Catch up on all the biggest stories in online marketing in this latest edition of our roundup covering late March and beyond. You’ll get fresh news from SEO and AI to PPC, social media, and video marketing.
In the top stories from last month, you’ll learn about the outcome of the last big core and spam updates. You’ll also get an analysis of how AI is killing Google ads, and an expert’s breakdown of how one piece of video marketing content was engineered to earn over $200,000.
Next, you’ll learn about Google’s alleged “crackdown” on SEO, and a veteran SEO’s take on what he would do if he had to start all over again, and what you can do about Google’s dead call button.
In the final stories of the month, what testers are learning about budgeting AI ad campaigns, and how to take advantage of a social media strategy no one is using.
Google March 2026 Core & Spam Update, AI-Generated Title Links, Bing AI Reports Update & Much More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rggEKDGA3AM
Barry Schwartz brings you this quick review of some sudden Google updates that landed late last month. The Core Update and the Spam update struck around the same time.
The core update (the first of 2026) took 2 weeks and is now complete. The spam update was over the day after it launched in April. Barry takes you through the updates and what we know now.
Google identified this update as “a regular update designed to surface better, relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.” As with the last few core updates, Google didn’t issue new guidance, but given the size of the impact, many site owners may wish they had made changes.
The updates sent ripples everywhere. It shifted nearly 80% of the top-three results, and 1/4th of all top-10 pages fell out of the top 100. It’s not yet clear which update is most responsible for all the changes, as analysis continues.
Barry also covers news that Google is using AI to generate title links in SERPs. This experiment shocked and angered some publishers because Google went so far as to change the headlines of news stories. Barry covers how this evolved from earlier practices, and what’s changed now.
Check out the complete guide for more takes from Barry about other changes to Google, including new citation tests for AI overviews, new ad APIs, changes for merchants, and more. Next, some experienced ad pros have opinions on what AI is doing for Google Ads and your team.
AI Is Killing Google Ads (And Saving Your Sales Team)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKCXBlnHg6o
Lawrence Mackey brings you this interview with Dan Butcher about how AI is killing Google Ads. The interview, more broadly, focuses on how ad teams handle channel management, and there’s a great discussion on that leading into the talk on AI.
Exploring how channel management has changed in recent years, the host and guest touch on the concepts of demand generation (creating interest when nobody’s searching) and demand capture (converting existing intent).
Both agree that Google remains the lowest-hanging fruit for demand capture because even after AI and other changes, it still converts at a much higher rate than channels like Meta, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, or Google.
That isn’t to say they don’t think the changes to ads have been significant. They explore a lot of what people mean when they say Google is “killing ads.”
Watch the complete video to get some additional practical advice on taking advantage of AI, including how an AI appointment setter via SMS can boost contact rates and book calls even when your team is offline. Next, learn what it takes to build video content worth hundreds of thousands in value.
Social Media Expert: I Made $200k With One Video (Steal This Viral strategy!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncqgnK5vMkY
Bandman Kevo brings you this interview with IG influencer RealMelaninKing on his explosive growth using video content. In the video, the guest discusses how the brand was built and expanded from 2 million followers in just 2 years to 6 million followers across all of social media.
After reflecting on his past and journey into influencing, RealMelaninKing goes into how he first started developing the viral content that made him a success. He had an early talent for Instagram videos and achieved his first $10,000 month only 6 months after starting.
He takes the audience through the thought process he uses to build content. He argues that competitor research should always be your priority and explains how he uses LLMs and other tools to conduct early research. He reminds you to explore which viral format your competitors are using to get attention.
They go on to discuss how the “trust deficit” is affecting how social media audiences engage with content. The guest reveals how he’s seen audiences develop a greater hunger for background information, testimonials, and proof of expertise, and how he builds content that adapts to that.
Check out the full video to learn more about the small changes RealMelaninKing makes to videos that help them go from thousands of views to millions. Next, Lily Ray thinks your SEO strategy doesn’t work. Is she right?
Lily Ray Reveals SEO Truths in 2026: What Works Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pUMNtq8Bp0
Joy Hawkins brings you this interview with Lily Ray covering Google’s increasingly aggressive crackdowns, carried out through site penalties, core updates, and more. She has some thoughts on what’s happening and on how to recover.
Over the course of a wide-ranging interview, they explore what Google is really targeting based on the evidence. Lily Ray draws on a long history of diving into the data to identify the most risky practices, such as creating city pages in locations where your business has no presence.
The conversation naturally veers to what is working right now, including the rewards of investing your time and budget elsewhere. Joy and Lily talk about Google alternatives that interest them and their SEO teams right now, including Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, Threads, and other ecosystems that offer authentic connections and can improve SEO in the long run.
