News archive

17th Oct Social Platforms X's forty-sixth release switches on three duplicate checks for the video carousel, which itself stays off 16th Oct AI Mode Connected Gmail and Photos data can now personalise ads in Search, per Google's privacy policy and the AI Mode help page 16th Oct ChatGPT GPT-6 Pro in the ChatGPT chat tab gains faster responses and agents that work in parallel 16th Oct Social Platforms X's forty-fifth release adds an embedding check for near-duplicate carousel videos, switched off 15th Oct AI Overviews Google puts inline links higher in AI answers, expands timely-article carousels and reports 7x Preferred Sources growth 15th Oct AI Mode Google puts inline links higher in AI answers, expands timely-article carousels and reports 7x Preferred Sources growth 15th Oct AI Mode Universal Cart starts rolling out in the US across Search, AI Mode included, and the Gemini app 15th Oct ChatGPT ChatGPT's Chrome extension reads open tabs in Chat and controls them in Work 15th Oct ChatGPT GPT-Live-1.1 and a Quip mini model take over ChatGPT Voice, with new voices in six languages 15th Oct Gemini Universal Cart reaches the Gemini app in the US, sharing one cart with AI Mode in Search 15th Oct Social Platforms LinkedIn tests a dedicated Network feed of posts from connections and followed people 15th Oct Social Platforms X's forty-fourth release switches on the author-level brand-safety fallback for ad placement 14th Oct AI Overviews Keene files an amended complaint over AI Overviews: four alleged 2026 overviews added, the drug-trafficking one dropped 14th Oct ChatGPT Site owners report ChatGPT links losing their utm_source tag since GPT-6, with the visits filed as direct 14th Oct Gemini Google renames Gemini Spark to Task on its help page and adds a Personal Intelligence requirement 14th Oct Claude Claude.ai will draw official US voting information from Democracy Works into its answers later this month 14th Oct Social Platforms X's forty-third release lifts the favourite weight to 0.66 and cuts the Brazil election list from 2,795 accounts to 25 13th Oct AI Mode Gemini 4 Argon becomes selectable in AI Mode for Pro and Ultra subscribers worldwide 13th Oct Gemini Gemini 4 Argon reaches the Gemini app for Pro and Ultra subscribers, with a tasks toggle and Antigravity on Mac 13th Oct Microsoft Copilot Bing Webmaster Tools adds a Topics Portfolio beta to the AI Performance report 13th Oct Social Platforms Facebook adds Your algorithm: typed interests and feedback steer Feed and Reels, with LLMs in the ranking 13th Oct Social Platforms X's forty-second release raises the favourite weight to 0.6 and cuts the video-open weight to 0.02 12th Oct AI Overviews Google's AI Overviews ads test now includes "certain pharmaceutical products" in the US 12th Oct AI Mode Google expands its AI Mode and AI Overviews ads test to "certain pharmaceutical products" in the US 12th Oct ChatGPT Ahrefs: free ChatGPT searched the web for 14.4% of 66.6 million answers, and Reddit citations fell 88% 12th Oct Grok The X Subscription replaces the SuperGrok plans: Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor and X Premium on one plan 10th Oct Social Platforms Turkey bans social media accounts for under-15s and strips behavioural ranking and scrolling feeds from teen accounts 9th Oct Gemini Free Gemini accounts move to Auto model selection as the 9th Oct change takes effect; effort levels replace Extended thinking 9th Oct Social Platforms X's forty-first release adds mentioned users to the post model and rebuilds ranker training; no feed default moves 8th Oct Google Updates Google documents a UGC Fresh Data Program: a push pipeline for forum and social platforms, separate from crawling 8th Oct Google Updates September 2026 spam update completes after 13 days 16 hours, the longest of 2026 8th Oct Claude Anthropic's new usage policy bans seeding the sources that search engines and AI answers draw on; automated publishing leaves the high-risk list 8th Oct Social Platforms X's fortieth release adds a For You video carousel, off by default, and raises the coordinated-spam floor to 180,000 followers 8th Oct Social Platforms LinkedIn says its AI-slop classifiers now cover every post distributed beyond the author's network, at 94% precision 7th Oct AI Mode Direct Offers appear as a beta asset in Google Ads, putting one-time promo codes under sponsored results in AI Mode 7th Oct ChatGPT GPT-6 reaches the ChatGPT Chat tab for every tier, with Intelligent UI answers that mix text, charts and tools 7th Oct Social Platforms X's thirty-ninth release switches the popular-posts source on and lowers the unexplored-post weight to 0.015 6th Oct Google Discover Search