Daily Search Forum Recap: January 30, 2026
Google rolled out several product tweaks on January 30, 2026, including a test of third‑party endorsement content in search ads, new one‑click previews for Performance Max campaigns, and official help documentation for Preferred Sources. At the same time, Google Business Profile review appeals delays were lifted, while Gemini 3 now powers AI Overviews worldwide. The Search Engine Roundtable highlighted an unprecedented spike in ranking volatility throughout the month, prompting heightened chatter among SEOs. Additional industry signals show ad‑budget cuts and rapid AI adoption shaping the search landscape.
Intentsify Solidifies Their Vision and Leadership With Salutary Data Acquisition, Second Strategic Deal Following Five by Five
Intentsify, a global B2B intent‑data provider, announced the acquisition of Salutary Data, a specialist in curated contacts and company intelligence. The deal marks Intentsify’s second strategic purchase in two years and follows a 21% overall revenue increase and 50% growth...
7 Custom GPT Ideas to Automate SEO Workflows
Search Engine Land outlines seven custom GPT prompts that let SEO teams automate routine workflows, from annual project planning to technical audits. Each prompt includes setup steps, example inputs, and optional integrations with tools like Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and Slack....
Stacker and Scrunch Partner to Bring AI Search Visibility to Earned Media at Scale
Stacker, the earned‑media distribution platform, has announced a strategic partnership with AI analytics firm Scrunch to embed AI search visibility and citation reporting directly into its product. The integration merges Scrunch’s data on prompt responses, brand mentions and citations with...
Market My Website Opens Early Access to AI Assistant Built for Founders Who Don’t Have Time for Analytics
Market My Website announced early access to an AI‑powered analytics assistant aimed at founders and solo operators. The tool links directly to Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console, delivering a concise weekly report that highlights traffic shifts, conversion issues,...
Google Ads Tests Third-Party Endorsement Content On Search Ads
Google is piloting a new feature that places third‑party endorsement content directly within Search ad descriptions. The format will display the endorsing site’s name, logo, and a brief testimonial beneath the ad copy. This test aims to leverage external credibility...
Google Search Adds Preferred Sources Help Docs
Google has published official help documentation for its Preferred Sources feature, which lets users designate trusted news sites in Google Search. The feature, rolled out globally after earlier releases in the US, India, and a beta phase, influences Top Stories...
4 Reasons Your Google Ads Clicks Are Down & What You Can Do via @Sejournal, @Brookeosmundson
Google Ads click volume can tumble for several reasons, most commonly a dip in Quality Score, reduced impression share, disruptive ad changes, or aggressive competitor bidding. Benchmarks show average CTRs ranging from 1.4 % on Shopify sites to 6.66 % across all...
Google’s SAGE Agentic AI Research: What It Means For SEO via @Sejournal, @Martinibuster
Google released the SAGE research paper, introducing a dual‑agent system that automatically generates complex question‑answer pairs for training AI search agents. Existing datasets like Musique and HotpotQA average fewer than three search steps, leaving a gap for deep‑research tasks. SAGE’s...
Levi Strauss, Walmart, Amazon Lead Brand Keys Loyalty Index
The 28th annual Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI) identifies Levi Strauss, Walmart and Amazon as the top loyalty leaders for 2026, alongside sector champions such as Dick’s, Costco and Whole Foods. The study highlights a rapid rise in...
Ad Fraud Is Exploding — Dhiraj Gupta of mFilterIt Explains How Brands Can Respond
Ad fraud is escalating into a systemic threat that undermines the digital economy’s trust. In 2024 mobile ad fraud rose 21% and programmatic scams siphoned nearly $50 billion, while the ad‑fraud detection market is set to exceed $2 billion by 2034. Dhiraj...
AI Ads Are Neither
The post traces advertising from early display ads and direct‑marketing concepts to today’s searchable, intent‑based model. Google refined paid placement by keeping a clear line between organic results and sponsored listings, turning tiny clicks into multi‑million‑dollar revenues. Amazon, however, blurred...
