AI SEO news
What changed in Google, AI search and AI crawlers, and what it means for your site. Every post links to its sources.
OpenAI launches ChatGPT business profiles and agents
Brands can now manage how they appear in ChatGPT, add product feeds and see aggregated mentions and clicks. OpenAI also added agents that advertisers can sponsor.
ReadGoogle starts the November 2026 core update
The third core update of 2026 started on November 10 and could run until just before Black Friday. Here is what to watch and when to judge the impact.
ReadGoogle adds carts and price tracking to Search
Google Search is taking on more of the shopping journey itself: comparing, tracking prices, applying codes and even messaging the business.
ReadChatGPT Ads hit a $1B run rate, add programmatic
Ads in ChatGPT are growing fast: a $1 billion run rate, self-serve buying in new regions and, according to reports, programmatic buying through Magnite and PubMatic.
ReadAmazon refiles its case against Perplexity’s Comet
The fight over whether AI agents can browse and shop on a site without permission is back in court, and news publishers have joined in on Amazon’s side.
ReadIETF AI preferences: Content-Usage status
A standard way to say “search yes, training no” is close but not finished. Here is what the IETF drafts define and why you can’t rely on them yet.
ReadEU publishers step up pressure over AI Overviews
The EU is investigating whether Google uses publishers’ content for AI answers without fair pay or a workable opt-out. A new French complaint adds to the case.
ReadGoogle AI Mode ads expand to 10 more countries
Google is putting more ads into AI Mode: new countries, and in the US, sponsored results inside follow-up questions in the same conversation.
ReadOpenAI: robots.txt may not apply to ChatGPT-User
If you blocked ChatGPT-User in robots.txt to keep ChatGPT away, that may no longer work. Here is how OpenAI’s three bots are documented now.
ReadAI crawler blocking keeps rising: Q3 2026 data
More sites are shutting AI crawlers out, both in robots.txt and at the firewall. The numbers differ by study, but the direction is the same.
ReadAnthropic’s three crawlers explained
Blocking ClaudeBot doesn’t remove you from Claude’s search answers anymore, and blocking Claude-SearchBot can. Here is how Anthropic’s bots split up.
ReadCloudflare Pay Per Crawl in 2026: still in beta
Charging AI crawlers per request is still an experiment. Cloudflare keeps adding pieces, but most sites can’t switch it on yet.
ReadBing shows where Copilot cites rivals, not you
Microsoft’s new Topics Portfolio groups the queries Copilot uses to find sources and shows the ones where other sites are cited instead of yours.
ReadGoogle September 2026 spam update is complete
The fourth spam update of 2026 took almost two weeks to roll out. Google did not say what it targeted.
ReadGoogle Discover groups news under AI summaries
Discover, a key traffic source for news sites, is turning into an AI-summarised feed. Publishers see less traffic when their story is one of many links under a summary.
Readllms.txt in 2026: 10% adoption, few crawler hits
llms.txt keeps spreading, but the evidence that AI systems read it is thin. Here is what the 2026 data says and when the file is still worth having.
ReadSearch Console adds an AI Overviews and AI Mode report
For the first time Search Console shows how often your pages appear in Google’s AI features. It shows impressions only, and comes with a setting to leave AI features entirely.
ReadGoogle Preferred Sources goes global and into AI Mode
Readers can tell Google which news sites they want to see more often. The feature now works in every language and influences AI features too.
ReadGoogle AI Mode leads in citing publishers
Which AI search engine cites news and media sites most? A 2026 benchmark puts Google AI Mode far ahead, with almost twice as many links per answer as ChatGPT.
ReadChatGPT’s share of AI referral traffic in 2026
ChatGPT remains the biggest AI source of visits, but other assistants are catching up in some studies. The data is messy, and your own analytics are the only number that matters.
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