Generative AI reads the entire web’s picture of your business: where your name has appeared, what other sources have said about you, how you’ve described yourself across platforms, and whether all of those descriptions are consistent with each other. A well-optimized website is one input into that picture. For most small businesses, it’s the only input they’ve thought about.

The businesses that show up in AI-generated answers tend to have active profiles on platforms where their customers spend time, names that appear in third-party content, and information that stays consistent across every surface AI might check. They’ve given AI systems enough corroborated, coherent information to be confident citing them.

This article covers five AI search trust signals that most business owners underinvest in or ignore entirely when it comes to generative engine optimization (GEO)—and what to do instead to increase your visibility and get discovered in AI search.

Contents

• Earned media (but not the kind you’re thinking of)
• LinkedIn
• Google Business Profile
• YouTube
• Consistency across platforms

The 5 biggest AI search signals businesses ignore

Here, we’ll cover the biggest AI search trust signals businesses are ignoring when it comes to GEO—and what to do instead.

1. Earned media (but not the kind you’re thinking of)

Earned media in an AI search context has nothing to do with landing a feature in Forbes or hiring a PR firm. For a small business, it means any time your name, expertise, or opinion appears on a property you don’t own.

That looks like:

• A quote in a local news article about storm damage trends from a roofing company owner.
• A mention in a city-specific “best of” roundup.
• A guest post on a trade blog your customers actually read.
• An industry association listing or award mention.
• A customer success story published on a vendor’s website.

Source

AI systems use corroboration. A business saying it specializes in roof replacement on its own website is a self-reported claim. Three other sites citing that business in that same context is a much stronger signal. The more places your name and specialty appear together in third-party content, the more confident an AI is when surfacing you for related queries.

Here’s what that looks like in practice: A dental practice owner in Austin gets interviewed by a local parenting blog about kids’ dental anxiety. That article lives on a third-party domain, mentions her by name and specialty, links back to her practice, and stays indexed. That one piece of earned media does more GEO work than a dozen optimized service pages on her own site.

The barrier is lower than most owners assume. Here are some examples of earned media opportunities:

• Trade association newsletters need expert comments.
• Local news outlets quote business owners on topics they cover year-round.
• Industry publications run contributed pieces from practitioners.
• Vendors publish case studies about clients who got results.

None of this requires a PR budget or media connections. It requires making yourself available.

What to do

• Offer a short expert comment to trade association newsletters or industry publications in your vertical.
• Ask vendors, business partners, and satisfied clients whether they’d publish a brief case study or mention.
• Find local “best of” lists and make sure your business is submitted or nominated where eligible.

Get everything you need to know about showing up in AI search in our free guide: The AI Search Toolkit >>

2. LinkedIn

Many local businesses either ignore LinkedIn entirely or treat the business page like a bulletin board for announcements. Neither approach generates GEO signals.

An analysis of 325,000 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity found that LinkedIn is the second-most cited domain across all three platforms, trailing only Reddit. AI systems cited LinkedIn content in more than 13% of responses on average. For professional and local service queries, it ranks first.

Two surfaces matter here, for different reasons:

1. The business page is where you document what your company does in structured, consistent language. The About section, listed specialties, and regular posts build a pattern of topical signals AI can read. A landscaping company that posts consistently about lawn care, seasonal prep, and soil health builds topic associations over time that shape how AI understands and describes that business. Six months of posts on a theme does more than a perfectly written About section ever will.
2. The owner’s personal profile is often more powerful and more neglected. AI systems treat active LinkedIn profiles as credibility anchors for individual expertise. When someone asks an AI for a good plumber in a specific city, businesses whose owners have active, substantive profiles are better positioned to appear in that answer. Running your personal profile is a business decision, not a personal one.

Source

“Active” doesn’t mean daily posting or chasing virality. It means a complete and current profile, a few posts per month about something specific to the work, and real perspective rather than promotional copy.

A Semrush analysis of 89,000 LinkedIn URLs cited in AI search found that 75% of authors whose content gets cited post at least five times in a four-week period, and follower count matters far less than consistency and expertise. A plumber with 300 followers posting practical, job-specific content regularly is more likely to get cited by AI than a competitor with 3,000 followers who posts once a month.

What to do

• Write the business page About section in plain language that matches how customers describe the problem they’re trying to solve.
• Build out your personal profile fully: headline, summary, services section.
• Post from your personal account about specific jobs, decisions, or lessons from the work.
• Prioritize practical posts about your trade over promotional content.

3. Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (GBP) is the signal most SMBs know about but underfill. Claiming and verifying the profile gets treated as done. That’s where most stop.

Google Posts are short updates that appear on the profile. Most SMBs post once at launch and never return. Consistent posting, even once a week, signals that the business is active and adds to the topical record of what the business does.

Photo and video recency matters more than most owners realize. A profile with current, relevant images tells both users and AI systems that the business is operating. An HVAC company that uploads photos from a recent installation job communicates something a competitor’s three-year-old stock photo does not.

Categories and service descriptions are typically set at initial setup and never revisited. A plumber listed only as “Plumber” misses “Water Heater Installation,” “Drain Cleaning,” “Emergency Plumbing,” and others that map directly to how customers search. Each missing category is a missed citation opportunity.

When you expand this business’s GBP services, it has an extremely comprehensive list.

Reviews and responses are an underused vocabulary signal. The words customers use in reviews expand the language AI associates with your business. Responses that reference specific service language add more structured text to your GBP record. A dental practice whose responses say “so glad we could help with your Invisalign treatment” is building topic associations with every reply.

Here’s what this looks like in practice: A family-owned HVAC company in Phoenix that adds a weekly Google Post about seasonal maintenance tips and responds to every review with a specific mention of the job type is generating far more AI search trust signals from their GBP than a competitor who set up their profile two years ago and never returned.

What to do

• Audit and expand your categories to reflect specific services, not just the broad trade.
• Post a short update at least once a week, even if it’s just a completed job or a seasonal tip.
• Respond to every review and use the response to add context about the job type.

Need help understanding the modern rules for SEO? Download our free guide >> How to Do SEO Right—Right Now!

4. YouTube

YouTube is the most underestimated GEO signal on this list, partly because it feels like a production commitment most small businesses can’t meet. That assumption is costing visibility.

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. Google owns it. And across AI search platforms, YouTube gets cited 200 times more than its next closest video competitor. The reason goes deeper than distribution: both OpenAI and Google trained their models on YouTube transcripts. 

A video where you explain how you approach a job generates a transcript, a title, a description, and a channel history. All of it is readable by AI, in a way your service page is not. When someone asks an AI how to know if they need a new roof, and a roofing contractor in their area has a two-minute video answering exactly that question, that video creates a citation opportunity the contractor’s service page does not.

The businesses showing up most consistently in local and trade-related AI answers often have the simplest production: phone footage, natural lighting, no script. What they have is specificity.

A lawn care company posting “why your lawn has yellow patches in July,” filmed in an actual client’s backyard, carries more trust signal than a polished brand video that says nothing about anything.

Think about what’s worth putting on video: 

• The three or four questions customers ask most before hiring you.
• A job shown in progress, like a roofing inspection, a dental cleaning, or a drain unclogged from start to finish.
• A decision explained: Why you recommended one approach over another on a specific job.
• Short local context: What older homes in this neighborhood typically need, what Phoenix summers do to HVAC systems, why certain soil types require specific lawn treatments.

What this looks like in practice: A solo electrician in Nashville posts a 5-minute video explaining how to tell whether a circuit breaker is failing or whether it’s a wiring issue—filmed on a phone in a client’s garage. That video, indexed on YouTube with a specific title and description, becomes a citable answer every time an AI handles an electrical troubleshooting question from someone in that market. His service page with the same information does not.

What to do

• Start with one video per month answering one specific customer question.
• Write specific, descriptive titles: “How to Tell If Your Circuit Breaker Needs to Be Replaced” beats “About Our Electrical Services” every time.
• Fill out the video description fully, including your location, services covered, and a link to your website.
• Organize videos into playlists by topic or service type so the channel has a clear structure AI can read.

5. Consistency across platforms

Every signal above is weakened if the information across platforms contradicts itself. This is the connective tissue that turns a collection of profiles into a coherent presence AI can confidently cite.

AI systems corroborate information before surfacing a business as an answer. A GBP that lists one city and a LinkedIn that lists another creates uncertainty. A website phone number that doesn’t match your GBP listing is a discrepancy. An AI dealing with contradictory signals about a business will be less confident citing it than one whose information is uniform across every surface.

Consistency goes beyond name, address, and phone number, though that still matters. It includes how you describe what you do, the categories and specialties you claim across GBP, LinkedIn, Yelp, and industry directories, your business hours after changes, and the photos and logo you use across profiles.

If you run a quick audit of your online presence, you’ll likely find at least three or four inconsistencies you didn’t know existed. For example:

• A car rental company with two locations listed under slightly different names.
• A dental practice whose website mentions Invisalign but whose GBP categories don’t.
• An HVAC company whose LinkedIn still lists the phone number from before they moved offices two years ago.

None of these feel like big problems until you realize they’re introducing doubt into every AI query about your business.

What to do instead

• Run a self-audit:
  • Search your business name in Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.
  • Look at what comes back. Note every platform that surfaces.
  • Check whether the description, address, phone number, and specialty language match across all of them.
• Standardize on one core business description paragraph and use it everywhere.
• Update any profiles that still reflect old addresses, phone numbers, or service areas.

You can also try our local citation coverage calculator to get an idea of where you stand:

Looking for ways to get more leads for your business (for free)? We’ve got you covered >> 14 Fast & Easy Ways to Get Free Leads (+Examples You Can Copy)

Stop ignoring these GEO signals and start getting found in AI search

None of this requires a marketing team or a budget. It requires consistency and specificity, which are things a single business owner who knows their work is better positioned to deliver than most large brands managing hundreds of locations.

The businesses that show up in AI answers are the ones that have given AI systems enough consistent, corroborated, specific information to be confident citing them. Your website is one input. The trust signals covered here are the rest.

AI-generated answers are not a temporary feature. The signal footprint you build across earned media, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, YouTube, and platform consistency today is what determines whether AI is confident enough to cite you tomorrow.

The post The Biggest AI Search Signals You’re Probably Ignoring appeared first on WordStream.

Local service advertisers want to convert these searchers into leads fast, as with most local service inquiries, time is of the essence. Luckily, Google’s Local Services Ads (via Performance Max campaigns using a pay per lead goal) can come to the rescue.

They allow local service advertisers to shine on the SERP with a unique ad type that shows service offering options, ratings, and searchers can take action directly on the ad without having to click off—making lead generation a breeze. In this article, we’re covering everything you need to know about Local Services Ads (LSAs) to make the most of them for your business.

Contents

• What are Google Local Services Ads?
• What businesses can run Google LSAs?
• Google PMax Local Services Ads benefits
• How to get started with Google LSAs
• Tips for effective PMax Local Services Ads

What are Google Local Services Ads?

Google Local Services Ads are a special type of PMax campaign ad that allows service-based businesses to run ads meant to generate leads directly on the search results page. Rather than linking to a landing page like traditional Google Ads, LSAs are meant to drive calls, form fills, messages, or appointment bookings directly from the ad. Specific industries such as locksmiths, plumbers, garage door professionals, electricians, lawyers, real estate agents, and many more can take advantage of this Google Ads type.

When a searcher enters a local search query, they may see several trusted professionals in their area positioned right above the traditional paid search ads; these ads show a business number, hours, ratings, and reviews.

For example, an LSA might look like this:

Upon clicking on a local advertiser’s listing, Google prompts them to confirm the job they’re looking for as well as their service area. If you fit the job and serve that area, you’ll be matched to the searcher, and they’ll be able to review your qualifications, ratings, and Google reviews before contacting you.

If you’re not a good fit for their job or you don’t serve their region, then Google will save you the costs and burdens and will connect them to a more appropriate Local Services Ad.

Are you making the most of Google Ads? Find out using our free Google Ads Grader tool!

Local Services Ads industries

Local Services Ads are a dream come true for some industries. Today, Google fully supports Local Services Ads all across the United States for more than 80 industries, including:

Benefits of Google Local Services Ads

Still wondering if Google Local Services Ads are right for your business? Let’s review some of the benefits of this specific ad type.

Advertisers pay per lead–not click!

PPC advertisers know the pain of paying for a click that isn’t a good fit or doesn’t convert—especially for businesses with high average costs per click, like attorneys and dentists. Google’s Local Services Ads help connect the right job to the right advertiser and prevent the job mismatch that often happens when a user searches for broad terms for a very specific job or for an area outside your service zone.

Businesses running Local Services Ads are only charged for valid leads, and depending on the job and the market, these can end up being even lower than the average cost per lead for search ads in your industry. If you receive a lead that is either fraudulent, spam, or a poor match, you can even dispute the charge for credit.

Plus, the Google Local Services Ads average cost per lead is about $60—which is significantly lower than the search ad benchmark average cost per lead of $66.69.

Find out how your search costs can compare to your current LSA costs using our latest search ads industry benchmarks!

Gain trust with the Google Verified badge

When eligible, the Google Verified badge will automatically appear on your LSAs, adding an extra dose of credibility. Before October 20, 2025, LSAs used to have multiple different badges (like the Google Guarantee) depending on their industry and level of verification. However, that has since changed, and all LSAs now have the Google Verified badge instead.

This Google Verified badge is meant to provide a more consolidated, cohesive, and transparent LSA experience for both users and advertisers.

Expand the reach of your paid search ads

You’ll notice that Google Local Services Ads sit above the paid search ads and the organic listings.

That’s because Google Local Services Ads aren’t meant to replace your traditional search ads or even your organic local listings.

