Curated real-time news for search (and discovery) industry folks

Dana DiTomaso made a video explaining this issue, how to filter it out, and why options are limited in terms of a permanent solution. She confirms it is due to spam traffic coming from Chrome version 139.0.0.0 on Windows 10.

This is impacting JME, Stan’s, and Gaspard. I didn’t check everybody else but saw enough to see that it was impacting some of our ecommerce clients.

Gemini Enterprise is a thing now. In tandem, Google Skills was announced as a platform for upskilling workforces.

I hadn’t thought of the knock-on affect that reddit mods will have on some search and LLM results since they’re able to make such judgement calls on what’s allowed in a subreddit and what isn’t. Interesting!

Now in public beta: you can customize Claude Code with plugins.

Eye-opening deep dive about how much power a Reddit mod with nefarious intentions has over Google Search results and LLM output. Trigger warning: if you are offended by blue language, maybe toss this article into an LLM and ask for a swear-free summary.

Google published new documentation about GBP negative review extortion scams. It describes the scams and tells you what to do (and not do) if your business is victim to one.

Google Voice Search is now powered by their new Speech-to-Retrieval (S2R) engine. It was previously powered by automatic speech recognition (ASR), which is a different technology.

Here's what makes S2R better than ASR:

• ASR converts a verbal query into text, then uses the text query to search for relevant results

◦ This can lead to unhelpful search results if there's even a small error in recognizing the spoken phrase

• S2R skips the "verbal to text" step and directly retrieves information based on the spoken query

◦ How, exactly? No clue. This is why I'm not a Google engineer. The blog post goes into detail. And S2R isn't perfect either, it's just significantly more accurate than ASR.

The announcement was published on Google Research but it's not just a breakthrough in a lab, it's an actual implemented change to how voice search works as of now:

> "The move to S2R-powered voice search isn’t a theoretical exercise; it’s a live reality. In a close collaboration between Google Research and Search, these advanced models are now serving users in multiple languages, delivering a significant leap in accuracy beyond conventional cascade systems."

SEOs are reporting recent surges in organic traffic in GA4 with no corresponding increase in GSC:

• Mainly affecting ecommerce sites, spread across pages
• Mainly desktop/Windows with barely any time on site
• Probably some sort of bot activity not getting filtered out by GA

Helpful context if you notice this anomaly yourself. No word from Google.

YouTube has a new "brand pulse report" (powered by AI of course) that evaluates brand presence across YouTube by detecting mentions in both visuals & language (both written & audio). It's only available for select advertisers to start with. Apparently it will be helpful in showing how paid and organic efforts work together to boost brand presence.

TIL Screaming Frog has a "Change Detection" option where it will compare 2 different crawls and give you analysis of what changed. Here's SF documentation on how to use it.

Google added `Google-NotebookLM` to the list of user-triggered fetchers, based on feedback. So if you see that user agent it means a NotebookLM user provided that URL as a source in a project.

Microsoft published a new blog with tips on how to get your content found in AI Search.

Another great blog from Metehan where he analyzes findings from a study proving freshness matters a lot for visibility in AI search, even when it makes search results objectively worse.

Includes:

• A comparative rundown of AI models and which ones have the most recency bias
• Digital content tactics based on the findings
• How to validate the findings using your own content
• Unanswered related questions
• Short, medium & long-term predictions

Starting Oct 7, AI Mode in Google Search is rolling out to 40+ new countries in 35+ new languages.

Google announced Places Insights in BigQuery.

Now businesses can apply Google Cloud's BigQuery analytical capability to Google's Places datasets which include detailed info about businesses, landmarks, points of interest.

Suggested use cases are analyzing location performance for multi-location businesses, scouting new locations for a business, geotargeting your advertising.

Here's a demo and here's the documentation.

As of 3:40pm CST (1:40 PDT) "The issue with serving has resolved itself. There will be no more updates."

ChatGPT now has apps in it.

• You can call an app by name (like Spotify)
• ChatGPT might suggest an app to you in conversation
• Devs can start building & testing apps
• Apps in ChatGPT must follow OpenAI usage policies & be appropriate for all audiences

The announcement has a list of apps available to start with, and those coming soon.

Microsoft launched an updated version of Bing Places for Business.

What's new:

• Domain moved from bingplaces.com --> bing.com/forbusiness
• Easier to import Google Business Listings ("faster, more reliable, and better at preserving key attributes")
• New dashboards, bulk editing tools & real-time status updates
• Recommendation Tool "to help new business owners enrich their listings"

Current Bing Places listings will automatically migrate to the new platform.

Claude can connect to Slack now:

• In Claude, search & reference your Slack convos
• Use Claude directly within Slack via

◦ Direct message with @Claude

◦ Click the Claude icon inside Slack's AI assistant

◦ Mention @Claude in any thread to draft a response

When Perplexity first announced their Comet browser on July 9 it was only for Perplexity Max subscribers willing to join a wait list and be invited.

Then on August 25 they announced Comet Plus as a standalone $5 subscription (free for Pro and Max subscribers).

Today they're releasing Comet as a free browser for anyone in the world to use. You can download it here: perplexity.ai/comet

Here's their pitch:

• The internet is broken. People want a better internet.
• Chat bots are outdated, but people love the Comet Assistant.
• There will be a Comet mobile app soon "with a personal AI designed for your phone."

Brave is a privacy-focused browser that also offers a search engine called Brave Search. Now they also offer "Ask Brave" which combines search and AI chat.

• You can use it from the Brave Search homepage by clicking the "Ask" button, or clicking the "Ask" tab on the Brave SERP
• If Brave Search is your default search engine, just add a double question mark at the end of any search query and it will use Ask Brave

Yoast announced Yoast SEO AI+, a new brand insights tool:

• Now in beta
• Not a plugin
• Doesn't need CMS access
• Accessibly priced for SMBs (<$30/mo)
• Tracks brand mentions in AI Search citations
• Offers competitor rank benchmarking
• Sentiment-tracking analysis by keywords (with positive/negative breakdown)
• Monitoring of specific brand questions

They plan to offer "actionable recommendations" to improve AI visibility soon.

Now if you do a Google Search for an emoji, you get a copy-ready result in a Featured-Snippet style box:

Google published 4 separate blogs about Gemini being in Google Home now:

• Welcome to the next era of Google Home
• New Google Home app redesigned for Gemini
• AI upgrade to Gemini for Home
• New Google Home devices built for Gemini