ChatGPT Access Tied To 9% Drop In Traditional Search
A new research paper compares how often ChatGPT and Google send people to websites, and what wider ChatGPT access did to 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
AI Visibility Rankings Aren’t Stable – New Research Shows It’s Mostly Statistical Noise
AI visibility numbers move between runs, so a single reading can mislead. A new paper offers a stopping rule for when rankings are finally trustworthy.
Google Says Canonical Re-Evaluation Can Take Up to Two Weeks
Google updated its canonicalization troubleshooting guide with new guidance on how long pages can stay in a duplicate cluster after you fix the content.
Google Business Profiles Showing Empty Review Dashboards
Some Google Business Profile dashboards show “no reviews yet” even though public review counts remain visible on the live listing.
Google Adds Social Reporting; Mueller Warns Against Markdown – SEO Pulse
Google rolls out Search Console reports for social posts, updates product markup guidance, and warns against building separate markdown pages for AI.
YouTube Moves Ahead of Spotify As UK’s Top Podcast Service
YouTube edged past Spotify as the podcast service UK listeners use most, the first time it has led on record, according to new data.
Google Search Hits All-Time Usage Record During World Cup
Google’s Nick Fox said Search saw its highest usage on record during Argentina’s comeback win over Egypt at the World Cup.
OpenAI GPT-Live Brings Search Into ChatGPT Voice
OpenAI has begun rolling out GPT-Live, new voice models for ChatGPT that can run a web search and show visual answers while you talk.
Google Search Console Adds Reports For Social Posts
Google is adding platform properties to Search Console, letting creators track how their Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube posts perform in Search and Discover.
AI Content Didn’t Stop Working, Your Metrics Did
Declining organic traffic doesn’t always signal failing content. Here’s how to measure influence when AI search disrupts traditional SEO metrics.
Google’s DMCA Removal System Is Being Exploited To Erase Real Pages
Copyright complaints can remove live pages from Google search before the dispute is resolved. Here’s how the takedown process works and how to spot it.
Where Clicks Go, What Agents Skip, Who’s Leaving Bing – SEO Pulse
Where AI Overview clicks go, what agents skip on sites they can’t read, and who’s leaving Bing, plus the rest of the week’s search news.
Google’s Mueller Flags A Case On Why LCP Fixes Miss the Target
John Mueller points to a Google case study showing how customizable layouts can skew which element the browser measures as LCP, plus the fixes.
Google Ends Cache-Served AMP Pages In Search
Google Search now takes searchers directly to a domain’s AMP host pages, ending the viewer/cache serving path. AMP still ranks as normal.
Cloudflare’s AI Crawler Rules Can Block Googlebot
Cloudflare now lets all sites manage AI crawlers as Search, Agent, or Training, with Sept. 15 defaults that can block Googlebot for sites blocking training.
Google AI Overviews Study Finds Lost Clicks Weren’t Lower Quality
An updated AI Overviews experiment finds no measurable difference in bounce rates, time on site, or returns to search between clicks with and without summaries.
OpenAI Hiring Points To Image & Video Ads Coming To ChatGPT
OpenAI job listings and its advertising plans point to image, video, native and conversational ad formats for ChatGPT.
Fabrice Canel, Longtime Bing Search Leader, Retires From Microsoft
Fabrice Canel, the Principal Product Manager who led Bing’s crawling and indexing team and championed IndexNow, has announced his retirement from Microsoft.
AI Agents Are Failing To Read B2B Pricing, Study Warns
Siteline tested a Claude agent on top B2B products. When it couldn’t find the prices, it often turned to third-party sources instead.
ChatGPT Users Are Now Mostly Non-English
OpenAI data show that active ChatGPT users on consumer plans now mostly use non-English languages, with growth fastest in Africa and Asia.
Google Moves Recipe Links To Top Of AI Mode Results
Google launched a new update in AI Mode that places recipe site links at the top of responses, with creator names, ratings and ingredient counts.
Google’s Liz Reid: Personalization Can Help Small Publishers
Google’s Liz Reid argues personalization and preferred sources can help small publishers get found in AI search, though she shared no supporting data.
Google Claims AI Training Is Fair Use In New Governance Paper
Google’s AI governance paper argues public-web training should remain fair use while pointing to opt-out controls, takedowns, and paid deals for specialized content.
Google’s Spam Update Now Reaches AI Answers. Enforcement Is Hard
The line between earning a brand mention in AI answers and engineering one is getting redrawn. Here’s what the research and Google’s June update say.
Google Spam Update Rolls Out, AI Manipulation In Scope – SEO Pulse
Five search developments this week: a spam update, AI impression counts, CTR data, Similarweb’s branded search findings, and Google’s tool access stance.
Google Desktop CTR Climbs While Mobile Dips, Report Finds
Desktop and mobile clickthrough rates are splitting, according to new benchmark data. Clicks are growing on desktop while declining on mobile.
Google’s Mueller Explains How AI Search Impressions Get Counted
John Mueller explained that impressions in Google’s Search Console AI report track links to your pages, and user-activated links only count after they’re activated.
Marketing Hiring Down 36% At Big Tech, Data Shows
SignalFire reports marketing hiring at major tech companies has fallen far more sharply than engineering, based on its hiring data.
Microsoft Clarity Now Flags Bots That Ignore Robots.txt
Microsoft Clarity’s Bot Analytics dashboard now detects when bots request URLs your robots.txt disallows, with trends and filters by bot and operator.
Google Finishes Rolling Out The June 2026 Spam Update
Google has finished rolling out the June 2026 spam update globally and across all languages. It’s the second spam update of the year.