Providing reviews content & comparing products? Heads-up based on Google's recent announcement. Using AI Mode to compare products is live and it provides a ton of information. And since Google leverages its Shopping Graph, you can find a lot of info, videos, reviews, and more.

Heads-up, with ChatGPT 5.1 (released yesterday), if ChatGPT uses its 'Thinking' model, you will see that in the upper right corner along with sources there. You can expand all the sources in the 'Thinking' area as well. Then you can see the full list of sources in the right panel like always.

Heads-up! Google is rolling out a bunch of AI shopping features. This is a big deal. And right as the holiday shopping season kicks in... *Agentic checkout is rolling out. *Shop conversationally in Search. *Use agentic AI to find products in stock nearby. And more... blog.google/products/sho...

Here we go (after months of testing). Alarms are going off at Pinterest right now -> Google app rolling out Images tab on Android, iOS "The pictures that appear in this endless feed are “tailored to your interests.” Tapping opens a fullscreen viewer with similar images appearing below.

Google's Pandu Nayak published a post today defending its 'Site reputation abuse' spam policy (after the EU investigation that was just announced). "E.g., a scammy payday loan site might pay a respected website to publish its content, including links to its offerings. We consider this to be spam"

Big news (pun intended) -> The EU is preparing to probe Google over news publisher rankings in search over claims that Google demotes sites with "third party" promotional content "News publishers argue these sponsored articles are crucial to their business model."

A fix is coming to AI Discover spam. And it's tied to expired domains... -> Google Working On Fixing Google Discover AI Spam Problem Google: “We keep the vast majority of spam out of Discover through robust spam-fighting systems and clear policies against new and emerging forms of low quality..."

Wikipedia recently noted that AI bots had been scraping its website while trying to appear human -> Wikipedia urges AI companies to use its paid API, and stop scraping Well, I get to use one of my favorite gifs again... :) techcrunch.com/2025/11/10/w...

No matter what your plans are today, take 40 minutes & watch Lily Ray's presentation about the rise of GEO. She covers how it closely relates to SEO (evolved from it), she debunks the GEO hype, and provides a great overview of what companies should actually focus on. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nJk...

Two interesting clips from Tyler Cowen's podcast with Sam Altman. First, they discuss when the first AI CEO could appear. Predictions: Within the next 2-3 years (at least for the decision making process). The public facing piece would still need to be human for now.

Classic example of one part of an organization not working w/the other. They clearly did not speak with anyone on the Search team about this. Don't take the blog post and run with it blindly... That could end up very badly for you and your site. Beware. www.seroundtable.com/google-opal-...

As reported by Barry, there has been a lot of volatility over the past month. On top of surges & drops ~10/18 and then over the past week, I've seen some sites heavily impacted by the June core update surge back. Google can always update a core system, or several, outside of broad core updates.

I think Google may have overlooked this. I think we could see changes there... SOON :) -> Google’s Preferred Sources Tool Is Jammed With Spam "Google is surfacing copycat spam sites, random sites, and parked domains. Some are so low quality that only their home pages are indexed."

Discover can send tons of traffic to publishers, but it's also the Wild West for testing new features, treatments, & more. Check out the exs in Barry's post. And remember, broad core updates (and other major algorithm updates) can impact your Discover visibility. Discover is an extension of Search.

Focus on finance? -> Google adds Gemini's Deep Search to Google Finance, which will also have prediction market data from Kalshi and Polymarket for event analysis, first in the US (rolling out in the coming weeks)

Sundar Pichai about how AIOs, AI Mode, & traditional search could work together for users in the future. i.e. Will the system choose which model or results are shown? "You can expect Google to make things simpler in the future. Like we did for Universal Search in the past..."

We have a number now. It's ~$1B that Apple will pay Google for Gemini -> Apple plans to use a custom 1.2T-parameter Google Gemini model to help power the new Siri next year and will be paying Google ~$1B annually for it "Google’s Gemini model will handle Siri’s summarizer and planner functions."

New from Google -> Google to remove more search features including practice problems, nutrition facts, nearby offers and more

More AI legal action, this time for agents -> Amazon sends a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity, demanding it to stop letting Comet make purchases on users' behalf and accusing it of computer fraud

More AI deals. And it's a pay-per-use model. Interesting... -> People Inc. (formerly DotDash) strikes Microsoft AI licensing deal as Google’s AI Overviews hit programmatic ad revenue

Interesting Google patent I came across published 5/8/25. Btw whatever happened to Google Perspectives? I think AI Mode and AIOs ran it out of town :) I have not analyzed this patent heavily but it talks about gathering 'independent content' and then providing a feed ppubs.uspto.gov/api/pdf/down...

If you found my blog post about AI Search platforms developing anti-spam systems and core visibility systems interesting, then you might like the most recent video. I cover those topics in detail and explain why we could very well see the AI Search platforms' version of Panda or Penguin soon.

We saw link icons in the SERPs last week & now I'm seeing "Jump to" in the SERPs which link to highlighted text on the page. Those links only show up on desktop in the test window I have open. Mobile doesn't have them. Also, for links that don't lead to highlighting, "Jump to" is not there either.

This is too good. Founder of GEO platform is shutting it down because he says, "There is no such thing as GEO strategy" separate from brand building. More need to hear this. Share away. :) www.linkedin.com/posts/benjam...

Again, the AI Search platforms are in their infancy... They will need to figure this out (and soon) -> AI browsers can bypass some paywalls and OpenAI's Atlas seems to avoid content from companies suing OpenAI, providing summaries or alternate reporting instead

Raptive sues Google for ad tech monopolization seeking billions in damages "According to the 93-page filing, Raptive contends that "Google has carried out a sophisticated, anticompetitive, and deceptive scheme for well over a decade" by "manipulating auctions for ad space across the Internet."