profiles open to creators and publishers in India and Canada, with Brazil "rolling out soon" 6th Oct AI Overviews Google emails site owners their "Preferred source selections" count and asks how to report it 6th Oct AI Mode Nano Banana 2.1 starts rolling out in AI Mode, through a banana icon under the Google app search box 6th Oct AI Mode Merchant Center gains a UCP integration hub for AI Mode and Gemini checkout, US first, Australia and Canada "next year" 6th Oct Gemini Nano Banana 2.1 starts rolling out in the Gemini app, Google says on X; the release notes are silent so far 6th Oct Social Platforms X's thirty-eighth release rebuilds the popular-posts source around two jobs and adds a fourth visibility answer, "notice" 6th Oct Social Platforms Meta tests a Reels-first Facebook app in India, with the classic feed moved to a second tab 5th Oct AI Overviews Future cuts jobs a second time in 2026, with Tom's Guide's UK audience down 55% since before AI Overviews launched 5th Oct ChatGPT OpenAI will test visual ads during ChatGPT image generation in the US, and says ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people a week 5th Oct ChatGPT OpenAI will watermark ChatGPT and Codex text in the EU, with the detector limited to approved researchers 3rd Oct Gemini Free Gemini accounts keep only Flash-Lite from 9th Oct; AI Plus loses Pro and AI Pro gains Deep Think 3rd Oct Social Platforms X's thirty-seventh release adds a popular-posts source and an author exploration bonus, both off, and moves the reply-spam exemption score to 62 2nd Oct Google Updates Google shows how long crawling, indexing and update recovery take: 3 to 6 months after a core update 2nd Oct Google Discover Google describes Discover's eligibility gate at its Barcelona event: three routes, and no separate Discover crawler 2nd Oct AI Overviews Ahrefs: AI Overviews on 73% of branded keyword crawls in September, up from 61% in July 2nd Oct AI Mode Merchant loyalty benefits become eligible to show in AI Mode and the Gemini app, US only 2nd Oct Social Platforms X's thirty-sixth release adds a candidate source named SID, off by default, and a Brazil election label to Under the Hood 1st Oct Google Updates Google's people-first content guidance adds a main content section and calls fabricated author profiles "a form of deception" 1st Oct Google Updates Google's generative AI content guidance now calls it "critical" to fact-check AI output by hand before publishing 1st Oct AI Overviews DemandSphere: AI Overviews appeared on 80% to 90% of tracked branded queries in late September, up from 26% 1st Oct ChatGPT ChatGPT adds a "Try on" button to clothing and accessory listings, and a Favorites list for products 1st Oct Social Platforms X's thirty-fifth release leaves the feed defaults alone and adds a per-reason policy for which actions a limited post keeps

30th Sep AI Overviews Judge Mehta dismisses the Chegg and Penske Media suits over AI Overviews: an expectation of traffic "is not an agreement" 30th Sep ChatGPT ChatGPT Ads adds bulk creation for product feed campaigns, product review status and cross-goal conversion reporting 30th Sep Gemini Skills roll out globally in Gemini chat and will replace Gems, which start shutting down in November 30th Sep Social Platforms Reddit will stop supporting RSS feeds on 13th Nov and moves its public data API to paid access 30th Sep Social Platforms X's thirty-fourth release resets the cold-start slot: posts under two hours old, authors up to 50,000 followers 29th Sep AI Overviews Google appeals the EU's order to share Search data with rivals and AI chatbots 29th Sep ChatGPT DevDay 2026: OpenAI cites 1.2 billion weekly users, launches always-on agents and ranks plugins inside conversations 29th Sep ChatGPT GPT-6.1 Sol ships to ChatGPT Work and Codex a week after GPT-6 Sol, and is "not yet available in Chat" 29th Sep ChatGPT Lightspeed study: AI shopping answers pick the national chain over a smaller store up to 94% of the time 29th Sep Social Platforms X's thirty-third release changes three feed weights and prints a 30-country age-verification list 28th Sep AI Mode AI Mode monitoring opens to all users globally, after a paid-only start 28th Sep ChatGPT Graphite and Similarweb: 43% of ad-eligible US ChatGPT users have seen an ad, and click rates run from 0.6% to 1.9% by market 28th Sep Gemini Gemini adds utm_source=gemini to the links in its answers; Mueller: "I see it too" 26th Sep Social Platforms X's thirty-second release moves two reply-spam thresholds to 125,000 followers and adds an appeal-aware enforcement gate 25th Sep Google Updates Google researchers describe SAFE, a multi-agent system that investigates networks of "AI