AI-Recommended Brands Saw 2.5x More Site Visits: Similarweb
A Similarweb report links AI recommendations to more site visits and deeper engagement, with most downstream traffic arriving via branded search.
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
Google Loses Two Top AI Researchers To OpenAI & Anthropic
Two senior Google AI researchers, Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer and AlphaFold’s John Jumper, are leaving for OpenAI and Anthropic within the same week.
AI Chatbot Use Hits 49%, But Skepticism Stays High
About half of U.S. adults use AI chatbots, and 60% read AI Overviews, but more predict AI will hurt society than help it.
Google Says SEO Tools Lack Access To Its Internal Metrics
Google’s new messaging to CMOs reiterates that GEO is still SEO and states that third-party tools have no access to its internal metrics.
Preferred Sources & AI Mode Are Creating Filter Bubbles – A New Discovery Problem
Google’s Preferred Sources and loyalty tools help established publishers stay visible, but create a harder discovery path for sites not yet on anyone’s list.
Deindexing Reports Keep Coming, Google Sees Nothing Unusual
Websites report pages being removed from Google’s index, while Google sees nothing unusual. How to separate real deindexing from ranking loss and reporting noise.
AI Citation Share Ships, New Data Doubts LLMS.txt – SEO Pulse
Bing rolls out AI Citation Share; fresh data shows LLMs.txt files go unread; Google backs two agent specs; and the UK orders fairer Search ranking.
OpenAI Brings Improved Health Responses To Free ChatGPT
OpenAI says GPT-5.5 Instant, the free default ChatGPT model, now performs comparably to its frontier models on the company’s own health evaluations.
Google, Microsoft Back Draft AI Agent Discovery Spec
A coalition including Google, Microsoft, and GitHub published Agentic Resource Discovery, an open draft spec for how AI agents find and verify tools online.
Google Must Give Notice Before Significant Ranking Changes
The UK’s CMA introduced two new conduct requirements for Google Search, covering fair ranking of organic results including AI Overviews, and search data portability.
Bing Rolls Out AI Citation Share In Webmaster Tools
Microsoft is beginning to roll out Citation Share, Intents, Topics, and Compare in the Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance dashboard preview.
TikTok Shows 3x More AI Slop Than YouTube, Report Finds
In a fresh-account test, Kapwing found 59% of TikTok For You videos were AI slop, roughly three times the rate on YouTube.
97% Of LLMS.txt Files Got No Requests, Ahrefs Data Shows
Ahrefs analyzed 137K domains and found 97% of llms.txt files received zero requests. AI retrieval bots accounted for 1% of total requests.
Google’s Mueller Says llms.txt Can’t Help LLMs Differentiate Sites
Mueller argues LLM systems can’t use llms.txt to differentiate between websites for discovery. He sees a narrow role once an agent is on a site.
What Apple’s Gemini-Powered Siri Means For SEO Strategy
Apple’s WWDC announcements turn the Google partnership into a shipping product, with open questions for search.
Google Expands AI Mode With Information Agents: Ultra Only
Google’s information agents are now available in all AI Mode languages and markets for AI Ultra subscribers, with expansion to more people planned this summer.
Reddit Climbs, Clicks Drop, GBP Comes To GA4 – SEO Pulse
Reddit gains ground after the May core update, new zero-click data lands, Google updates its SEO guidance, and Business Profile data comes to Analytics.
YouTube Brings In-App Sharing & Messaging To The U.S.
YouTube is expanding in-app video sharing and messaging to eligible adults in more markets, reviving a version of its messaging feature removed in 2019.
Google Is Adding Business Profile Tools To The Gemini App
Google is adding a direct Google Business Profile connection and Business notebooks to the Gemini app, rolling out this month.
Google Search Traffic To Open Web Drops To 23%, Data Shows
New data shows most U.S. Google searches end without a click, with a shrinking share of traffic reaching websites outside Google’s ecosystem.
Claude Is The Fastest-Growing AI Traffic Source, Per New Data
Claude referral traffic has grown almost 4x this year, making it the fastest growing among AI platforms, though still the smallest source.
US Publishers Demand Common Crawl Stop Scraping Their Content
Digital Content Next sent Common Crawl a cease and desist letter demanding it stop scraping publisher content and remove protected material from its datasets.
More News Sites Default To Blocking AI Crawlers
Reuters and Time now block AI bots by default, allowing only approved crawlers through allowlists, as more publishers add friction to AI content scraping.
Reddit Tops Search Results Across All Niches After May Core Update
SE Ranking found Reddit gained top 3 share across all 20 niches after Google’s May core update, with smaller moves in YMYL categories.
AI Mentions May Not Translate To Trust, New Analysis Suggests
Getting your brand into AI-generated answers may not be enough if the narrative isn’t believable. A new analysis modeled believability across seven AI platforms.
Google Ask Maps Updates – How They Impact Your Business Profile
Google’s Ask Maps transforms local search by requiring complete business profiles to answer complex queries with multiple conditions.
Google Gives Sites AI Search Opt-Out, But Not The Data To Use It
Google is beginning to let websites opt out of AI search, but the click data needed to make that decision isn’t available yet.
Google Analytics Is Adding Google Business Profile Data
Google has documented a native link between Google Business Profile and Google Analytics, bringing local metrics like calls and directions into GA reports.
Google Tests AI Search Data, UK Requires Opt Out – SEO Pulse
Google tests AI visibility reports and an opt-out toggle as the UK requires new publisher controls for AI search features.
Google’s May Core Update Favored Pages That Match Intent
Aleyda Solis analyzed US and UK SISTRIX data from Google’s May core update, finding visibility patterns tied to source type and market fit.