Some searchers still turn to Google and expect to visit your website before deciding if you’re the best provider for their business. Even if they don’t convert via LSAs, their prime position on the SERP and user reviews may change how people convert later on.

Easy management with PMax

LSAs have moved directly into Google Ads under Performance Max campaigns with a new pay-per-lead goal. That means you can run LSAs without having to leave Google Ads (as they were previously in a separate dashboard). Most advertisers are already taking advantage of the fully-automated PMax campaign type. So now, you can work with LSAs using PMax campaigns (when assigned a pay-per-lead goal), which is a campaign type you might be already comfortable and familiar with.

How to get started with Google Local Services Ads

Ready to try out Google LSAs? Here’s how to get started.

1. Confirm your eligibility

Google’s Local Services Ads are only available for certain industries (which we outlined earlier). To find out if you can connect with your customers through Local Services Ads, first confirm your business type and location here.

If you’re eligible, you’ll be guided through creating an account to manage your Local Services Ads. Local Services Ads are managed separately from the ads you create in Google Ads, so you’ll need to create a new account.

2. Create your business profile

To run LSAs, you’ll need a Google Business Profile account and link it to your Google Ads account. Your Local Services Ads business profile will determine which jobs are matched to your business. Be honest about what kind of services you can perform as well as which areas you want leads in, as you’re agreeing to potentially pay for any match leads from your Local Services Ads.

From your business profile, you can edit:

• Your weekly budget
• Your business hours
• Your service areas
• Your job types

3. Add your license and insurance details

If you’re a licensed and insured professional, you’ll need to submit proof. Be sure your paperwork is up to date, and then provide your general liability insurance details as well as your related professional licenses.

If your city or state requires additional licenses, you can add them here as well to ensure you’re compliant in those regions.

4. Complete a background check

Before Google starts sending people into its users’ homes, offices, and cars, it wants to be sure its users are safe and can always trust the Local Services Advertisers covered under the Google Verified badge. For this reason, Google requires businesses and their fieldworkers to pass a background check.

There is no cost for these background checks, and you can manage them here.

5. Manage your leads

Once your business profile is complete and linked to your Google Ads account, you’ll be able to have a PMax pay-per-lead campaign created in your account. Once this is up and running, you can see the leads your campaign yields in the leads reporting section of the Google Ads platform.

Remember that leads aren’t necessarily booked jobs! Be sure to follow up with your inbound leads. After selecting an individual lead, you can review the details of the lead, including the job type and location, as well as listen to the recording of the call.

How to make your PMax Local Services Ads more effective

These two quick tips for running Google Local Services Ads with PMax campaigns can make a big difference in ROI.

1. Be mindful of the locations you target

Each pay-per-lead PMax campaign running LSAs includes the usual settings, like location targeting. Of course, having the right location settings on your LSA PMax campaign is critical, since the point of this ad type is to reach local searchers.

For example, if you serve multiple locations, be sure the locations you choose to target are in close proximity to your main prospect hubs (i.e, where you’ll have a higher likelihood of benefiting from the proximity ranking factor).

2. Keep your Google reviews up

Keep in mind that reviews on your regular Google Business Profile appear on your LSAs, so the more positive reviews you have on your Google Business Profile, the nicer your PMax LSAs will look. This reputation management checklist can help ensure you have a well-rounded approach to advertising your services on Google Ads. 

Use Google Local Services Ads today to book more jobs tomorrow

Google LSAs are quick and easy to create and manage, so incorporating this ad type into your marketing strategy is a win-win for your service business. Just be sure to carve out time to properly set them up and manage any leads your LSAs bring in.

To recap, here are the steps to get started with Google LSAs:

1. Confirm your eligibility
2. Create your business profile
3. Add your license and insurance details
4. Complete a background check
5. Manage your leads

The post The Ultimate Guide to Google Local Services Ads appeared first on WordStream.

The problem isn’t your ranking. It’s the keyword you’re focusing on.

Type that query into Google today, and you’ll get a complete AI-generated answer at the top of the page, showing you quick step-by-step instructions, tool recommendations, DIY videos, and common mistakes to avoid. Basically, everything a homeowner needs to handle the faucet problem by themselves.

Now you find yourself in a situation where you own a page that ranks first for a query that no longer requires a plumber.

This is the real SEO problem most small businesses are facing right now. AI has started absorbing entire classes of informational keywords, and many businesses are still investing in them as if nothing has changed.

This is already visible in the data. When AI Overviews appear, organic click-through rates can drop by over 60%, even for top-ranking pages. At the same time, more than 80% of searches now end without a click at all, meaning users get what they need directly on the results page. And for queries with AI summaries, about 1 in 4 searches ends without any further action.

But not every keyword is affected equally. Some have been fully claimed by AI. Some are changing shape. And some still drive calls, bookings, and revenue because they require a real business to finish the job.

This article gives you a framework to tell them apart: a three-tier system for classifying your keywords based on how much AI has claimed them, a step-by-step audit to find your most valuable SEO keywords right now, and concrete examples from five SMB industries showing exactly which keywords are worth your time.

Contents

• Why you need to evolve your SEO keyword strategy
• The 3-tier framework to guide your keyword strategy now
• How to find SEO keywords for the AI search era (step-by-step)
• What this looks like in practice: Updated keyword strategy examples
• What to do once you’ve found keywords worth targeting
• A simple pressure test for any keyword

Why you need to evolve your SEO keyword strategy

Most small businesses experience traffic drops and assume the same thing: something went wrong. Maybe rankings slipped. Maybe Google changed the algorithm. Maybe a competitor overtook them.

Sometimes that’s true. But more often now, it’s nothing from above. The keyword just stopped behaving the way it used to. That’s the part that’s easy to miss.

But the role that the keyword plays in the journey has quietly changed. And unless you separate those changes, it all gets lumped together as “traffic loss,” which leads to the wrong fixes.

Some queries have been fully claimed by AI

There’s a category of keywords that no longer really belong to websites. These are classic informational queries: “what is,” “how to,” “why does.”

A few years ago, these were the backbone of most content strategies. You’d write a clear explanation, rank for it, and bring people into your site early in their research. Now, when someone searches “what is a dental crown” or “how to fertilize your lawn,” they often get a complete answer before they even see a list of results. Structured, readable, detailed enough that most people don’t need anything else.

So even if your content is technically winning that keyword, it’s no longer controlling the outcome. You’re part of the source material, not the destination. Traffic loss in this category isn’t something you fix with better optimization. It’s a structural change in how the query gets answered.

Some queries are partially affected

Not everything collapses that cleanly. There’s another layer of keywords where AI does a decent job summarizing the space, but doesn’t fully resolve the decision. These are the comparison and research queries: “best CRM for small business,” “dental crown vs. veneer.”

You’ll still see an AI-generated summary. It might list a few options and outline pros and cons. But it doesn’t settle the question.

AI Overviews are already reducing click-through rates for many of these queries, but they haven’t killed them entirely. It doesn’t know your budget, your constraints, or your specific situation. So people still click. They open a few tabs. They look for examples. They try to validate what they just read. Fewer of them may make the jump to your website than before, but the ones who do are much closer to a decision. That’s why these keywords still matter.

Some queries still require a business

Then there’s the third category, and this is the one most businesses should be paying the most attention to.

Search something like “emergency plumber Austin” or “dental crown cost Chicago,” and the intent is immediately different. The user isn’t trying to understand a concept. They’re trying to solve a problem. AI can provide context, explain what to expect, and outline typical costs. But it can’t actually complete the job.

At some point, the user needs to call someone, book an appointment, or show up somewhere in person. These keywords still behave much closer to how search used to work. Clicks still matter. Visibility still leads somewhere. Ranking still has a direct connection to outcomes.

Why this distinction matters

If you treat all keywords the same, this change is almost impossible to diagnose. A drop in traffic from an informational query looks identical in a report to a drop from a transactional one. But the underlying cause and what you should do about it are completely different.

One category is gone for good. One is evolving. One is still fully in play. And until you separate those three, it’s easy to keep investing in areas where the return has quietly disappeared while underinvesting in the ones that still drive real business.

The easiest way to find keywords? Try our Free Keyword Research Tool!

The 3-tier framework to guide your keyword strategy now

Here’s the simplest way to think about your keyword strategy now:

The mistake most businesses make is overinvesting in Tier 1. That made sense before. It built traffic. It fed the funnel.

Now, it often produces visibility without outcomes.

The change is simple:

• Reduce effort on Tier 1
• Refocus on Tier 2 and Tier 3
• Judge keywords based on business impact, not traffic

How to find SEO keywords for the AI search era (step-by-step)

Most keyword audits still start from the same assumption: improve rankings, improve results. That used to be true. Right now, you can rank first, bring in consistent traffic, and still get nothing from it.

So the point of this audit isn’t to find where you rank or which keywords you’re missing. It’s to answer one uncomfortable question:

Does this keyword still require someone to contact a business, or can it be resolved entirely on the search results page?

Step 1: Pull your existing keywords (start with what already gets traffic)

Before you open Ahrefs or Semrush, go into Google Search Console and look at what’s actually driving traffic. Not the pages you think should work, but the ones that are pulling in clicks right now.

This is usually where the disconnect starts to show up. You’ll find pages that look like clear wins in your reports: they rank well, they bring in traffic, they’ve probably been highlighted in monthly updates. But when you think about what they actually contribute to the business, things feel off. The phone isn’t ringing. Nothing downstream reflects the traffic you’re seeing.

Most teams interpret that as a conversion problem. More often, it’s a keyword problem hiding behind good-looking numbers.

Step 2: Check what Google actually shows (not what the tool says)

Once you have your keyword list, search each one manually and look at the results as if you were the customer. Not through a tool. Not through a report. Just a clean search.

Take “how to fix a leaky faucet.” A few years ago, that query would give you a list of articles. Now, in many cases, it gives you the answer immediately: a structured explanation, steps, a video. All before you see a single organic result. At that point, your ranking barely matters. The user has already solved their problem.

Ask yourself one question while you’re looking at the results: if I were actually trying to solve this problem, would I need to click anything here? 

If the answer is no, that keyword has effectively been claimed.

Get updated tips for your SEO strategy with our free guide >> How to Do SEO Right—Right Now!

Step 3: Classify the keyword (This is the core of the audit)

As you work through your list, you’ll notice that keywords in the same general topic can behave very differently from each other.

Take the dental example:

• “What is a dental crown” gets a clean, structured explanation that covers definition, materials, and process. There’s no urgency to go further.
• “Dental crown vs. veneer” still shows a summary, but it’s not definitive. You’re comparing options, weighing tradeoffs. That creates space for clicks.
• “Dental crown cost Chicago” is different again. You’re not learning anymore. You’re trying to figure out what this is going to cost you, locally, and who to call.

All three sit close together topically. All three behave completely differently.

Step 4: Pressure-test the keyword (this is where most people get it wrong)

Don’t rush the classification step. A lot of keywords don’t fall neatly into one tier, and small wording differences can change everything.

For example, “dental crown cost” might still nudge someone to book an appointment, especially if the results are vague or location-dependent.

But “average dental crown cost” is much easier to satisfy with a single price range on the results page. If you group those together, you end up making the wrong call about both.

Look at the actual results and think about what the user is trying to do, not just what the keyword says on the surface.

Step 5: Quantify the gap between traffic and value

Once you’ve classified your keywords, compare what the data shows against what the business is actually getting. This is usually where the biggest gap appears.

The keyword bringing in 1,200 visits a month is generating zero leads. The one with 90 visits is generating 14. That’s not a conversion problem. That’s a keyword strategy problem.

Step 6: Identify where your time is going

Zoom out and look at your content as a whole. What you’ll usually find is that a large portion of your site is built around informational queries, because that’s what SEO rewarded for years. Those pages were easier to rank, easier to scale, and they drove visible traffic growth.

The question isn’t “how do we improve these pages?” It’s “what role do these pages actually play now?”

Some still matter. They support other pages, establish expertise, and may get cited in AI-generated answers. But they’re no longer where your growth comes from.

Step 7: Decide what to do with each page

By this point, the next steps tend to become clear without needing a rigid checklist.

• Some content you keep as-is, because it still serves a purpose even if it’s no longer a direct driver of leads.
• Some content you improve, especially Tier 2 queries where better positioning can still influence an undecided buyer.
• Some content you stop investing in entirely. Not because it’s bad, but because the return is no longer there.

You’re not trying to win every keyword anymore. You’re trying to focus on the ones that still require you.

What this looks like in practice: Updated keyword strategy examples

Across almost every small business category, the same thing is happening: there’s a layer of content that used to attract traffic and signal authority but now gets absorbed before it can do anything useful. Right next to it, there’s a layer of keywords that still drives real business but gets a fraction of the attention.

Plumbing company

A plumbing business will almost always have content around basic fixes. Things like “how to fix a leaky faucet” or “why is my sink dripping.” These pages used to make sense. They brought in traffic, they positioned the business as helpful, and occasionally they led to calls.

Now, in most cases, they get resolved before the user ever needs a plumber. The answer is right there. The steps are clear. The problem feels manageable. So the business ends up ranking for a query that actively removes the need for its service.

Compare that to queries like:

• “emergency plumber [city]”
• “burst pipe repair cost [city]”
• “licensed plumber near me same day”

These don’t get resolved in the search results. They lead to action. The user isn’t trying to learn anymore. They’re trying to fix a problem they can’t handle themselves.

That’s the difference.

Get everything you need to know about showing up in AI search in our free guide: The AI Search Toolkit >>

Real estate

Real estate sites are full of educational content.

• “How to buy a house.”
• “What is a mortgage?”
• “Steps to selling your home.”