slop" channels 25th Sep Microsoft Copilot Sighting: Bing tests an "AI Mode" tab in its search menu 25th Sep Social Platforms TikTok's first state settlement sets a two-hour cap for Alabama teens and promises a non-personalized feed 25th Sep Social Platforms X's thirty-first release rebuilds visibility filtering, publishes the Under the Hood page code and adds ten accounts to the Brazil election filter 24th Sep Google Updates Google releases the September 2026 spam update, with a rollout of "up to two weeks" 24th Sep Google Updates Search Console splits web performance into text-based and multimodal searches; Lens and Circle to Search data was never counted before 24th Sep Google Discover Chartbeat: Discover referrals down 34.3% year on year, from 6.6% the year before 24th Sep Social Platforms X's thirtieth release moves the reply-spam split to 250,000 followers and pulls the value model into a shared crate 23rd Sep AI Overviews UK CMA reopens its Google choice-screen plan to admit AI assistants, with an attribution condition 23rd Sep ChatGPT ChatGPT Ads add seven Asian markets and pass 60 countries; OpenAI lists India as a live market 23rd Sep Social Platforms X's twenty-ninth release moves the reply-spam split to 225,000 followers and gives the vm-ranker its own value model 22nd Sep Google Updates Google adds CrUX ad metrics to its page experience documentation; Mueller: "Not everything is a direct search ranking factor" 22nd Sep AI Overviews Comscore: AI Overviews appeared in 39.4% of US desktop Google searches in June 2026 22nd Sep AI Mode Google auto-enrols eligible US Shopify merchants in native checkout inside AI Mode and the Gemini app 22nd Sep ChatGPT GPT-6 Sol and Luna arrive in ChatGPT Work and Codex at half the API price, and are "not yet available in Chat" 22nd Sep Gemini Eligible US Shopify merchants are enrolled by default in native checkout inside the Gemini app 22nd Sep Microsoft Copilot Comscore: Copilot Search appeared in 17.3% of US desktop Bing searches in June 2026 22nd Sep Social Platforms X's twenty-eighth release raises the coordinated-spam floor to 80,000 followers and starts logging where feed candidates come from 21st Sep Grok Grok 4.7 replaces 4.6 as the flagship, forty days on 18th Sep Google Discover Google tests a "Dive deeper" button in Discover that opens an AI topic overview 18th Sep Social Platforms X's twenty-seventh release adds legal-demand withholding to Under the Hood reports and deletes a dwell-regret scoring mode 18th Sep Social Platforms X's twenty-sixth release grows the Brazil election filter by 69 accounts and adds delayed ads conversion heads 17th Sep Microsoft Copilot Publishers' brief cites Microsoft's own data: click-through fell 51% to 94% from Bing web search to Bing Chat 17th Sep Social Platforms X's twenty-fifth release raises its reply-spam thresholds again and drops the search-relevance judge labels 16th Sep Google Discover Search profile threshold falls again to 10,000 followers, with multi-brand logins and a site badge 16th Sep ChatGPT Audit: ChatGPT states a first-person product preference in 79% of recommendations, AI Overviews in 2% 16th Sep ChatGPT OpenAI tests Sponsored Agents, ads a user can talk to, and puts ChatGPT Ads into Shopify and HubSpot 16th Sep Social Platforms X's twenty-fourth release adds a separate reply-spam model for big accounts and a ten-second click-dwell target 15th Sep Google Updates Google Research describes Retrieve-for-Train, a small diffusion model that generates query fan-outs in one pass 15th Sep AI Mode Search Live now runs on Gemini 3.8 Live, for everyone globally, with web links in spoken answers 15th Sep ChatGPT Ofcom: 21% of UK adults used an AI tool for news in the past month, with ChatGPT the most used at 13% 15th Sep Gemini Gemini Live moves to 3.8 Live Extended Thinking, a voice model that reasons while it talks 15th Sep Perplexity Dow Jones v. Perplexity gets a third extension: fact discovery to 10th Dec 2026, expert discovery to 16th Mar 2027 15th Sep Instagram Meta One sells clickable links in Instagram posts and Reels, up to 12 of each a month 15th Sep Social Platforms X's twenty-third release adds an ads purchase-value signal, feed-diversity metrics and a higher spam-filter threshold 14th Sep AI Overviews Google confirms an "AI contribution pilot" that pays publishers for content used in AI Overviews, AI Mode and the Gemini app 14th Sep AI Overviews A federal judge lets a defamation claim over AI Overviews proceed against Google 14th Sep ChatGPT OpenAI retires automatic switching from Instant to Thinking for Plus and Pro users worldwide 14th Sep Gemini Google's "AI contribution pilot" counts the Gemini app among the products that