The DaSilva Download – August Edition

It’s August in Canada — the sweet spot of summer.

The days are long, the patios are busy, and the news cycle in AI, search, and ads is coming in hot.

Between park days with the dogs and late sunsets with a good book, I’ve been soaking up every bit of fresh insight — from how AI is reshaping visibility to the new rules for paid search — and this month’s roundup is packed with what’s worth your attention.

✨ Good News

Charlie the 10-year-old yellow lab loves surfing so much, his owners sometimes have to hide his board just to get a break. Last weekend, Charlie joined 15+ other canine surfers at the World Dog Surfing Championships in Pacifica, California.

From Labs to Frenchies, the competitors paddled out in life vests, hopped on colorful boards, and rode waves to a cheering beach crowd. Judges scored them on balance, tricks, and style. My personal favorite? Iza the French bulldog taking home her first win in the medium-sized dog heat. Proof that joy comes in all sizes — and sometimes with a tail.

🎓 Tip of the Month

The smartest SEO move I’ve made lately? Mining Reddit for FAQs.

Reddit Answers has quickly become my go-to for drilling into the real pain points, questions, and hot takes in any niche. While I picked up the tactic from Alex Cooper’s AI Creative Strategist course (which is technically about paid ads), it’s a goldmine for SEO — especially with the growing importance of FAQs and schema in AI-driven search.

Here’s Alex’s tweet with the best Reddit search questions to ask right now. If you’re serious about knowing your audience beyond keyword data, this is worth bookmarking.

👀 What I’m Keeping an Eye On

🕵️‍♀️ The new “black box” of marketing – Jono Alderson’s latest piece nails something I’ve been feeling for months: we’re no longer optimizing for a human visitor; we’re trying to be included in a model’s reasoning. Comfort metrics make us feel like we’re making progress, but don’t always tell us anything useful — especially with AI visibility tools. Read Jono’s post and my LinkedIn thoughts.

🗞️ Fresh content bias in AI assistants – Ahrefs found that AI assistants tend to cite newer content (average 1,064 days old) than traditional organic results (1,432 days). ChatGPT leads in preferring fresh sources, while Google AI Overviews leans older. Full breakdown.

🗂️ Structuring content for LLMs – Schema-rich pages are 13% more likely to earn AI citations, and sequential headings can 2.8x your odds. Structure matters more than ever. Read the report.

🔗 Perplexity’s 59 ranking patterns – It’s not just keywords. Perplexity uses hidden ML rerankers, trusted domain lists, and trend signals from YouTube. High CTR at launch + trending topics = visibility. Metehan’s research.

⚖️ EU antitrust complaint over Google AI Overviews – Independent publishers are pushing back, saying they can’t opt out of having their content scraped for AI summaries. The legal fight could set a precedent for AI/content rights. Reuters coverage.

💬 Google scaling ads in AI Mode – Ads will be placed based on the entire conversation in AI Mode, not just the query. The shift from “queries” to “conversations” changes targeting completely. Read more.

📱 The cost of our devices – Over 1.2B smartphones are made each year, and we’re replacing them faster than ever — often in just 2–3 years. The environmental toll is massive. Science Daily article.

🚀 What I’m Focused on Now

This month, my learning has one goal: helping clients stay visible and profitable in a marketing world that’s harder to measure, predict, and control.

🎯 Cracking the Paid Search Black Box – Inside Alex Cooper & Jimmy Slagle’s AI Creative Strategist Blueprint, I’m refining creative and targeting strategies built for platforms like Performance Max and Meta Advantage+, where traditional levers are gone. The aim: campaigns that perform even when the metrics are murky.

🧠 Building AI-First Companies (Without Replacing Humans) – Allie K. Miller’s AI First Academy is giving me frameworks to help clients create in-house AI policies, train teams on ChatGPT and Copilot, and embed AI for speed and smarter decisions — while keeping human creativity at the core. I’m also pulling insights from two courses I’ve completed: Developing AI Policy by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center’s and Generative AI: Governance, Policy & Emerging Regulation by University of Michigan.

🔍 Winning in AI-Driven Search – From Steve Toth’s AI Search with AEO, I’m applying tactics that help content surface in AI Overviews and answer engines so my clients are the ones cited, clicked, and trusted in the new search landscape.

Every course and case study this month ties directly back to keeping clients ahead — even as the rules keep changing.

🔥 Vibe Check

📬 Let’s Talk!

If you’ve been wrestling with AI visibility, black box metrics, or the shifting rules of SEO/paid - hit reply. I’d love to hear how you’re navigating it.

And if this gave you one “wow, that’s useful” moment, pass it to a fellow marketer who’s deep in the trenches with us.

Talk soon,
Tiffany