Here's a quick update on Reddit's AI translation project. I have covered this heavily via a two-part series in the past. Reddit continues to scale those translations and you can see huge growth over time across a number of languages/countries. Germany and Spain below...

Like I've said before, ChatGPT will build stronger systems to fight spam, security risks, & more -> Introducing Lockdown Mode and Elevated Risk labels in ChatGPT *Lockdown Mode in ChatGPT, an advanced, optional security setting for higher-risk users *“Elevated Risk” labels for certain capabilities

Yep, I see it in Canary (see below). Chrome is a natural fit as the beginning stages of Jarvis. So Google enabling users to *automatically* start Chrome when Windows boots up is smart -> Chrome can now launch when you boot up your Windows PC phandroid.com/2026/02/12/c...

Me, and I think everyone else, waiting to see an actual ad in ChatGPT... I can't trigger one across free accounts yet. And yeah, I've been trying... :)

Heads-up, another example of the ad side of Google not on the same page as the organic side. There's a new trigger for when users clicks the back button in their browser. Oof... You will be automatically opted-in unless you opt-out before 3/9/26 www.seroundtable.com/google-adsen...

Big news, The CIA World Factbook is sunsetting. If you remember, it was one of the key sources fueling Google's Knowledge Graph in the beginning. Now the Knowledge Graph is way more robust, but Wikipedia and The CIA World Factbook were cited by Google as important sources. End of an era...

It's rolling out now -> Google told advertisers that it is integrating direct shopping into Search's AI Mode and Gemini; users can now buy items from Etsy and Wayfair w/in Gemini "UCP-powered checkout is rolling out now, letting US shoppers buy items from Etsy & Wayfair..."

Interested in ChatGPT Ads? Asad Awan, one of the ad leads for OpenAI, was on their podcast yesterday. For example: What will the process look like down the line for companies trying to reach new audiences via ChatGPT? i.e. where is this headed for advertisers (and performance marketers)?

This is a big deal. Agents can bypass the UI via WebMCP -> Chrome Team announces WebMCP is available for early preview "You tell agents how & where to interact with your site, whether it's booking a flight, filing a support ticket, or navigating complex data. This direct communication channel..."

Heads-up. Bing Webmaster Tools announced its new AI Performance reporting today. You can view total citations and cited pages. And then you can view "Grounding queries" and the number of citations per query. And there's a pages report broken down by citations. blogs.bing.com/webmaster/Fe...

And it keeps dropping.

Yep, it's Google results... again. ChatGPT Searches Google Shopping to Create its Recommendations "After running the experiment 100X, we found the top ChatGPT product was included in Google Shopping’s first 3 results 75% of the time. There was also substantial overlap with the 2nd & 3rd results"

It's official. OpenAI just posted about this. Let the ads begin... openai.com/index/testin...

Today might be the day! -> OpenAI will reportedly start testing ads in ChatGPT today "On Monday, OpenAI will officially begin testing ads within ChatGPT, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality."

Re: the Google Grokipedia drop. I've explained if you drop in Google, you risk dropping in AI Search as well (since those platforms leverage Google results.) Well, Malte Landwehr dug in after seeing the Google drop, and yep, Grokipedia dropped in AI Search too. www.linkedin.com/posts/landwe...

Sounds like Bing nuked Neocities -> "We recommend using search engines other than Bing" — 1.5 million Neocities sites are blocked by Microsoft's search engine, and AI support bots aren't helping. It's still alive and well in Google.

In the race to Jarvis, Personal Intelligence might be coming to NotebookLM -> Google tests Personal Intelligence for NotebookLM conversations "...suggests NotebookLM can learn from your chats to understand your goals, & it includes a custom prompt field that pre-fills a profile-like description."

Heads-up. I have shared before how Grokipedia has surged like crazy in Google, but I also warned that might not stick (based on the 100% AI-generated content there). Well, that time may have come. Grokipedia has started to drop pretty heavily with the latest volatility. h/t @sistrix.com

For some sites with many self-serving listicles that dropped heavily based on the recent (possible) Google reviews update, I'm seeing a trend. Some are still showing up on page one, but in this section... They have to pay now to be there. Oof.

Amazon's ad business is still rocking -> Amazon reports Q4 ad revenue up 23% YoY to $21.32B, slightly above expectations And remember, Prime Video now has ads by default (unless you pay extra). I hate that... but it's generating serious money for them.

I'm sure Google is watching closely -> Reddit looks to AI search as its next big opportunity "Weekly active users for search over the past year grew 30% from 60M users to 80M. Meanwhile, weekly active users for AI-powered Reddit Answers grew from 1M in Q1 to 15M by the fourth quarter."

Here's a side-by-side comparison. Beyond clickbait and related things to avoid, the Discover documentation now includes "Provide a great page experience" as well. So you know, watch overloading your page with annoying ads, auto-playing crap, and more. :)

WTH is going on with this crap? "Negative citations"? Is that what some are doing to try & gain an advantage? I mean, not only could this get you in trouble SEO-wise (and AI Search-wise), but it could get you in trouble legally. Oof, come on people. Although I do want to meet "Marian" at some point.

A Discover Core Update! *Showing more locally relevant content from websites based in their country *Reducing sensational content and clickbait *Showing more in-depth, original, & timely content from sites w/expertise in a given area, based on our systems’ understanding of a site’s content

If you're interested in the self-serving listicle situation, which I believe was part of a reviews update that Google released, then you should check out my latest video. I cover "Review Update Notes", including what I've been seeing while analyzing sites, I cover @lilyray.nyc's great post, and more

Gemini Rising -> Google says the Gemini app has 750M+ MAUs, up from 650M last quarter, and its first-party models process 10B+ tokens per minute via direct API use by customers

Anthropic said there will be NO ads in Claude -> "There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them. So we’ve made a choice: Claude will remain ad-free. Our users won’t see “sponsored” links adjacent to their conversations with Claude..."