pay publishers 12th Sep Social Platforms X's twenty-second release adds LLM-judged search relevance labels and refreshes the Brazil election filter 10th Sep ChatGPT OpenAI's ad policy, version 1.6, lets it decline ads that conflict with its business interests or competitive position 10th Sep Gemini The Gemini app arrives on Windows, free and global, with an Alt + Space shortcut 10th Sep Instagram Mosseri says a chronological feed makes "the average user experience" much worse, as Australia drafts an opt-out law 10th Sep Social Platforms X's twenty-first release adds per-country account takedown data to Under the Hood and new ranking surfaces 9th Sep AI Mode AI Mode links Yahoo Fantasy and Sleeper accounts for lineup advice, US only 9th Sep Social Platforms X adds a new ad unit to its home feed code and carries the safety action through visibility filtering 8th Sep Google Updates Google rolls out its DMA results pages in Europe and calls them its largest quality reduction 8th Sep AI Overviews AlsoAsked: 97% of People Also Ask answers are now AI Overviews, up from 12.6% in 2025 8th Sep AI Overviews Merchant Center's AI performance report is live in five countries, with AI search terms and intents 8th Sep AI Mode Merchant Center's AI performance report is live in five countries, with AI search terms and intents 8th Sep ChatGPT ChatGPT Images 2.5 rolls out to every ChatGPT tier, with Sketch, templates and shared prompts 8th Sep Social Platforms X feeds its ranker the shape of every post: media, text length and links, for the quoted post too 8th Sep Social Platforms Australia drafts a duty-of-care law that makes platforms offer every adult a choice of algorithmic or followed-only feed 6th Sep AI Overviews Dartmouth audit of 1,920 health queries: YouTube is the most-cited domain in US AI Overviews, ahead of Mayo Clinic, the CDC and the WHO 4th Sep AI Mode Google confirms a "small experiment" serving exact and phrase match Search ads in AI Mode 4th Sep AI Mode Google confirms Gemini 3.8 Flash in AI Mode is dropping citations, and promises a fix 4th Sep Gemini Lyria 3.5 brings music templates and longer tracks to the Gemini app for every user 4th Sep Social Platforms X tightens its cold-start slot for the Phoenix retrieval experiment, and wires per-request overrides into the ranking call 4th Sep Social Platforms X merges its first outside pull request, then ships a release that adds an LLM reply-spam classifier 3rd Sep ChatGPT GPT-6 Astra starts rolling out to paid ChatGPT tiers, with access off by default for enterprises 3rd Sep Grok Grok Bot opens to enterprises, free for two weeks, with admin controls added 2nd Sep AI Mode Gemini 3.8 Flash becomes selectable in AI Mode, three weeks after 3.7 2nd Sep Gemini Gemini 3.8 Flash reaches the Gemini app for Pro and Ultra subscribers 2nd Sep Social Platforms X flips its Phoenix aggregation default to a long-dwell variant, and lets its bot detector file reports 1st Sep AI Overviews The EU asks publishers whether they will use Google's AI opt-out 1st Sep Social Platforms X makes the risk-bucket ads blender the default for the home timeline, and rewrites its moderation rules as two tables 1st Sep Social Platforms X moves its country-by-country adult-content gating into a live config, and starts recording ranking scores per experiment bucket

31st Aug Google Discover The Discover Generative AI report reaches every property, three months after a logging note first confirmed it existed 31st Aug AI Overviews Search Console's Generative AI reports and the AI opt-out control reach every property worldwide 31st Aug AI Overviews Audit of 15,942 citations: AI Overviews lean on commercial health sites and YouTube where ChatGPT leans on government pages and Wikipedia 31st Aug AI Overviews Google publishes the application rules for the EU search-data program, and never mentions AI chatbots 31st Aug AI Mode Search Console's Generative AI reports and AI opt-out control reach every property worldwide 31st Aug ChatGPT ChatGPT ads reach a $1bn run rate, and self-serve buying opens across Europe, India and North Africa 31st Aug ChatGPT OpenAI's ad policy, version 1.5, lets licensed legal services advertise in the US 31st Aug Microsoft Copilot Microsoft puts a sign-in wall on Copilot, and leaves Copilot Search in Bing open 31st Aug Instagram Unlabeled AI-generated profiles lose recommendation eligibility 30th Aug ChatGPT Study: the language of the question, not the user's location, decides whether ChatGPT names local suppliers 29th Aug Grok Grok Bot gets an X connector, and xAI hands paid users X API credits to use it 28th Aug Google Updates Google stops applying site reputation manual actions for EEA searchers from 