All of these topics can now be summarized cleanly in a few paragraphs. AI lays out the process, explains financing, and answers the basic questions most buyers have early on. That doesn’t mean the content is useless. It just means it no longer drives the outcome.

Now look at queries like:

• “homes for sale in [city]”
• “real estate agent near me”
• “how much is my home worth [city]”

No AI Overview for this query (yet)!

These are not informational in the same way. They’re situational. They depend on location, timing, and context. At some point, the user needs a person to move forward.

That’s where the click still matters.

HVAC business

HVAC companies often invest heavily in educational content around systems.

• “How does central air conditioning work?”
• “types of HVAC systems.”
• “what size AC unit do I need?”

These are all logical topics. They help explain the service and build credibility. But they’re also exactly the kind of queries AI handles well. The answers are structured, repeatable, and easy to summarize.

Now contrast that with:

• “AC installation cost [city]”
• “emergency HVAC repair near me”
• “HVAC company [city] reviews”

Here, the user isn’t trying to understand the system. They’re trying to solve a problem or make a decision. And that decision can’t be completed without involving a business.

Dental practice

Dental sites follow a similar pattern.

• “What is a dental crown?”
• “How long does a root canal take?”
• “are veneers better than crowns?”

These topics still have value, but they’re increasingly being answered directly in the search results. The user gets a clear explanation without needing to visit a site.

But when the query shifts slightly:

• “dental crown cost [city]”
• “same day crown dentist near me”
• “best dentist for veneers [city]”

Now the stakes are different. The user is no longer just learning. They’re evaluating options and preparing to act. That’s where the opportunity is.

Car dealership

Dealership content often leans into financing education.

• “How car financing works.”
• “What credit score do you need to buy a car?”
• “lease vs. buy.”

All of these are now easy for AI to summarize. The process, the terms, and the tradeoffs can all be explained in a few lines. But that doesn’t replace the moment where someone actually needs a car.

That shows up in queries like:

• “used cars under $15k near me”
• “car dealership bad credit financing [city]”
• “best used car dealerships [city]”

These queries don’t end in understanding. They end in action.

What to do once you’ve found the right keywords

This is the part most people get wrong. They see traffic dropping on research queries and assume those keywords aren’t worth targeting anymore. So they either double down on volume or abandon the space entirely. Both are mistakes.

AI now handles the first layer of the query: summarizing options, explaining the basics, giving the user a starting point. So if your content is doing the exact same thing–listing options, repeating definitions, staying neutral–there’s no reason to click. AI already did that job.

It’s not just about finding the right keywords; it’s about using them in a way that adds value and earns the click.

To do that, you need to:

• Narrow the problem
• Add real-world constraints
• Show actual numbers where possible
• Make decisions easier, not just more informed

In other words, your content needs to do the part AI stops short of doing because that’s the only part left that’s worth clicking for.

A simple pressure test for any keyword

If you strip everything else away, it comes down to one filter: If the query can be fully answered without a business, it’s not a growth keyword.

That sounds obvious when you read it. It’s much harder to apply in practice, because a lot of content still feels valuable even when it doesn’t lead anywhere. It ranks. It brings traffic. It shows up in reports. But if someone can search that query, get what they need, and move on without ever contacting a business, it’s not contributing to growth in the way most teams expect.

That doesn’t mean you remove it. It just means you stop treating it as something that will drive results on its own.

Before you commit to a keyword, run it through two questions:

1. If someone searches this, will they eventually need a provider to complete what they’re trying to do?
2. Is there any realistic path where they don’t need to contact a business at all?

If the second answer is yes, that keyword has likely already been absorbed. It doesn’t make it useless. It just means it shouldn’t be at the center of your strategy.

Build the right keyword strategy for the AI era

What’s happening to SEO right now isn’t random, and it isn’t temporary. It’s a structural change in how different types of queries get handled.

Some keywords have effectively been removed from the click economy. They still exist, and they still get searched, but they no longer create the same path to a website. Some are still in play, but they require different content to earn attention. And some haven’t changed at all, because they still depend on a real business to complete the job.

The problem is that most strategies treat all three the same, measuring success through rankings and traffic without asking what those numbers actually lead to. That’s why so many businesses feel like SEO is working on paper and failing in reality.

The fix isn’t more content or better optimization. It’s being more selective. Fewer keywords, better aligned with actual outcomes.

The post How to Find Keywords That Still Drive Results in the AI Era appeared first on WordStream.

A lot of that work moves faster nowadays. Routine tasks like early copy drafting, consumer data mining, and visual creation that once took hours can now be done in minutes. It’s estimated that 10–15% of a marketer’s time can already be automated with current technology, and 60% of jobs across the US economy contain 30% or more automatable work, or about a day and a half every week.

That does not mean that every task belongs outside human hands. Not at all. It just means that a surprising amount of low-leverage repeat work no longer needs to start from zero each and every time.

Contents

• Decide which tasks should and shouldn’t be automated
• 17 tasks you can automate now
• When to leave things in human hands

Before you automate anything, know what should stay human

It’s important to remember that you should still keep things like strategy and final messaging close. The same goes for brand voice, factual judgment, compliance-sensitive claims, and anything public enough that a weak output would be painful to clean up later.

A simple rule that helps is: the more visible the output, the more human review it needs. That is why the best candidates for automation are in and around the core decision. First tries. Sorting. Summaries. Cleanup. Pattern spotting. Structured drafting. The “marketing meh” stuff.

Your most public-facing work should be human-led.

If your website traffic is flat, it could be an AI visibility problem. Get The Complete AI Search Toolkit: Practical Strategies to Get Found by AI

17 tasks you can automate now

The strongest candidates tend to repeat, follow a pattern, take time without much original thinking, and stay easy to review before anything important goes live. That is also the filter for the list below. These are the parts of marketing that quietly eat the week away from you. So, let’s try to avoid that, shall we?

1. Pulling weekly campaign summaries

Most weekly summaries follow the same shape: what moved, what mattered, and what needs attention next. Start with clean source data, generate a rough readout, then tighten the interpretation yourself.

Tool tip: ChatGPT (or other LLMs) works well here because it can turn raw notes or performance inputs into a first-pass summary quickly.

2. Summarizing meetings and call notes

This work becomes big fast when nobody owns it properly. Use a transcript (or decent notes) as the source, then turn that into a recap organized around decisions, open questions, and next steps while the conversation is still fresh.

Tool tip: Notion AI Meeting Notes is made for transcription, summaries, and action items inside a shared workspace.

3. Sorting search terms into themes

A raw search term report is only half useful until somebody groups it into patterns. Decide the grouping logic first, then sort by intent, product area, or pain point so it becomes easier to find negative keyword opportunities, ad group problems, or content gaps.

Tool tip: Google Ads Search Terms Insights groups all your queries into categories and subcategories with performance data attached.

4. Clustering customer feedback by topic

Reviews, support chats, survey responses, and open-text feedback are full of patterns that are easy to miss when you read them one by one. You can now pull them into one place, group them by recurring friction points, requests, or objections, then look at the language people keep repeating.

Tool tip: Caplena is built for analyzing open-ended feedback at scale, which makes it a strong fit for clustering themes with precision, understanding what creates delight or friction, and making decisions backed by quantified customer insights.

5. Tagging and routing inbound leads

Lead handling gets messy when the rules live in different people’s heads. Define the categories first, then automate the repetitive tagging and routing around source, urgency, segment, or owner, while reviewing the exceptions on a regular basis.

Tool tip: Zapier has lead-routing automations built for rule-based workflows across forms, CRMs, and inboxes.

6. Updating CRM notes after sales calls

This task always looks small until the data quality slips and every downstream handoff gets worse and worse. Use call notes or transcripts to draft structured summaries around need, status, objection, and next step.

Tool tip: Gong is built around conversation intelligence, including note-taking, call summaries, and CRM updates.

7. Writing social media caption drafts

A lot of teams lose quite a lot of time here in tiny increments. Start with the real source asset, generate rough options by platform, then rewrite the best social media captions in your voice so the final line still sounds human.

Tool tip: Claude (or other LLMs, although many see the current iteration of Claude as the better tool for creative writing) is a strong fit for early drafting and simplification when you want rough options before a human polish pass.

Want more ways to put social success on autopilot? Download The Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing (Simplified)

8. Repurposing blog posts into other formats

Believe it or not, a good blog post can actually keep working after publish day. Use the full piece as the source, then turn it into a newsletter intro, a social draft, or a sales follow-up asset, and then just edit for channel fit.

Tool tip: Writer is designed for teams creating on-brand assets at scale, which makes it useful for repurposing work like this.

9. Drafting ad copy variations

Even strong marketers get sleepy after rewriting headline five (again). Now, you can just use the audience, offer, and core problem as the foundation, generate several rough angles, then cut hard and refine.

Tool tip: Jasper’s ad copy generator is built specifically for producing multiple ad variations from a short brief.

10. Creating meta titles and meta descriptions

This is small work with a bad habit of showing up late. Start with the target keyword and a brief page summary, draft several options, then choose the one that matches the content and gives a searcher a reason to click.

Tool tip: Grammarly offers dedicated AI tools for meta titles and meta descriptions, which makes it a practical fit for this narrow task.

11. Building first-pass content briefs

A weak brief drags the whole draft down. Use the topic, audience, and business goal to generate a rough outline with likely subtopics, useful questions, and possible angles, then refine it with editorial judgment.

Tool tip: Perplexity (or other LLMs) is useful here because it surfaces sources quickly during the research phase before you shape the brief yourself.

12. Refreshing old blog posts with optimization ideas

Older posts usually need sharpening, not blind rewriting. Use the current article as the source and pull out thin sections, stale references, weak metadata, or missed opportunities, then turn that into an edit checklist.

Tool tip: Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is helpful during refreshes because it evaluates copy while you revise it.

13. Drafting FAQ sections

A lot of FAQ sections feel padded because they were built from assumptions instead of real questions. Start with what people actually ask in chats, sales calls, or search, draft rough Q&A starters, then trim and rewrite them so the section adds clarity.

Tool tip: Grok (or other LLMs) can turn source material into structured question-and-answer starters quickly.

14. Turning webinars into content assets

Webinars trap useful material all the time. Work from the transcript or detailed notes, pull out the strongest explanations or moments worth expanding, then repurpose those into rough follow-up assets for content or social.

Tool tip: Descript is useful here because it is built around transcript-based editing and repurposing recorded content.

15. Drafting nurture email variants

Email flows rarely live as one perfect version. Define the audience and the job of the email first, then generate rough variants and edit for pacing, voice, and clarity.

Tool tip: HubSpot’s AI email writer is designed to generate draft emails inside a broader marketing and CRM workflow.

16. Creating internal recaps for stakeholders

Most stakeholders do not want the whole dashboard, no matter how hard you worked on it. They just want a useful readout. Start with the raw update, organize it around progress, issues, and decisions, then add your interpretation before you send it.

Tool tip: Microsoft Copilot is useful for turning meeting notes, emails, and documents into short internal summaries across Microsoft 365.

17. Compiling competitor messaging snapshots

Competitive review is worth doing and easy to postpone because it gets tedious quickly. Use the same comparison frame each time so your notes stay consistent, then summarize the patterns in headline approach, offer framing, and CTA language.

Tool tip: Gemini (or other LLMs) is helpful for this research-heavy task because it returns answers with linked sources you can inspect.

When to leave things in human hands

This is worth repeating because it is where quality slips the fastest. Here’s your rule of thumb.

Speeding up support work is helpful
Handing off judgment is where things get shaky

Remember: Keep strategy close. Keep final messaging close. Keep brand voice, factual review, and compliance-sensitive claims close. The more public the output, the more that last human pass matters.

Start with the tasks that keep coming back

The fastest wins usually come from the work that repeats every week and never feels important enough to rethink. That’s why it keeps stealing your precious, precious time.

Here are your next steps to start automating your marketing tasks:

1. Pick one or two tasks from this list.
2. Build a better process around them.
3. Tighten the review step.
4. See what time comes back.

Most teams do not need a dramatic reinvention. They just need fewer manual tasks standing between good thinking and finished marketing. Now go get your time back.

Here’s a recap of the full list of tasks you can automate now:

1. Pulling weekly campaign summaries
2. Summarizing meetings and call notes
3. Sorting search terms into themes
4. Clustering customer feedback by topic
5. Tagging and routing leads
6. Updating CRM notes after sales calls
7. Writing social media caption drafts
8. Repurposing blog posts into other formats
9. Drafting ad copy variations
10. Creating meta titles and meta descriptions
11. Building first-pass content briefs
12. Refreshing old blog posts with optimization ideas
13. Drafting FAQ sections
14. Turning webinars into content assets
15. Drafting nurture email variants
16. Creating internal recaps for stakeholders
17. Compiling competitor messaging snapshots

The post 17 Marketing Tasks You Can Stop Doing Manually appeared first on WordStream.

In this post, I’m going to cover what’s changing and when, talk about why this change is taking place, then get into the tactical changes you should be making and understand what you should expect from this shift.

Contents

• What’s changing
• Timeline of shift from Display to Demand Gen
• What to expect with this change
• What advertisers should do now to prepare

Google Display to Demand Gen campaigns: What’s actually changing

When you create a new campaign in Google Ads, the first thing you do is select a campaign objective.

If you select “create a campaign without a goal’s guidance,” you can see all of the available campaign types.

Moving forward, the display option will no longer be available.

To clarify, this does not mean that the Google Display Network is going away. Not even close. Google generates far too much revenue from the GDN.

Instead, the most direct path to the GDN will be Demand Gen.

 Is your Google Ads strategy prepared for the switch from Display to Demand Gen? Find out with a free, instant account report using our Google Ads Grader!

