Well, that's interesting... :) Time is serving markdown to AI bots versus the typical html page a user sees. Here is what I see as ClaudeBot and ChatGPT-User. Vincent Schmalback wrote an article explaining this. See the link below. www.vincentschmalbach.com/time-serves-...

The NYT quarterly earnings revealed revenue from affiliate (Wirecutter) increased 7.1% to $75.5M. So I checked search visibility. Yep, Wirecutter surged with the May core update (and beyond into July). So the surge in revenue makes a lot of sense. :) www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/b...

"It's not commodity content"... -> Some interesting quotes from Reddit's CEO Steve Huffman during their earnings call last week. "Reddit's content is in demand and it's not *commodity content*..." And "Reddit is used for training, it's used for post-training, to teach these models how to talk..."

Reddit Q2 2026 Earnings Call | User Growth & Data Licensing Inflows Drive Double-Digit Revenue

YouTube video by i101

youtube.com

Newish client. From 21K+ domains disavowed to none in the blink of an eye. They never should have been disavowing links. They never set up unnatural links, never paid for links, never had a manual action, etc. They just saw "toxic links" show up in third-party tools and thought they should disavow.

Heads-up, I said this would happen again. Grokipedia just tanked again on 7/26. That's after originally surging, then tanking, and then surging again in May. It's obviously 100% AI-generated content and there was no way it would remain strong in Google over the long-term. Now it got hammered again.

The Mystery of ChatGPT's Phantom Index Continues... I have an important update based on the case study I wrote in late June about the site with no Google visibility yet it was being cited heavily in ChatGPT. It's still being heavily cited in ChatGPT & w/out Google/Bing rankings... It's wild.

Surging in ChatGPT, Dead in Google – The curious case of a YMYL site with no search visibility in Google, but cited like crazy in ChatGPT

Glenn Gabe of GSQi covers an interesting AI Search case study where a site with no Google visibility is surging like crazy in ChatGPT.

gsqi.com

Great to see Top Stories in many AIOs for newsy queries now. And 'Preferred Sources' bubbling up my top publishers. If you work for a news or media publisher, take some time to review AIOs with Top Stories modules.

An update on Reddit's lawsuit against Perplexity and Serpapi -> A US judge largely denies Perplexity and three data scraper firms' bid to dismiss Reddit's lawsuit over claims of copyright law violations under DMCA

Reddit keeps its strange DMCA fight over Google search results alive

Reddit advances lawsuit accusing Perplexity AI of conspiring with web scraper.

arstechnica.com

I once audited a site with 2.5M urls indexed when they only had 2.5K urls. They had gotten hammered by a core update... How? They let internal search urls get indexed and third-parties could hijack their internal search results to publish pages. John covers that scenario in the podcast. Beware. :)

Barry Schwartz@rustybrick.com · 5d ago

The Google guidelines no longer say to block internal search results but you still likely should to reduce server load issues and potential hack situations and more www.seroundtable.com/internal-sea... via @johnmu.com #google #seo #googleseo #search #internalsearch #hack #spam #content

Well, I know one button that will get a lot of use... lol -> LinkedIn Introduces a 'Seems Like AI Slop' Button www.404media.co/linkedin-int...

LinkedIn Introduces a 'Seems Like AI Slop' Button

Following 404 Media's reporting on how LinkedIn is full of AI slop, the platform is giving users a chance to report it when they see it.

404media.co

With AIOs expanding, if you want to know the percentage of queries you rank for where AIOs show up, you can do that easily in Semrush. Just add a filter for SERP features, AIOs, and SERP features on SERP, and note the number of queries. Then remove the filter and see the total queries.

Good article from Blake Stimac on CNET about the shared Claude chats getting indexed, with a long quote from me about how blocking via robots.txt works -> Private Claude Conversations Have Been Indexed by Search Engines - CNET

Private Claude Conversations Have Been Indexed by Search Engines - CNET

Shared Claude chats were made readily available for anyone who knew where to look.

share.google

And there you go... AIOs finally appear in France after being announced. Now at 27% of SERPs according to Semrush Sensor. See Wikipedia below with AIOs appearing over the past few days and Sensor showing the surge.

I wish the journalist writing about the recent Claude shares being indexed reached out to an SEO before writing this. It's filled with bad info. If you block via robots.txt AND noindex the page, Google and Bing *cannot* see the noindex tag since they can't crawl the page and see the tag in the html.

Private Claude Chats Exposed in Google and Bing Search Results

The screwup shows how tricky it can be to stop web crawlers from making ostensibly private conversations with AI chatbots entirely too public.

wired.com

I see why Anthropic is looking for a lead SEO :) -> Google Indexed Claude AI Shared Chats Before Results Were Removed The directory has been removed from the SERPs, probably via the Removals tool in GSC, but the shares were available until recently.

