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

Tyler Einberger's latest Substack article got a mention in today's Daily Search Forum Recap on SEO Roundtable. Written for humans!

Google announced the Kaggle Game Arena: "a new, public AI benchmarking platform where AI models compete head-to-head in strategic games, providing a verifiable, and dynamic measure of their capabilities."

There's a chess exhibition today at 12:30pm CST - single elimination showdown between 8 models.

They plan to expand the arena with Go and poker next, and eventually video games.

Anthropic made it so OpenAI can't use the Claude API anymore because they were using Claude Code to build a competing product, which violates the terms of service.

Google Merchant Center has a help community where you can crowdsource answers to your GMC questions

Well, that was fun while it lasted.

trakkr.ai is a free (in beta) platform for tracking brand mentions in 6 major LLMs. Try it out:

• See how they grade your site's visibility in AI
• Explore top brand AI visibility by industry
• Learn how they calculate scores

Bing published a blog with a clear message about content freshness and visibility in AI-powered search:

"For AI powered search engines like Bing, freshness signals directly influence how quickly updates are reflected in search results and AI generated answers. The lastmod field in your sitemap remains a key signal, helping Bing prioritize URLs for recrawling and reindexing, or skip them entirely if the content hasn’t changed since the last crawl."

The blog has tips on formatting lastmod, including a timestamp, and submitting sitemaps to Bing.

MS Clarity announced updates that make it easier to integrate & use with WordPress sites:

• All you have to do is activate the plugin and there's a project ready to go, and it will take you straight to the setup screen.
• It also has built-in login options for MS, Google, or FB.
• If you already have Clarity on your WP site you can connect it from the plugin.
• Clarity dashboard inside WP

Google Ads now measures *branded searches as a new conversion type:*

• Branded searches track the number of searches users make within 7 days of *seeing* eligible ads.
• Branded searches are a "Consideration conversion" in reporting, to distinguish them from actual actions like purchasing.
• Branded search conversions are attributed to the *last viewed ad.*

So if your brand has a strong presence in organic search from SEO, paid might claim credit for the "branded search conversion" just because someone already familiar with the brand happened to see an ad, basically intercepting a search intent that was already there.

For better attribution it's important to look at *net new* branded search volume (beyond baseline), not just the total number of branded search conversions to see if new brand search interest is coming from a paid campaign.

On a more cooperative note, if specific ads really are driving a lot more net new branded search than others, it's worth looking at the topics/messaging to try and figure out what got people interested (to see if there are insights applicable to organic search strategy).

You can integrate MS Clarity with UserFeedback, an onsite survey tool for WordPress sites. Here's the setup guide.

In the latest SEO Office Hours Shorts, JM had some good advice for someone who asked if displaying partial product names is considered a violation:

"I don't see how this would be considered a violation. Showing a part of the full product name is okay."

"I would *recommend making sure that in the structured data you actually have the full name*. It makes it a little bit easier for us to recognize which product this specifically is, so that when we can tell that someone is searching for that product, we can also show your offer there."

"One thing I might recommend taking a look at, is you can also do some of this with CSS. Which means that *in the HTML you can still have the full name, but with CSS you can kind of shorten it to whatever fits into your design*. ... But this is kind of like a technical implementation question. Like, should you do it with CSS or can you do it with maybe JavaScript or something server side? That's totally up to you."

Love this response - also aligns with the recent GSC video about CSS & SEO, ICYMI.

Yelp is producing AI-generated videos about restaurants:

• Business owners can't see the videos generated for users
• Yelp users can't opt out of having their review photos/videos used to make videos
• Only restaurants with sufficient Yelp reviews, photos & videos have videos made
• One video per restaurant, not personalized

There's an example video in the article. No word on whether they will make them for other types of businesses. No mention of potential hallucinations or keeping up with menu changes. More incentive to stay away from Yelp, IMO.

People have shared examples of a "Help me shop in AI Mode" button showing up in Google Search (outside of AIO). Looks like only mobile.

I tried the same searches as the examples in both Chrome and the Google App on my phone, but no luck. It's another reminder that Google will be promoting AI Mode in as many aspects of Search as they can!

NotebookLM now has Video Overviews (in addition to Audio Overviews) & they redesigned the Studio panel so you can make & save multiple Mind Maps, Reports, Audio, and/or Video Overviews in the same notebook.

OpenAI added study mode, "A new way to learn in ChatGPT that offers step by step guidance instead of quick answers."

• Powered by custom instructions written in collaboration with teachers
• Meant to promote active learning, manage cognitive load, encourage curiosity, keep information engaging
• Personalized to user's level
• Quizzes & open-ended questions check knowledge retention
• Toggles on & off during a conversation

They're working on more functionality. Blog has examples & screenshots.

To try it out, choose "Study and learn" in the Tools menu:

Google just announced new features & capabilities for AI Mode "just in time for the back-to-school season".

Looks like 2 rolling out live "soon" and 2 more experiments just for Labs enrollees:

• *PDF uploads on desktop launching this week* - plus more file types in the months ahead
• *Google Lens in Chrome & AI Mode for desktop* - beginning soon
• *Canvas projects that you can come back to* - rolling out as an AI Mode Labs experiment
• *Search Live with video input* - rolling out as an AI Mode Labs experiment on mobile

The blog post has more detail & video screenshots.

This article says according to Microsoft, Copilot Mode will only be free for a limited time (undefined) and likely require a subscription to Copilot Pro once they've worked out the bugs in the "experimental preview phase"

JM reposted a LI post in German with some advice:

"Pro tip: check your ecommerce site to see if it works for shoppers using the common agents. (Or, if you'd prefer they go elsewhere because you have too much business, maybe don't.)