Timeline of shift from Display to Demand Gen

The announcement was made in May of 2026, but it will take until January of 2027 for the ability to create standalone Google Display campaigns to go away. That’s seven months, including the ever-coveted holiday season for you to get your accounts ready.

After that time, all remaining Display campaigns will be automatically migrated to Demand Gen campaigns, but Google has yet to give a date for that shift.

What to expect with Display migrating to Demand Gen

Everyone’s experience will be different, but here are the broad strokes of what we’re seeing and what could happen for your account.

More AI, less manual control

Demand Gen campaigns rely on more automation from Google, which can mean a few things.

First, performance may be a bit better with more data points being fed into Google’s machine learning. There may be better audience expansion and creative optimization compared to previous Display campaigns.

But there will also be less manual control and greater volatility in performance. Many of the controls from traditional Display campaigns are being carried over, but some will go away. There are going to be fewer levers to pull in Demand Gen, but on top of that, the lean into automation means there may be bigger swings taken by the bidding algorithms. It could take longer for the system to get its bearings and return the results you’re needing.

Creative continues to grow in importance

Demand Gen is more creative-driven than a traditional display campaign is. There are more visuals that can be leveraged and more placements they can show in.

Here’s a quick view of some spacing options for YouTube placements just on mobile. Not to mention the desktop variants plus the other four networks you can target with Demand Gen (Discover, Gmail, Maps, & GDN), that’s a ton of different formats your ads can take.

Be sure you’re putting effort into making strong creatives that will stand out on all Google platforms to see the best results.

What should advertisers do now?

While there is a decent amount of time between now and January, I expect it will come sooner than you think. So it’s in your best interest to begin planning and making moves in your account as soon as possible.

 When major platform changes pop up, you can’t risk any account mishaps. Download our free guide to six common Google Ads mistakes to learn how to catch and fix them fast!

1. Tinker with Demand Gen if you haven’t already

One of my favorite things about the Google Ads platform is that you can create all sorts of draft campaigns, tinker with settings, and get a general understanding of a campaign without ever having to launch it.

If you’ve not used a Demand Gen campaign until now…this is your time to start tinkering.

Head into the platform, create a new campaign, and don’t use a goal’s guidance. This will offer you the most settings in later stages. (If you eventually want to use a goal’s guidance for your campaigns, that’s totally fine. This is just a learning phase.)

From there, familiarize yourself with all aspects of Demand Gen campaigns.

Here are some key things to pay attention to as you’re tinkering:

• Understanding how your campaign goal will impact your bidding options.
• Take note of your current conversion performance and what that means for available campaign goals.
• Note that audiences are made of combinations of custom segments, remarketing lists, Lookalike audiences, interests, and different options for demographics.
• Content targeting like placements, topics, and keywords lives in the Content section of the left hand navigation at the ad group level and isn’t found in the campaign builder process. This is also the section where you’ll exclude placements you want to avoid.
• Ad groups house the network targeting, not the campaign level, and by default new ad groups are opted into “All Google Channels” but do NOT include the Google Display Network.
• Ad creatives can have different formats like single image, single video, and carousel. They include text, images, and videos along with logos and calls to action and have quite a few more moving pieces than regular Responsive Display Ads and banners.

Needless to say, Demand Gen campaigns are quite a different beast than Display campaigns, so it’s good that you know where all of the controls are before you start spending funds.

2. Take inventory of your existing display settings

If you’ve been running Display campaigns for a long time, you’ve likely added at least a few negative placements to keep your ads from showing on sites that don’t perform well or aren’t aligned with your brand. Additionally, maybe you’ve found some specific placements, audiences, in-market segments, or something else that does perform well that you want to make sure you retain with this changeover.

Make an inventory of all the learnings you have from your existing campaigns, whether positive or negatives, then use your new knowledge of Demand Gen campaigns that you definitely gained from the previous step and find how to employ those learnings.

3. Try replicating your existing Display Campaigns in Demand Gen

The smallest step you can take with this changeover is to turn your existing Display campaigns into a Demand Gen type, but still have almost all the same targeting, ads, etc.

For this step, you can either create a new campaign from scratch, or you can test out Google’s new migration tool. You can do this from the Campaigns tab by checking the box next to the campaign you want to update, click Edit, then select Update to Demand Gen. This will remove your existing Display campaign and create a new Demand Gen campaign that uses the previous campaign’s data and settings.

I recommend starting with a low-stakes campaign to start, test how the process works and make sure you don’t find any errors, then begin updating your higher-value Display campaigns if this is the route you want to take.

For those of you doing this manually and not using the migration tool, you’ll have more work to do, but you can retain your existing Display campaign and adjust its spending to accommodate the new Demand Gen version and slowly lower the budget over time in favor of Demand Gen once you’ve got your feet under you.

Just be sure to pay attention to the network settings at the ad group level. Here’s where you’ll get to choose which platforms you want to leverage. To only replicate a previous Display campaign, choose the “Let me choose” option, then check the box next to GDN only. Leave all others blank.

4. Test expanding into more Demand Gen capabilities

Once your new campaign has been running for a while and you’re seeing good results, it might make sense to expand into some of the other features of Demand Gen.

The one that comes to mind first is network coverage. Google has lots of inventory available through Demand Gen campaigns, not just the Google Display Network. Check the box next to a few of these on your top-performing campaigns and see if you can get more incremental results at a decent rate.

5. Develop new KPIs

With placements, targeting, creatives, bidding, and other factors all being different, it’s going to be tough to compare these campaigns to Display in the long run.

Instead, I would encourage you to develop a new set of KPIs to benchmark against and improve upon. If you’re beating your old Display campaign KPIs with Demand Gen, then that’s wonderful. But if you’re not, don’t assume Demand Gen can’t work for you. Evaluate where you’re falling short, test and iterate, and work on getting back to levels you’re happy with and seeing success from.

Be ready for the switch from Google Display to Demand Gen campaigns

Google transitioning Display campaigns into Demand Gen isn’t a surprise. Just like many of the other changes they’ve made in the past, this will likely frustrate those who have been advertising for a long time and are set in their ways. For the most part, you’ll be able to replicate your Display strategy within a Demand Gen campaign, so start with that. Then, if you feel comfortable, maybe take the rest of the Demand Gen features for a stroll and see how you do. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results you get.

For more ways to maximize your campaign results during this transition, see how our solutions can help!

The post Google Display Ads Migrating to Demand Gen: What You Need to Know appeared first on WordStream.

Everything I just mentioned will remain true for the foreseeable future. However, with Google’s latest announcement, Local Services Ads are moving into the Google Ads interface–and getting a few more updates to how they’re built out and managed. I’m breaking down everything you need to know in this article.

Contents

• Google’s latest Local Services Ads update: What’s changing
  • Timeline and businesses impacted
  • Why this change is happening
• How to run Local Services Ads with PMax campaigns
  • What to do if you’re currently running LSAs
  • Steps to prepare
  • How to set up new LSAs going forward
• Google Local Services Ads update FAQ

Google’s latest Local Services Ads update: What’s changing

To fully understand this update, let’s first refresh on how LSAs currently work. Businesses that fit into one of over 80 service category choices have to verify their business through their Google Business Profile and run LSAs through the Local Search Advertising dashboard.

These ads show exclusively in Google Search and Google Maps results, and allow viewers to contact a business to book a service, request a quote, and so on directly on the ad without having to click off to a landing page. These ads reduce friction for both the user and the business. Plus, you only get charged once a potential customer completes a lead action from your Local Services Ad.

With the change Google is rolling out, LSAs will now live directly within the Google Ads interface, rather than the separate LSA dashboard (and the LSA dashboard will be sunset).

Hard to tell from this screenshot, but the LSA dashboard is actually waving “bye-bye” here.

But that’s not all. LSAs will also not exist as their own standalone campaigns. Instead, running LSAs will be done via Performance Max (PMax) campaigns specifically using a new pay-per-lead goal. So, now, to run Google Local Services Ads, you will have to set up a PMax campaign and assign it the pay-per-lead goal.

Unlike traditional PMax campaigns that charge per click and show across multiple different Google property placements, the pay-per-lead PMax campaign will create and run LSAs solely on Google Search and Maps (eligible placements for LSAs will remain the same).

Here’s a breakdown of what’s changing with this Google Ads Local Services Ads update:

• Local Services Ads dashboard will be sunset. Existing LSA campaigns advertisers are running will be automatically migrated to PMax campaigns with a pay-per-lead goal set within Google Ads. Any historical data from the LSA dashboard will need to be manually backed up before a business’s LSA campaigns are migrated to a Google Ads account. Individual advertisers will be alerted in their LSA dashboard as well as via email ahead of when this happens.
• Your Google Business Profile will be integrated with your Google Ads account. Advertisers have had the option to link their GBP to their Google Ads account for a while now, but now this will become a required, automated part of running LSAs through Google Ads.
• How you bid on LSAs could be impacted. Bidding strategies that were available to old LSA campaigns are not supported in Google Ads, so manual bidding and industry-level Target CPA bidding are being deprecated. Instead, advertisers previously on those strategies should use Smart Bidding with their PMax pay-per-lead campaigns, and would have a campaign-level target CPA applied across all vertical categories (if they were using industry-based target CPA bidding).
• Your LSA budget increments switch from weekly to daily. Previously, LSA campaigns would be bound to a set weekly budget, but those don’t exist in Google Ads—which functions off daily budgets and monthly spend limits. Therefore, when your LSAs transition, the new PMax campaigns they live within will have an assigned calculated daily average and monthly spend limit (you can edit this whenever once your campaigns have migrated). Learn more about Google Ads budget calculations
• Better Business Bureau (BBB) callouts on LSAs are being deprecated. Local Services Ads will no longer have the option to highlight BBB accreditation. Instead, advertisers are encouraged to add structured callout assets (such as business hours, specialties, or accepted payment methods) to their PMax LSA campaigns to help them stand out.

Here’s what will stay the same:

• Where your Local Services Ads appear. LSAs will continue to only show in eligible Google Search and Google Maps placements.
• How you pay for your LSAs. Advertisers will continue to only be charged each time an individual lead comes in from their PMax Local Services Ads.
• How LSAs are targeted. Local Services Ads created via PMax pay-per-lead campaigns will allow targeting through service categories and areas (along with other campaign settings you select).
• How you collect and track leads. The lead actions you enable and track through LSAs will remain the same in the new PMax format. Plus, past lead data will automatically transfer to Google Ads where you can access it in the Lead Manager interface within the platform.

Could your account benefit from the new PMax LSAs? Find out with a free, instant account report using our Google Ads Grader!

Google PMax pay-per-lead LSA transition timeline and businesses impacted

Local Services Ads are only available to verified businesses within the many service industries specified by Google. The transition from LSAs running under the LSA dashboard to LSAs running under Google Ads platform Performance Max pay-per-lead campaigns will roll out gradually as follows:

• August 2026 is phase one of the migration. Google will automatically upgrade current LSA campaigns to PMax pay-per-lead campaigns within Google Ads for select home and storefront service advertisers in the United States. In the announcement, Google lists these industries as the ones it will be starting with next month: Plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, and moving.
• Late 2026 is when the migration will expand. Google will continue to roll out the update to broader advertiser groups, including service-area businesses without physical storefronts and accounts with custom bidding or booking configurations.
• Non-US accounts and all remaining business categories will transition in 2027. The update will be complete by next year.

Google’s aiming for minimal campaign downtime for advertisers during this transition. Your Google Business Profile account administrator will receive advance email alerts 14 days before your migration date, and you’ll be reminded directly in your current LSA dashboard, too.

Why Google Ads LSAs will be migrated to PMax pay-per-lead campaigns

I think for most advertisers this change is welcome, as it is consolidating this campaign type into the main platform for easier management.

“No more hopping back and forth between LSA and Google Ads accounts,” Google Ads Product Liaison, Ginny Marvin, posted on X.

Source

How to run Local Services Ads with PMax campaigns

Here’s how everything with LSAs will work from here on out.

What to do if you’re currently running LSA campaigns

If you currently have LSA campaigns, Google’s system will automatically transfer your entire campaign setup to Google Ads. In the announcement, Google states that your “targeted locations, service types, business categories, budget limits, ad schedule, and business photos will move over seamlessly without requiring your manual input.”

Once that happens, you’ll no longer be able to access your old Local Services Dashboard. Instead, you will be brought to the Google Ads interface upon signing in. So, the first thing you’ll want to do after reading this article is save your old LSA reports now to get ahead of any potential historical data losses. You can do that by following the steps to manually download your LSA campaign reports here. It’s also a good idea at this point to make sure your current LSA campaigns and Google Business Profile are updated and optimized, so that eventually your newly generated PMax campaigns start off on the right foot.

Next, keep your eyes peeled for when it’s your business’s turn to get an automatic migration applied to your LSA campaigns. You will know ahead of time via email and LSA dashboard banner notification when your account will migrate. At this point, you can sit back and let Google do all the transfer work automatically. Then, next time you sign in, you’ll be brought to the Google Ads interface rather than the LSA dashboard.

After your LSAs are automatically migrated, you can navigate over to campaign overview in Google Ads to see your new PMax campaigns that contain all your original LSA content and settings (minus your bidding strategy and budget shifting depending on your old setup). From there, navigating your campaign refinement is similar to any other standard Google Ads campaign, so this resource on how to run Google Ads might be helpful, or check out our article on how to track, analyze, and optimize Performance Max campaigns.

The Google Ads home screen looks like this, but when you click Campaigns on the left-hand side, you will find a table view of your new PMax pay-per-lead campaigns along with any other Google Ads campaigns you may be running.

The last thing you need to do is be patient. Google says that most transferred LSAs will start running right away once an account is migrated, but it’s important to note that it can take up to two weeks for the migration process to fully complete and campaign performance to stabilize.

