Google Ads is rolling out a beta that allows advertisers to connect additional data sources directly to website conversion actions, giving marketers a new way to supplement tag-based measurement with backend conversion data.
The feature enables advertisers to combine conversion signals collected through Google tags with transaction data from systems such as CRMs, order databases and ecommerce platforms.
What’s new. Advertisers can now attach an additional data source to an existing website conversion action through Google Ads Data Manager or the Data Manager API.
The beta is designed to supplement — not replace — website tagging by allowing advertisers to send conversion data from backend systems into the same conversion action used for campaign measurement and optimization.
Why we care. The new beta helps fill conversion measurement gaps by combining Google tag data with first-party data from backend systems like CRMs and order databases. This can recover conversions that may be missed due to browser restrictions, privacy settings, or ad blockers, giving advertisers a more complete view of campaign performance.
Why Google launched it. According to Google, combining tag-based measurement with backend conversion data can help advertisers create a more complete picture of conversions and improve campaign performance.
The company says the feature can help:
Recover conversions that may not be captured by website tags.
Improve measurement resilience.
Provide more comprehensive data for automated bidding.
Simplify data integration through Data Manager.
How it works. The system combines website conversion data collected through Google tags with conversion records uploaded from an advertiser’s backend systems.
To prevent duplicate reporting, Google uses transaction IDs to identify and deduplicate conversions between the tag and the additional data source within the same conversion action.
What advertisers need to know. The beta is currently limited to website conversion actions that use Google tag or Google Tag Manager implementations.
It is not available for:
Google Analytics imported conversions.
URL-based conversion actions.
Google recommends adding an additional data source to an existing conversion action rather than creating a new one to avoid potential double-counting across campaign goals.
Data requirements. Every upload must include:
Transaction ID.
Conversion date and time.
Advertisers must also provide at least one attribution identifier, such as hashed customer information or a Google click identifier.
Google recommends uploading conversion data as quickly as possible and ensuring uploaded conversion values match the same currency format used by website tags.
Bottom line. The beta marks Google’s latest effort to strengthen conversion measurement by bringing backend transaction data directly into Google Ads. As advertisers look for more complete performance data, the new capability offers a streamlined way to supplement website measurement with first-party business data.
For the past two years, the SEO industry has been asking Google for two things: more visibility into AI traffic and more control over how content appears in AI experiences.
They announced new controls that allow site owners to opt out of AI-powered experiences (AI Overviews, AI Mode, etc.) and introduced new AI reporting within Google Search Console. (Note that both of these are in early beta and are not yet available for everyone.)
On paper, this is a victory for things moving in the right direction for publishers.
Instead, the conversation immediately split into camps. Some focused on the new reporting. Others focused on the new controls and began debating whether to opt out of AI altogether.
What caught my attention wasn’t the announcement itself. It was how quickly the conversation shifted from gaining visibility to voluntarily giving it up.
Before we go any further, let’s clear up what Google actually announced.
The new controls do not turn off AI Overviews, stop people from using AI Mode, or slow AI adoption. Users are still going to search and ask questions, and increasingly do so through AI-powered experiences.
Google introduced a way for publishers to have more control over whether their content can be surfaced in those experiences. (Was this the plan all along, or was it exclusively because of the UK Competition and Markets Authority demanding it?)
Screenshot courtesy of Google’s announcement
That’s an important distinction because many people are treating this as a decision about AI itself. It isn’t.
AI Mode doesn’t disappear because a publisher opts out.
AI Overviews don’t disappear when a website decides not to participate.
The user experience remains largely unchanged. The only thing that changes is which brands are eligible to appear.
If Expedia opted out tomorrow, people wouldn’t stop planning vacations. If NerdWallet opted out tomorrow (like I did their stock), people wouldn’t stop researching credit cards. Google would simply surface someone else in its place.
This isn’t a decision about whether AI succeeds or fails. It’s a decision about whether your brand is present when customers choose to use it.