30th Aug 28th Aug AI Overviews AI Overviews start expanding into full AI Mode-style answers by default, no "Show more" click 28th Aug AI Mode Sighting: Shopping ads move inside the AI Mode answer for the first time 28th Aug Gemini Gemini Notebook moves to compute-based usage limits that refresh every five hours 28th Aug Social Platforms X adds a config switch that can change which ranking-model head serves, and locks its moderation rules under a golden test corpus 28th Aug Social Platforms X caps ads by the riskiness of nearby posts, and stored reply scores can now only fall 27th Aug Google Updates Google: naming an update is "primarily transparency", and anything actionable arrives separately 27th Aug AI Mode Hotel booking arrives in AI Mode, with flight price tracking in 180+ countries 27th Aug Gemini Expert Intelligence puts 100,000 licensed books into Gemini Notebook, with AI Mode named as next 26th Aug Google Updates Google confirms it is routing search result links through google.com/goto 26th Aug AI Overviews A Wikipedia study estimates AI Overviews cut its search referrals about 5%, and revises its own earlier 15% 26th Aug Gemini Gemini Live starts handing voice requests to Spark, and reads your inbox out loud 26th Aug Microsoft Copilot Sighting: Bing tests relabeling Copilot Search answers as "AI Overview" 26th Aug Claude Claude in Chrome goes generally available and starts acting without asking, and Claude gets a second browser of its own 26th Aug Grok Grok Bot reaches the $30 tier, and xAI widened the same post rather than writing a new one 26th Aug Instagram Meta's settlement with US states commits it to a teen chronological feed option, hidden likes and a two-hour cap 26th Aug Social Platforms X starts showing follower counts to the model that judges reply spam 25th Aug AI Overviews At the Chegg and Penske hearing, Judge Mehta says Google's AI answers are built "on the backs of the publishers" 25th Aug AI Mode AI Mode gains link carousels for developing topics 25th Aug Social Platforms X switches on the brand-safety verdict it shipped disabled, and grows its Brazilian account list from 665 to 2,328 24th Aug Social Platforms X adds a fifth brand-safety verdict for its most severe labels, and moves the reply-spam boundary again to 100,000 followers 21st Aug Google Updates August 2026 spam update completes after 2 days 16 hours 21st Aug Perplexity A sealing order confirms Britannica's lawyers have inspected Perplexity's source code 21st Aug Grok Grok Bot comes down to the $100 tier, and Grok 4.6 lands on Google's enterprise platform 21st Aug Social Platforms X moves the reply-spam boundary from 60,000 followers to 80,000, and wires 20 ad conversion types into the ranker 20th Aug Google Discover Discover readers get to tune their feed by typing what they want 20th Aug AI Overviews Publishers can now put a "Preferred Sources" button on their own pages 20th Aug Social Platforms X builds AI-generated trend labels into For You posts, with a tap-through to the trend 19th Aug AI Overviews Interactive visuals and practice quizzes start appearing inside AI Overviews 19th Aug AI Mode Generative UI goes global in AI Mode, and notebooks move into Search 19th Aug Gemini Google gives college students a free year of a paid Gemini plan 19th Aug Grok Grok Build opens to every plan, and publishes apps straight into the X timeline 19th Aug Grok Grok 4.6 reaches GitHub Copilot and Amazon Bedrock in five days 19th Aug Social Platforms X extends muted keywords to the Following timeline, and makes them match quoted posts and reply threads 18th Aug Google Updates Google releases the August 2026 spam update 18th Aug Google Discover Search profile handles become editable, but only to a handle you already own 18th Aug AI Overviews A second randomized experiment: hiding AI Overviews raised click-through 8.8 points 18th Aug AI Overviews One site tracked its AI Overviews traffic for nine months and found 22% of it filed as Direct 18th Aug AI Mode A randomized experiment routed every search through AI Mode: clicks fell 18.8 points and satisfaction fell with them 18th Aug ChatGPT ChatGPT ads are going to 31 European countries, the pilot's largest expansion 18th Aug ChatGPT Sighting: ChatGPT pins a Shopping tab to the sidebar, with its own search page 18th Aug Gemini Gemini in Chrome reaches every US Android user, with auto browse for paying subscribers 18th Aug Social Platforms X wires its new topic-diversity signals into the ranker, and chains its two brand-safety generations 17th Aug AI Overviews Search Console under-reported AI impressions from 13th to 17th Aug 17th Aug AI Overviews Google stops the AI-Overviews illustration test: "a small experiment