How to prepare for your account’s LSA to PMax transfer

To recap, here are the steps to prepare for the Google Ads LSA migration to PMax.

1. Look out for email and banner notifications informing you of your account’s upcoming transition date. Download historical LSA performance reports before your migration.
2. Check your current LSA and GBP setups. Ensure everything is up to date and aligned with your business’s overall advertising strategy for a smoother transfer experience.
3. Once your campaigns have migrated, check settings like budget and bid strategy to ensure your new PMax campaigns are set up how you want. Then, wait two weeks before any major optimization changes.

Note that if you’re working with a marketing partner (for example, if you’re a LocaliQ customer) to run your Google Ads campaigns, this transition will be managed for you, and these steps are already taken care of.

How to set up new LSAs going forward

If you don’t currently have any LSA campaigns running, the new setup process is pending. But you can continue to set up new local Business Profile accounts and campaigns through http://g.co/localservices temporarily.

“You can’t create new campaigns with pay-per-lead goals directly within Google Ads at this time. If you need to set up additional campaigns or local accounts, please continue to visit g.co/localservices. Campaign creation will become available later,” the official Google announcement states.

Here are some additional steps you can take to future-proof your local advertising strategy for your service-based business.

1. Check that your business is in an industry eligible for LSAs here.
2. Create a Google Business Profile and follow the prompts to verify your business here: https://business.google.com/us/business-profile/
3. Link your Google Business Profile to your Google Ads account.
4. Become familiar with PMax campaigns in Google Ads, so you’re ready to create new pay-per-lead PMax campaigns when the option becomes available.

For now, this site above is still available for businesses that want to start new or expand with LSAs. Eventually, creating new PMax pay-per-lead campaigns will become an option within Google Ads instead.

Google Local Services Ads update FAQ

If you have more questions about the new PMax-powered LSAs, I’ve got you covered.

What’s happening to the Google Local Services Ads dashboard?

The Google Local Services Ads dashboard, along with any historical data held within it, will be fully sunset by 2027.

Which industries will be most impacted by this LSA update?

Only service-based businesses eligible to run Local Services Ads will be impacted by this Google Ads update.

Do I need to re-verify my business to run LSAs on Google Ads?

No, if your business is already verified via Google Business Profile, you will not need to re-verify once your LSA campaigns have transitioned to PMax.

Will my PMax LSAs still display a Google verified badge?

Yes, all Local Services Ads for eligible businesses in select verticals will still include a Google Verified badge—so long as the business passes the required business registration and representative checks.

Where will my PMax Local Services Ads show?

Although Performance Max campaigns are known to show across multiple Google placements and properties, pay-per-lead PMax LSAs will continue to only show in Google Search and Maps results.

Can I still view my LSA dashboard’s historical data once this update is rolled out?

No, you’ll have to download your historical LSA campaign performance reports. This resource from Google walks you through how to manually save your historical reports. However, your past customer lead history (like contact details, call recordings, etc.) will automatically transfer to Google Ads, where you can access it in the Lead Manager interface within the platform.

How do I know when my business’s LSA campaigns are migrating to Google Ads?

There are no set release dates for this update for specific businesses, but Google will be rolling out this change for some industries by early August 2026, and all accounts will have transferred over by the end of 2027. You will know ahead of time by email notification as well as a banner notification in your current Local Services Ads dashboard.

Can I still manage my Google Business Profile outside of Google Ads?

You can still access, edit, update, and optimize your Google Business Profile organic assets directly within your Google Business Profile account. However, if you want to run ads based on your Google Business Profile, it will have to be done directly in Google Ads by way of pay-per-lead PMax LSAs. Any changes you make to your Google Business Profile will be automatically synced into your Google Ads account so your PMax LSAs stay updated.

Do I need to do anything else to prepare my LSAs for this transition?

No, the migration will happen automatically, so there is no action needed to be taken by advertisers. It’s a good idea to double-check your campaign settings before and after your account transition, though, to see if everything is carrying over how you like.

I’m not currently running LSAs; should I start?

If your business collects leads and is in one of the eligible industries, you should absolutely run LSAs by way of pay-per-lead PMax campaigns. LSAs can be lower cost, stand out in search results, and make it easy for viewers to turn into leads.

How local businesses can tackle the upcoming LSA update

If you’re concerned about how this Google Ads update will impact your local service business, don’t panic! Remember, here are three steps to ensure your automatic transition from LSA to PMax campaigns goes smoothly:

1. Check your current LSA and GBP setups. Ensure everything is up to date and aligned with your business’s overall advertising strategy.
2. Keep an eye out for email and banner notifications for your upcoming transition. Download historical LSA performance reports before your migration.
3. Once your campaigns have migrated, check settings like budget and bid strategy to ensure your new PMax campaigns are set up how you want. Then, wait two weeks before any major optimization changes.

For more ways to maximize your local advertising strategy, see how our solutions can help you navigate whatever Google updates get thrown your way!

The post Google Local Services Ads Meet PMax: What You Need to Know appeared first on WordStream.

That reaction is becoming more common—and it’s not an accident. Now that AI tools are making it easier for us marketers to produce content at scale, they’re also making it easier for content to sound like slop. And that sameness has a cost: AI-generated text can heavily reduce trust.

This is important to remember because people don’t always stop and analyze exactly what they’re reading—but they do adjust how much they trust you. So when your content feels generic or templated, people can tell (and people will remember).

This article will help you identify the signs that make your content sound like it was written by AI, what readers trust when it comes to your content, and how to do a quick audit of your content to make sure it stands out from the AI sameness.

Contents

• 14 signs your content sounds like AI
• What customers trust instead when reading your content
• A quick audit to make sure your content doesn’t sound like AI (+how to fix it)

14 red flags that make your content sound like it was AI-generated

A lot of websites lose conversions simply because nothing pops. When everything sounds familiar, there’s:

1. No reason to keep reading
2. No reason to trust what you’re saying
3. No reason to choose you over anyone else

AI makes this even worse by smoothing out all your uniqueness—turning your content into a polished facade that lacks clarity, specificity, and intent.

Warning: these are signals, not “proof.” AI learned how to write by training on human content, so, naturally, most of these patterns show up in human writing too. The difference is the frequency. When these things stack, the result starts to feel generic. And that’s the tell. What I’m saying is that, contrary to popular belief, em-dashes do not equal AI-generated (Charles Dickens probably didn’t have ChatGPT).

Now, let’s jump into the list.

1. Every sentence follows the same rhythm

What it looks like: Line after line with similar length, structure, and pacing.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI models optimize for predictability. Consistent sentence structure is a safe output.

What it signals to readers: This wasn’t written with intent. It was pre-packed and assembled like Swedish furniture.

What to do instead

• Break the rhythm up intentionally
• Shorten one sentence dramatically
• Let emphasis drive structure (instead of symmetry)

Source

Free guide download >> 135 of the Best Words & Phrases for Marketing with Emotion

2. Lists that don’t actually build

What it looks like: A list where each point feels interchangeable. You could rearrange them, and nothing would change.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI generates items independently rather than developing a progression.

What it signals to readers. No clear thinking behind the structure.

What to do instead

• Order points by importance or sequence
• Make each item depend on the previous one
• Then remove anything that repeats the same idea

3. Claims without constraints

What it looks like: Broad promises with no boundaries or tradeoffs.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI avoids specificity unless prompted—it defaults to safe generalizations.

What it signals to readers: Low credibility. If everything sounds possible, nothing feels believable.

What to do instead

• Add scope (“for teams under 20 people”)
• Add limits (“works best when…”)
• Show where it doesn’t apply, too

Source

4. Headlines that could belong to anyone

What it looks like: An all-in-one headline that sounds fine but could sit on literally any competitor’s site without changing meaning.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI pulls from common headline patterns that appear across thousands of pages.

What it signals to readers: No differentiation. Meh.

What to do instead

• Add a specific outcome
• Add a clear audience
• Add something that can’t be copied without sounding off

If you need help crafting better headlines, try these headline formulas.

5. No real examples anywhere

What it looks like: A page full of claims, but nothing concrete to anchor them.

Why it shows up in AI writing: Examples require context. AI defaults to generalization.

What it signals to readers: This hasn’t been tested. Or worse: it hasn’t been thought through.

What to do instead

• Show one real, human use case (like this)
• Include numbers, even rough ones
• Replace one abstract claim with a specific scenario

This real estate agent’s blog uses a real listing as an example.

6. Everything sounds equally important

What it looks like: Every benefit, feature, or claim is given the same exact weight.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI doesn’t inherently prioritize. It expands evenly across ideas.

What it signals to readers: No clear value hierarchy.

What to do instead

• Decide what matters most
• Emphasize that clearly
• Let secondary points stay secondary

7. Repeating the same idea in slightly different ways

What it looks like: Multiple sentences that feel like variations of the same statement.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI expands ideas to sound complete, often through paraphrasing.

What it signals to readers: Filler.

What to do instead

• Cut repetition aggressively
• Replace one repeated sentence with a concrete detail
• Ask yourself: Does this add new information?

Source

8. No tradeoffs, no tension

What it looks like: Everything is presented as positive. No limitations, no downsides. Just vibes.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI avoids negative framing unless explicitly instructed.

What it signals to readers: This isn’t realistic.

What to do instead

• Acknowledge where your product isn’t ideal (practical)
• Clarify who it’s not actually for (personal)
• Show awareness of real-world constraints (relatable)

9. CTAs that don’t really explain what’s next

What it looks like: Buttons or prompts that require interpretation. Read more?

Why it shows up in AI writing: Generic calls to action are widely represented in training data.

What it signals to readers: Uncertainty. Friction.

What to do instead

• Be explicit about the next step
• Reduce ambiguity
• Show what the user gets immediately

Source

Need help crafting the perfect calls to action? Get our free guide: The 42 Best Call to Action Phrases Ever (& Why They Work)

10. Writing that avoids specifics

What it looks like: No numbers, no timelines, no proof, and no concrete outcomes.

Why it shows up in AI writing: Specifics require source grounding. AI defaults to safe abstraction.

What it signals to readers: Low confidence.

What to do instead

• Add one measurable outcome
• Replace one vague claim with a number
• Define what “better” actually means

11. Generic phrasing that replaces real meaning

What it looks like: Phrases that sound familiar but don’t add clarity.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI leans on widely used language patterns that appear across (literally) every industry.

What it signals to readers: You’re relying on language instead of thinking.

What to do instead

• Replace one generic phrase with a concrete description
• Ask yourself: What does this actually mean in practice?
• Write the explanation you’d give out loud, in person

Source

12. Over-explaining simple ideas

What it looks like: Basic concepts that could have been communicated cleanly and without incident in a single sentence, but are instead carefully elongated across multiple sentences, as though the idea itself might feel neglected if it were delivered too directly or without the word “streamlined.” Good thing we don’t do that here.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI tends to expand for completeness, even when it’s not needed.

What it signals to readers: This is trying to sound smart, not useful.

What to do instead

• Cut explanations in half whenever possible
• Keep only what adds clarity
• Trust the reader to follow along

13. No visible decision-making

What it looks like: Content that presents conclusions without showing how they were reached.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI gives you results, not reasoning, unless explicitly prompted.

What it signals to readers: Lack of depth.

What to do instead

• Show why something works
• Explain key choices
• Add a short “because” behind one claim

Source

14. It feels like it could have been written by literally anyone

What it looks like: Nothing in the copy reflects a point of view, experience, original thought, voice, or constraint.

Why it shows up in AI writing: AI generalizes across multiple sources rather than committing to a single perspective.

What it signals to readers: No ownership. No accountability.

What to do instead

• Add a clear stance
• Reference real situations
• Let the writing reflect actual experience

Get everything you need to know about showing up in AI search in our free guide: The AI Search Toolkit >>

What do readers trust instead when they’re reading your content?

If all of the patterns above create doubt, the opposite builds confidence because it feels considered.

When you make specific claims

Clear scope, defined outcomes, and measurable results signal that something real sits behind the words. Instead of broad improvements, you can see what changes and by how much.

When you show that you’re thinking

You can follow the logic. You understand why something works, not just that it does. That doesn’t require long explanations. Just intention.

When you signal effort

There’s a noticeable difference between something that was generated and something that was written. AI can produce clean sentences, but it struggles to show judgment. Your copy doesn’t need to announce itself. It just needs to feel like someone took the time to think it through.

When it reflects quality

Clear language signals clear thinking. Not complexity or polish. Precision.

A quick audit: Does your content sound like it was written by AI? Let’s solve it

Use this as a 5-minute audit. You don’t need to fix everything all at once—just start with one page.

Make your content stand out from AI-generated copy

AI didn’t introduce generic marketing copy. It just made it easier to produce—and harder to notice. That’s the real shift here. The more content people see that feels interchangeable, the more they rely on subtle signals to decide what to trust.

Remember that your content shouldn’t try to compete with volume. Instead, it should feel like someone (not something) actually took the time to write it. That’s how you win.

Here’s a recap of the 14 signs your content sounds like it was written by AI (so you can avoid it!):

1. Every sentence follows the same rhythm
2. Lists that don’t actually build
3. Claims without constraints
4. Headlines that could belong to anyone
5. No real examples anywhere
6. Everything sounds equally important
7. Repeating the same idea in slightly different ways
8. No tradeoffs, no tension
9. CTAs that don’t really explain what’s next
10. Writing that avoids specifics
11. Generic phrasing that replaces real meaning
12. Over-explaining simple ideas
13. No visible decision-making
14. It feels like it could have been written by literally anyone

The post 14 Red Flags That Make Your Writing Sound Like AI (+How to Fix It) appeared first on WordStream.

