Live curated AI and search news feed

University of Pennsylvania & Northeastern University (MA) ran a study that found:

• Google’s AI search features reduce traffic to websites.
• Google’s AI Mode provided a poor user experience and made users less satisfied with Google Search.
• Removing AI Overviews had the effect of increasing clicks to websites without any detectable decline in users’ Google Search experience.
• AI Mode keeps users inside Google’s search experience longer and sends them to websites less often than without AI Mode.

We already knew AI on SERPs means fewer clicks to websites, but it's nice to have an official study saying so. They conducted a randomized field experiment of 1100 people that tracked real Google searches & had a follow-up survey after one week.

One thing missing from this experiment (IMO) is search intent. Sometimes an AI summary is the best UX when you already have zero intention of visiting a website and you just want to know how many tablespoons are in a quarter cup. But I have rage quit AI search plenty of times. I think DuckDuckGo has the right idea letting people choose whether they want AI in search results or not.

Apparently Google Search Console is missing data for Sept 15 - this happens on a semi-regular basis in GSC and the data gets backfilled eventually. I checked a handful of our accounts and I'm not seeing it, but it seems pretty widespread, so good to be aware of.

Google Merchant Center now lets you upload and manage product review data via API.

Organic Shopping listings don't show up on Google SERPs in Europe anymore. Instead, users in the EEA will get price comparison services aka vertical shopping services.

Google Merchant Center updated help documentation about product videos. Here's what's new:

• Emphasis on using a unique URL for video updates for a faster recrawl (typically within 3 days)
• New section added about Shopping policy compliance:

> Shopping policy compliance

> To ensure a safe and positive experience for customers, Google requires that all video assets comply with standard Shopping policies. All videos submitted with the video link [video_link] attribute must adhere to Google's advertising and content guidelines.

Now ChatGPT is available in Microsoft Word:

> You can draft from notes, summarize a document, revise selected text, and adjust headings and formatting from the ChatGPT sidebar. Word joins Excel and PowerPoint through the same Microsoft add-in.

> ChatGPT for Word is available on all ChatGPT plans, including Free. Your plan’s token limits apply, and Word draws from the shared usage allowance for Codex and other premium features on plans that include it.

> To get started, install the ChatGPT add-in from Microsoft Marketplace, open ChatGPT in Word, and sign in.

Google updated documentation for sites with explicit content, focusing on ecommerce sites. Here's the new section:

> For Google Shopping features: label adult products in ecommerce feeds or markup

>

> If you're optimizing your product listings to appear in Google Shopping features and your products are considered adult-oriented according to Google's adult-oriented content policy, label them in your Merchant Center feeds with the `adult` attribute or with `hasAdultConsideration` structured data markup. This label doesn't affect your site's visibility in organic web search results.

Google published new documentation on adding a Search profile badge to your website (you have to claim your Search profile first - here's how to create one or check if you already have one)

Claude updates:

• Chat + Cowork are merging
• Claude Docs & Claude Slides exist now
• Claude Design works inside conversations

The gist is that you don't have to choose chat, cowork or design before starting a task - just ask Claude for what you want and it will access what it needs to use.

Rolling out to Pro & Max plans now, followed by Team & Free plans.

ChatGPT is testing Sponsored Agents - basically advertisements that you chat with.

> Sponsored Agents give users the option to go deeper. After seeing a relevant ad, a user can choose to start a clearly labeled conversation with a business-sponsored agent in ChatGPT. The user can explain what matters to them, ask follow-up questions, and follow a link to the business’s website when they’re ready to take the next step.

Cloudflare made a new setting called "Disallow AI Training" that lets web content stay indexed for search but blocks crawlers that only want to train AI on your content:

> Training, Search, and Agent controls are applied at the domain level. With the addition of Disallow AI Training, the available settings are:

> 1. *Allow*: All crawlers are allowed, unless blocked by another setting or a WAF rule.

> 2. *Disallow AI Training*: Bot Preference Sync publishes the applicable no-training preference in robots.txt. Accountable mixed-use crawlers remain allowed for search. Every other training crawler is blocked, including the training-only crawlers run by Amazon, Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI — blocking those does not affect search. Disallow AI Training is only available as a setting for Training, not Search or Agent.

> 3. *Block on pages with ads*: Crawlers, including mixed-use crawlers, are blocked only on pages detected to be serving an ad.

> 4. *Block*: All crawlers, including mixed-use crawlers, are blocked.