Xumo Expands Direct Access to Premium Streaming Inventory via The Trade Desk’s OpenPath
Xumo, the Comcast‑Charter streaming joint venture, has linked its premium CTV inventory to The Trade Desk’s OpenPath through FreeWheel, creating the first direct‑supply path of its kind. The integration gives advertisers programmatic access to more than 60 million monthly active users...
Canadian Retail News From Around The Web For January 30, 2026
Canada’s retail sector shows mixed signals as e‑commerce orders surged 20% in 2025 while payroll employment slipped 1.5% in November. Major players are investing heavily: GoodLife Fitness rolled out a year‑long multichannel campaign, Empire Company expects a $95 million operating‑income lift...
GoodLife Fitness Launches National Marketing Campaign as It Expands Canadian Locations
GoodLife Fitness, Canada’s largest fitness‑club chain, unveiled a national marketing campaign titled “Canada’s Gym. Built Here, Built for Everyone.” The rollout coincides with the opening of 14 new locations in 2026, including two clubs focused exclusively on women’s programming. The...
Luxury Briefing: Inside LMVH’s ‘Quiet Opulence’ Jewelry Brand, as Jewelry Outpaces Luxury
Fine jewelry has become the standout performer in luxury, outpacing fashion and leather goods. LVMH’s watches and jewelry division posted an 8% earnings increase in 2025, driven by Bulgari and Tiffany & Co.’s repositioning. Richemont similarly benefits from its jewelry...
Canadian Ecommerce Orders Rose 20% in 2025, with Top Brands Driving Half the Growth: Omnisend
Canadian ecommerce order volume jumped 20% year‑over‑year in 2025, but the surge was unevenly distributed. The top 10% of brands captured half of all order growth, highlighting a widening performance gap. Shoppers engaged with marketing less often, yet those interactions...
Defining Your ICP (the Non-Hand-Wavy Way)
The article exposes how most Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) are vague wish‑lists and introduces a MarketFit Method that frames the ICP as three testable hypotheses—targeting, need, and solution. It adds a three‑layer targeting model (firmographics, persona, behavioral signals) to turn...
Discover Decathlon’s New Shopping App Today
Decathlon has launched a dedicated mobile app for iOS and Android that consolidates its full product catalog, promotions, membership benefits, and order management in a single interface. Shoppers can browse inventory, check in‑store stock, scan barcodes for detailed product data,...
X Announces Partnership with WBD for Winter Olympics
X has struck a partnership with Warner Brothers Discovery to deliver exclusive Winter Olympics content across Europe and the U.K. The deal merges X’s real‑time sports conversation engine with Eurosport and TNT Sports broadcast feeds, while integrating HBO Max and discovery+ streams. Brands...
LinkedIn Continues to Add Users, Revenue
LinkedIn’s latest quarter posted a record $5 billion in revenue, marking the first time the platform crossed that threshold. Membership climbed to 1.3 billion, with double‑digit growth reported across new regions. Active‑user estimates hover around 450 million, roughly 36 % of the EU base,...
Snapchat Shares Data on How Its Users Seek Info on Financial Products
Snapchat released a study with Ipsos of 1,100 U.S. daily social users who hold or seek financial products. The data shows daily Snapchat users hold more products and are 1.4 times more likely to take a new financial product within...
FINNY Partners with Osaic to Expand AI Prospecting for Advisors
FINNY, an AI‑powered prospecting platform for financial advisors, has partnered with Osaic to roll its technology out across Osaic’s network of more than 270 institutions and roughly 11,000 advisors. The integration gives users access to FINNY’s predictive F‑Score engine, real‑time...
The Role of AI Transcription in the Future of Video Search and Discovery
AI transcription is turning spoken video into searchable, timestamped text, addressing the long‑standing difficulty of locating information within growing video libraries. Modern speech‑recognition models now handle diverse accents and technical vocabularies with high accuracy, enabling instant navigation to exact moments....
EXCLUSIVE: X’s Memelord Product Chief Has a Plan to Save the Platform—If Grok Doesn’t Destroy It First
X’s product chief Nikita Bier unveiled a multi‑phase strategy at CES 2026 aimed at reviving the platform by leveraging meme‑centric content and AI‑enhanced advertising. The plan introduces AI‑curated meme feeds, new short‑form ad formats, and tighter integration with the upcoming...