Let’s get into it!

Contents

• August marketing ideas for any business
• August promotion ideas to boost campaigns
• Full list of August holidays

Want marketing ideas for every month of the year? Free guide >> The Mega Must-Have Marketing Calendar

August marketing ideas for any business

As you can see from the different categories of observances, you can appeal to all kinds of emotions in your marketing. Use these ideas to connect with your audience in a more meaningful way than any of your competitors.

Black Business Month

Black Business Month was founded by John William Templeton and Frederick E. Jordan in 2004. Use this as an opportunity not to just support Black-owned businesses, but to get into the habit of doing it year-round.

• Retailers: Take the 15% Pledge and start selling products made by Black-owned businesses. You can use the Support Black-Owned Businesses Directory to find Black-owned businesses near you.
• B2B businesses: Interview a Black business owner and share their tips on running a business, overcoming prejudice, or dealing with challenges your clients commonly face.
• Any business: Show your followers how to support Black businesses.

Family Fun Month

Centering your August marketing campaigns around Family Fun Month is sure to be a crowd-pleasing strategy. Here are some ideas to start you off:

• Partner up with nearby attractions and offer coupons for an offline marketing campaign.
• Share a blog post or email newsletter roundup of your favorite family-friendly spots in town.
• If your target audience is parents: Write a post on how to actually have family fun this month in the depressing last days of summer when your kids are at each other’s throats, and you’ve had no alone time in weeks.
• Team up with other local businesses in town and run a family fun night. Photographers can offer family portraits (before little Jane gets a butterfly plastered to her face), restaurants can provide the food (and coupons to get them through their doors), and other businesses (like preschools) can set up informational (but fun) tables.
• Clothing companies could run a series of sales each week for men, women, babies, and tweens via social or email.

Back to School Month

Back-to-school season and January are friends. Go wild with all the fresh-start, back-in-gear, goal-setting themes you used in your January marketing.

• Salons offer special deals on back-to-school haircuts.
• Spas, invite parents in for a much-needed massage after a long summer.
• Schools and after-school programs offer early bird registration deals.
• Personal trainers or fitness centers offer discount packages.
• Dentists or nutritionists can encourage appointments or give healthy tips.
• Run a re-engagement campaign to bring back any customers who went quiet over the summer.
• Run a back-to-school sale with a fun back-to-school pun, like this Facebook ad below:

Check out more back-to-school marketing ideas here.

Simplify Your Life Week (first week in Aug)

According to Amazon, “seeking simpler living” is the latest trend in consumer behavior. As a business owner, take this time to clean out clutter (virtual and physical) and organize your mind and workplace before the September storm hits.

As for marketing ideas:

• Productivity tool providers could offer a free trial during this week.
• You could share a roundup of tools or apps you use (or have deleted) to simplify your life.
• Interior designers can share their organizational tricks.
• Break down a complex topic into plain English for your audience.

Life is as broad as it gets, so anything related to simplifying works here.

Worried you’re wasting spend in Google Ads? Let us simplify the answer with a free, instant audit >> Google Ads Performance Grader

National Friendship Day (first Sunday of Aug)

This day gives a good excuse for promoting referral programs and running BOGO sales promotions. You might also use catchy taglines like “You never know how many friends you have until you own [the product you provide].”

National Dollar Day (Aug 8)

On this day in 1786, the US monetary system was established. A nice history lesson, but also a great marketing opportunity.

• Use a money-saving-themed blog post to teach your audience how to save a dollar (or hundreds).
• Take a dollar off your (low-priced) products.
• Offer something for just $1.
  

Source

National Book Lovers Day (Aug 9)

There are readers in every audience. Share a post on social media recommending your favorite reads, top industry influencer authors, or asking for recommendations from your followers. Your audience likes opportunities to share their input; you like post engagement; everyone wins.

National Relaxation Day (Aug 15)

It is National Wellness Month, after all. Ideas:

• Spas and salons can offer discounts or even volunteer to visit a local office and give short chair massages.
• Restaurants can promote signature drinks as a way to kick back and relax.
• Yoga instructors can run free sessions for offices.
• YOU can close up shop early to allow employees to enjoy some hard-earned rest.

National Spirit of ’45 Day (second Sunday in August)

On August 14, 1945, President Truman announced the end of WWII. The national pride, can-do spirit, and eagerness to step up and play their part are not only what made this victory possible but also what laid the groundwork for future generations. The Spirit of ‘45 is a great platform for inspirational blog posts, emails, and social media posts.

Source

World Humanitarian Day (Aug 19)

On World Humanitarian Day, we recognize those who lost their lives working for humanitarian causes. Incorporate this into your marketing by:

• Donating proceeds to a humanitarian organization near you.
• Encouraging your audience to do something good.
• Sharing quotes from modern-day humanitarians.

There’s nothing wrong with a Mother Theresa or Gandhi quote, but featuring newer individuals provides an opportunity for both you and your audience to learn about the current crises the world is facing.

Senior Citizens Day (Aug 21)

Even though these folks get year-round senior discounts, why not throw an extra one in the mix on this day?

• Senior living communities host an open house barbeque on this day to honor their residents and give potential residents (or their adult children) a chance to check you out.
• Local businesses, contact local senior centers to see if you can sponsor or cater an event, or even stop by with free manicures to brighten up someone’s day.

Secondhand Wardrobe Day (Aug 25)

Many local secondhand stores are part of nonprofits that fund needs in the community or even worldwide. Consider running a clothing drive to give your audience the opportunity to make a difference while cleaning out their wardrobe (perhaps to simplify their lives…see #4).

Or, for businesses NOT in the clothing industry, publish mission-statement-friendly posts like these:

National WebMistress Day (Aug 26)

This holiday recognizes women in web development. Recognize #womenwhocode, do an employee spotlight on a female developer, or donate to learnership groups like GirlCode.

Source

National Just Because Day (Aug 27)

The creative marketing possibilities are endless for this day.

• Send your email subscribers a promo code just because you appreciate them.
• Encourage your patrons to buy that outfit (or any product you sell), book that ticket, or do something spontaneous for no reason other than because you can.
• Go against this post on how to write copy that sells and promote something with “just because”—no features or benefits.
• Inspire your audience to do a random act of kindness. Just because.
• Run a giveaway that not only ramps up engagement but sparks an inspirational comment thread your followers will enjoy.
• Write a post on X of inspirational things to do just because.

Master social media this August with our free, definitive guide to social media marketing (simplified!)

August promotion ideas to boost campaigns

You don’t need a specific August social media holiday or monthly observance to market your business this month! Here are some additional August marketing ideas that can be framed around special promotions.

Work with influencers

Want to engage a group of younger buyers? Work with an influencer.

Influencer marketing offers a way to connect with an audience in a more authentic and personal way that most brands would struggle to do alone. That’s why the youngest buyers trust this type of advertising more.

You don’t need Nike money to partner with influencers. Many micro-influencers are happy to work for free gear or a small per-post payment. Just make sure the ones you choose match your tone and have an audience that would be interested in what you sell. Gen Z and Alpha shoppers can sniff out insincerity in a heartbeat.

Offer exclusive discounts

Everyone likes to feel special! An exclusive discount code tells people “they’re in the club.”

The best part is that customers can share the code with their friends, making them feel a little extra special.

Have an end-of-summer clearance event

If those yellow duckie swim trunks didn’t fly off the shelf the way you’d hoped, now is a great time to get them gone with a clearance event.

This colorful ad will catch attention, and the big discount will keep it.

You can also feature a few images of clearance items. Let people know what kind of goodies they can nab at low prices, and they’ll be more likely to click for more.

Source

Share a “beat-the-heat” promotion

Your customers have been battling high temperatures for a few months now. Use some of your August promotions to help them stay cool until fall arrives.

Indoor attractions like movie theaters, themed restaurants, and go-karting are great for this type of promotion.

But don’t restrict yourself here. You can use this theme for just about any product under the (really hot) sun.

Notice that you don’t even need a discount to use this promotion idea. Just tie your product into the theme, and you’re good to go.

Hold a summer-themed giveaway

Giveaways are great any time of year. They’re versatile, eye-catching, and adjustable; you can ask more or less of your audience with a bigger or smaller gift.

This ad makes a huge splash with a big prize: Ten grand in cash and a Winnebago. Also, notice the cool-weather images, even though this was shared in August.

That’s not a bad strategy. Your customers might be attracted to chilly scenes when temps are unbearably high.

One tip for your August giveaway promotions is to make the entry directions very clear. This one does a great job of that by giving a three-step entry process right in the ad creative.

Create inspirational visual assets

Speaking of visuals, when people scroll social media while dreaming of adventure, they’re much more likely to stop at posts and promotions with eye-catching images and videos.

This short clip is an excellent example. It’s appropriately emotional and tells a great story about camping with your best four-legged friend.

You don’t have to go full-feature film. Even a high-quality social media image of someone jumping in a pool, setting up camp, or driving down a dirt road can capture the feeling people crave this time of year.

Get ahead of Labor Day promotions for September

It doesn’t feel like Labor Day is right around the corner, falling on September 7 this year. But it is. And if you time your promotions right this month, you can gain a first-mover advantage on all the Labor Day sales.

You’ll want to track your Labor Day promotions to see how they help move the sales needle for your business. A Labor Day-specific discount code is an easy way to do it.

The code also hints at urgency since one can assume the code won’t work after the holiday.

Make your last few August promos time-sensitive

Speaking of adding urgency, there’s no better way to motivate action quickly than with a countdown timer. Adding one to your pre-Labor Day ads will get people on the fence about buying to smash the “add to cart” button.

A timer like this is perfect for your August promotion landing pages.

Plan for state/county fairs

Many state fairs happen in the fall, so plan ahead and see if you can get on the list!

• • • Be a web sponsor—get your logo on their website (good for a backlink).
    • Be a vendor—food, tables, bouncy houses, and more.
    • Donate an auction or raffle item.

Lean into the summer weather

August can be a coin toss when it comes to weather. Odds are, your customers are either trying to beat the heat and getting excited about cooler weather, or they’re enjoying their last few warm, sunny summer days. You could frame your August summer marketing promotions around either angle. Whether you share tips for soaking in those last few summer days or get your audience excited for the upcoming cooler temps, this August marketing idea is sure to be effective.

Source

Summer is ending, but August marketing must go on

Whether you’re heading into fall with gusto or dragging your feet, your marketing needs to stay consistent and strong! Use these ideas to engage your audience, attract more customers, and stand out above your competitors. For more ways to maximize your monthly marketing, see how our solutions can help take your seasonal strategies to the next level!

All things family

• National Sisters Day (first Sunday in August)
• Respect for Parents Day (Aug 1)
• American Family Day (first Sunday in August)
• Sons and Daughters Day (Aug 11)
• Middle Child Day (Aug 12)

Vertical specific

• Shapewear Day (Aug 10)
• Secondhand Wardrobe Day (Aug 25)
• Brazilian Blowout Day (Aug 21)
• Tooth Fairy Day (Aug 22)

Patriotic

• Spirit of ’45 Day (second Sunday in August)
• Aviation Day (Aug 19)
• Park Service Founders Day (Aug 25)
• Ride The Wind Day (Aug 23)

Fun/funny

• Underwear Day (Aug 5)
• Water Balloon Day (first Friday in August)
• Lazy Day (Aug 10)
• Tell a Joke Day (Aug 16)
• Sneak Some Zucchini Into Your Neighbor’s Porch Day (Aug 8)
• I LOVE My Feet Day! (Aug 17)
• International Beer Day (first Friday in August)
• Beach Day (Aug 30)
• Mail Order Catalog Day (Aug 18)

Niche/nostalgia

• Power Rangers Day (Aug 26)
• Book Lovers Day (Aug 9)
• Left-Handers Day (Aug 13)

Dog appreciation

• Work Like A Dog Day (Aug 5)
• Never Bean Better Day (Aug 22)
• International Mahjong Day (Aug 1)

Compassionate

• Relaxation Day (Aug 15)
• Thoughtful Day  (Aug 28)
• Grief Awareness Day (Aug 30)
• Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day (Aug 28)
• International Overdose Awareness Day (Aug 31)

Sales

• National Dollar Day (Aug 8)
• National Thrift Shop Day (Aug 17)
• National Thoughtful Day (Aug 28)

Food and beverage

• National Raspberry Cream Pie Day (Aug 1)
• National Ice Cream Sandwich Day (Aug 2)
• National IPA Day (Aug 3)
• National Watermelon Day (Aug 3)
• National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day (Aug 4)
• National Jamaican Patty Day (Aug 5)
• National Oyster Day (Aug 5)
• National S’mores Day (Aug 10)
• National Filet Mignon Day (Aug 13)
• National Rum Day (Aug 16)
• National Pinot Noir Day (Aug 18)
• National Fajita Day (Aug 18)
• National Lemon Juice Day (Aug 29)

The post 98 Easy & Engaging August Marketing Ideas appeared first on WordStream.

Referred customers are roughly 16% more valuable over their lifetime than customers acquired through other channels.

I’ve spent more than 15 years in demand marketing, and in that time, I’ve had a front-row seat to more referral programs than I can count. A handful of them compounded, but many others died quietly in a settings page nobody visited. In this guide, I’ll walk through the things that separate successful and unsuccessful campaigns.

Contents

• Why referral marketing works
  • Referral Marketing ROI Calculator
• Referral vs. word-of-mouth vs. affiliate vs. influencer marketing
• 8 types of referral programs
• How to build a customer referral program in 8 steps
• 8 referral marketing examples worth copying
• How to promote a referral program
• Referral program metrics that matter
  • K Factor (Virality) Calculator
• Referral program software for SMBs in 2026
• When referral marketing does not work
• FTC disclosure and legal considerations
• Referral marketing FAQs

Why referral marketing works

Referral marketing works for three measurable reasons.