>

Google launched Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking -

• They're live dialogue models: you speak your query/prompt, get an audio response (with link to transcript - you can also switch to typing if you want)
• 3.8 Live now powers Search Live in the Google app
• You can switch languages mid-conversation!
• Responses include web links to "dive deeper"

Applications for Google Business Profile API access are backlogged. Google acknowledges the delay, says they have no ETA and don't submit additional applications while your first one is pending.

Google Search Central announced a new plugin for WordPress websites:

> If you’re using WordPress, you can now see a report of important actions like cart checkouts or form submissions directly in your WordPress dashboard, thanks to Site Kit's new Site Goals feature.

>

> Site Kit is Google’s official plugin for WordPress - covering everything from Search Console to AdSense and Analytics, directly in your WordPress dashboard.

>

> To show you how your site is helping achieve your business goals, Site Kit actively fills in data gaps by detecting these key visitor actions and sending the events to Analytics for you. The new Site Goals section then curates those stats on your dashboard to show what worked and what didn't.

>

> Here’s how it works:

> • Automatically tracks important site visitor actions like cart checkouts or form submissions from popular plugins like WooCommerce, WPForms, and Contact Form 7, without any manual tagging or code.

> • You get a report tailored to what you do, whether that's tracking online store sales or lead generation signups.

> • Highlights your top goal drivers, so you can see which traffic channels and landing pages brought in the visitors who actually converted.

>

> Site Goals is available for all WordPress sites using Site Kit with Google Analytics.

Here's the Site Kit documentation.

Here's documentation on plugin conversion tracking.

Dreambeans started in Google Labs in June 2026, and now the Android/iOS app is available to all logged-in Google users.

What it is: Personalized daily collections of stories connected to Google apps you select (Calendar, Gmail, Photos, Search, YouTube, Gemini).

Wondering about the name?

> The name combines two ideas at the heart of the app. The “dream” is how the app works overnight to find meaning in the content overload across your connected apps. It then distills what it finds into “beans” - a fresh collection of stories brewed for you each morning.

> • Dreambeans creates stories based on things you might be interested in based on the personal context from the apps you choose to connect. It could suggest places to visit, topics to explore, things to try, or events you might be interested in.

> • Every story is illustrated with personalized, AI-generated artwork. If a story involves you or the people in your life, Dreambeans uses Google Photos and Nano Banana 2 to personalize the scene rather than relying on generic stock photos.

Users can thumbs up/down to "tune" the feed, but "corrections are processed overnight" so preferences aren't reflected until the following day.

Some stories have actions like "see ticket" or "watch trailer" but there's no mention of how website owners can see how many impressions/clicks they might be getting via Dreambeans.

Google is testing "AI Contribution Pilot" with select publishers - a way to compensate them for content used in AI-generated search results. Seems to be invite-only right now, there's not even any documentation accessible to the public. Digiday has a detailed writeup of what's known so far, and what some participating publishers have to say about the experience.

Anyone working in SEO for longer than a week knows these things are par for the course! Still nice to see them confirmed by a Google rep in writing, because it helps inform phrasing when explaining things like this to clients.

• Thumbnail images in search results can take a long time to update after you have changed the page content/schema markup
• AI search reporting in Google Search Console is inadequate

Someone spotted a new Product videos section in GMC and shared a screenshot on LinkedIn - I'm not seeing it yet but glad for the nudge to look, because it was a good reminder about video creations & video assets in GMC. Both were announced last year.

*Video assets* in particular is really helpful as a dashboard where you can see all the videos from a brand's website and social channels (as well as any AI-generated videos from Product Studio in GMC).

Click on any video in the dashboard to verify the products featured in it, and then the video can be highlighted on Google in organic search results! Might as well get the most mileage out of videos you are making.

Now rolling out for Google Business Profiles: view counts for posts!

> *What you can track:*

> • *Rolling 18-Month Insights:*Review performance metrics across posts published over the past 18 months.

> • *All Post Types Included:*Track views across regular updates, special offers and events.

> • *Cross-Platform Reach:*See aggregated views from customers discovering your business on both Google Search and Google Maps.

> *How to check your post metrics:*

> 1. Sign in to your Google Business Profile.

> 2. Select Posts from your dashboard menu.

> 3. Look for the view count on each post card to see how many shoppers saw your update.

> Note: Currently rolling out globally, not yet available in the API

They announced it in the latest Small Business Bulletin.

YouTube has a new tool that gives creators feedback on YouTube Shorts so you can improve them before publishing. Here's what the documentation says about it:

> • Get feedback:Tap theGet feedbackbutton to get an analysis of your video's hook, pacing, and more.

Scammers are creative! There's one happening now where they're abusing the Google Maps contributor program and uploading AI-generated photos that look like they belong to the business on the listing, but the phone number is their own. Then searchers call the number in the photo instead of the real business number. Check your GBPs regularly!

