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Month: November 2025

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Nov202025

Good News, SEO Friends! We Can Finally Add Annotations in Google Search Console! Here Is How to Use Them

If you’ve ever found yourself squinting at a Search Console traffic dip, frantically trying to remember, “Wait, did we launch that new header template before or after the Core Update?”—I have fantastic news for you.

Google has finally heard our collective plea and rolled out the ability to add annotations directly into the Search Console Performance Reports!

This is a game-changer. It means no more mismatched spreadsheets, no more relying on memory, and no more guessing why your impressions spiked. You can literally drop a sticky note right onto the graph.

Quick Context: When Did This Happen?

Google officially released this feature to everyone on Monday, November 17, 2025.

It had been in testing for months, so if you’ve seen screenshots floating around, they’re real! This addition immediately fills a massive gap in search analysis, giving us a single, reliable timeline for all our data.

Why Are Annotations Such a Big Deal? (The End of Guesswork!)

The core value is context. Your Performance Report shows the what (clicks and impressions changed), but annotations give you the why (we launched a new schema, or Google rolled out an update).

  • ⚡ Pinpoint the Cause: Now, when traffic zaps (or surges!), you can instantly see if it aligns with the moment you launched a new campaign, fixed a huge bug, or deployed a site migration.
  • 🤝 Shared Team History: Annotations are visible to everyone with access to the GSC property. It’s an automatic, shared change log for your team, your boss, or your client. Accountability just got easier!
  • 📈 Clear A/B Testing: You can perfectly document the launch and end dates of any major SEO test, allowing you to quickly isolate the test’s true impact from everything else happening online.

Here Is How to Drop Your First Note in GSC

The process is super intuitive. Google designed it to be quick, which is exactly what we need when tracking a fast-moving update!

Step 1: Head to the Performance Report

  1. Log into your Google Search Console property.
  2. Find the Performance report (under the “Index” section).
  3. Make sure your date range covers the day you need to mark.

Step 2: Add the Annotation

You can typically do this in one of two fast ways:

  • The Power User Move: Right-click directly on the chart line or the date line at the bottom. A quick option to “Add annotation” should pop up.
  • The Traditional Way: Look near your date picker for the “Add Annotation” link.

Step 3: Write Your Note and Save

A simple box will appear. Keep your notes brief, clear, and professional!

  • Date: Select the specific date of the event (e.g., when the code went live).
  • Note: Type your explanation. You have a 120-character limit, so use a clear shorthand! (e.g., [TECH] Fixed canonical tag issue site-wide or [GOOGLE] Nov 17 Core Update Started)
  • Click Add.

A Quick Heads-Up: Annotations are shared with all property users, you can’t edit them (only delete and re-create them), and they auto-delete after 500 days. Use simple, clear language!

Step 4: See the Magic

You’ll now see a small marker appear on the graph for that date. Just hover over the marker to instantly read your note. You can now tell the story of your search performance without ever leaving the tool!

Pro Tip: What Should You Be Annotating?

Don’t just track big SEO changes—track anything that impacts your business or site structure:

  • Google Algorithm Updates: Don’t rely on outside sources; mark the days Google officially announces a rollout (Core Updates, Spam Updates, etc.).
  • Major Infrastructure Changes: Any time you migrate CMS, change domains, or deploy a site-wide template update.
  • Content Strategy Shifts: When you push a major content audit, consolidate pages, or start focusing content on a new user intent.
  • External Factors: Big holidays, major promotions, or seasonality changes that always affect your traffic.

This simple feature is going to save us all countless hours of investigation. Go give it a shot and start building the historical record your data deserves!

Nov202025

AI Max: A Conversation with Your Google Ads Manager

Let’s be honest: when Google drops another AI-driven feature, a lot of us just groan. After the experience many of us had with Performance Max (PMAX)—the “black box” that ate budgets and delivered questionable conversion quality—it’s smart to approach AI Max for Search campaigns with a healthy dose of skepticism.

My message isn’t about avoiding the tool; it’s about managing the risk. This isn’t a silver bullet; it’s a powerful, unproven engine that needs tight human supervision.

First, Get Your Terms Straight

A quick sanity check, because the names are confusing:

  • AI Max for Search: This is not a new campaign type. It’s a bundle of advanced AI features (like dynamic ad copy and keywordless matching) that you turn on inside your existing standard Search campaigns.
  • Gemini: This is Google’s core AI model (think ChatGPT, but Google’s version). AI Max is powered by models like Gemini, but it has nothing to do with the actual text or chatbot results the public sees. It’s an ad optimization tool, end of story.

The Core Conflict: Volume vs. Quality

AI Max is, at its heart, the next evolution of broad match and Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). It’s designed to find volume that your current Exact and Phrase keywords miss.

The Promise: The AI will interpret user intent better than any human ever could, customizing your ad copy (Generative Creative) and even sending them to the perfect landing page (Final URL Expansion).