Why AI opt-out sounds good but is actually a trap
I understand the appeal. Publishers are worried about losing more clicks, frustrated by changing search behavior, and concerned about how AI systems use their content.
Those concerns are beyond valid.
Where I disagree is with the assumption that opting out changes user behavior.
It doesn’t.
Users aren’t deciding whether to use AI based on your participation. They’re deciding whether AI helps them get answers faster. For a growing number of searches, it does.
That’s why opting out of AI inclusion and opting users out of AI experiences are two different things.
A publisher can choose not to participate. Users can still use AI Mode. Google can still answer the question. The only thing that changes is which brands are eligible to appear.
That’s the trap.
The practical outcome isn’t less AI. It’s more visibility for your competitors. They gain citations, exposure, and the opportunity to become the trusted answer, while your brand becomes less visible.
If the concern is that AI is changing how customers discover information, disappearing from AI-powered experiences feels like a pretty dumb move.
The challenge isn’t finding ways to be less visible. It’s finding ways to remain visible as search behavior continues to evolve.
Google finally gives us AI data… and SEOs still complain.
The other part of Google’s announcement that received less attention was the reporting.
For years, the industry has been asking for more visibility into AI-driven search experiences. We wanted better attribution, better reporting, and a clearer understanding of how users interact with AI-powered search.
Now Google is beginning to provide some of that visibility, and almost immediately the conversation shifted to why it isn’t enough. Note that many of these screenshots are illustrative and are even from industry friends and well-respected search practitioners in our space. No shade intended to any one individual, simply wanting to illustrate the movement.
Maybe that’s true. The data isn’t perfect. The reporting doesn’t answer every question. I’d love more visibility into citations, AI Mode interactions, and better any sort of attribution modeling.
I especially agree with Dan’s post above, but waiting for perfect data has never been a winning strategy.
SEO has always operated with imperfect data. We’ve spent years making decisions based on estimated search volume, incomplete attribution, and reporting limitations. Some of the biggest wins in my career came from acting on directional signals rather than perfect certainty.
The same applies here.
The mistake is treating every reporting enhancement as either perfect or useless. We’re getting more visibility than we had six months ago, and we’ll likely have more six months from now.
My reporting approach: SEO+ reporting
Part of the reason this debate exists is that many teams are still measuring success through a traditional SEO lens.
Traditional reporting focuses on clicks, rankings (ewww), traffic, and conversions. Those metrics still matter, and I don’t see them disappearing anytime soon. The problem is that they’re no longer telling the entire story.
Users are discovering brands across more surfaces than ever before, especially outside of the Google ecosystem. Traditional organic search still matters, but so do AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, Reddit, YouTube, and a growing list of ecosystems users rely on in their purchasing journey.
That’s why I’ve started thinking about reporting as “SEO+” rather than just SEO. (Yeah, I’m lazy and used the streaming naming convention “+” because… yeah, lazy.)
The goal isn’t to abandon traditional metrics. The goal is to expand what we’re measuring. Alongside traffic and conversions, I want to understand where brands are being cited, how often they’re being mentioned, how many unique URLs are being cited, whether branded search demand is increasing, how AI platforms reference them, and whether visibility is expanding even when attribution remains borked.
This is where I think many organizations are making the same mistake they made with content years ago.
With one of my clients, a lot of our content influences revenue months before a customer converts. Looking only at last-click reporting dramatically understates the impact. That’s why I started reporting on “content assists” as a key metric in their reporting. AI visibility is creating a similar challenge. A customer might first encounter your brand through an AI Overview, revisit you through traditional search, and ultimately convert through a completely different channel (probably a paid channel… ‘cause everyone loves ROAS).
The influence is real even when the attribution path is messy.
That’s why I’m less interested in measuring traffic alone and more interested in measuring discoverability. The brands that consistently appear across search, AI, and recommendation platforms are building familiarity long before a conversion occurs.
