Live AI search news feed
Live from Momentic Studio, this news feed is curated by the Momentic team so you can stay up to date on AI search, SEO, GEO, AEO, AI search, frontier AI models, and relevant tools.
Need some data to show that improving CWV improves business outcomes? John Mueller shared this case study on LinkedIn.
Cloudflare added more nuance to their AI bot controls to give users more ways to manage AI traffic:
- Search - Bots that scan your site to help it appear in search engine results
- Training - Crawlers that scrape your content to train AI models
- Agent - Bots that retrieve info from your site to answer user questions
The options across all 3 use cases are: Allow, Block, or Block on pages with ads. The reasoning is that ads are meant to be seen by people, and this monetization funds the business that publishes the content.
Starting September 15, 2026 there will be new default settings for these controls:
- Training & Agent will be blocked by default on pages that display ads
- Search will be allowed by default
- Multipurpose crawlers that combine Search + Training (e.g. Googlebot, Applebot, Bingbot) will be blocked if the user blocks Training
They're also creating bot management capability based on content use, with three settings:
- Immediate - go ahead and interact, but you can't store or reuse anything
- Reference (default) - index, excerpt, and reference back
- Full - go ahead and summarize/reproduce my content
These content use values can be combined with the bot classifications to refine the rules to your liking.
Cloudflare is currently testing a new `use` signal that will live in your robots.txt but it will only signal a preference, it won't block things.
There's more in this article too, about verified bots and "transitive trust" and things for the future they are thinking about.
Google updated AMP (accelerated mobile pages) documentation yesterday:
> *What*: Simplified our AMP documentation by removing outdated references to the AMP viewer, AMP Cache, and signed exchange.
> *Why*: Starting today, Google Search is updating how it connects users to AMP pages, and will now take users directly to the publisher's AMP host pages. This change simplifies and reduces maintenance efforts for publishers who are creating AMP content, as they no longer need to update the AMP cache or configure signed exchanges. AMP content will continue to rank just like any other web page.
If you noticed an uptick in total citations/avg. cited pages in Bing WMT's AI Performance report around the beginning of June (I sure did, across multiple accounts) I'm sorry to say it's not because your website started getting more AI visibility. :pensive:
Microsoft Bing's Krishna Madhavan said it's just data backfilling. Which makes sense since there's been a "heads up" since day one in this report that "Results may be refined as additional data is processed"
In a separate reply he clarified: "we are constantly backfilling data. This is not about completeness. Just regular data processing pipeline artifact."
And in another reply: "trends is what I would focus on"
Would've been nice to get an annotation or alert inside Bing WMT instead of a month-delayed acknowledgement, but at least we know now. I guess put a sticky note on your monitor because there isn't a way to add your own annotations in this report. Thank you to Barry Schwartz for summing all this up!
Today I noticed PageSpeed Insights has an Agentic Browsing section and there's documentation for Lighthouse agentic browsing scoring, too.
Schema App has a new tool called Knowledge Assistant. Haven't tried it, but if it works as well as they describe, it sounds really helpful.
- Search/chat tool for your website
- Powered by Microsoft's NLWeb
- Users ask natural-language questions & get answers grounded in the website's Content Knowledge Graph (a knowledge layer that can govern multiple websites & other digital properties!)
- If the answer doesn't exist, it says so instead of hallucinating
- Can also be used by employees to find answers
- Lets you identify content gaps through its database of customer questions (super helpful)
There's a video on the page and a link to try a demo. I tried it out (I assume) in SchemaApp's own site search tool and it's pretty okay. It takes a little bit to give you an answer, which ends up being an overview summary statement, list of key facts, and previews of web pages it drew information from. Cool to know about.
Also Claude Sonnet 5 is now the new default model for Free & Pro (upgrade from Sonnet 4.6). They say it hallucinates less, isn't as sycophantic, and has more safeguards on by default.
Fable 5 in Claude is available again as of today - the announcement contains lots of details on new safeguards, a new collaborative framework for fixing jailbreaks, and more collaboration with the feds.
> Fable 5 will be available starting Wednesday, July 1, to users globally on the Claude Platform, Claude.ai, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork. For Pro, Max, Team, and select Enterprise plans,1 Fable 5 will be included for up to 50% of weekly usage limits through July 7, after which it will be available via usage credits. We will re-enable access on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry as quickly as possible.
You might have noticed that Google Tag Manager overview got a new look. Apparently these UI updates are happening now because of the previously announced GTM + Google Tag integration coming in September 2026.
Here's how the GTM workspace overview has changed:
- Collapsible left nav
◦ Some features (like Triggers and Variables) are now hidden behind 'Show more' in the left nav
- Welcome cards at the top
- Google Tags have flowchart visualization
- You can sort the table by clicking each column header
I checked on a bunch of GTM containers we have access to and these changes are only in some of them so it's still rolling out.
