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Industry Insights
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One Page, One Baseline: Paula French on Program Page AI Search Visibility [UPCEA]
Your program page has a new audience, and it doesn’t fill out RFI forms. Half of prospective students now use AI tools at least weekly, and most universities have no idea what those tools are telling them. Before a student ever lands on your site, an AI tool has likely …
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Track and Report the Right Higher Ed Marketing Analytics to Improve Your Strategy
This post was updated by Allison Zeringue on 6/16/2026 to reflect current best practices. It was originally published on 10/09/2024. Key Insights Less than half of higher ed marketers track cost per inquiry or cost per enrolled student, the two metrics that connect marketing spend to enrollment outcomes. Institutions that …
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[DATA] Higher Education Marketing Trends 2026: How Industry Pros Stay Informed
Higher education is under pressure from every direction. Enrollment shifts, budget constraints, AI disruption, and changing student expectations are hitting at once, and the professionals navigating them are expected to stay ahead of it all. Search Influence partnered with UPCEA, the leading association for online and professional education, to better …
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Will Scott Speaks on GEO and Agentic SEO at SMX Advanced 2026
There’s a version of AI-assisted SEO where you paste a prompt into a chatbot and hope for the best. Then there’s the version Will Scott will be demonstrating at SMX Advanced 2026, one that’s already changing how agencies deliver work for clients. Will, CEO and co-founder of Search Influence, has …
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Best AI SEO Tracking Tools Under $50/Month (2026)
TL;DR If you have under $50/month and want to start tracking how your brand shows up in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity: Waikay.io (free tier) if you’ve never tracked AI visibility before and want to test the waters RankScale ($20/mo) if you want analytics-driven testing across the broadest set …
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What Is GEO? Generative Engine Optimization Explained
Key Insights GEO gets your brand cited in AI answers, not just ranked on a SERP. Built on SEO basics (site health, schema, depth, authority) but optimized for what an LLM cites, not what a user clicks. Attribution is messy. AI traffic often shows up as Direct in GA4. Most …
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How Will AI Search Affect Paid Ads in 2026? What Marketers Need to Know
This post was updated by Audrey Reynaud on 5/6/26 to reflect current best practices. It was originally published on 6/3/25. Key Insights AI Overviews decrease paid ad performance. When an Overview appears, Google Ads CTR drops from 19.70% to 6.34%. Zero-click search is becoming part of the new norm. Over …
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AI Search KPIs: The Metrics That Actually Matter for Visibility
This post was updated by Chuck Wilkins on 4/29/26 to reflect current best practices. It was originally published on 3/6/26. Key Insights Brand influence now happens before a website visit. Discovery and evaluation increasingly occur inside AI chat interfaces, not on your site or a traditional search engine results page. …
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How to Choose an AI SEO Tracking Tool
Key Insights Pick an AI SEO tool based on platform coverage, refresh rate, budget, and whether you need tracking only or tracking plus content optimization. These tools measure brand visibility in AI answers (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity), not traditional rankings. Coverage matters: tools track different platforms, and visibility varies …
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Beyond Google Zero: Will Scott on Agentic SEO and the Rise of Non-Human Traffic
The “Google Zero” panic has been building for months. The fear: AI Overviews and zero-click search are slowly starving websites of organic traffic. Some publishers have responded with alarm. Others have abandoned SEO strategies entirely. Will Scott, AI SEO expert and CEO of Search Influence, has a different read, and …
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