The wrong question
Most of the discussion around Google’s announcement has centered on a single question:
Should I opt out of AI?
I think that’s the wrong question.
The better question is whether you can afford to be absent from the places where customers increasingly discover information, products, and brands.
Users aren’t waiting for the SEO industry to decide whether AI is good or bad. They’re already using it.
That’s why I view Google’s announcement less as an AI opt-out feature and more as a strategic decision point. Opting out doesn’t remove AI from the equation. It simply increases the likelihood that someone else becomes the answer instead.
Some brands will use it.
Their competitors are hoping they do
Will you lean into change, or will you be another person complaining that Google owes them free clicks?
This post first appeared on the author’s website and is republished here with permission.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has ordered Google not just to give site owners a way to opt out of AI Overviews but also to explain how the search engine ranks its search results. Also, the CMA has ordered Google to allow users to port their search data to certain third-party services.
Transparency on search rankings. The CMA wants Google to “improve transparency and fairness in how search results are ranked,” and implement this within 6 months.
UK businesses told the CMA that Google’s “ranking practices are neither fair nor transparent,” adding “changes are made without sufficient notice, and when these changes impact their businesses, they do not have effective ways to raise concerns.”
Technically, yes, we cover Google search updates all the time. Google continues to adjust its ranking algorithms to (1) improve the relevancy of those search results and (2) to remove those who try to manipulate those results.
The CMA added that under this conduct requirement, Google must:
Introduce clear processes for businesses to raise concerns about how Google ranks results and have them addressed effectively
Rank ‘organic’ search results using objective and non-discriminatory criteria (including in AI Overviews but not sponsored results)
Provide greater transparency to businesses about how rankings work and give advance notice of significant changes
Data portability. The CMA also wants Google to “Allow users to port their search data to authorized third parties such as rewards platforms or companies offering personalized offers or discount codes” within 3 months.
“Third-party firms are keen to offer people new products and services based on their Google search data but need to be able to access it with confidence. Using this data would allow third parties to offer people more personalized features – like tailored travel suggestions, more relevant shopping deals, and rewards (including cashback and discounts),” the CMA wrote.
Why we care. I highly doubt Google will follow these orders, as doing so would put its most prized asset – the search ranking algorithm – in its competitors’ hands. It will also show all how rankings work, thus making it easier to manipulate and spam.
The CMA is not the first to ask for this and won’t be the last, but Google will no doubt vigorously fight these orders.
Google penalties, also known as manual spam actions, are among the few events in search that can disrupt an otherwise healthy online business overnight.
For companies heavily dependent on organic traffic, the consequences often extend far beyond lost rankings. Revenue drops, customer acquisition costs rise, expansion plans stall, and the effects can linger long after the original policy violations have been remedied.
With a steady 90% market share, Google remains the primary traffic source for many publishers, ecommerce platforms, retailers, travel brands, affiliates, and lead generation businesses.
Direct traffic rarely compensates for a major visibility loss, and Bing seldom offsets the difference. As a result, a manual spam action carries serious operational implications, not merely SEO risks.
Manual actions aren’t algorithm updates
One point still misunderstood throughout the industry deserves clarification. Manual spam actions differ from algorithmic updates. They aren’t fluctuations caused by changes in relevance calculations or ranking system adjustments.
Google’s manual penalties involve direct enforcement after suspected violations against Google Search Essentials, formerly Google Webmaster Guidelines, have been identified and confirmed. The distinction matters because the response required is completely different.
A website affected by changing ranking systems requires analysis, adaptation, and recrawling. A website affected by a manual spam action requires remediation and applying for reconsideration. Those are separate situations entirely.
Google doesn’t issue manual spam actions casually. The process involves internal senior employee review cycles. Suspected violations must be investigated and confirmed first.
Google states clearly that manual actions are the consequence of proven policy transgressions. Despite frequent cries of foul, false positives are exceptionally rare. Once a manual action appears in Google Search Console, the enforcement is already in the production pipeline.