Google has rolled out several Pinterest-like tools and features recently. Mixboard is another -> Google Mixboard Expands to 180+ Countries After User Surge www.techbuzz.ai/articles/goo...

Ah, the Google partnership still paying off big-time :) But they revealed that ~50% of Reddit's traffic is from Google. That's a huge risk for them IMO. If Google tweaks anything algorithmically, Reddit could pay a heavy price -> Reddit reports Q3 revenue up 68% YoY to $585M

Like I've always said, it works until it doesn't. Here's a spammy site I've been keeping an eye on since it recently surged in both Search and Discover. It started tanking the other day. Now doesn't rank for any of those core queries anymore. Actually, it's deindexed. Poof.

Wait, you mean the AI Search platforms need anti-spam systems? I think someone just wrote about that :) -> OpenAI’s new browser Atlas and Perplexity fall for AI-targeted Cloaking Attack *Agent-aware cloaking reliably changes what AI search tools read… a very simplistic, but powerful exploit.

My latest post is for all the site owners out there getting hammered by AI tools, scrapers, and bots over the past several months -> Stop the AI Tool and scraper madness – Set up Cloudflare today and watch expensive automated traffic disappear [Case Study]

Good to see this on Fast Company... And it matches what my recent post outlined about the danger of spamming AI Search platforms -> Here’s why you don’t need a magic GEO hack "But herein lies the danger. If SEO’s past is any teacher, we’re headed toward a new playground of snake-oil & shortcuts."

This is still showing. LOL. Doesn't mean it's impacting rankings (nothing changed) but clearly a system is using that anchor text when populating sitelinks -> Disney's sitelinks still showing Black hat SEO packages www.searchengineworld.com/negative-and...

Oh boy, more Reddit, and more gaming of AI Search (until the AI platforms create stronger anti-spam systems) -> Some ad buyers say brands are increasingly spending on Reddit, reviving old threads, seeding "organic" posts, and even paying third-party groups to generate content due to the site's...

Yep, it surged out of nowhere (which can happen). I'm sure it will drop quickly but it's ranking in the SERPs & Discover as of now. And DO NOT click the link from the SERPs if you do end up searching for it. It's a dangerous site -> Google promotes fake content to millions on Discover news platform

Rollout began at 12:30ET. Gemini is coming to your smart displays & speakers -> Early access for the new Gemini for Home voice assistant in the U.S. is rolling out "For users that get enrolled in the early access, your voice assistant will get upgraded from Google Assistant to Gemini"

Study: Organic LLM (oLLM) traffic underperformed every traditional channel except paid social media across key financial metrics such as conversion rate, average order value and revenue per session

AI being used more and more with finance -> Anthropic expands Claude for Financial Services with a beta Claude for Excel integration, additional data connectors, and new pre-built Agent Skills

Focus on Local? -> Ads might be coming to Apple Maps next year "Similar to Google Maps and other mapping apps, Apple’s plan is to allow restaurants and other businesses with brick-and-mortar locations to pay to promote themselves in search results"

Oh boy -> Google Investigates Weekslong Security Breach Involving Contractor "Google is investigating a breach of its security systems involving a contractor who took almost 2,000 screenshots and sensitive internal files, including information related to Google’s Play store systems & guardrails..."

OpenAI is expanding to music -> Sources: OpenAI is developing AI tools to generate music from text and audio prompts, including capabilities such as adding guitar accompaniment to vocal tracks

Sort of crazy considering Spotify paid out $10B during the same time paid. Not much more than YouTube -> YouTube paid out $8B to the music industry in 12 months techcrunch.com/2025/10/23/y...

Sky's tech will be integrated into ChatGPT -> OpenAI acquires Software Applications Incorporated, which is building an AI-powered user interface for macOS "OpenAI plans to integrate Sky's technology into ChatGPT & bring on its entire team of roughly a dozen people. Financial terms not disclosed."

The AI browser wars are insane. Comet -> Chrome (starting with agentic) -> ATLAS!!! -> Oh wait, now Copilot Mode in Edge (announced today). What will launch tomorrow? Claude's Chromium Buddy? 😂 www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/c...

Glad Google covered these points (again). I have covered them over the years as well. If you've been impacted by broad core updates due to quality, it's not about links or technical SEO usually. That's unless you have technical SEO problems causing quality problems (which can happen on large sites).

The AI tracking tools are already experimenting with new packages & pricing. E.g. check out new packages from Profound & one is just $99/month. It's only 50 prompts tracked (& only ChatGPT) so basically not super in-depth... but shows that the $500 per month 'lite' package was priced too high (IMO).

Big Reddit news -> Reddit Accuses ‘Data Scraper’ Companies of Theft (including Serpapi, Perplexity, and 2 other companies) "In a lawsuit, Reddit pulled back the curtain on an ecosystem of start-ups that scrape Google’s search results and resell the information to data-hungry A.I. companies..."

Yep, there will be growing pains with agents -> First impressions of ChatGPT Atlas, as browser agents remain confusing, with insurmountable security and privacy risks including prompt injection attacks

Big news -> OpenAI launches its ChatGPT Atlas web browser, available initially for macOS, & “coming soon” to Windows, iOS, & Android My livestream notes: Atlas has 3 core features. Chat is with you all the time. Browser memory is the second. And third, agent... ChatGPT will take action for you.

Oh boy... Adobe has a new GEO product. :) -> Adobe Delivers LLM Optimizer for Businesses to Boost Visibility Across AI-Powered Chat Services and Browsers Enables companies to gain relevance and authority? What?? -> "It enables businesses to gain relevance and authority in an era where consumers..."