@johnmu.com Hi John. Is there any way Google can share something about the latest volatility. It sure looks like a reviews update based on my analysis so far. I know those aren't announced anymore, but this seems bigger than usual. See my thread below. bsky.app/profile/did:...

Good Morning Google Land! This is the February 4th edition of "Reviews Update Notes". At least I *think* it was a reviews update. Google stopped announcing reviews updates a while ago... but said they might announce one if there were significant changes to the system. I think that's what happened.

Yes, IT'S HAPPENING! This is HUGE news. With the latest volatility, Lily saw a bunch of sites dropping, but it was their blog content (including many self-serving listicles). I have seen the same thing and have been digging in. Lily does a great job breaking everything down. Again, big news!

Heads-up: For sites dropping with the latest volatility, they are dropping in AIOs too. That makes complete sense since AIOs & AI Mode are extensions of Search. So if you are impacted by updates (like the latest), then you can drop in Search, AIOs, AI Mode, AI Search platforms leveraging Google.

If you run a large-scale/complex site, this is important. Make sure you know where Googlebot could go crazy crawling. E.g. As Gary said, "once Googlebot discovers a set of URLs, it cannot make a decision about whether that URL space is good or not unless it crawled a large chunk of that URL space"

Fake experts with AI-generated press releases -> PR bodies launch campaign against fake experts after Press Gazette investigation - Note, Press Gazette is uncovering more fake experts who have featured widely in the press.

So, are ChatGPT Ads imminent? I just saw this to today when analyzing some queries and shared a screenshot. Interesting. :) -> "Reply to user query using the following additional context of ads shown to the user." Barry covered this in a post today. See below.

Are you a news or media publisher? This is basically like Top Stories, but in ChatGPT. A dedicated carousel with articles from news and media publishers. Oh, and Google's there too. :) Not necessarily new I believe... but important to know for site owners.

People, places, products, and ideas -> OpenAI has been busy. They just announced a knowledge panel-like feature and I can see that today. So like we knew would have to happen, they are trying to build their own Knowledge Graph, Shopping Graph, Local Data, and more.

Oh boy. Would you let Profound (or any AEO company) connect to your CMS & publish, update, & edit content (via AI-generated content)? I mean, what could go wrong? Remember when I shared about "Mt. AI" the other day? -> Scale Content Operations with CMS and Slack Integrations

Grokipedia Rising (for now). :) Will be interesting to see how Google addresses this over time. And note, I am NOT seeing Grokipedia often when checking AIO rankings they had previously. Newer rankings remain, but I'm seeing many disappear when Grokipedia was ranking a week ago or earlier.

Google has been busy. Although unconfirmed, the volatility recently has caused a ton of movement across some sites. Again, Google can always release "smaller core updates" where they update a system, or several, outside of a broad core update. And those can have a big impact on some sites.

Auto Browse in Chrome arrived this morning. Auto Browse works with any Gemini model btw. So I gave my new agent a task and asked it to check some of the Google volatility tools, collect today's numbers, and then present that to me in a table. Took 1:29 and worked pretty well.

OpenAI relies on an independent web index for this -> Keeping your data safe when an AI agent clicks a link "We rely on an independent web index (a crawler) that discovers and records public URLs w/out any access to user conversations, accounts, or personal data. i.e. it learns about..."

Chrome with agentic capabilities. Yet another step towards Jarvis -> Google updates Gemini in Chrome with a new side panel, an auto browse feature that can navigate pages and take actions for AI Pro and AI Ultra users, and more blog.google/products-and...

Oh, I'm sure publishers will mark up the AI portions.... LOL -> Google might mark up parts of pages created via AI (but it's based on html markup by the author) chromestatus.com/feature/5078...

Interested in Personal Intelligence? I just published a post covering the power of Personal Intel in Gemini and AI Mode. I know there are privacy concerns... but this is a big step towards Jarvis in my opinion. And it's super-powerful when Search and Gemini can tap into everything it knows about you

Huge news. Sites may eventually be able to opt-out of generative Search features like AI Overviews and AI Mode From Google: "Building on this framework, & working with the web ecosystem, we're now exploring updates to our controls to let sites specifically opt out of Search generative AI features"

Heads-up! I saw this live yesterday. It's super-alarming and should be for all publishers. When you click "Show more" in the AIO, you are TAKEN OUT OF SEARCH and into just the AIO. Then type a question via "Ask anything", & you are taken directly to AI Mode. searchengineland.com/google-ai-ov...

Testing the "Tailor your feed" feature in Discover (it's in labs). Sort of weird that I have to access that within the overflow menu for a listing and not top-level somehow, but it does work... When prompting Discover for something and refreshing my feed, those articles do show up at the top.

More about ChatGPT Ads. Yep, another OMG moment. Not much data coming for advertisers. Oh, and the price... -> OpenAI targets ~$60 per 1,000 views for ChatGPT ads, on par with live NFL broadcasts and above Meta's sub-$20 CPM, while offering little conversion data

Great episode from Marie Haynes about the importance of user interaction signals, happy vs. unhappy users, and more. She covers Glue, Navboost, RankEmbed, etc. I've been saying "Hell hath no fury like a user scorned" for a long time (medieval Panda days). Don't be on the wrong side of Navboost.

Heads-up, Barry reported a lot of volatility around 1/21 and I am seeing a lot of movement then. I've also had several site owners reach out about movement they are seeing on their sites (and via GSC data). Also, I covered Grokipedia's surge yesterday and the latest burst was right on 1/22...