The operational problem is that many businesses fail to recognize how much unresolved policy exposure their web platforms have accumulated over time.
The initial steps that ultimately lead to a manual penalty and a website’s drop in search visibility often begin inconspicuously, gradually eroding policy compliance.
An ecommerce business launches an aggressive link acquisition campaign during an early growth phase. Over the years, PageRank-passing spam links accumulate unchecked until eventually nobody remembers where thousands of exact-match backlinks originate.
A publisher enters into commercial partnerships involving sponsored content or affiliate sections, which gradually become structurally integrated into the editorial architecture of the website.
A SaaS company creates large numbers of low-quality location pages while expanding into new markets.
A lead generation business scales supplemental SEO content through low-cost LLM production systems with limited editorial oversight because that appears to be what most competitors are doing.
The underlying patterns are remarkably similar across industries. In many cases, organic search visibility initially improves and may even generate measurable revenue gains attributable to the SEO initiative.
The short-term results reinforce the perception that the approach is working. However, as time passes, nobody revisits whether those earlier decisions remain aligned with evolving search quality standards and webmaster policies.
Why historical violations still matter
One reason manual spam actions create so much disruption is that policy violations often persist quietly for years before review. Many organizations incorrectly assume that questionable SEO tactics of the past lose their relevance over time.
Yet Google Search systems don’t forget historical footprints. Archived URLs remain crawlable. Legacy sections continue contributing content quality signals long after internal ownership was abandoned.
Most persistently, backlink patterns remain visible for decades. Large numbers of websites remain affected by backlinks generated through manipulative campaigns dating back many years.
Paid placements, article syndication networks, private blog networks, commercial keyword-heavy guest posting campaigns, expired domain backlinks, directory spam, and widget distribution schemes that once formed part of mainstream SEO activity are today’s liabilities.
Some of these practices continue to operate more or less openly for years, while enforcement may appear erratic or inconsistent. When left unaddressed, they represent an incalculable risk to the website publisher.
This becomes particularly important during acquisitions. Businesses purchasing established domains frequently inherit unresolved compliance exposure alongside rankings and traffic. Google evaluates the website’s condition, not which employee, agency, or previous owner introduced the violations.
Traffic growth alone doesn’t confirm compliance health. A domain generating millions of clicks may still carry unresolved risks tied to old link schemes, expired sponsorship arrangements, deceptive user-agent cloaking, manipulative redirects, or scaled low-quality content sections. Those issues often go unnoticed until they’re brought to the surface by a Google manual spam action notification.
A common sign of an algorithmic adjustment: Gradual loss of visibility
Reputation abuse and publisher liability
The mechanics behind reputation abuse are straightforward. A trusted brand with an established web platform allows third parties to publish unrelated, often unsupervised content under the same domain name. In many cases, publishers integrated discount coupon sections, casino reviews, affiliate content, or commercially motivated informational pages directly into existing editorial systems.
The problem frequently worsened significantly because the content wasn’t properly segmented. The consequence is that the distinction between trusted editorial work and commercially motivated material became blurred.
Once confronted with a site-wide penalty, affected publishers experience broad visibility declines across the entire platform, not merely within the originally offending sections of the website. The damage to a brand that lends its reputation to a disreputable third party is often substantial.
Recovery efforts frequently prove time-consuming and costly. Removing isolated pages rarely resolves the problem. Many organizations require broader structural changes, including archive cleanup, internal link reviews, crawl management adjustments, sponsorship governance reforms, the removal of spammy redirects, stronger editorial oversight, and stricter technical segmentation.
In short, recovering from such a penalty takes time, costs significant amounts of money, and is often a painful process.
A common sign of a manual spam action: Rapid loss of visibility
The risks of scaled content
Google increasingly scrutinizes large-scale publishing systems that produce repetitive, low-value content without a unique selling proposition.
The issue isn’t maintaining many websites simultaneously. Large website portfolios have thrived in Google Search for years and continue to do so. The underlying problem involves quality control, editorial oversight, originality, and informational value.