Crocs Puts Self-Expression over Algorithmic Sameness with New Platform
Crocs introduced its first global brand platform in nearly a decade, "Wonderfully Unordinary," to replace the 2017 "Come As You Are" campaign. The new platform emphasizes self‑expression and real‑world experiences as a counterpoint to the algorithmic sameness dominating digital culture....
Toimi Expands SEO Optimization Capabilities Using AI-Powered Analytical Tools
Toimi has launched AI‑powered analytical tools to overhaul its SEO workflow, focusing on content structure, semantic clustering, and search intent analysis. The technology processes massive datasets, enabling strategic planning of site architecture rather than chasing short‑term ranking spikes. AI insights...
Social Media Marketing Outlook 2026: What to Expect in the Year Ahead
The 2026 Social Media Marketing Outlook predicts short‑form video will cement its role as the primary brand engagement tool, while platforms like Reddit face growing user resistance to advertising. Algorithmic shifts are expected to heighten tension between creators and networks,...
How to Find Great Writers (and Other Content Marketing Struggles)
The article outlines a practical framework for locating and retaining great content writers amid a crowded marketplace flooded with AI tools and low‑cost freelancers. It stresses evaluating fundamentals such as grammar, readability, and audience focus, and prioritizing writers skilled in...
Starbucks Canada Rolls Out Tiered Rewards Program
Starbucks Canada launched a revamped Starbucks Rewards program on March 10, introducing three tiers—Green, Gold, and Reserve—to deliver faster, more personalized benefits. The redesign, driven by extensive member feedback, adds features such as a 60‑Star $2‑off redemption, non‑expiring Stars for higher...
Salesforce President Ariel Kelman’s 25-Year Playbook for Marketing at Scale
Salesforce President and CMO Ariel Kelman shared his 25‑year marketing playbook on the Marketing Vanguard podcast, emphasizing trust‑driven storytelling, AI grounded in first‑party data, and executive‑led AI experimentation. He illustrated the “show, don’t tell” approach with the AgentForce City exhibit,...
Google Ads Advertiser Verification Page Moving
Google has relocated the Advertiser Verification page within the Google Ads console to the Admin → Policy → Account section, renaming it simply "Account." The new hub consolidates verification tasks with business information, certifications, and compliance status. The change was highlighted by industry voices...
Shoppers Want to Feel Seen and Understood, Suggests New Tesco Media Report
Tesco Media’s third annual "We Know the Nation 2026" report reveals British shoppers are seeking community and shared values, moving beyond pure transactions. With roughly 80% of UK households holding a Clubcard, the data shows event‑driven sales spikes—such as scones...
Google Personal Intelligence Creates AI Frankenstein Recipes
Google’s Personal Intelligence (PI) is delivering AI‑generated “Frankenstein” recipes that blend content from multiple sources. In a recent test, the tool produced a Key Lime Pie recipe attributed to the food blog Inspired Taste but with incorrect ingredients, bake time,...
Google Ads API Version 23 Now Available
Google has launched version 23 of the Google Ads API, marking the first release of 2026 and a shift to a faster release cadence. The update adds dozens of new features, including expanded asset and reporting metrics, granular billing data, and...
Most Consumers Can Identify AI Videos
According to Animoto’s 2026 State of Video Report, 83% of consumers say they can identify AI‑generated videos, and they perceive such content as diminishing brand trust. The study found that robotic gestures, unnatural voices, and lack of emotional tone are...
Particular Audience Introduces Modular Retail Media Solutions to Cut Costs and Accelerate Innovation for RMNs
Particular Audience unveiled a Modular Retail Media (MRM) suite comprising 13 interoperable modules that can be added to existing retail media networks without replacing legacy adtech. The AI‑driven components, ranging from semantic search to automated product bundles, promise higher‑margin ad...
Jotform Brings AI-Powered Chatbots to Canva Designs
Jotform has launched Jotform AI Chatbot for Canva, the first native AI chatbot integration within Canva’s design platform. The tool lets viewers interact with designs to ask questions, book appointments, track orders, or submit inquiries without leaving the editor. Users...
