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Google ends its five-year Gmail and Photos ad pledge, and advertisers can't see the effect

Google's Oct. 16 policy change lets Gmail and Photos data shape some ads, with no new reporting for advertisers.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

Close-up of a fingerprint scanner used for secure entry to a server room.

Most bots claiming to be Googlebot or GPTBot are fake, and two countries want a law to unmask them

New data shows most bots claiming to be Googlebot or GPTBot are fake, and two countries want laws forcing crawlers to identify themselves.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

Aerial view of a busy multi-lane highway with many cars, seen from directly above

ChatGPT sends under 1% of Google's traffic, and three new studies now agree on it

Three new studies agree ChatGPT drives under 1% of Google's organic traffic -- software marketers are overbudgeting for GEO.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

Close-up of a dark wooden gavel with a brass band resting on its round wooden sound block, photographed at an angle against a plain light grey background.

China writes the first rulebook for GEO, and bans claims vendors already sell

China published the first formal GEO rulebook, banning vendor promises like 'AI dominance' after a fake-product scandal.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

Stylized illustration of a magnifying glass inspecting a browser window on a dark navy background, symbolizing web content discovery.

Cloudflare and OpenAI's pilot surfaced hundreds of millions of pages ChatGPT search had missed

A Cloudflare-OpenAI pilot indexed hundreds of millions of pages for ChatGPT search using network signals instead of backlinks.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

A blue-lit data center corridor with server racks and a Network-2 label panel.

DeepSeek opens its search API to developers, and says it already blocks GEO manipulation

DeepSeek opened a priced search API that screens for GEO manipulation, giving marketers a new way to check AI search visibility.

Sienna Mcpherson · 5 min read

Rows of warm spotlight beams shining down through haze against a dark background.

Google puts inline links higher in AI Overviews, and preferred-source usage is up sevenfold this year

Google is placing inline links higher in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and preferred-source usage has grown 7x since January.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

A magnifying glass hovers over a European map marked with colored pushpins.

Google is poisoning SERPs to stop scrapers, and rank trackers can't tell the difference

Google has been feeding rank trackers wrong SERPs since mid-September, and two vendors confirm it independently.

Sienna Mcpherson · 5 min read

A plain white masquerade-style eye mask resting in near-total darkness

Google's helpful-content guidance now calls fabricated author bios deception, and ghostwritten SaaS blogs are exposed

Google now calls fake AI author bios deception in its core content guidance. Here is what changes for SaaS blogs and comparison pages.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

A hand marks corrections on a printed manuscript with a red pen.

Google tells sites to fact-check AI content before publishing, and the rule now reaches your title tags

Google's Oct. 1 guidance update adds a mandatory fact-check step for AI content, and extends it to titles and metadata.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

Aerial view of a multi-lane highway with elevated rail tracks crossing it diagonally

Google search referrals to publishers dropped 40% this year, and AI still isn't filling the gap

Google Search referrals fell 40% year-over-year and Discover fell 34%, while AI referral traffic remained flat at 0.01% of pageviews.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

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Google adds AI Max reporting, two years after advertisers called it a black box

Google promises AI Max reporting that shows which search term, asset and page earned a conversion, after two years of black-box complaints.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

A laptop showing HTML and CSS source in a code editor on a white desk

Google can pick a stranger's domain as your canonical, and Search Console won't show you the traffic

Identical framework error screens can cluster unrelated sites, and the canonical Google picks may sit on a domain you do not own.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

A laptop screen showing a dark analytics dashboard of charts and figures.

Google has started paying for grounding, and the panel shows earnings but not usage

Google's AI contribution pilot pays when pages shape an AI answer, and shows a monthly figure with no usage behind it.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

A laptop showing an analytics dashboard of charts and metric tiles

The same 3-4 word query now drives 46% of paid conversions and almost no organic clicks

Longer searches now carry 46% of Google Ads conversions and 0.3 organic clicks per 100 impressions. Same query, opposite outcome.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

A laptop on a white desk showing a code editor, with a larger monitor behind it.

Google may still judge your site on the programmatic pages you already deleted

Mueller says cleanup and re-earning trust are two different jobs, and only the first one is fast.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

Two colleagues studying a laptop screen at a shared office desk

Google's EEA rebuild gives aggregators the top unit, and splits your rank data by region

Google's DMA redesign puts comparison sites above direct suppliers in Europe, and makes one global rank number a blended average.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

A laptop showing analytics charts on a desk

AI Mode stopped citing sources on Gemini 3.8 Flash, and only paid subscribers could see it

A model swap briefly killed AI Mode citations on the paid tier - the one most visibility tools never check.

Sienna Mcpherson · 4 min read

Two colleagues in conversation at a table with a laptop open between them

Forum threads now feed Google and AI answers, and 30 of 71 Cloud 100 subreddits feed nothing

Ahrefs and Foundation data show forum threads feeding Google and AI answers, while most B2B software communities earn no citations.

Sienna Mcpherson · 5 min read

Analytics dashboards and charts on a desk

AI answers name your product, then recommend a competitor

Being named in an AI answer, being cited, and being recommended are three different scores. Most software teams track only the first.

Sienna Mcpherson · 5 min read

Two colleagues reviewing an annotated document between open laptops

Google splits site reputation enforcement by region and names four tests

Site reputation manual actions stop applying inside the EEA on August 30, and Google published its four review factors.

Sienna Mcpherson · 5 min read

← All topics

Search

Google ends its five-year Gmail and Photos ad pledge, and advertisers can't see the effect

Most bots claiming to be Googlebot or GPTBot are fake, and two countries want a law to unmask them

ChatGPT sends under 1% of Google's traffic, and three new studies now agree on it

China writes the first rulebook for GEO, and bans claims vendors already sell

Cloudflare and OpenAI's pilot surfaced hundreds of millions of pages ChatGPT search had missed

DeepSeek opens its search API to developers, and says it already blocks GEO manipulation

Google puts inline links higher in AI Overviews, and preferred-source usage is up sevenfold this year

Google is poisoning SERPs to stop scrapers, and rank trackers can't tell the difference

Google's helpful-content guidance now calls fabricated author bios deception, and ghostwritten SaaS blogs are exposed

Google tells sites to fact-check AI content before publishing, and the rule now reaches your title tags

Google search referrals to publishers dropped 40% this year, and AI still isn't filling the gap

Google adds AI Max reporting, two years after advertisers called it a black box

Google can pick a stranger's domain as your canonical, and Search Console won't show you the traffic

Google has started paying for grounding, and the panel shows earnings but not usage

The same 3-4 word query now drives 46% of paid conversions and almost no organic clicks

Google may still judge your site on the programmatic pages you already deleted

Google's EEA rebuild gives aggregators the top unit, and splits your rank data by region

AI Mode stopped citing sources on Gemini 3.8 Flash, and only paid subscribers could see it

Forum threads now feed Google and AI answers, and 30 of 71 Cloud 100 subreddits feed nothing

AI answers name your product, then recommend a competitor

Google splits site reputation enforcement by region and names four tests

One briefing, every Tuesday.