we're no longer running" 17th Aug AI Mode Search Console under-reported AI impressions from 13th to 17th Aug 17th Aug ChatGPT ChatGPT grounds most answers on its own index, a 200-character snippet and a cache that ignores your headers 17th Aug Gemini A detector study estimates 8.9% of pages behind generative answers are optimized for them, and Gemini grounding sees more than Search 17th Aug Social Platforms X adds topic-level diversity to For You, in a release it did not announce 14th Aug AI Mode Gemini 3.7 Flash becomes a selectable model in AI Mode 14th Aug Social Platforms X drops 665 Brazilian candidate accounts out of For You, and corrects how its new weights are being read 13th Aug Google Discover A fourth Discover logging error, on the day the Search-side AI report broke too 13th Aug AI Overviews AI-generated illustrations start appearing inside AI Overviews, and a recipe publisher objects 13th Aug Gemini Gemini 3.7 Flash takes over Gemini Spark 13th Aug Social Platforms X publishes its ranking weights and its visibility filters, plus a tool that shows your own labels 12th Aug Google Discover Google cuts the Search profile follower thresholds to 35,000 12th Aug ChatGPT Health and finance advertisers get a route into ChatGPT ads, case by case 12th Aug Gemini Gemini connects to twelve more services, from OpenTable to Zocdoc 12th Aug Grok Grok 4.6 becomes the flagship, aimed at long-running agents 11th Aug AI Overviews The French press files against Google over AI Overviews and AI Mode 11th Aug ChatGPT ChatGPT ads reach Brazil and Mexico, completing the May list at nine markets 11th Aug ChatGPT Sighting: the ChatGPT "Sources" link moves behind the three-dot menu 11th Aug Gemini The Gemini app passes 1 billion monthly users 11th Aug Grok Grok Bot: agents that sign into your tools and keep working 10th Aug AI Overviews Google points the judge at an App Store ruling, two weeks before the AI Overviews hearing 10th Aug AI Mode Google tests AI buttons on the desktop home page that open AI Mode 9th Aug ChatGPT ChatGPT Atlas stops working, nine months after launch 7th Aug ChatGPT ChatGPT ad pixels switch to automatic advanced matching by default on 17th August 6th Aug ChatGPT GPT-5.6 Luna becomes the free-tier default and free text chats go unlimited 5th Aug AI Overviews Pew's click study gets a peer-reviewed version, and the click gap survives the controls 5th Aug Gemini Google Assistant shuts down on 4th September, and Gemini takes the slot 4th Aug AI Overviews How Google counts an AI Overviews impression: only once the link is in view 4th Aug AI Mode How Google counts an AI Mode impression: every follow-up is a new query 4th Aug Perplexity Ninth Circuit vacates Amazon's injunction against Comet's shopping agent 3rd Aug Claude The IAB publishes a measurement standard for AI visibility, and refuses to rank the tools selling it 3rd Aug Claude Testing a prompt on its own changes the answer in 44.7% of cases 3rd Aug Social Platforms Pinterest moves search relevance judging to vision-language models

31st Jul ChatGPT ChatGPT crosses 1 billion weekly users 31st Jul Perplexity Reddit's DMCA circumvention claims against Perplexity and SerpApi survive dismissal 31st Jul Social Platforms LinkedIn ranks comments per viewer and limits automated and generic ones 30th Jul AI Overviews Top Stories sits inside the AI Overview on one in six news searches 30th Jul ChatGPT ChatGPT is Google's sixth most-clicked destination, and buys more of those clicks than any other 30th Jul Gemini Gemini Spark starts using your logged-in accounts to run web errands 30th Jul Social Platforms Reddit's "choppy" search referrals outweigh a 61% revenue quarter 29th Jul Google Discover Discover performance becomes measurable for social and video posts 29th Jul AI Overviews The two US AI Overviews antitrust suits get a joint hearing date 29th Jul AI Mode Productrise: AI Mode shows 95% fewer product listings than standard search 29th Jul Instagram Google Search Console opens Instagram reporting to every account 28th Jul Grok Build Mode ships, and Grok 4.5 arrives in GitHub Copilot 27th Jul AI Overviews Similarweb puts AI Overviews on 43% of US searches, nearly triple last year 24th Jul AI Overviews Google signs the EU's AI-content transparency code, days before the labelling rules bite 24th Jul Gemini Starbuck v Google: a defamation claim over Gemini outputs survives dismissal 24th Jul Grok Grok lands inside Google Workspace, completing the Office set 24th Jul Social Platforms Facebook tests opening straight into full-screen video, with Classic Feed demoted to a tab 23rd Jul AI Overviews The EU's first DMA fine on Google names AI Overviews and AI Mode 22nd Jul AI