First, referred customers don’t just spend more; they recruit more. A 2024 Journal of Marketing Research study found that referred customers make 31% to 57% more referrals of their own than customers acquired through other channels, and that ignoring those downstream referrals causes firms to undervalue a single referral by 20% to 36%.

Second, referred customers cost less to acquire (typically 25-50% lower customer acquisition cost—CAC—than paid channels in vendor benchmarks).

And third, the trust transfer that happens when a customer recommends a brand to a friend is structurally stronger than any ad creative you can buy. The order is intentional. Lead with the math, end with the trust quote.

Referral programs help boost trust and customer spending while lowering the cost to acquire new customers.

Beyond these reasons, there are a couple of other beneficial factors to consider.

Referral economics

The previously mentioned Journal of Marketing study tracked about 10,000 customers of a German bank and found referred customers had a contribution margin about 25% higher than non-referred customers in year one, and a lifetime value about 16% higher across the full six-year horizon, after controlling for observable demographics.

Referred customers usually cost less to acquire than paid channels. You will see CAC-reduction figures across referral software vendors’ blogs, usually in the 25-50% range, and sometimes higher for subscription brands.

Generally speaking, you want to treat these kinds of statistics as a directional practitioner heuristic, not a sourced benchmark. They are vendor-aggregated, the methodology is almost never published, and the same numbers get recycled from blog to blog with no primary study underneath.

There is no peer-reviewed figure for referral CAC reduction the way there is for referred-customer value. So model your own: the ROI calculator below turns your real CAC, participation rate, and reward into a referral CAC you can benchmark and optimize against, and communicate these numbers to the C-suite.

Want more ways to convert customers? Download 14 Super-Fast Ways to Boost Conversions

Referral psychology

Reciprocity, the principle Robert Cialdini popularized in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, makes the existing customer feel the program is fair. They share a reward; you give them a reward. That is why double-sided programs outperform single-sided ones in nearly every published test.

And, broadly, recommendations from people you know are the most trusted form of advertising. 88% of global respondents trust them more than any other channel, per Nielsen’s 2021 Trust in Advertising Study.

Reciprocity is a motivational force for your referral program.

Referral marketing ROI calculator

Use our free referral marketing calculator to see if it’s the right tactic for your business.

Referral vs. word-of-mouth vs. affiliate vs. influencer marketing

Four channels often get conflated, despite the fact that they have different incentive structures, different software, and different FTC obligations (I’ll get into those a little later).

Word-of-mouth is organic and untracked. Referral marketing rewards existing customers for one-to-one shares. Affiliate marketing pays third-party publishers (such as bloggers, deal sites, etc.) a commission for sending public traffic. Influencer marketing pays creators a fee for content reach.

Knowing which one you are running matters when you set a budget, when you pick software, and when you disclose under FTC rules.

Which you choose is heavily dependent on your niche. Find out which tactic is most likely to influence your ideal customers and how the economics work for your business.

8 types of referral programs

The eight common referral program structures are single-sided, double-sided, tiered or milestone, mystery, gamified, advocacy or VIP, charitable, and cash. Double-sided is the default and outperforms single-sided in nearly every published test, but each structure exists because it solves a specific business constraint.

Here are some examples of each:

• Single-sided: Only the referrer is rewarded.
• Double-sided: Both the referrer and the referee get rewards. This is the most common setup for referral marketing.
• Tiered or milestone: Rewards scale with referral count. For instance, gifting company Harry’s pre-launch program used 5/10/25/50 referral tiers, with larger gifts at each step.
• Mystery rewards: Randomized reward (e.g., spin-the-wheel, scratch card).
• Gamified: Leaderboards, progress bars, badges.
• Advocacy or VIP: Status, early access, exclusive events.
• Charitable: Donation to a partner nonprofit per referral.
• Cash: Direct cash payouts.

Double-sided referral programs like this one are the default.

Referrals aren’t the only way to leverage positive customer experiences. Find more in How to Get More Reviews: 8 Tips to Boost Ranking, Reputation, & Revenue.

How to build a customer referral program in 8 steps

To build a customer referral program there are 8 key steps: confirm product-market fit and a positive NPS (net promoter score) signal, pick one goal (lower CAC, more customers, or expansion revenue), choose a single-sided or double-sided structure, set rewards using customer lifetime value, select software or a do-it-yourself process, design shared assets including the properly compliant disclosure, promote the program across post-purchase, email, in-app, and NPS-promoter touchpoints, and review the program monthly.

Here’s an in-depth breakdown of each step:

1. Confirm product-market fit (PMF): NPS 30 or higher, or equivalent positive word-of-mouth signal. Pre-PMF plus referral equals amplified negative word-of-mouth.
2. Pick one goal: Choose lower CAC, more customers, or expansion revenue. Programs that try to optimize for all three optimize for none.
3. Choose your structure: Single-sided versus double-sided. Flat versus tiered. Default to double-sided flat for the first quarter, layer on tiers later.
4. Set the reward: The reward should not exceed 10 to 20% of the gross margin on a referred customer. Above that, your unit economics break before the program scales.
5. Pick software: Or build a do-it-yourself version with unique URL parameters, Stripe coupon codes, and your existing CRM. For under 100 customers per month, do-it-yourself usually wins on cost.
6. Design share assets: Pre-written email, SMS, social cards, unique URL, and a compliant FTC disclosure. Your referrers should never have to think about what to say.
7. Promote it: Post-purchase page, order confirmation email, shipping notifications, in-app widget, NPS promoter follow-up, customer support resolution email, and quarterly dedicated campaign. The settings-page-only launch is how programs die.
8. Measure and iterate: Monthly review until the virality (aka “k-factor”)stabilizes (usually 60 to 90 days), then quarterly.

8 referral marketing examples worth copying

The eight referral programs worth studying in 2026 are not the eight with the biggest budgets; they are the eight where the mechanic is the lesson. Each one solved a specific design problem in a way most operators can adapt.

In each of these, the reward maps closely to the core value of the product, and the ask lands at a high-trust moment in the customer journey.

How to promote a referral program

A referral program launch is about 10% of the work. The other 90% is surfacing the program in the moments customers are most willing to share. The eight placements that matter most are post-purchase, order confirmation email, shipping notifications, in-app widgets, NPS promoter follow-up, customer support resolution emails, quarterly dedicated campaigns, and sales rep outreach to closed-won B2B accounts.

A key across all of these tactics is that you need to surface the “ask” at high-trust moments in the customer journey.

Promote your referral program on social media for more reach.

Below is a series of copy-and-paste templates you can use at various specific points to ask for a referral:

Subject: [First name], know someone who needs [product]?

Hi [First name],

You mentioned [specific result]. If a colleague could use the same, your link gives them [referee reward] and gives you [referrer reward] when they [sign up or place a first order]: [referral link].

Easier to forward? Send this: "I have used [product] for [time] and it is [result]. Use my link for [referee reward]. I get [referrer reward] if you sign up: [referral link]."

Thanks,
[Your name]

[First name], glad [product] is working out. Share your link and you both get [reward]: [referral link]. We credit you the moment they [sign up or order]. You get a reward when they buy, so only send it to people it will help.

Headline: Enjoying [product]? Give [referee reward], get [referrer reward].

Share your personal link. When a friend makes their first [purchase], you both get [reward].

Buttons: [Copy my link]  [Share by email]

Small print under the buttons: Friends will see that you receive a reward when they buy.

Referral program metrics that matter

The five referral program metrics worth tracking are:

1. Participation rate: What percentage of eligible customers shared at least once? SMB ecommerce benchmarks typically land around 2 to 5%. Below 2% means the program is buried; above 5% means you have either a superfan base or a very strong post-purchase placement.
2. Share-to-conversion rate: Of the shares you sent, what percentage became paying customers? 10 to 25% is typical. Lower than 10% usually means a broken landing page experience for the referred customer.
3. Referral CAC versus blended CAC: Total program cost (rewards plus overhead) divided by new referred customers. Compare that to your blended CAC across all channels. A healthy referral CAC is 25 to 50% below blended.
4. Referred-customer LTV versus non-referred LTV: The Wharton finding was around 16% higher LTV on a six-year horizon. Track your own cohort comparison; this is the metric a CFO will care about most.
5. Payback period on incentive: How many months of customer revenue does it take to recover the incentive spend? Under three months for ecommerce, under twelve months for subscription B2B is the rough bar.

Track k-factor (the viral coefficient—see the explanation below) only if you are explicitly aiming for compounding growth. Most healthy programs run at K = 0.1 to 0.5 and remain profitable.

K-factor (virality coefficient) calculator

K equals invites per user times the conversion rate of invited users. If K is greater than 1, the program compounds; every cohort produces more than one new cohort. If K is less than 1, the program is additive, which is still useful but not viral. Most real businesses live at K = 0.1 to 0.5 and, that is fine.

This calculator shows you where you sit and what to do about it:

Referral program software for SMBs in 2026

There is no best referral marketing software in 2026, only the right one for your stack and scale. The category map is small enough to fit on one screen. Pick based on whether you are on Shopify, on a custom site, on a B2B SaaS stack, or running enterprise-scale, then run as much of a trial as you can before committing.

• Shopify and ecommerce: ReferralCandy, Yotpo, Smile.io. Native Shopify apps with the fastest install and opinionated defaults.
• General SMB and no-code: Referral Rock, Referral Factory, Friendbuy. Work across stacks, more customization, longer setup.
• B2B SaaS: Cello, GrowSurf. Built for SaaS metrics (monthly recurring revenue, expansion, multi-step rewards). PartnerStack is in this conversation too, but it is a partner-program platform first and a referral second.
• Enterprise: Extole, Buyapowa, Mention Me, Annex Cloud, Ambassador. Enterprise-grade attribution, multi-program management, and dedicated CSMs (customer success managers). Pricing starts in the four-figure-per-month range.
• The do-it-yourself path: For under 100 customers per month, a Tally form (or free Google Forms), unique URL parameters, Stripe coupon codes, plus your existing CRM can replicate most of a referral platform. Do not pay $300 per month for software until you have signal the program will scale past that.

The biggest mistake at this step is letting a vendor demo set your strategy. Pick your program structure first, then evaluate software against it.

When referral marketing does not work

Referral marketing does not work in five specific situations:

1. Pre-product-market-fit: You will amplify negative word-of-mouth instead of growth.
2. Once-in-a-lifetime purchases: Think wedding, funeral, mortgage refinance.
3. Heavily regulated verticals: Financial advice, healthcare, and legal, for example, without legal review
4. Commoditized products: Especially where the referrer has no story to tell
5. Very low customer acquisition: we’re talking paybacks in under a month.

In all five cases, the program overhead outweighs the gains.

The most expensive version of this mistake is launching a referral program before you have product-market fit. Referral marketing is an amplifier. If your customers are not happy, the referral program speeds up the spread of that unhappiness. The first step in the eight-step build sequence is not “set up the software”; it is “confirm a positive net promoter score.” That ordering is intentional.

For regulated industries, the FTC and state-level rules can be aggressive enough that the legal review cost outweighs the program revenue. If you sell financial advisory services, run any referral mechanism through compliance counsel before you launch. The same applies to healthcare, where HIPAA and state-level practice rules can prohibit pay-for-referral entirely.

FTC disclosure and legal considerations

The FTC’s Endorsement Guides require clear and conspicuous disclosure of any material connection between a brand and an endorser, including referral rewards (cash, credit, discount, free product, or status). The 2023 update to the guides explicitly extended the rule to refer-a-friend share copy you provide to your customers, and 2024 enforcement updates raised civil penalties into the five figures per violation. If your share copy pretends a paid referral is an organic recommendation, you are out of compliance.

The material connection rule in plain English

Any time a customer recommends your product and receives something in return (cash, credit, a discount, a free product, status, or even an entry into a sweepstakes), that customer must disclose the relationship in the recommendation. The disclosure has to be clear (plain language, not legalese), conspicuous (visible without expanding hidden text, in a font size comparable to surrounding copy), and consistent (every time the endorsement appears, not just once at signup).

In practice, that means three things for a referral program:

• Pre-written shared copy must include the disclosure: If you provide an email template, the template ships with the disclosure baked in.
• The disclosure has to fit the channel: Email and SMS get a “heads up, I get $X if you sign up” line. Social posts get #ad or #sponsored at the front. In-app widgets get the disclosure adjacent to the share button.
• You are responsible for what your referrers say: Even if a customer goes off-script and posts something on Instagram without the disclosure, the FTC can hold the brand accountable for failing to provide adequate guidance.

Special rules

Healthcare, financial services, and anything aimed at children under 13 (COPPA overlap) have additional state and federal rules layered on top of the FTC’s baseline. Do not launch a referral program in those verticals without counsel.

This section is not legal advice. Review the FTC’s Endorsement Guides directly and consult an attorney for your specific program.

Referral marketing FAQs

Here are several answers to the most asked questions about referral marketing.

What is referral marketing in simple terms?

Referral marketing is a customer acquisition strategy that rewards existing customers for introducing new customers to your business. It formalizes word-of-mouth into a trackable program with unique links or codes, defined rewards (cash, credit, discount, or product), and measurable conversion data, turning unpaid recommendations into a managed channel.

What is the difference between referral marketing and affiliate marketing?

Referral marketing rewards existing customers who personally share your product with their own network, usually a one-to-one share. Affiliate marketing pays third-party publishers (bloggers, creators, deal sites) a commission for sending public traffic to you, often via SEO or content. Different audiences, different reward structures, different software. Most companies should run both separately.

What are the main types of referral programs?

