Google’s Liz Reid: Search and Gemini may converge, or diverge further
Google’s search chief says the line between web discovery and AI assistants is still unsettled as agents and new behaviors reshape the web.
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Danny Goodwin's latest articles
OpenAI: ChatGPT now has 900 million weekly active users
OpenAI reports the new usage milestone as paid subscriptions surge — the latest evidence that AI has become mainstream for daily use.
ChatGPT ecommerce traffic converts 31% higher than non-branded organic search
AI referrals drove stronger purchase intent, faster growth, lower average order value, and just 1.5% of organic revenue, new analysis finds.
How Google Discover qualifies, ranks, and filters content: Research
New SDK findings reveal why some pages never reach ranking, how pCTR predicts clicks, and why images and recency drive Discover traffic.
Anthropic clarifies how Claude bots crawl sites and how to block them
Anthropic explains how its bots handle AI training, live queries, and search results, and what opting out means for visibility.
SerpApi moves to dismiss Google scraping lawsuit
SerpApi says Google is stretching the DMCA to protect ad revenue, not copyrights — casting the case as a fight over access to public SERPs.
Paid search click share doubles as organic clicks fall: Study
Text ad clicks surged year over year as classic organic fell across key verticals, with paid listings now taking up to one-third of clicks.
44% of ChatGPT citations come from the first third of content: Study
ChatGPT pulls most from early sections, favoring direct definitions, balanced tone, and dense entities, new research finds.
Perplexity stops testing advertising
Perplexity began testing sponsored placements in 2024. It’s abandoning them, saying labeled ads can erode credibility.
Airbnb says traffic from AI chatbots converts better than Google
Early data suggests chatbot referrals bring higher-intent guests as Airbnb bets on conversational search and deeper AI integration.
Google’s Jeff Dean: AI Search relies on classic ranking and retrieval
Behind the AI interface, a staged system narrows tens of thousands of documents to a few, showing that visibility hinges on classic signals.
Cloudflare’s Markdown for Agents AI feature has SEOs on alert
Cloudflare will auto-convert HTML to Markdown for AI crawlers, cutting tokens by 80% — but it may encourage cloaking.
Bing Webmaster Tools officially adds AI Performance report
New insights include total citations, average cited pages, grounding queries, page-level citation activity, and visibility trends over time.
Reddit says 80 million people now use its search weekly
Reddit is unifying search with its AI Q&A. It's goal: to become an end-to-end discovery engine where users finish, not just start, queries.
Google AI Mode doesn’t favor above-the-fold content: Study
It's not about placement, it's about structure. Analysis of 2,300+ AI citations shows Google pulls answers from anywhere on a page.
Google says AI search is driving an ‘expansionary moment’
AI-powered search is driving record engagement and ad growth, as executives say new experiences are adding usage, not replacing queries.
Anthropic says Claude will remain ad-free as ChatGPT tests ads
Anthropic argues ads inside AI chats would erode trust, warp incentives, and clash with how people actually use assistants like Claude.
DOJ and states appeal Google search antitrust remedies ruling
The fight focuses on default search deals that critics say lock out competitors and limit choice for users, advertisers, and rival companies.
Google may be cracking down on self-promotional ‘best of’ listicles
SaaS brands saw 30–50% visibility drops after heavy use of self-ranked 'best' pages, possibly signaling stricter Google review trust signals.
LinkedIn: AI-powered search cut traffic by up to 60%
LinkedIn says Google’s AI Overviews cut non-brand B2B awareness traffic, forcing a rethink of how discovery works.
AI local visibility is up to 30x harder than ranking in Google: Report
Data shows AI assistants recommend only 1% to 11% of locations, revealing a massive gap between Google rankings and AI visibility.
AI recommendation lists repeat less than 1% of the time: Study
AI recommendations vary widely, even when prompts are identical. New data shows intent is consistent, but position tracking is mostly noise.
Google searches per U.S. user fell nearly 20% YoY: Report
Datos data signals a tougher discovery era as AI cuts repeat searches, concentrates traffic, and leaves publishers with fewer opportunities.
Google research points to a post-query future for search intent
Google signals search’s next phase: small multimodal models on devices infer intent from behavior before a query is ever typed.
Google outlines risks of exposing its search index, rankings, and live results
Elizabeth Reid’s affidavit warns that court-ordered data sharing would expose Google's IP, invite spam abuse, and put user privacy at risk.
Nick LeRoy turns SEO consulting into fundraiser for Minnesota immigrant support
Consulting hours become donations as a well-known SEO turns outrage over ICE raids into rapid financial support for impacted families.
Same URL in AI Overviews and blue links counts as one Google Search Console impression
Google's John Mueller confirms that when a URL appears in an AI Overview and as a blue link on the SERP, it won't count as two impressions.
Organic search traffic is down 2.5% YoY, new data shows
SEO isn’t dead. New data confirms it: traffic grew at the largest sites, and the sharpest declines were felt by the top 100 to 10,000 sites.
Google AI Overviews cite YouTube most often for health topics: Study
Google’s AI health summaries rely on sources that lack rigorous medical review or evidence, a new analysis finds.
News publishers expect search traffic to drop 43% by 2029: Report
AI answers are taking clicks from publishers. Media companies warn that Google Overviews and chat experiences are speeding up traffic loss.
Apple is finally upgrading Siri, and Google Gemini will power it
A multi-year Apple–Google deal places Gemini at the core of Apple Intelligence and paves the way for a new Siri.
Google AI Overviews are tested and removed based on engagement
Google tracks how users behave and only shows AI Overviews in Search when they actually add value, said Google VP Robby Stein.
Google’s John Mueller on SEO vs. GEO: Focus on audience behavior
AI isn’t going away, but Mueller says strategy beats semantics. Focus on how users really find and engage with your site.
37% of consumers start searches with AI instead of Google: Study
Traditional search frustrations are pushing users toward AI first, forcing brands to stay visible and credible in both places.
Top 10 PPC expert columns of 2025 on Search Engine Land
PPC vibe coding, CPC inflation, critical PPC tactics, and more! These 10 PPC columns got the most pageviews on Search Engine Land in 2025.
Top 10 SEO expert columns of 2025 on Search Engine Land
AI optimization, llms.txt, the end of the web, and more! These 10 SEO columns got the most pageviews on Search Engine Land in 2025.
Top 10 SEO news stories of 2025
SEO vs. GEO. AI Mode expands. AI Overviews kill clicks. Goodbye, num=100. These were among the most popular and biggest SEO stories of 2025.
Google sues SerpApi over scraping and reselling Search data
Google accused SerpApi of 'circumventing security measures protecting others’ copyrighted content that appears in Google search results.'
AI Overview fan-out rankings boost citation odds by 161%: Study
Analysis of 10,000 keywords shows pages ranking across Google AI Overview fan-outs account for over half of all citations.
Googlebot dominates web crawling in 2025 as AI bots surge: Report
Cloudflare data shows AI crawlers exploding, publishers blocking bots, and many platforms sending little traffic back.