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Things You Should Do #1: Why the New York Times puts free content first
The world’s most successful subscription publisher - The New York Times - regularly gives some of the most valuable real estate on its homepage to free articles - and, crucially, makes sure readers know they’re free.
Who’s at Fault When AI Makes a Serious Mistake? Managers Can’t Agree
A Wharton study finds a growing accountability problem as businesses hand more impactful decisions to AI.
- Searchengineland Read
Google Ads introduces channel prioritization and budget allocation controls
Google Ads is rolling out new channel prioritization and budget allocation controls, giving advertisers more flexibility over where their campaign budgets are spent across Google properties and partner networks.
- Searchenginejournal Read
Google Ads Introduces Channel Prioritization And Budget Allocation
Google Ads introduces channel prioritization and budget allocation controls, giving advertisers more flexibility over spending across Search, Performance Max, and other campaigns.
Google Ads Channel Prioritization and Budget Allocation
Google Ads is rolling out two new "controls" in the advertising platform named channel prioritization and budget allocation. These are rolling out globally across Google Search, Google Shopping, Performance Max, and soon Demand Gen.
- The Keyword Read
Guide your campaign spending with new priority and allocation features
New controls in Google Ads let marketers categorize channel groupings by priority and better control how budget is allocated
Google Search On URLs: Ranking Factor, Hyphens vs Underscores & Emojis
Google posted its first video in a series of what they are calling The Non-Canonical Cabinet. In this video, Cherry Prommawin and Gary Illyes discussed how Google Search deals with URLs. They discuss URLs as a ranking signal, hyphens versus underscores, emojis and much more.
- Searchengineland Read
Your brand can win the mention and lose the citation
Your AI dashboard’s single score is likely hiding two very different problems. Semrush’s “2026 AI Visibility Index” found that, across 22 categories and four AI platforms, fewer than half of the top 100 mentioned brands also appeared in the matching top 100 citation lists on average in every month measured. A single “AI visibility” score can hide whether the brand appears in the answer, whether its website supplies the evidence, or whether third-party sites carry most of the weight.
- Searchengineland Read
What language should you track AI prompts in?
English dominates AI training, but isn't always best for tracking AI visibility. Here's how to choose the right language for each market.
- Searchenginejournal Read
Why SEO Isn’t Enough Anymore – And Why That’s A Good Thing
SEO has always been great because there are so many ways to be successful. Now there might be even more.
Daily Search Forum Recap: October 14, 2026
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google has rolled out its latest Gemini model, Argon 4
Dave’s Hot Chicken Started With $900 in a Parking Lot. It Now Has 500 Restaurants
The chain has eight openings in one day, deals across Europe and no sign of slowing down.
What can you actually put in a URL 🐔?
Can you put a chicken emoji 🐔in your domain name? What about your URL path? What about non-English characters? Welcome to the premiere of The Non-Canonical Cabinet—a series where Google Search Developer Advocates Gary Illyes and Cherry Prommawin dig through the vault to answer the weirdest, most hyper-specific edge cases of SEO. These are questions that don't belong on a standard FAQ page but are still useful for Search and generative AI features. In this episode, they tackle the technical boundaries of domain names and URL paths, explain Punycode vs. percent encoding, and unpack why just because technology allows you to be weird doesn't mean you should. In this episode: 🌐 Who decides what goes in a domain name 🈶 Internationalized domain names and Punycode (xn--what?) 🐔🔥 Can emojis go in a domain? 📈 Do keywords in a URL help with ranking? 🔣 Emojis and non-English characters in the URL path, and percent-encoding ➖ Hyphens vs. underscores TL;DR: Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Keep URLs simple, readable and built for humans. Chapters: 00:00 – Welcome to The Non-Canonical Cabinet 01:33 – Can you put anything in a domain or URL path? 02:05 – Domain: understanding ICANN & RFC standards 03:46 – What is allowed in the domain name? ASCII, Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), and Punycode 05:18 – Emoji in a domain name? 06:01 – Do keywords in a URL help with ranking? 07:02 – URL Paths: UTF-8, special characters, and "chicken gear" 08:28 – Encoding in a domain vs URL path 09:06 – Why emoji URLs might not be a good idea 10:45 – Hyphens vs. Underscores in URL paths 11:34 – Recap 📚 Learn more: URL structure best practices: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/url-structure 🗄️ Got a weird question you want us to pull from the cabinet? Don't let your edge-case questions gather dust! Leave it in the comments below! 🤖 Next episode: we try to put chicken in a robots.txt file. Like. Subscribe. Keep it Canonical. #GoogleSearchCent
A Masked Gang Stole 30,000 Bottles of Wine Worth $5.8 Million From an Italian Winery. It’s Being Called the Biggest Vino Heist in Italy’s History
The vino villians disabled the cameras, used the company’s own forklifts and drove off with two truckloads of prized Tuscan reds.
Higher Ed Got More Money This Year. So Why Are Colleges Still Broke?
Is higher education facing a temporary funding squeeze or a deeper structural problem? Rising costs, enrollment uncertainty and uneven public investment raise important questions.
- Searchengineland Read
What the PPC agency of 2027 will look like
As routine PPC work gets automated, agencies face a bigger question: What will clients still pay humans to do?
- The Media Copilot Read
Publishers test AI search strategies as Google referrals fall 40%
Publishers are testing AI search strategies as Google referrals decline, but experts say there is no reliable GEO playbook yet.
- The Media Copilot Read
Reach signs Google AI partnership for UK and Irish news content
Reach has announced a partnership with Google that gives Google enhanced content rights to news across its UK and Ireland portfolio. The post
- Searchenginejournal Read
Your Store Is ‘Agent-Ready’ By Default, We Tested 122 Shopify Stores To See What That Actually Means
From testing top Shopify stores, Bill Hunt found agents can build a checkout, but can’t answer basic delivery or cancellation questions.
- The Keyword Read
6 ways to trick-or-treat yourself to the ultimate Halloween with Search
Whether you need a last-minute costume or a scary movie watchlist, let Google handle heavy lifting for your Halloween prep.
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