Affiliate networks produce near-identical product comparison pages across thousands of long-tail keywords.
Local SEO operations deploy templated service pages across hundreds of regions with minimal differentiation.
AI-assisted workflows publish large numbers of informational pages without factual oversight or genuine expertise to support them.
Most organizations don’t cross into problematic territory intentionally. The transition usually occurs gradually, often unbeknownst to the decision-makers who rely on outdated or misleading recommendations.
The resulting manual spam action in Google Search Console, followed by a sharp decline in rankings, frequently occurs after a prolonged period of spam signal accumulation rather than during the apparent growth phase.
Incomplete remediation prolongs penalties
Many site owners approach reconsideration requests as if they were negotiating with Google. That puts them at a significant disadvantage from the outset.
The reconsideration process exists for one purpose only: to demonstrate that the website has been restored to full compliance with Google’s guidelines. It’s important to note that Google expects complete compliance before lifting a manual spam action.
This means the requirement extends beyond the specific violation highlighted in Google Search Console. A site owner who addresses only one known spam issue while leaving unrelated policy violations unresolved elsewhere on the website will typically face rejection.
A common testing approach, such as a publisher removing some problematic sponsored content while retaining similar affiliate arrangements elsewhere, will fail. Likewise, a business that disavows recent manipulative backlinks while ignoring historical paid link schemes is unlikely to convince Google of its genuine commitment to complying with Google’s policies going forward.
Similarly, a website network that cleans up one property while continuing identical publishing practices across related domains signals incomplete remediation rather than meaningful operational reform. As a result, it stands little chance of regaining Google’s trust.
Why repeated rejections make recovery harder
Effective website recovery requires a comprehensive review rather than selective cleanup. Technical infrastructure, content quality, sponsorship structures, redirect behavior, link acquisition history, indexing patterns, archive sections, and ownership transparency all require examination during serious compliance recovery efforts.
The Google Search team expects compelling documentation detailing what has changed and how future violations will be prevented. Temporary cosmetic adjustments rarely persuade reviewers to lift a manual spam action.
Making matters worse, each rejection typically requires an even more comprehensive review and cleanup effort. At the same time, every reconsideration request that Google deems disingenuous further erodes Google’s trust in the publisher.
The cost of uncertainty
There’s no guaranteed turnaround time for reconsideration processing. Some reviews are completed within days. Others take weeks or months.
At the same time, large websites with extensive SEO legacies accumulated over many years often require longer assessment periods due to the substantial volumes of data that must be crawled and analyzed before changes can be evaluated.
For businesses that rely primarily on Google traffic, this uncertainty creates a potentially existential threat.
An ecommerce business approaching a peak seasonal period with an unresolved manual spam action can face cash flow problems quickly.
Publishers dependent on advertising revenue experience ranking losses that translate directly into declining commercial performance.
Lead generation businesses often encounter immediate pipeline contraction once visibility declines significantly.
The operational risk becomes even greater when companies fail to build a strong brand capable of partially offsetting organic traffic declines through direct navigation or alternative revenue-generating channels. In this context, paid traffic is a poor substitute due to its associated costs.
In short, some online businesses can’t afford to be penalized in the first place.
Penalties can cripple operations
The issue extends beyond SEO performance. Search visibility directly affects commercial expansion, investor confidence, company valuation, partnership negotiations, and revenue stability.
Penalty expiration represents another commonly misunderstood aspect. Google manual spam actions may expire after prolonged periods, often years. However, this is rarely a viable strategy for an affected business.
Waiting passively through an extended period of declining visibility seldom aligns with commercial realities. More importantly, expiration alone doesn’t guarantee recovery or renewed growth, as the penalty could be reapplied not too long after it expired.
Google’s search systems continue evaluating overall site quality independently of manual enforcement status. A website carrying unresolved spam signals across its content, technical infrastructure, or off-page profile may continue to struggle long after the manual action itself has been lifted.