I'm curious whether it's influenceable or not! I guess time will tell.

Agentic capabilities are rolling out in Google Workspace

I am not a fan of this update

This is the first time I've ever seen a GBP with a CEO's name and LinkedIn listed right by the address & phone number. The regular LinkedIn profile link goes to the company page.

Just from analyzing SERPs all the time you KNOW that AIO in People Also Ask features have gotten more widespread, but now there's data:

• 14 months ago, only 12% of PAA answers were AIO
• Now, it's 97-100% of them, depending which dataset you use

Google added new documentation about regional differences in Search experience - so far the regions are EEA (European Economic Area), Türkiye, and South Africa.

Multiple people are reporting missing September performance data in GBPs and I am seeing the same thing across various profiles in different industries/locations.

Likely a bug and the data will be backfilled, but good to be aware of.

Gemini Audio + Google Workspace:

• Conversational search for your Gmail inbox
• Talk to write in Google Docs: "Just talk, and Docs Live handles the heavy lifting: organizing your thoughts, structuring your document, and — with your permission — pulling relevant details directly from your Gmail, Drive, Chat, and the broader web."
• Talk to Google Keep to save notes: "Keep's new voice feature understands your stream of consciousness and processes it in the background, turning your thoughts into structured lists and notes without you having to type a single word."

Rolling out now to AI Plus/Pro/Ultra subscribers, and "coming soon" for Google Workspace business.

GPT-6 Astra is rolling out to limited users today but will be available to all Plus/Pro/Business users "over the coming days". Must be a big deal, because that is one impressive landing page!

Anthropic released an open-source tool called Claude Commerce Agents, which are reference blueprints for shopping and merchant agents that live inside a website or app. It says they produced carts up to 35% larger and made shoppers 60% more likely to check out

Interesting: Outages have been reporting this morning across all the major AI tools - ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok (plus others)

Maybe AI is testing its ability to go on strike?

If you do a site search on schema.org there's now an "AI Preview" answer above the site search results:

New Gemini & Claude models released today:

Gemini 3.8 Flash (& Flash Cyber)

:zap: Gemini 3.8 Flash: Our most intelligent workhorse model yet. It delivers upgrades across coding, agentic workflows, and critical multi-step reasoning at the same speed and low cost of 3.7 Flash.

:shield: Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber: Our most capable cybersecurity model. Built to help defenders protect software, spot vulnerabilities in hours instead of months, and automate patching at scale. Eligible defenders can apply for access through our new Fairwind Program.

Claude Fable 5.1 & Mythos 5.1

Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1 are the same model, but with different levels of safeguards. Fable 5.1 is generally available, while Mythos 5.1 is available only through our trusted access programs; its safeguards are specifically designed to support work in cybersecurity and the life sciences.

The Google product mashup & integration continues with Google Pics:

• Image creation/editing tool from Google Workspace
• Built on Nano Banana
• Use as a standalone product AND inside Workspace apps (Slides, Docs, Drive)
• Includes editing tools: isolate/transform one object in the image, add text comments to specific parts of the image to request targeted changes, modify/translate text inside an image without changing anything else, collaborate on images, or generate multiple versions from one prompt

That suite of editing tools sounds like the best part and I can't wait to try it! There's a video demo of how it works in this blog and it seems much more precise than re-prompting Nano Banana to get it to edit an image the way you want.

Rollout begins today for AI Pro/Ultra subscribers and "most" Workspace business customers.

People are reporting a GA4 bug where there's no data for September 1st. I'm seeing this for some of our accounts but not others. :woman-shrugging:Good to be aware of & hopefully fixed soon!

Spotted an ad in an AIO - appreciate that it's set apart from the organic part of the response

Search Engine Land published this article last month on a "Search Everywhere Optimization" framework labeled "F.A.C.T.S." (Freshness, Authority, Consistency, Trust, and Semantic Relevance). It models Google's E-E-A-T framework to help identify which priorities can actually influence AI visibility. I think it's a helpful (and memorable) tool for quickly filtering with opportunities may actually be relevant.

searchengineland.com/why-the-f-a-c-t-s-model-is-the-key-to-search-everywhere-optimization-484207

This might have already been discussed and I might be forgetting it. But if you’ve ever done a search for a local service and saw the button for “Have AI get prices” it actually has AI call those businesses to get prices and availability, then delivers it via email. But the business that it recommends is not always the one that ranks best. But this might be added incentive for local businesses to have humans answering phones if this becomes a more common thing in the SERPs.

Also, I kind of hate the idea of AI robo-calling a bunch of businesses. Feels gross.