Webflow and Google Ads Narrow the Gap Between Ads and Site Results
Webflow has launched a native Google Ads integration that lets marketers create, run, and monitor campaigns directly from the Webflow design environment. The new app, available in the Webflow Marketplace, supports Google’s Performance Max campaigns and pulls site assets such...
EBay Advertising Launches 2026 UK Marketing Trends Calendar
eBay Advertising has unveiled its 2026 UK Marketing Trends Calendar, a data‑driven guide that maps seasonal moments, micro‑trends and high‑intent shopping periods across the year. The calendar, built on eBay UK marketplace data, highlights demand spikes such as a 76%...
Exposed: Why Launching an Agency Is a Risky Business
A new analysis by digital‑marketing firm Avid Panda shows that 39% of marketing companies launched between 2021 and 2025 cease trading within five years, with advertising agencies the most vulnerable at a 41% failure rate. The study compares incorporation data...
DfE Woos Bored Professionals in VCCP Training Debut
The Department for Education has launched "Give Your Skills New Life," a national recruitment drive created by its new agency VCCP to entice professionals to become further‑education teachers. The campaign uses authentic stories of real trainers and students across colleges...
Real-Time Blackhole List – How to Remove an IP From It?
Email senders increasingly encounter DNS‑based Real‑Time Blackhole Lists that block IPs suspected of spam, phishing, or compromised servers. When an IP lands on a blacklist, major ESPs reject or filter messages, causing bounce errors, silent drops, and plummeting engagement metrics....
![The Way Your Agency Handles Leads Will Define Success in 2026 [Webinar] via @Sejournal, @Hethr_campbell](/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto,fit=cover/https://cdn.searchenginejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/1-105.png)
The Way Your Agency Handles Leads Will Define Success in 2026 [Webinar] via @Sejournal, @Hethr_campbell
The webinar hosted by Search Engine Journal highlights that agencies’ ability to manage leads after capture will determine their success in 2026. It stresses that missed calls, delayed follow‑ups, and poor handoffs are eroding conversion rates and wasting ad spend....
Ain’t No Stopping Us Now: 2026 Adspend to Top £50bn
The Advertising Association and WARC report projects UK advertising expenditure to surpass £50 billion in 2026, following a 10.1% rise to £46.9 billion in 2025. Q3 2025 saw ad spend climb 11.4% to £12.5 billion, with search and online display making up 83%...
Introducing the Klaviyo App in ChatGPT
Klaviyo has launched a new app that embeds its marketing automation data directly into OpenAI’s ChatGPT. By tagging @Klaviyo, marketers can query real‑time campaign performance, revenue trends, and unsubscribe drivers, receiving results as interactive cards and plain‑language recommendations. The integration...
EDO Launches ‘EDO Always-On’, Delivering Automated, Scaled Outcomes Measurement for Convergent TV
EDO announced the launch of Always‑On, a cross‑platform measurement solution that streams automated outcomes data into media partners' analytics platforms. NBCUniversal and Paramount Global are the first to integrate the service, feeding real‑time performance insights for linear and streaming inventory....
The State of Browsing in 2026: Why Digital Burnout Is Now a Marketing Problem… and Opportunity
Shift’s 2026 State of Browsing Report finds digital burnout now prevalent in browsers, with 62% of U.S. adults reporting recurring fatigue. Users juggle many tabs—one in five has 11+ open—and experience frequent attention loss, costing significant time. Marketers are implicated...
StackAdapt Achieves EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework Certification
StackAdapt announced it has earned certification under the EU‑U.S. Data Privacy Framework, the European Commission‑approved mechanism that legitimises transatlantic personal data flows. The certification confirms the platform’s GDPR‑aligned privacy program and eliminates the need for supplemental transfer tools such as...
Put a Face on It: Unpacking the Uniquely Australian Obsession with Heads in Logos
Australian retailers frequently feature founders' heads in their logos, a trend highlighted by Dan Murphy’s recent eye‑contact campaign. The practice taps into a cultural love for personable, “battler” narratives that signal authenticity and local origin. Both real and fictional founder...