Live AI search news feed

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.

June 2026 Google Spam Update started today

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.

• Here's the MCP link
• Here's the documentation

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:

• Developer's guide to setting up your brand design system
• Getting started guide for the rest of us

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.

Meta announced AI Mode for Facebook, and new editing cqpabilities for photos.

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"

Google Analytics announced three updates:

1. New “Source Group” field

New Source Group dimension cleans up various source values from major platforms.

So nstead of seeing multiple variations like:

• `facebook`
• `fb`
• `Meta-facebook`
• `instagram`
• `ig`

GA$ will consolidate them into standardized values like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. This will help advertisers compare performance across platforms more easily, especially if source naming was inconsistent because of UTMs, ad platforms, or campaign setup differences.

1. Updates to “Source Platform”

Google is also updating the existing Source Platform field so its classifications better align with the new Source Group field.

Third-party platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, Amazon, Meta Ads, OpenAI/ChatGPT & Perplexity will be classified more consistently alongside Google-owned inventory like YouTube, Search & Maps.

1. New hostname filter

Adding hostname filters in the Admin section under Data Filters allows GA users to exclude events from unapproved hostnames, for example traffic coming from a domain that shouldn't be sending data to the property.

(e.g. it will help keep junk, test, spam, copied-site, or misconfigured-domain data out of GA reports)

Reddit announced that starting today, users can use video in comments.

It's official - I'm seeing the GBP connector across some the GA4 accounts we have access to now! Admin → Product links

Here's the documentation.

I am noticing AI Mode autosuggests showing up when I search now

YouTube is bringing back in-app video sharing/messaging. It was available from 2017-2019 and then they took it away. Now it's back, but not available to Brand Accounts. But still helpful for brands to be aware of because video shares show up in YouTube Analytics and who knows if this will increase sharing (YouTube doesn't say if in-app shares & messages will show up differently in analytics, or if they'll influence the recommendations users see).

Since yesterday, Google Merchant Center is having an API issue. Product submissions & feed updates are delayed. Google is aware of it and working to resolve it, and they said submissions will automatically resume when the issue is fixed.