They also dig into what’s really been happening with the core updates. Lily identifies several interesting trends, including the increasing likelihood of “aftershocks” that occur after the update is reported as finished.
She also tracks the massive amount of movement in the healthcare niche and trends that may signal Google’s internal conflict over the role of user-generated content. They discuss other interesting trends, such as the surprising visibility of Facebook groups and the increasingly iron-clad rankings of .gov sites over competitors.
Check out the complete video to learn more about why GBP stays safe, the crackdown on listicles, the new war on AI-generated reviews, and more. Coming up next, a long-time SEO lays out how he’d start over from nothing, knowing what he knows now.
SEO in 2026: How I’d Rank in Google in the AI Era
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiW6xRYSXmM
Sam Oh feels like he finally has some answers on how SEO behaves in the AI era. He’s using those answers to present a theory on how you can move forward, starting from the assumption that you have nothing. He identifies some key shifts.
First, he argues, AI is increasingly learning to be like us when it comes to sources. That means it gathers sources from across the web, citing public information, forum posts, and videos to create a well-supported answer.
Another big shift, according to Sam, is that brand is everything now. It’s not always worth the effort to get attention from Google by writing for Google (even if it’s good, it will get stolen by search features). Instead, you need to work on making your brand impossible to ignore.
He also talks about where traditional SEO still wins because organic clicks are increasingly flowing to action-oriented results.
Check out the complete video to learn more about fresh ranking strategies and where they’re likely to do the most good. Next up, Google’s call button is now dead, but marketing strategies that rely on phone booking still have options.
Google’s call button is DEAD, do THIS instead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVoeAlO-dhE
Caleb Ulku brings you these ideas for replacing the Google call button. As he reminds you, Google recently rolled out a new update that removes the call button from all organic map results.
The button is not fully removed, but it has been isolated to our profile page and cannot be seen from SERPs. This is not an error or an isolated incident, Caleb argues, but part of a pattern by Google to take greater control of searcher-to-business interactions.
The missing call button isn’t even the greatest threat, he goes on to say; it’s the increasing tendency of Google to strip free features used by businesses so they can be reintroduced as paid features later.
Reaching the call button now requires more effort from your searchers, and this is likely to continue in the future. Unfortunately, he can provide several recent examples, including the organic shopping results that were steadily replaced with only ads.
The damage is currently being studied, but some business owners are discussing call volume losses of 20-40%. Caleb has some ideas on how you should react.
First, anyone who reaches your number will now see your entire profile. That means they will judge your entire profile and compare it to others.
Caleb argues that AI overviews are coming for the map pack and that AI will rely on deep, rich profiles to draw on when answering queries.
Check out the complete video for more ideas on how to respond not only to the movement of the call button but to all the changes that may follow. Next, AI is also coming for ads. Learn what to do from Google’s own team.
Budgets, bidding & AI-powered campaigns: Best practices for 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI5ZmVloHo8
Google Ads provides you with a look at the best (approved) practices for ads in the new year. They aim to address recent concerns about updates and the role of AI in creating ad campaigns.
The discussion covers a lot of territory, including what they consider the most important advancements from their perspective, how to respond when you see new warnings like “limited by target”, and what’s driving new sources of campaign volatility.
This video includes several recommendations you may want to consider if you run ads for small businesses. The hosts explain why they recommend value-based bidding, and discuss how to avoid pitfalls when you’re trying this kind of bidding for the first time.
You’ll also learn about some of the new capabilities that have come to Google Ads recently. The hosts cover Campaign Total Budgets, Smart Bidding Exploration, Journey Aware Bidding, and other features that will become increasingly important as the year continues.
Check out the rest of the video to learn more about all the new features in Ads this year. In the last story of the year, you’ll learn about a social media strategy no one is using. Maybe it’s the one you’re looking for?
The Social Media Strategy Nobody Is Using
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMumHwVEfFs
Gary Vee brings you this portion of his Expo West keynote, where he discusses one of the biggest opportunities he still isn’t seeing enough businesses seize. He shares this discussion with his guest.
The great opportunity, Gary argues, is “organic social media.” This strategy may already be powering some of the most visible brands of the past few years, and Gary goes more into why it matters.
Gary believes that the tailored, ultra-personal nature of modern feeds makes most users siloed, receiving information only from trusted sources. Users stick to trusted social media platforms and customize the information they receive there.
This makes it necessary to treat the entire patchwork of social media like one environment and reach as far as possible.
As he points out, LLMs draw information from many sources, which makes it even more important to spread out across the entire social media environment. You need not only YouTube but also LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and any others your demographic uses.
Check out the whole thing for his advice on how to make it possible and scale across dozens of social media sites. This is just one big change that’s rocking online marketing. Make sure to check out the next roundup to learn what comes next!