The Risk (The PMAX Hangover): We’ve been here before. An automated system’s first priority is volume, not necessarily profitable volume. When AI Max goes hunting for new queries, experience tells us it often:

  1. Cannibalizes Profit: It can start bidding on competitor brands or overly generic terms at a higher Cost Per Click (CPC), eating up budget you could have spent more efficiently elsewhere.
  2. Drops Conversion Quality: The new leads or purchases it finds often come in at a higher CPA/lower ROAS. You get more, but you spend more for each.
  3. Loses Creative Control: Allowing an AI to dynamically rewrite your ad copy in real-time is a significant brand risk, especially in regulated or sensitive industries.

Your Strategy: Containment, Control, and Continuous Scrutiny

We are not going to treat AI Max like a “set-it-and-forget-it” tool. Our strategy is about containment and data accountability. If you decide to test this feature, here is the non-negotiable process for risk mitigation:

1. The Gold Standard: Isolate the Test (A/B First!)

Never enable AI Max directly on a high-performing campaign. That’s how you accidentally burn budget. Instead, use the Campaign Experiments feature—it is your single best weapon against uncontrolled automation.

  • The Setup: Run a 50/50 split test. Your Control group is the existing, proven campaign. The Trial group is the exact same campaign, but with AI Max enabled.
  • The Goal: We need to scientifically confirm that the Trial group delivers incremental profit without raising your overall CPA above acceptable limits. If it just cannibalizes your existing, profitable conversions, the test fails, and you shut it down.

2. Implement Aggressive Guardrails (Don’t Be Polite)

You have to actively teach the AI what you won’t pay for. Automation loves to push boundaries, so push back harder.

  • Be a Negative Keyword Bully: Check the Search Terms Report daily. Any irrelevant, low-intent, or competitor query brought in by the AI’s “keywordless matching” needs to be moved to the Negative Keyword list immediately. This is the only way to quickly discipline the system.
  • Protect Your Brand Terms: This is crucial. Add your own brand terms as negative keywords to the AI Max campaign. Your branded traffic is already cheap and converts well. Don’t let the AI steal credit, raise the CPC, and claim it’s “driving new value.”
  • Creative Oversight: Pay critical attention to the dynamically generated ad copy. If the AI is generating variations that violate brand voice or are legally sensitive, you need to have a process in place to block those executions fast. Creative autonomy is a serious risk in high-stakes markets.

3. Demand Accountability (Scrutinize the Data)

AI Max gives you the Search Terms Report—use it to your advantage. Your focus shouldn’t be on the overall campaign CPA, but on the quality of the new traffic the AI is finding.

  • Focus on the Increment: Filter the Search Terms Report to identify the queries that came in only via the AI’s expanded matching.
  • The CPA Test: Hold those AI-discovered queries to a high standard. If they are consistently delivering conversions at a significantly higher CPA or lower ROAS than 

Where We Stand Now

We need to call AI Max what it is: another attempt from Google to encourage advertisers to give up granular control to automation.

In my humble opinion, AI Max is primarily a tool for those who have extra budget and who are prioritizing finding unknown keywords and achieving maximum volume over bottom-line efficiency. It’s more like an engine built for discovery, not for proven profitability.

AI Max sounds like the next logical step in Search campaign automation for saving time. However, you need to treat this like an unproven team member: give it a tight budget, clear instructions (negative keywords), and track its performance relentlessly. If it doesn’t meet your metrics after a controlled test, you cut it. No hard feelings, just good business. 

You see, the irony, of course, is that the heavy oversight required completely contradicts the whole idea of automation.

Nov202025

Meta’s Andromeda Update: What Advertisers Need to Know in 2025 

Meta has released a major update to its ad delivery system called Andromeda, and many advertisers are already seeing changes across their Facebook and Instagram campaigns. If your results suddenly look different, with higher costs, lower reach, or faster creative fatigue, this update is likely the reason. 

Andromeda is a new AI-powered system that decides which ads get shown to each user. Instead of relying heavily on audience targeting, it focuses on the creative itself, especially the first few seconds and the visual structure of the ad. The system uses real-time signals to match each user with the creative it believes is most relevant. 

 How the Meta Andromeda Algorithm Impacts Campaigns 

Here are the key changes affecting daily performance: 

1. Creative Variety Matters More 

Ads with unique visuals, settings, and angles reach more people and last longer. 

2. Broad Targeting Performs Better 

The algorithm needs a large audience to find the right match. 

3. Small Tweaks Don’t Reset Performance 

New overlays, new captions, or minor edits are often not enough. 

4. Persona-Based Creative Works Best 

Ads built around different customer motivations help Andromeda discover new pockets of users. 

How Advertisers Should Adjust 

To get better results under Meta’s Andromeda system, advertisers should keep their campaign structures simple, refresh creative more often, build ads for different customer personas, and give each creative enough time and budget to perform. 

Meta’s Andromeda update represents a clear shift toward creative-first advertising. Strong visuals, fresh hooks, and simple campaign setups now play a bigger role in driving results than detailed audience targeting or minor creative edits. As the system continues to learn and evolve, advertisers who focus on creative variety and clean structures will be in the best position to adapt. 

If you’d like help reviewing your Meta campaigns or planning creative for this new environment, our team is always here to support you.