The eight common structures are single-sided (referrer only), double-sided (referrer and referee), tiered or milestone (rewards scale with referral count), mystery (randomized reward), gamified (badges, leaderboards), advocacy or VIP (status, early access), charitable (donation per referral), and cash (fintech and high-LTV verticals). Double-sided is the default and outperforms single-sided in nearly every published test.

How do you build a customer referral program step by step?

To build a customer referral program: confirm product-market fit and a positive NPS signal first; pick one goal (lower CAC, more customers, or expansion); choose a single or double-sided structure; set rewards using customer lifetime value math (reward should not exceed 10 to 20% of referred-customer gross margin); select software or build with unique URL parameters; design share assets; promote across post-purchase, email, in-app, and NPS-promoter touchpoints; and review monthly.

What metrics should I track for a referral program?

Track participation rate (the percentage of eligible customers who share at least once), share-to-conversion rate, referral customer acquisition cost (CAC) versus blended CAC, referred-customer lifetime value (LTV) versus non-referred LTV, and payback period on incentive spend. Track the k-factor (invites-to-conversion rate of invited users) only if you are aiming for viral growth. Most healthy programs run at K = 0.1 to 0.5 and remain profitable.

What is the best referral marketing software in 2026?

The best referral marketing software depends on your stack and scale. For Shopify ecommerce: ReferralCandy, Yotpo, or Smile.io. For general SMB or no-code: Referral Rock, Referral Factory, or Friendbuy. For B2B SaaS: Cello or GrowSurf. For enterprise: Extole, Buyapowa, Mention Me, or Annex Cloud. Under 100 customers per month, a do-it-yourself setup with unique URLs, plus Stripe coupons, plus your CRM is usually enough.

Do I have to disclose referral relationships under FTC rules?

Yes. The FTC’s Endorsement Guides require clear and conspicuous disclosure of any material connection, including discounts, store credit, cash, or free product, every time the endorsement appears. The 2023 update and 2024 enforcement updates raised per-violation civil penalties into the five figures. Pre-written share copy you provide to referrers should include the disclosure. Do not disguise paid referrals as organic recommendations.

When does referral marketing not work?

Referral marketing does not work when you do not yet have product-market fit (you will amplify negative word-of-mouth), when the purchase is once-in-a-lifetime (referee-side rewards still work but referrer-side does not), in heavily regulated verticals without legal review (financial advice, healthcare, legal), or when your current customer acquisition cost is already very low, and payback is under a month. Program overhead may outweigh the gains.

What’s the difference between B2B and B2C referral programs?

B2B and B2C referral programs share the same strategy but require different mechanics.

B2C runs short cycles, low-friction, two-sided cash or credit, with in-app and post-purchase placements. While B2B runs longer cycles, multi-step rewards tied to pipeline stages, CRM-attached attribution, and sales handoff for high-ACV deals.

Confusing the two is the most common mistake B2B teams make when adapting a Shopify-style program to their funnel.

What changes in B2B:

• Attribution window: A B2C referral closes in hours or days. A B2B referral can take 6 to 18 months. The tracking has to survive that.
• Multi-step rewards: Pay a small bonus when the referral becomes a marketing-qualified lead (MQL), a larger bonus when it becomes closed-won. Single-payment-on-conversion programs fail at B2B time horizons.
• CRM attachment: The program runs out of the CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive), not out of a Shopify app. The referral-source field on the deal record is non-negotiable.
• Sales handoff: High-ACV referrals get routed to a human, not a self-serve flow. The referrer expects their friend to be treated like a warm lead instead of a cold signup.
• Reward type: Gift cards or charitable donations work better than cash for buyer-side compliance. Many enterprise procurement teams ban employees from accepting direct cash from vendors.
• Ownership: B2B referral programs live with Growth or Marketing, with a defined handoff to Sales. B2C programs live entirely with Marketing or Ecommerce Ops.

Dropbox offers free storage capability for referrals.

If you sell to mid-market and enterprise accounts, your referral motion is closer to a partner program than to a refer-a-friend widget. Acknowledge that up front and build the CRM plumbing before launching.

Make referral marketing work for you

Referral marketing isn’t a passive strategy. You have to take regular action to launch, manage, track, and improve the program. But with the right plan in place, it can drive consistent, low-cost customer acquisition.

The key is tailoring your referral marketing program to your business, goals, and ideal customers. Once you have the match, it’ll deliver dependable results.

Speaking of dependable results, reach out, and we’ll show you how our digital marketing solutions can help support all of your marketing goals.

The post Referral Marketing Guide: Strategies, Examples, & Free Tools appeared first on WordStream.

In late May 2026, Google published its first official guidance on how AI Overviews and AI Mode work. It is the clearest thing the company has said on the subject, and it points directly at the fundamentals: fast, accessible websites, content that reflects genuine expertise, and strong local reputation signals. These are the same things that have driven search visibility for years.

The entire category of “AI optimization” services (the chunking, the file formats, the rewrites) does not appear in the guidelines as something Google uses or rewards. In fact, Google addressed these tactics in a section titled “Mythbusting.”

That is worth pausing on. Not because you should feel validated (though you might), but because it tells you exactly where to spend your time. You don’t need a new playbook; you simply need to execute the existing one more consistently.

Here is what Google actually said in their AI search guidelines, what it means for your business, and one question that will tell you whether your website is already in good shape.

Contents

• What’s in Google’s AI search guidelines?
• What to focus on for AI search visibility, according to Google (+experts!)
• What’s less important for AI search
• How to apply these AI search guidelines in one easy step

What Google says about AI search in its guidelines

The guidance lives in Google Search Central’s documentation under “Optimizing for generative AI features on Google Search.” It was announced at Google I/O 2026 and covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, and the emerging category of agentic search experiences.

The document answers a question that has been floating around since AI Overviews launched: Does SEO still matter for AI search?

Nikiya Griffith, Director of Organic Growth at BX Studio, says the answer has been clear in practice for some time. “We’ve seen that about 80% of the time, what’s good for SEO is good for GEO. Our most successful strategic initiatives over the last year have been ones where SEO and GEO were approached in unison as one holistic strategy. Of course, you still need to devote time and attention to the considerations that are unique to GEO or SEO, but overall, we really see GEO as an extension of good SEO.”

Google’s guidance lands in the same place. Its answer is direct: “In short, yes.” Its generative AI features pull from the same Search index as traditional results. They use the same ranking systems. Succeeding in AI Overviews or AI Mode starts with succeeding in search.

Three themes run through the document: foundational SEO, demonstrable expertise, and trust and local relevance. This is not a new set of requirements. It is a clarification of which signals Google already counts, now applied to AI-powered experiences.

For small businesses, that is genuinely good news: The work you have already done holds more value than the AI optimization industry would have you believe.

Get everything you need to know about showing up in AI search in our free guide: The AI Search Toolkit >>

What to focus on for AI search visibility, according to Google (and the experts!)

While the mythbusting section is detailed (which we’ll cover shortly), the guidance on what actually works breaks into three areas that will feel familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to SEO over the past few years.

Foundational SEO

AI systems still need to discover, access, understand, and retrieve content. That process works the same way it always has. The guidance explicitly references crawlability, site structure, mobile usability, page speed, and internal linking, and these same factors affect both traditional search visibility and how AI Overviews retrieve content.

A plumbing company in Phoenix with a slow mobile site creates a barrier for both. These used to feel like two separate problems. Google’s guidance makes clear that they are the same problem.

For most small businesses, the technical bar is not complicated. Make sure your content is crawlable, your site performs well on mobile, and your pages meet the basic technical requirements to be eligible for indexing. If you can check those three things, you have covered most of what the technical section describes.

Content built on real experience

This is where the guidance spends the most time, and it is worth reading carefully.

Google explicitly prioritizes what it calls “non-commodity content,” meaning content that goes beyond what anyone with a search engine could produce.

The guidance gives a clear example of the distinction: a summary of existing advice is commodity content. A first-hand account based on real experience (“Why We Waived the Inspection and Saved Money: A Look Inside the Sewer Line”) is non-commodity content. The difference is not length or format. It is whether the content reflects genuine knowledge that is not widely available elsewhere.

For SMBs, this is a real structural advantage over larger publishers or businesses. An HVAC technician in Cleveland who writes about why heat pumps underperform during polar vortex conditions, covering the specific settings to adjust and the system configurations that tend to fail, is providing something a national publisher writing generic HVAC content cannot replicate. A dental practice that explains what patients actually notice during their first Invisalign appointment, drawn from hundreds of cases, is working with knowledge that competitors cannot simply copy.

Businesses closest to customer problems often have information that larger publishers cannot easily replicate. Google’s guidance points toward making that expertise visible.

“If you have genuinely unique insights to share, whether it’s in the form of expert quotes, original data, or something else, you’re going to have a much better chance of winning in organic and AI search,” said Nikiya.

“You still need to make sure you’re following best practices and formatting fundamentals, so your content can be easily crawled and gets discovered. But quality beats quantity if you’re aiming for long-term growth.”

Local relevance and trust signals

The guidance calls out Google Business Profile, reviews, citation consistency, and local mentions as signals that carry weight in both traditional and AI-powered local results.

For small businesses, reviews that describe specific services or outcomes carry more than generic five-star ratings. “Arrived on time, fixed the leak” gives AI systems less to work with than a review describing a specific situation: an emergency repair at 2 a.m., or a problem that two other companies had misdiagnosed. Specific language gives Google’s systems more context about what your business actually does and how well it does it.

Citation consistency matters too. If your address, phone number, and business name appear differently across directories, it weakens the trust signal. Cleaning that up pays off in both traditional and AI-powered local results.

Need help understanding the modern rules for SEO? Download our free guide >> How to Do SEO Right—Right Now!

What’s less important for AI search, according to Google

The mythbusting section of Google’s AI search guidelines is where businesses can save real time and money. Google names five tactics and explains that none of them are required for AI search visibility.

Llms.txt files

An llms.txt file is a markdown document placed at a site’s root that summarizes what a site is and links to its most important content. The idea, proposed by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI in 2024, was that AI systems could use this file to orient themselves without crawling everything. The SEO industry ran with it quickly.

The problem is that AI systems have largely not read it. Ahrefs analyzed 137,000 sites in May 2026 and found that 97% of existing llms.txt files received zero traffic. Not low traffic. Zero, meaning no bots, no humans, nothing fetching the file at all. Of the 3% that did receive any traffic, AI retrieval bots accounted for just 1.1% of requests. Slackbot, a chat app’s link-preview mechanism, fetched more llms.txt files than PerplexityBot did.

Ahrefs also found that zero AI bots went looking for llms.txt files that did not exist. There is no knock at the door you are missing by not having one.

Google’s guidance matches this data precisely. The mythbusting section states that businesses do not need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in generative AI search.

Google’s own Search Advocate John Mueller has called llms.txt “a temporary crutch, perhaps to save some tokens” for AI coding tools parsing developer documentation. The file was designed for software developers, not HVAC companies or dental practices.

Content chunking

Chunking means breaking content into short, discrete sections under the theory that AI systems retrieve information in small pieces and prefer content formatted that way. Google says this is not accurate.

Its systems can understand multiple topics on a single page and surface the relevant portion without the publisher doing that work in advance. Write pages for your audience. Length should follow the content, not the other way around.

AI-focused content rewrites

Some businesses have been rewriting perfectly serviceable pages to add “long-tail keywords” and “AI-retrieval phrases.” Google says this is not necessary.

Its systems understand synonyms and general meaning well enough that content does not need to mirror every variation of a query. Chasing retrieval phrases is work that produces diminishing returns.

Specialized AI schema

Structured data continues to matter for rich results, including review stars, FAQ boxes, and local business details. But Google is explicit that there is no special schema.org markup for AI search. There is no AI-specific type or new property you need to add. If your structured data is already in place for traditional search, you are covered.

Nikiya flags one practical risk worth watching here. “There’s been a lot of mixed messaging around schema markup recently, and as a result, we’ve seen an uptick in what I consider schema slop. I think the intention behind it is good; people want to follow best practices, but if you have an AI tool write schema for you, and you don’t have an expert with technical SEO or GEO experience to review that code, you can actually wind up doing yourself a disservice. If you’re going to add schema markup to your website, you need to make sure it matches what’s actually on the page, and you need to validate it.”

Follow this schema workflow if you do add it to your site.

The short version: existing, accurate, validated structured data is what matters. Adding more schema without those conditions is not a neutral act.

How to apply these AI search guidelines in one easy step

When reviewing a page, ask: Would a customer who already trusted your business find this genuinely useful?

Read each page as a prospective customer would, and look for:

• Specifics
• Evidence of experience
• Practical guidance rather than general statements

Pages that sound interchangeable with your competitors are the ones that deserve attention first. Pages that reflect how your business actually thinks about problems and solves them are already aligned with what Google describes throughout its guidance.

The content that tends to underperform in AI search is the same content that tends to underperform in traditional search: thin, generic pages that do not add anything beyond what is already available everywhere else. That has not changed. It is simply more visible now.

What Google’s guidance clarifies

The most valuable aspect of this document may simply be the clarity it provides. For the first time, businesses have a written reference from Google itself on what it evaluates across traditional and AI-powered search experiences.

When someone tries to sell you a new AI optimization service, whether it involves chunking, llms.txt files, or special schema, you can check it against published guidance. If Google explicitly says it does not matter, that is a definitive answer.

The work that has always driven search visibility is the same work this guidance describes: technical accessibility, demonstrated expertise, and local trust signals. Adding AI to search does not change what the foundation requires. If anything, it makes getting that foundation right more consequential.

The post Google’s AI Search Guidelines: What You Really Need to Know appeared first on WordStream.