Bot-detection sometimes triggers on users with agents, and it can be annoying for them to get through. (Insert philosophical discussion on whether agents are more like bots or more like users, and whether it makes more sense to differentiate by actions rather than user-agent.)"

The original post shared an experiment that tested Swiss ecommerce sites for AI agent accessibility. You can translate it with ChatGPT or right in LI, but the gist is these reasons prevented an AI agent from shopping;

• CAPTCHA (in this case a slide puzzle)
• Cloudflare Turnstile
• Maintenance page
• Technical errors
• Intentional bot blocking

AI Mode launched in the U.K. Here are some parts from the announcement stood out to me:

Standard claim that Google wants to send people to websites::salt:

• Helping people discover content from across the web *remains central to Google’s mission.* With AI Mode, you can express exactly what you are looking for and get the right web content in a range of formats, *with prominent links for people to click on*. By expanding the types of questions people can ask, Google Search opens up *new opportunities for content discovery*.

Shop on Google shop on Google::shopping_bags:

• AI Mode is particularly helpful for exploratory questions and for more complicated tasks like *comparing products*, planning a trip or understanding complex how-tos.

Endgame: you trust and use our AI answers for everything::face_with_spiral_eyes:

• *We aim to show an AI-powered response as much as possible,* but in cases where we don’t have high confidence, you will see a set of web search results.
• we are using *novel approaches to improve factuality*

I had no idea this was going to happen, but when I created a new client Project in Similarweb, it signed me up for email updates from Newslever (a platform they own).

Newslever just sent me a rundown of the latest social media posts from our client's competitors with a summary of the messaging (pain points/solutions). Helpful, low-effort way to identify gaps & opportunities.

You can also click through to the Newslever site to see the "most engaged" social media posts (with engagement scores), recent website content updates & new ads launched.

FYI, Similarweb Competitive Trackers are sunsetting & getting replaced by Projects.

Ahrefs did a study using a massive dataset (17M URL citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, AIO & organic SERPs) to see if AI assistants "prefer" fresh content.

They identified a consistent pattern & made an observation about citation order:

• AI assistants cite almost 26% fresher content than organic SERPs based on the original publish date
• AI assistants cite about 13% fresher content than organic SERPs based on the "updated on" date
• ChatGPT & Perplexity appear to cite URLs from newest to oldest

This implies publishing new URLs will get you more citations in AI assistants than updating old URLs.

Considerations:

• The amount of work it takes to create new vs update
• Publish/updated dates are isolated here. We don't know anything about the content quality, EEAT, topical authority, backlink profiles etc. Maybe recently published content is more likely to have other attributes that get it cited more.
• Ahrefs used their Brand Radar here, which tracks "seed keywords" - not the same as real output from real prompts.

They end by reminding everyone Google is still where most searches happen, and making low-effort updates for a fresher date isn't going to magically boost your visibility in AI search.

July 20 - 26, 2025 Summary

Here's your quick-hit summary of last week:

Tools & Integrations

• Google Opal: Google's new no-code AI platform lets you build mini-apps to automate tasks. Check it out →
• Microsoft Clarity x Shopify: Microsoft launched a native Clarity app integration for Shopify. Setup instructions →
• Rendering Difference Engine: Gray Dot Company's Chrome extension reveals HTML changes post-JS load—a big deal since most crawlers (and LLMs outside Gemini) skip JS rendering. Try the extension →
• GA4 Gemini Integration: Google's open-source MCP tool lets Gemini interpret your GA4 data through natural language queries. Learn more & set up →
• Automated URL Redirect Matcher: Streamlit's new tool accelerates redirect mapping using Screaming Frog crawls and embedding models. Speed up your redirects →

SEO News

• Google Web Guide: Google's AI-powered search result organizer just dropped in Search Labs. It categorizes results under AI-generated headlines and expands queries for more depth. Learn more →
• Google Trends API: Now available with 5-year data windows, geographic breakdowns, consistent data scaling, and more than five simultaneous search-term comparisons. Apply for early access →
• New GA4 Reports: GA4 now includes 'Lead Acquisition' and 'Lead Disqualification' reports. They require specific events for activation. Details here →
• Google Business Profile Workshop: Google's hosting a live workshop on optimizing GBP, useful for clients needing a refresh. Register for July 31 →
• Snippet Extensions Update: Google's "Page includes" snippet extensions are appearing more frequently—structure your content clearly to influence these. Brodie Clark's insights →
• Crawl Budget Clarified: Google confirmed that 1xx and 4xx status codes don't impact crawl budget. More context on LinkedIn →
• Webflow Adds llms.txt: Despite Google dismissing llms.txt, Webflow has rolled out support, but notably still lacks IndexNow support for Bing.

Google announced a new experimental tool called Opal. It's a platform for building your own mini AI apps (using natural language, no code) to automate tasks.

You can try it out here - (sign-in/permissions required). It also has a gallery of pre-built AI apps you can use as-is or use as starter templates.

Microsoft Clarity launched the Clarity Shopify App for native integration with Shopify websites:

1. Visit the MS Clarity app page in the Shopify App Store
2. Click "Add app" & follow prompts
3. Open up your Clarity dashboard & get started

Gray Dot Company just launched a new Chrome extension so you can check how a URL’s HTML/content might change after JavaScript is loaded. Important because Google mostly crawls without rendering JS and LLMs outside of Gemini don’t render JS at all.