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.
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
Google published new documentation for Subscription Linking. They have a subscription linking API for news publishers that lets Google users link to their paid subscriptions (such as The NYT) to their Google Account. That way, articles from the publication you pay for/subscribe to can show up in Google Search, News, and Discover and you can just read them no matter what device you're on, as long as you're in the Google Account that's linked.
The new documentation specifies how publishers can enable subscription linking in different Google products: Search, AI Mode/AIO, generative AI features in Discover, and Gemini.
I don't think this is relevant to any of our clients right now, but it's another reminder of how personalized search/discovery results can be.
Google added a new section to GBP documentation about a new *Collected info* section in business profiles. I checked a random handful of GBPs we have access to and didn't see it, but helpful to be aware of.
When Google calls/texts a business to get business details, the info they gather will be put into Collected info where the business owner can review and confirm or delete it.
ChatGPT updated their scheduled tasks feature:
- New 'Scheduled' page in sidebar for managing all tasks
- "All tasks are faster and more reliable"
- You can schedule tasks for specific times or choose broad windows like "evening"
- 'Monitoring tasks' can search the web and check connected apps, and only notify you if something's worth reporting
It's rolling out over 2 weeks, starting yesterday. I'm not seeing it yet. But you can go directly to chatgpt.com/scheduled in the meantime.
Google updated site migration documentation to add new recommendations for using the Change of Address tool in Search Console:
- No need to use it if you're just moving your site from HTTP to HTTPS
- Make sure to submit all domain variations & subdomains if you're moving your site from one domain to another
Anthropic upgraded Claude Design:
- Import your brand's design specs & the whole team can create on-brand designs
- Create branded designs, slides, whatever, by prompting
- Work stays synced between Claude Design & Claude Code, start in either
- Export designs as various file types or send to Canva/other tools
Documentation links:
Andre Alpar ran a test to see if 12 different AI assistants render JS or not.
Smart setup: each assistant got a unique, secret, never-linked URL. The page's raw HTML had a "decoy code" and the real code was injected with JS. Each page also had a unique string that returned only if the page was actually fetched (to sniff out lying/hallucinating assistants).
The results:
- All of the US assistants read raw HTML *only* (including GEMINI and all the big ones)
- The Chinese assistants (DeepSeek, ERNIE, Quen, Kimi) and Mistral render JavaScript
If you've got important content that you want available to AI assistants, make sure it's in the source HTML! At least for now.
Microsoft launched Copilot Cowork - it's an agentic system that does tasks for you across all the MS 365 apps and Edge (and you can use plugins). The Copilot app has a new toggle so you can switch between chat & cowork.
- Announcement of general availability & "we're a more cost effective option" pitch
- Copilot Cowork release blog with milestones, launches, updates
- Product page with plans, demo, FAQ, etc
Bing announced new AI visibility insights in Bing WMT:
- Intents
- Topics
- Citation share
- Compare
Can confirm I'm seeing these in the AI Performance report already! Intents, Topics & Citation share are new columns in the grounding query/pages table. Compare is a new bubble filter by the date picker so you can compare a previous time period to the current one.
Google updated its one-month-old documentation on optimizing for generative AI search already, to emphasize this point:
Google ignores LLMS.txt files (and similar) so you can create new "machine readable files" if you want, but it won't help or harm anything in terms of Google Search, because Google Search doesn't use them.
Their note on the update reads:
> *What*: Added a note to the AI optimization guide clarifying Google Search's usage of llms.txt files.
> *Why*: To address questions from the community and clarify that while these files aren't needed for Google Search (and won't negatively or positively impact your visibility or rankings), it's fine if you want to maintain these files for other services or systems that use them.
Google is hosting a live workshop for small/local business owners & solopreneurs on how to use Gemini for business. It's one hour long and free but RSVP is required: https://rsvp.withgoogle.com/events/gbp_gemini
Google published new guidelines just for small businesses in Tennessee. This is in response to SB 2262, a new law passed in TN that will go into effect on July 1st. SB 2262 says that small business owners have the right to hold search engines accountable if their business is 'blacklisted' (deindexed) or if 25%+ of their online reviews disappear.
> *The search engine must provide a response to such request within five business days that includes an explanation of the action and justification for the action; the process, steps, and requirements necessary for the small business to appeal the action or be restored or re-indexed...*
The new documentation from Google encourages small business owners to get set up with Search Console, Google Business Profiles, and Google Merchant Center, and essentially tells them "this is how you can find out if your site is in violation of our policies"