Back in March 2026 Google said they were going to let merchants upload customer loyalty data via the GMC API and now it's officially in the documentation.
"Customer Match via Merchant API: You can upload your customer loyalty data, such as user identifiers and loyalty tiers, to *enable personalized experiences on free listings* via Merchant API."
The help doc also has multiple examples of what the "personalized experiences" can look like on both paid and free listings, which is what I was curious about. Basically there are highlighted lower prices/free shipping offers for members visible.
Well that was fast! Google's June 2026 Spam update concluded today - it rolled out over 2 days & 1 hour.
YouTube Shorts is 5 years old! They're updating the Shorts experience:
- Clear Screen mode temporarily hides icons/text so you can just watch the video
- 2x playback speed available
- Mute more easily: tap screen to pause, tap mute icon
- :heart: replaces :+1:
- No more "dislike" button. Use the "Not interested" or "Don't recommend this channel" controls instead
Google is rolling out agency Admin & Standard roles in Merchant Center for Agencies:
- Agencies can designate Agency Admins with master controls & Standard Users with limited permissions
- Agency Admins can apply custom labels to client accounts to group them by brand, vertical, or team
- Agencies can grant/remove access to client accounts from a central hub
Here's the documentation on how it works & how to set it up (includes a YT video)
There's a new Google Small Business Bulletin about how to connect your GBP with Gemini and what to do after. Also covers "business notebooks" in Gemini: how to create and use them.
For me the best part is the availability note saying this will eventually roll out to Google Workspace accounts! When it was initially announced they said it was only for single-location businesses (i.e. one Google account <--> one Google Business Profile, not agency friendly)
ChatGPT updated GBT-5.5 Instant saying it:
- Is better at identifying the underlying goal behind a question and carrying context across multiple turns
- Follows complex instructions more reliably
- Adapts more effectively when users add constraints/clarification to the original prompt
- Makes better use of location context for relevant shopping/local queries
Now that we are starting to see Generative AI search reports in GSC, it's time to anticipate and answer the questions clients will have. Since the only metric is impressions, it would be nice to know what counts.
A Bluesky user named Nicola Agius tagged John Mueller asking:
> 1. Does total impressions include AI impressions?
> 2. If your article isn't shown, but your icon is on the main feed combined card, is that an impression?
> 3. If your article has been grouped in a cluster, but your icon doesn't show in the main feed, is that an impression?
> 4. Does total impressions include X posts?
JM's reply:
> The impressions are based on links to your site being shown in AI Overviews / AI Mode. I don't know if just a favicon would be linked, but if it's linked to a page on your site, that would count. If something needs to be "activated" to see the link, it would only count when users do that.
Is it just me, or is that answer confusing? Does it mean that when you see +1 or +4 in an AI Mode citation, that only the first link in that "citation pack" gets an impression recorded in their GSC report? Does it mean that of the 19 total sites cited in the sidebar citation container, only the first 3 get an impression recorded because the other 16 need to be "activated" to see the link? That seems to be what he is saying.
It would be nice if Google updated the documentation for this new report with some crystal clear visual examples of what does and doesn't count as an impression. There's a link to submit feedback on this report if you feel inspired.
GSC's Page indexing report is delayed by 2 weeks, showing the last update as 6/22/26 (I checked and am seeing the same thing). This has happened before and been resolved before. Just good to know it's a thing lots of people are seeing, not an issue with your specific GSC account.
Just spotted the first Generative AI report in a real-life Google Search Console account (not just somebody else's screenshot)! It's not in all of them that we have access to (and it definitely doesn't include all the metrics we need), but the stateside rollout is officially underway.
Ahrefs has a new chat assistant named Agent B. You can ask it to analyze data, run API queries, or use Ahrefs tools for you. It's free for all plans while it's in Beta. Click the question mark hovering in the lower right corner to enable it if you want!
SparkToro now has an MCP Server so you can connect your account to Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. Then you can run reports, compare audiences, make personas, create visuals, and lots more SparkToro stuff inside your favorite AI tool.
Shopify is launching AI-powered Campaign Autopilot integrated in Shopify admin. Yes it's for ads (across multiple channels, with more on the way) but if you do SEO for a client with a Shopify website who uses this and you have access, you could see what kind of messaging is working best with the target audience, and which categories/products are being pushed, which can inform adjacent organic strategy like accompanying comparison/how-to-choose guides, FAQs that address common problems/confusions, etc.
Now MS Clarity can show you when bots don't follow your robots.txt rules. They added more reports in the Bot Analytics dashboard for disallowed URL requests plus trendline and filters for non-compliant bot activity.
YouTube announced some new insights tools (built with Gemini) to help both creators and agencies:
- Google Ads Insights Finder (what's popular & trending on YouTube)
- Brand pulse metrics (select ones) integrated into Insights Finder
- Insights APIs for partners (info about creators & audiences to help agencies to media planning)
- Demand Gen campaign tips - Gemini will supply creative insights like what visuals would improve performance
