A shared robots.txt line could let sites opt out of AI training with several providers at once, but companies involved are handling it differently.
DebugBear told customers to remove its Core Web Vitals monitoring script. Site owners should also check exposed accounts and unauthorized changes.
Google's spam guide adds indexing advice for pages made for sharing. Other updates cover restaurant ordering controls, report dates and AI Mode revenue.
Shopify's performance reviews asked how staff used AI. Its CEO says the answers didn't matter, and the question can give a company a reputation.
New research identifies a potential weakness in big-brand visibility that smaller publishers may be able to exploit.
Developers can apply to bring apps into AI Mode and the Gemini app, and Google's policy bars misleading descriptions meant to get an app picked.
Reddit says search referrals are falling and its CEO points to Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. Here's what its login test means.
Measure whether AI recommends your brand to buyers, fix outdated sources, and turn shortlist visibility into customer relationships your CFO can value.
Google is adopting new AI training controls, under consideration by the IETF, that should simplify and streamline AI training controls for publishers and site owners.
Discord's most public servers will each have a web page that may carry AI summaries and some messages search engines can show.
Microsoft just announced new Bing AI content controls "offering newer, simpler, and clearer preferences that allow you to make choices about training, grounding, or both while remaining eligible for Bing search results," Krishna Madhavan, Principal Product Manager, Microsoft Bing, wrote.
Shopify’s catalog returns a commission next to each promoted product’s price and reviews. What an AI agent does with that number depends on its developer.
OpenAI just sent its weekly email update to advertisers announcing the ChatGPT Ads are live in 26 more countries, a new wider standard ad unit format, Multi-image ads are now available in open beta to all advertisers, Shopify integration is now available internationally and Shopify integration is no...
Resolve's Michael Johnson outlined a keep-or-cut approach to link building, from qualifying publishers and earning roundup placements to creating linkable assets and a 90-day execution plan.
Creative enhancements are now on by default in ChatGPT Ads. Here's what they can change, how to opt out, and the tracking questions still open.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Ads in Google AI Mode make Google less per search, but Google has more searches. Google's John Mueller said AI spam tactics will be caught...
Search Console's Page indexing report has fallen behind before. Here's what Google has said and what each remaining check can show while the data lags.
Google's Q3 earnings call outlined a vision in which traditional Search may no longer be the central experience.
Six Google Ads details on Smart Bidding, seasonality adjustments, channel controls and budgeting that PPC teams should check before BFCM.
This week, we reported on Google Search volatility not once but twice this week. Google warned tools on user-generated spam guidelines. Google downplayed the importance of fresh indexing reporting. Google explained...
Everyone has been asking, what is the click-through rate you get from Google Search AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. Well, a new small study says the click-through rate is about 0.9%. The study also showed that when you opt out of showing in Google's Search generative AI, it also leads...
Microsoft is now showing ads within the Bing AI Overviews powered by Copilot. I don't think I've seen ads within the AI responses in Bing Search and I personally still cannot trigger them, but Khushal Bherwani shared a screenshot of an ad within an AI Overview in Bing Search.
Halloween is tonight/tomorrow and to celebrate both Google and Bing has special easter eggs (or should I call them pumpkins) for its search results. Google asks you to find a costume using AI Mode, which is boring. But Bing has a floating ghost that explodes into candy when you tap it.
Gary Illyes from Google was recently interviewed by Aneta Samkoff, host of the Odys Podcast. The topic was all about bots and crawlers and they covered a lot of ground. Gary said bot impersonation is more of a problem now because of AI. Bot impersonation is when rogue bots pretend to be someone the...
Google seems to have stopped appending UTM parameters on Gemini links, the cited URLs in Gemini's AI responses. Google started adding UTM parameters to links in Gemini in early September, but then, around September 28th, Google stopped.
Google Search may be bringing back the ability to see 100 search results per page by bringing back the num=100 parameter. As a reminder, Google dropped this feature in September 2025 as one of many methods to prevent crawlers from scraping its search results. As you know, third-party tracking tools...
Today, we're announcing our plans to support
a shared AI training control
in robots.txt. This will help websites express their AI training preferences across multiple AI
providers in a single step and is based on work from the AIPREF working group at the Internet
Engineering Task ...
Google’s Ads Decoded explores longer AI Mode queries, earlier discovery, and demand for human perspectives. Here’s what advertisers can consider for 2027.
Google’s Q3 stock plunge puts AI spending and Search ad revenue under scrutiny. Here’s what the earnings reveal for PPC advertisers.
AI search merges businesses with their lookalikes, and courts are holding platforms liable. Here’s how conflation happens and how to make your entity unmistakable.
Google's John Mueller was interviewed by David Iwanow, where he shared information on AI-generated content, the future of SEO, technical SEO, the crawl stats report, redirect chains, ecommerce product data and much more. John was asked about tactics, such as listicles, being used to rank well in AI ...
Check whether search engines can find and understand your images, and spot technical issues that limit their visibility in multimodal search.
Google announced earnings yesterday, and during the earnings call, Philipp Schindler, Google's senior vice president and chief business officer, said that ads in AI Mode have a "lower monetization" than ads in traditional search.
Identify OpenAI Aura blocks that stop agents from opening your site, and gather evidence to request a review.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...
HubSpot's traffic collapse shows why SEOs need to measure revenue per visit, track AI referral conversions, and build audiences beyond Google.
Google does not show all links, and not all spammy links, within the Search Console links report. This is not new, Google has long said that the link report only shows a sampling of links.
Google is testing query refinement bubbles at the top of the AI Overviews in Google Search. But clicking the refinement bubble does not change the query, instead, it takes you into AI Mode for that query set.
Google seems to be testing mixing sponsored products, ads, within the organic product results in AI Mode. Google has this line above the product results that can say "Sponsored" and "All products." Even as I look at screenshots of this, I am not sure if the "All products" are sponsored or not.
Google has released several updates to the Merchant API for October 26. The update expands YouTube Shopping and AI-commerce reporting, adds product attributes for videos and warranties, improves disapproval diagnostics, and introduces API integration enhancements and reporting deprecations.
Google may be testing removing the citations card on the Google AI Overviews section. So when you do a search on desktop and see an AI Overview, Google generally shows a citations card that has links to the sources you can click on. Google is reportedly testing removing that card from the interface.
Google says missing pages aren't a ranking threat, but what visitors encounter after a 404 can matter to a business.
Watch our team audit a real website live with Loren Baker and Vahan Petrosyan, and learn which technical SEO & AI-readiness checks your audit needs.
Google seems to be rolling out access to the Google Business Profile AI-powered messaging feature to more businesses. I believe we covered this in June of this year, but since then, Google made some updates to the feature.
Google Search revenue growth slowed for a second straight quarter, and lower AI Mode monetization was one reason given.
Google has finally added the ability to manage and control third-party ordering services on an individual basis for restaurants within Google Business Profiles. So you can disable features completely or partially from within Google Business Profiles.
Google announced it is expanding ads in AI Mode to several more countries including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Singapore. Then in Q4 Google will also expand ads in AI Mode to Brazil, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.
WordPress announced security release version 7.1.4 that fixes 22 vulnerabilities, including one that affects its updater.
Restaurants can now turn off specific third-party ordering providers in the Business Profile dashboard instead of waiting on each provider to remove them.
Pages cited by AI often answered a question in their first lines, though the gap was smaller against pages AI pulled up but didn’t cite.