Google Indexed Claude AI Shared Chats Before Results Were Removed

Google Search indexed public Claude AI chat links, letting people find shared conversations through the site query before those listings disappeared soon after.

hackread.com

If YouTube is important for your business, heads-up. Custom thumbnails for Shorts and Thumbnail Generation in Ask Studio -> Making thumbnails easier on YouTube

Making thumbnails easier on YouTube

New YouTube tools give creators control over Shorts thumbnails with custom uploads, desktop frame selection, and AI generation in Ask Studio.

blog.youtube

Another site that was returning 403s to Google & tanking is now surging back (commerce.gov). Quickly checking, it's now returning 200s instead. Weird to see a number of sites do that recently. I covered nobelprize.org about a month ago, which also had that issue. I pinged them on LinkedIn about it.

ChatGPT gains access to Yelp reviews, ratings, and photos (and its 'Request a quote' feature) "Yelp's branding and links will appear when OpenAI uses its content, though OpenAI controls the design of that experience, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told Axios."

ChatGPT gains access to Yelp reviews, ratings, and photos

Yelp will feed real-time local data into ChatGPT, including reviews, photos and quote requests, with branded links back to its platform.

searchengineland.com

Focus on Health and Medical? Big heads-up. I wonder how many will connect their health data to ChatGPT?? -> Launching Health in ChatGPT to users in the U.S. openai.com/index/health...

Remember, some of those drops in traffic are due to major algorithm updates + AI and NOT just AI. The threat of blocking is also a negotiating tactic (especially with Reddit). Their $60M contract is up for renewal and they just dropped with their AI translations getting hit by the May core update.

Large Publishers Strongly Considering Blocking Google Search

Several large publishers are strongly considering blocking Google Search entirely after clicks from Google Search have continued to decline, and the exchange of value in having Google consume its cont...

seroundtable.com

Barry Schwartz@rustybrick.com · 2w ago

Large publishers are strongly considering blocking Google Search completely www.seroundtable.com/publishers-b...

Huge quarter for Google: "Google's ad revenue was up again year-over-year, with an increase of 14.5%, and overall revenue is also up 24%. This is Google's biggest quarter ever in terms of overall revenue."

Barry Schwartz@rustybrick.com · 2w ago

Google had its biggest revenue quarter yet with $119.8 billion and ad revenue was up 14.5% www.seroundtable.com/google-ad-re...

Will be interesting once AI Overview data starts flowing in for France. Doing some quick tests here, I'm not seeing AIOs yet when placing myself in France.

Trouble in Reddit Land following the May core update and June spam update (which I covered in my post). Also, the $60M Google deal is up for renewal -> Reddit, Politico, and others mull cutting Google's access to their content for AI as traffic drops; Reddit signed a $60M/year deal w/Google in 2024

Google Was a Lifeline for Publishers. Now Some Are Thinking of Cutting It Off.

Reddit, Politico and others are weighing how—or even if—they can work with the tech company as AI tools supplant traditional searches.

wsj.com

Heads-up, Google's AI experiences arrive in France today, including AIOs and AI Mode. x.com/rajanpatel/s...

A win for... scrapers? Whoa, big news in Google Land. And right ahead of their earnings call tomorrow. -> Google v. SerpApi: The Court Granted SerpApi's Motion to Dismiss h/t @rustybrick.com

Google v. SerpApi: The Court Granted Our Motion to Dismiss

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted our motion to dismiss Google’s lawsuit.

serpapi.com

Efficient scaling for agentic systems. Search information agents are coming -> 3.5 Flash-Lite Rolling Out In Google Search From I/O: "Information agents will launch first for Google AI Pro & Ultra subscribers this summer." searchengineland.com/3-5-flash-li...

Work for a news or media publisher? The focus on quality over quantity is great to see. I hope more publishers do this... "They are among numerous major publishers pivoting away from quantity of content towards quality as Google AI changes continue to lead to falling traffic referrals."

Hearst starts with 'why' as journalists asked to produce fewer articles

Plus, why Telegraph cut down its newsletters in quality over quantity focus.

pressgazette.co.uk

Well, that's concerning... -> OpenAI said it paused internal access to the unreleased model that disproved a famous 80-year-old math conjecture after the system repeatedly found ways to act outside the sandbox meant to contain it www.unite.ai/openai-pause...

Gemini etched into the silicon -> Google Plans New ‘Frozen’ Chip to Run Its AI Models Much More Efficiently "Google is working on a new server chip that would directly integrate the blueprint of its Gemini AI model, enabling the company to serve its AI models to users much more efficiently..."

Alphabet stock pops on report it's developing a more efficient AI chip

The new AI chip, called "Frozen v2," would embed parts of Gemini's architecture directly into the silicon, according to the report.

cnbc.com

Ah, that quote from Nick Fox now makes more sense... Google knew the NYT article was coming out... And the spokesperson providing a comment to the NYT even used the same quote. h/t Barry Schwartz Me: JUST ADD CLICKS TO THE AI PERFORMANCE REPORTING AND LET PUBLISHERS SEE WHAT'S GOING ON. :)

How Google’s A.I. Search Is Imperiling the Open Web

As Google incorporates more artificial intelligence into search, people are spending more time on Google. Some website operators are crying foul.

nytimes.com