Overviews AI Overviews and AI Mode launch in France 22nd Jul AI Mode AI Mode goes live in France 22nd Jul ChatGPT Similarweb report: citations reach 6.8% of ChatGPT answers, ads reach 26% of chats 22nd Jul Grok Grok 4.5 reaches grok.com, X, iOS and Android 21st Jul AI Overviews Major publishers say blocking Google is now on the table 21st Jul AI Mode Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite starts rolling out in Google Search 20th Jul AI Overviews AOP: Google referrals to eight UK publishing groups fell 7.1% in a quarter 20th Jul Claude Anthropic's $1.5 billion authors settlement gets final approval 17th Jul AI Overviews Top Stories carousel goes live inside AI Overviews 17th Jul AI Overviews Google says AI features send "billions of clicks" to sites every week 16th Jul AI Overviews The EU orders Google to share Search data with rivals, AI chatbots included 16th Jul AI Mode AI Mode connects to Instacart, Canva and YouTube Music 16th Jul Gemini The EU orders Google to open Android to rival assistants, naming Gemini as the benchmark 16th Jul Claude DataDome: Claude referrals more than double, while Meta's crawlers take over the AI web 15th Jul AI Overviews Ozone: publisher ad supply fell up to 40% in Q2 as AI search shrank the open web 15th Jul AI Mode Personal Intelligence connects Google Calendar to AI Mode 14th Jul AI Overviews German media regulators put AI Overviews under national media law 14th Jul AI Overviews Common Sense Media rates Google AI search "Unacceptable" for children 14th Jul AI Overviews Image generation comes to AI Overviews 14th Jul AI Mode Common Sense Media rates AI Mode "Unacceptable" for children 10th Jul Gemini Publishers sue Google over the books behind Gemini 2nd Jul AI Overviews Further Exploration starts appearing at the end of AI Overviews 1st Jul AI Overviews First randomized experiment puts the click loss at 39.8%, and finds the lost clicks were not lower quality

30th Jun AI Mode Recipe links move to the top of AI Mode responses 29th Jun Google Discover AI Summaries that bundle publishers start appearing in the UK feed 29th Jun AI Mode Google commits to bringing AI Mode to France by 23rd Sep 27th Jun Instagram Mosseri tests making "Your Algorithm" central to the app 26th Jun Google Updates June 2026 spam update finishes rolling out in about 2 days 24th Jun Google Discover A third Discover logging error in seven weeks, and a first confirmation hiding in the fine print 22nd Jun ChatGPT ChatGPT ads reach Japan and South Korea; UK advertisers get self-serve 19th Jun Google Updates Google researchers describe S-CTS, a system that terminates clusters of coordinated "AI slop" channels on a video platform 18th Jun Claude When an assistant recommends brands, it mostly cites other companies' pages 16th Jun ChatGPT LLMs pick the brand they recognise in every tie, and a fabricated authority claim breaks it 16th Jun Microsoft Copilot Bing Webmaster Tools adds Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare 12th Jun AI Mode Information agents roll out to AI Ultra subscribers 10th Jun Instagram "Your Algorithm" reaches the main Feed 9th Jun AI Overviews SparkToro: 68% of US Google searches now end without a click 8th Jun AI Mode Google: AI Mode will not become the default for Chrome search 4th Jun Google Discover Search profiles launch in the US, giving publishers a claimable identity in Discover 4th Jun Instagram Instagram Plus launches: the first paid distribution lever 3rd Jun AI Overviews UK regulator orders an AI Overviews opt-out for publishers 3rd Jun AI Mode Search Console adds Generative AI reports and an AI opt-out control 3rd Jun ChatGPT A natural experiment finds most AEO growth was the platform, not the optimization 3rd Jun Claude SE Ranking: Claude referrals grew 386% in four months, from a tiny base 2nd Jun Google Updates May 2026 core update completes after a volatile 12-day rollout 2nd Jun ChatGPT Merchant product feeds resurface inside the ChatGPT Ads Manager 2nd Jun Microsoft Copilot Microsoft announces Web IQ, grounding APIs built for AI agents

