For example, a chatbot can tell you: “Here are some hotels in Paris:…”. But an AI agent could go a step further and compare hotels, check prices, look at availability, and actually complete the booking for you.

I've seen a lot more rage bait recently in the SEO community. So I wanted to characterise what I'm seeing, and hopefully help people to keep sharing confidently, without the fear of being shot down so heavily that shared learning falters entirely. www.linkedin.com/pulse/9-ways...

New from Google Search Central blog: Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/06/gen-ai-performance-reports

Love this from @martinibuster.bsky.social "While concepts of expertise and authoritativeness are inherent in content, they’re still objective judgments that can be inferred from external signals, not something that can be directly added to content by SEOs." searchenginejournal.com/eight-overlo...

Barry saved me from vibe coding this. 😂 Love that it contains aggregate data and then you can drill in to each tool.

AI Overviews is the most undertracked AI search: 500,000 prompts show why peec.ai/blog/ai-over...

If it helps, there is a good definition of YMYL in this 2019 guide on how Google fights disinformation. storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog...

- Agents can use raw HTML and the accessibility tree, and, in exceptional circumstances, will render the full page IF the justification is there. So at best our audience can act like a “real user”, and at worst, it’s like using Lynx browser in the 90s. That’s a wide target to hit! 🧵 4/7

"A tax on robotic and digital AI employees or a "minimum wage for robots" to manage the [AI] transition would give the ability to "throttle the adoption of AI and create a more level playing field" www.bbc.com/news/article...

Mad to think: "AI bot traffic on Cloudflare's network grew 187% in 2025 while human traffic grew 3.1%. Agentic AI traffic alone grew 7,851% year over year. Cloudflare's CEO has stated publicly that bot traffic will exceed human traffic by 2027" www.linkedin.com/pulse/machin...

Potential good news for publishers: Google AI Overviews & AI Mode gain preferred sources, plus new perspectives carousel and highly cited labels searchengineland.com/google-ai-ov...

Most server-side GTM setups I see fall into the exact same trap. You map a custom domain, extend cookie lifetimes, and think you're done. In reality, your container is just a dumb pipe proxying thin browser data. You're paying hosting costs just to be a basic middleman. 2/3

Regarding conversion-based ads: "OpenAI has told some advertisers that starting this week, it will let them test these ad formats, known as conversion-oriented ads, which marketers would only pay for if they get results, the agency executive said." www.theinformation.com/articles/ope...

1. The optimisation target has moved from documents to passages to agent-selected answers 2. The economic relationship between Google and publishers has become extractive by design, not by accident 3. The window to build agent-ready commerce and brand infrastructure is 12 to 18 months. 🧵 5/6

Our algorithmic content optimization engine is graduating from labs to production. Optimizer is now available to all our AI SEO clients. If you've had enough of audits, decks and dashboards and want to do some genuinely cutting-edge AI SEO, ping me and we'll set up a demo. dejan.ai/optimizer

Cloudflare: Screw you AI, you can't come in. Also Cloudflare: Screw you employees, AI you can come in.

WordPress 7.0 exposes AI API keys. A security researcher says there "will be an absolute rush by hackers to steal" AI API keys because they're worth thousands of dollars. www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-7-...

😆

I did not know of a search operator in Google that is: around(x):

I don't have much to say about this year's Google I/O because I prefer to write about products that have shipped, not just "coming soon" announcements - but here are some notes on Gemini Spark and Antigravity simonwillison.net/2026/May/20/...

The most important things re SEO from I/O. -Search is "AI Search through & through" -New Search box - can use any media to search -Gemini Spark Agents - on 24/7 -Universal Cart - multiple merchants. Finds alternate deals in the background -Create apps in Search. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjxj...

Google tests new conversational ad formats in AI Mode and Search Google is rolling out Gemini-powered conversational ad formats across AI Mode and Search as it looks to make ads more contextual, #google #seo

LLMs are not designed for a purpose. They are not designed for a group of related purposes. They are not a product of design. They are a mechanism of design which is being reactively presented as solutions for whatever purposes seem to have the most revenue potential.

Interesting viral video, from an engineer at Atlassian that was made redundant. youtu.be/55pTFVoclvE?...

Google Search as you know it is over

Screaming Frog Audits via MCP? Yes please. www.screamingfrog.co.uk/blog/seo-spi...

I love the ORM/PR side of SEO, it's not for everyone & I certainly wouldn't do it for just anyone. But the feeling when you finally remove an undeserved allegation in search results from 20 years ago, it's unmatchable! We all do things wrong in life, so why should we be punished daily for it?

Google on optimising for AI: "Commodity content (for example, something like "7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers") is often based on common knowledge, which could originate from anyone, and typically adds little unique insight for readers." developers.google.com/search/docs/...

Nice point from @markwilliamscook.com

Google Says Its Indexing API Is Inundated By Bloggers

I (with some agentic support) aggregated research and pulled it together into a table to summarise how it works in mid-2026. It's a fast-changing area, and some details may vary in different circumstances, so let me know if you spot any mistakes: www.searchpilot.com/resources/bl...

💪 I really recommend heading over to WhichUK on Insta and soaking up their tips to stop Meta techbro stalking... www.instagram.com/p/DYFPCTnlpx...

AI Citation drift: How stable are sources in AI search results? www.sistrix.com/blog/ai-cita...

I believe Google recently changed how it answers some "best" queries in AI Overviews. Previously, using a listicle that ranked your own company as #1 was often sufficient to get recommended in the answer. 🧵

Just checking the reports on look-er-data-studio.com

New: AI Citation Ranking Factors Everyone talks about AI Citations as a way to boost visibility + traffic, but what works? To find out I gathered every study/experiment from the past 2 years and scored the biggest wins The result? 22 AI Citation Ranking Factors signal.zyppy.com/p/ai-citatio...

2025 in one graphic. Inflation! by @axios

Related: www.searchpilot.com/resources/bl...

Reform does not even have a bloody uptodate manifesto 😅🥹

Heads-up, Google just announced updates to links and link treatment in AI Overviews and AI Mode -> Google updates links within AI Overviews & AI Mode

"When the official site is hard to render, the system doesn’t stop. It leans on whatever is fast, crawlable, and consistent." 👏

Speed still matters. "for every 100 milliseconds slower a store loads, conversion tends to be about 3.5% lower. (...) For every 32 milliseconds slower a store responds to interactions, conversion tends to drop by about 1.5%." www.shopify.com/enterprise/b...

I thought this was interesting. My research indicates Google treats freshness as relative rather than absolute. This means looking at what percentile you fall into with your content freshness versus the rest of the SERP, which is related to if you make 'significant' changes.

👏 "The SEO industry has done this before. Spinning. Mass programmatic pages. Doorway content. Each cycle... dressed as a discipline, sold at scale, briefly effective, eventually punished by the engine, replaced by the next controllable input dressed as a discipline."

AI content to AI crawlers improves visibility? (...when slop is put out with the garbage): speakerdeck.com/thomaspeham/...

This example of an AI search had me giggling... speakerdeck.com/sophiecoley/...

What could go wrong? :) -> Cloudflare says AI agents can now create Cloudflare accounts, start paid subscriptions, register domains, and deploy apps on behalf of users

I was shocked by how often publishers who blocked AI crawlers were still in the index, this was a very good read.

Google just published a study about indirect prompt injection. Important for SEOs & site owners to understand -> Google Says Prompt Injection Moving From Theory Into Real Abuse From Brett: "This is the AI-era cousin of hidden text, doorway tactics, comment spam, parasite content, and schema abuse."