Compliance requires ongoing oversight
Compliance reviews can’t be considered optional or a luxury. Organizations heavily dependent on organic Google visibility require ongoing operational review cycles focused specifically on comprehensive policy compliance.
These reviews shouldn’t be conducted internally. Even the most talented in-house SEO teams are often hard-pressed to diligently identify shortcomings that may reflect on their own work or that of their colleagues. Policy compliance requires external expertise, sufficient authority, and a proven track record.
Purely technical SEO audits, while indispensable, are insufficient if commercial partnerships bypass oversight. Editorial standards alone won’t suffice if historical link manipulation remains unresolved. Planned growth initiatives require evaluation against established compliance frameworks before deployment, not after traffic has become dependent on questionable practices.
Mature organizations increasingly integrate compliance reviews into their operational governance. Sponsorship structures undergo search compliance review before launch. Scaled publishing systems are assessed for quality before expansion. Historical content is evaluated on a recurring basis. Acquisition due diligence includes policy exposure analysis alongside financial review.
This level of discipline and vigilance matters because manual spam actions rarely arrive at convenient moments. More often than not, undesirable Google scrutiny coincides with critical periods: just before a long-planned commercial expansion, in the run-up to a migration project, ahead of an acquisition, as the peak retail season begins, or shortly before investor reporting deadlines.
This is hardly intentional. It’s simply a matter of unfortunate timing. Google doesn’t align search quality enforcement with business planning calendars. Google cares primarily about user experience. For every website that loses its top position, there is usually another capable of providing users with a similarly compelling experience.
Businesses that ignore unresolved policy exposure often discover the problem the hard way, only after search visibility has collapsed and online sales have followed suit. At that point, recovery becomes a far more prolonged, expensive, and operationally disruptive undertaking than ongoing compliance reviews would have been prior to penalization.
Nevertheless, the work must be done. The one silver lining is that, in many cases, the process proves cathartic. Once the penalty has been resolved and the website’s SEO signals have become more consistent, the removal of legacy issues often allows rankings not merely to recover, but to exceed their previous highs.
Google is broadening its Limited ad serving policy on Search, giving itself more authority to restrict impressions from advertisers it considers unqualified or potentially confusing to users.
The update could affect how frequently ads appear on certain searches, particularly for newer advertisers, brands with poor user feedback or advertisers whose identity is not clearly communicated in their ads.
What’s changing. Starting this month, Google expanded the policy to cover additional Search scenarios, with implementation rolling out gradually through 2028.
Under the updated rules, Google may limit ad impressions on searches that it believes have a higher risk of creating negative user experiences.
How Google decides. User feedback will play a larger role in determining whether an advertiser is qualified. Advertisers that receive persistent and disproportionate reports about misleading content, products or business practices may see their ads restricted on certain searches.
Google also says it may limit ads that make it difficult for users to identify who the advertiser actually is.
Why we care. Google is applying more discretion to limiting ad visibility, making it based on advertiser trust signals and branding clarity, not just policy compliance. That means advertisers with generic ad copy, unclear brand identity or a history of negative user feedback could see reduced reach on certain searches.
The change also reinforces the growing importance of brand transparency in Search ads. Advertisers may need to revisit ad copy, landing pages and branding elements to ensure users can immediately identify who is behind an ad and why they’re seeing it.
What advertisers should do. Google is encouraging advertisers to strengthen brand visibility across both ads and landing pages, avoid overly generic messaging and clearly communicate any affiliation with other brands.
The company also recommends pinning a domain headline in the first position of responsive search ads to make advertiser identity more obvious to users.
The bottom line. Google’s updated policy gives greater weight to advertiser trustworthiness and clear branding, potentially limiting visibility for advertisers whose identity or business practices create confusion for users.
First spotted. This update was spotted by Founder of Adsquire, Anthony Higman, who shared his displeasure of this update on LinkedIn.
Login