But anyways… I tried to replicate it with a few local businesses (Meridian, QuickQuack) but I didn’t have any luck getting the button to show up. So your mileage may vary.

The EU Commission classified ChatGPT as a "Very Large Online Search Engine" under the Digital Services Act. Now it will have to conform to DSA obligations for search engines by January 2027.

It also classified Reddit & Roblox as "Very Large Online Platforms"

This article shares study findings & analysis of Q1 & Q2 GBP performance at large - unsurprisingly it seems like Google Maps is trying to keep users on Google Maps and satisfy their local search intent without them needing to visit business websites or click to call.

Worth a quick read, but this chunk is the gold:

> Two ranking systems and reviews as the connective tissue

>

> Traditional Maps rankings still rely on proximity, relevance, engagement, and prominence. The signals behind AI Mode and Gemini differ: web context, entity matching, brand authority, and review sentiment are layered on top of the Google Business Profile.

>

> One system determines whether you appear on the map. The other determines whether Google’s AI trusts what it knows about your business enough to answer a customer’s question directly, without a click.

>

> Reviews are becoming the raw material for that second system. Google now prompts reviewers with structured tags such as atmosphere, price, and cleanliness, rather than relying solely on free text, and also encourages customers to review businesses they’ve visited.

>

> It’s building cleaner data so its AI can answer questions without sending users to a website first — a plausible explanation for direction requests rising while calls and website clicks decline.

The author is the co-founder of GMBapi.com which is a local SEO software platform.

Google is testing a feature that asks searchers to click "Continue" to see more search results. It's another way to thwart scrapers but I hope they can come up with less annoying methods.

Rank tracking projects in Ahrefs are showing 0 keywords with a message, "Add keywords to track your ranking progress in organic search results." Ahrefs posted an update about the issue an hour ago: lnkd.in/p/g-h7_fXU

Allegedly the RankMath plugin for WP sites has a new security issue - apparently when a user accesses Help & Support in the plugin it automatically creates a WordPress Application Password with Administrator-level permissions - the password is then shared immediately with the plugin owner and AI agents can then access/act on the site :grimacing:

This is cool! Now you can connect ebooks to Gemini Notebook ("more products joining soon")

Salesforce + Claude = Claudeforce

Google updated their favicon documentation:

> *What*: Updated the favicon documentation to specifically list out the supported favicon file formats.

> *Why*: To be clearer about which favicon file formats are supported by Google Search. Previously, the documentation linked to an external reference that evolved over time and caused ambiguity about which favicon file formats are actually supported in Google Search. Google Search's supported file formats haven't changed; this update explicitly lists them in the documentation.

This is the line that was added:

"Google Search supports the following favicon file formats: BMP, GIF, ICO, PNG, JPEG, PPM, and TIFF."

Google Search Central updated how their Site Reputation Policy works, *but only for users in Europe:*

• The policy itself is the same
• Outside Europe, Google applies the manual action and the affected website section is penalized in search results
• Inside Europe, Google *does* *not* apply the manual action. Instead, Google treats the website section as if it were separate from the rest of the domain, so it stops benefiting as much from the main site's reputation/authority.

It's mostly for sites that have third-party content intended to get a boost from the domain’s authority: coupon sections, affiliate content, sponsored editorial, white-label directories, etc.

It's a really painfully worded announcement. It basically boils down to the same thing: the offending website section will lose visibility. They're just saying "it ranks independently from the rest of the site" instead of "we're penalizing it" as a concession "following discussion with the European Commission".

Google Analytics is rolling out dashboards - I'm not seeing it yet, but below is what they announced on LinkedIn and here's the documentation.

> We redesigned the reporting workspace around a central "+ Create" button in Reports so you can build, customize, and organize your core performance insights in seconds :rocket: As we roll out this update across all accounts over the next few weeks, here’s a preview of what’s new inside your reporting UI:

>

> :dart: One-click creation: Start building dashboard views directly from Reports.

> :three_button_mouse: Drag-and-drop flexibility: Easily resize columns, arrange metrics, and reorder cards with total design freedom.

> :bar_chart: In-dashboard funnels: Access funnel visualizations directly inside your standard dashboard, no separate exploration required.

> :pushpin: Instant publishing: Save and publish straight to your Left Navigation for quick access every time you log in.

>

> Keep an eye out as we introduce AI-powered prompt capabilities to build reports for you automatically in a future drop :eyes:

This article says ChatGPT has a new Shopping tab pinned in the left sidebar. I'm not seeing it in any version of ChatGPT yet but I'll keep an eye out - can't wait to see first-hand what the Shopping landing page and dedicated search are like.