Google Search Profiles Now Available At 10,000 Followers
Google lowers Search profile eligibility to 10,000 followers for U.S. websites and creators, with new account tools and updated article displays.
About
See short video versions of news stories on YouTube and TikTok. Matt G. Southern is the Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal, where he’s covered Google, SEO, and AI for over 13 years.
Articles
Cloudflare Lets Sites Disallow AI Training Without Blocking Googlebot
Cloudflare’s Disallow AI Training keeps mixed-use crawlers available for search. Google and Apple honor training opt-outs; Bing robots.txt support is pending.
Google Tests Paying Publishers For AI Answers Via Search Console
Google is testing a Search Console pilot that pays publishers when their content contributes to Gemini, AI Overviews, and AI Mode answers.
Google Search Redesign, Business Profile Post Views – SEO Pulse
Google redesigned Search results across the EEA, Business Profile posts get view counts again, and ChatGPT Shopping now leans harder on product feeds.
Google Documents Partner-Only API For Full-Web Search Results
Google’s developer docs for the Web Search Service API show a partner-only path to full-web search results.
What Wikipedia Reveals About AI Overviews And Web Traffic
A University of Washington paper estimates AI Overviews reduced search referrals to Wikipedia by about 5%, a metric Google disputes.
Google Adds Post View Counts To Business Profiles
Google says Business Profile post view counts are rolling out globally for posts published in the past 18 months, combining views from Search and Maps.
YouTube Gives You Feedback On Shorts Before Publishing
YouTube is expanding Get Feedback, a tool that reviews a Shorts before publishing, to U.S. users
Le Monde Says AI Overviews Haven’t Hurt Its Audience So Far
Le Monde says its audience hasn’t dropped since AI Overviews launched in France, while app traffic and subscriber growth complicate the broader traffic story.
ChatGPT Shopping Results Lean Hard On Product Feeds
ChatGPT Shopping is pulling more product picks from what it calls feed-integrated sources, and store visibility moved too.
New Google Guide To Regional Search Features & Eligibility
Google added documentation mapping regional Search features in the EEA, Türkiye, and South Africa, with eligibility and participation steps.
Brands Are Tracking AI Visibility, But Are They Measuring The Right Things?
AI visibility tools track brand mentions and citations, but marketers need outcome data to know what those movements mean and what to do next.
Google Rolls Out Redesigned Search Results Across The EEA
Google rolled out redesigned Search results in the EEA, reworking aggregator units and adding supplier units for hotel, flight, transport, and product queries.
UK Site Loses 98% Of News Search Visibility After .com Move
A UK news site’s trending-query visibility collapsed after moving from .co.uk to .com, and the new domain didn’t pick up what the old one lost.
Google Says Old Low-Value Pages May Affect Site Recovery
John Mueller says Google’s systems may still judge a site by its old low-value programmatic pages, and that showing value again takes time and effort.
Some Sites Use llms.txt Like robots.txt, Common Crawl Finds
Common Crawl analyzed 584,107 llms.txt files and found most came from templates, many had no links, and some carried crawler rules the format can’t enforce.
Search Console AI Reports Go Global, Mueller On Recovery – SEO Pulse
Google says Search Console AI reports are now worldwide, and John Mueller weighs in on recovery timing, markdown for AI crawlers, and sitemap cache-busting.
People Aren’t Leaving Google For AI. They’re Using Both
Research shows how people can keep using Google while making fewer traditional searches and clicking through to fewer websites.
AI Slop Cleanup Job Listings Up 87%, Report Says
The Guardian reports AI cleanup listings are up 87%, while freelancers say clients lowball the work.
Google AI Mode Prices Differ From Product Carousel For Same Items
Data finds Google AI Mode rarely shows the same products as the regular results carousel, and often lists a different seller when it does.
Google Adds Gemini 3.8 Flash To AI Mode
Google added Gemini 3.8 Flash to AI Mode’s model menu on release day.
Google To Bring New Video Understanding Tech To Ask YouTube
Google says a new Gemini system that inspects frames, audio, and transcripts on demand will power Ask YouTube on video watch pages.
YouTube Says Bigger Thumbnails Drove More Long-Form Views
YouTube’s Todd Beaupré says the desktop homepage redesign with larger thumbnails drove more long-form engagement despite showing fewer videos at once.
Google Details Who Can License Its Search Data In Europe
Google published eligibility rules, samples, and key dates for licensing ranking, query, click, and view data from EEA Search under the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
Google Search Console AI Reports Rolled Out Worldwide
Google says Search Console’s generative AI performance reports, which track AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions, have now rolled out to all sites worldwide.
ChatGPT Is Now A “Very Large Online Search Engine” In The EU
ChatGPT is now a very large online search engine under the EU Digital Services Act after OpenAI reported about 159.1 million average monthly search recipients.
UCP Releases Spec Update With Schema Changes
The Universal Commerce Protocol’s first spec release since April adds grocery readiness, lays groundwork for food and lodging, and brings schema changes.
Claude Searches Web Differently From Claude Code, Data Shows
New data finds Claude and Claude Code search at different rates, mention different brands, and send their agents to different types of pages.
Facebook Groups Are Google’s No. 2 Forum Source
Ahrefs data shows public Facebook Group posts appear in 38% of Google’s Discussions and forums results, passing Quora and trailing only Reddit.
Judge Questions Google AI, Spam Update Fallout – SEO Pulse
This week’s SEO Pulse covers Google’s AI publisher dispute, spam update fallout, the GEO debate, AI citation gaps, and ChatGPT’s Reddit behavior in search.