28th May AI Overviews Munich court: AI Overviews are Google's own words, and Google answers for them 28th May Perplexity CNN sues Perplexity, the first US television network to sue an answer engine 27th May AI Overviews Preferred sources come to AI Overviews and AI Mode 27th May AI Overviews Merchant Center gets an AI performance report covering AI Overviews 27th May AI Mode Merchant Center gets an AI performance report covering AI Mode 26th May AI Overviews Cursor data from 846,000 sessions: an AI Overview slows searchers down and flattens intent 25th May Claude A 252,000-trial experiment on what wins the first citation 21st May Grok SpaceX's IPO filing produces the first audited Grok user number: 117 million 20th May AI Overviews I/O 2026: AI Overviews and AI Mode merge into one experience 19th May AI Mode I/O 2026: AI Mode passes 1 billion monthly users and merges with AI Overviews 19th May Gemini I/O 2026: Gemini Spark launches and the app passes 900 million users 15th May Social Platforms X's second algorithm release makes the repo runnable, and documents ads inside the ranking pipeline 14th May AI Overviews SISTRIX: an AI Overview sits on 72% of health searches for UK newsbrands 14th May AI Overviews A causal study finds AI Overviews raised Reddit engagement, and AI Mode erased the gain 14th May AI Mode A causal study finds AI Mode erased the Reddit engagement gain AI Overviews created 14th May Grok Google Analytics starts counting Grok referrals for you 13th May AI Overviews A 55,000-query audit finds 30% of AI Overview sources appear nowhere on the first page 13th May Microsoft Copilot Microsoft retires Copilot Mode in Edge after nine and a half months 12th May Social Platforms TikTok GO puts bookable hotels and experiences inside TikTok search and location pages 7th May ChatGPT An undocumented change makes ChatGPT's brand links dramatically more prominent 6th May AI Overviews Google announces five link improvements for AI Overviews and AI Mode 5th May AI Overviews A musician sues Google for C$1.5m after an AI Overview called him a sex offender 5th May ChatGPT Self-serve Ads Manager opens to every US business, with no minimum spend 1st May AI Overviews SISTRIX: AI Overviews reuse the same sources for months 1st May AI Mode SISTRIX: AI Mode replaces 56% of its cited sources every week

30th Apr AI Overviews Preferred sources open up to every language Google Search supports 30th Apr AI Overviews A peer-reviewed study finds sites that block Google-Extended cited less often in AI Overviews 30th Apr Instagram Aggregators become ineligible for recommendations across photos, carousels and Reels 24th Apr AI Overviews Seer: first partial CTR recovery on AI Overview queries 21st Apr Microsoft Copilot AI Max ads arrive for Copilot surfaces; Copilot Checkout reaches 500,000 merchants 16th Apr AI Mode Clicking a link in AI Mode on Chrome now opens the page beside the answer 15th Apr Claude A Wharton and Rutgers study measures what blocking AI crawlers cost publishers: about 7% of weekly traffic 14th Apr AI Mode The Google app for desktop leaves Labs with AI Mode built in 10th Apr AI Mode Agentic restaurant booking expands to eight more countries, subscription-free 8th Apr Google Updates March 2026 core update completes; Mueller explains staged rollouts 2nd Apr Gemini Gemini overtakes Perplexity to become the second largest source of AI referrals

31st Mar AI Overviews Index Exchange: ad requests down 40 to 50% in health and careers, 7% in news 26th Mar AI Mode Search Live goes global across all AI Mode countries and languages 25th Mar Google Updates March 2026 spam update completes in a record 19.5 hours 24th Mar ChatGPT OpenAI deprioritizes Instant Checkout and pivots ChatGPT commerce to discovery 20th Mar AI Overviews A US court dismisses a publisher antitrust case, and rules AI Overviews is not a separate product 19th Mar AI Overviews Google tells the CMA it is exploring an AI Overviews opt-out, without saying when 18th Mar Perplexity Comet ships on iPhone, completing the browser's platform story 17th Mar AI Overviews Chartbeat: search referrals to small publishers are down 60% in two years 13th Mar Social Platforms Facebook publishes the results of its originality crackdown: original Reels watch time doubled 12th Mar Social Platforms LinkedIn documents its feed ranking in detail, and none of the popular "rules" appear in it 4th Mar AI Mode Canvas graduates from Labs to everyone in the US 3rd Mar Google Discover Reach reports Discover traffic down 46% in half a year 1st Mar AI Overviews BrightEdge: AI Overviews now appear on about 48% of tracked queries

27th Feb Google Updates First-ever Discover core update completes (US English only) 27th Feb Perplexity Perplexity launches Computer, a cloud agent that routes work across 19 models 25th Feb AI Overviews SISTRIX: AI Overviews cost the German market 265 million clicks a month 20th Feb Google Discover The first measurement of the February core update: more topics, fewer publishers 18th Feb AI Mode AI Mode adds 53 languages, its largest single expansion 18th Feb Perplexity Perplexity kills its ads program entirely 16th Feb AI Overviews Google calls an AI Overviews opt-out a "huge engineering project", and licenses the FT 10th Feb AI Overviews European Publishers Council files antitrust complaint over AI Overviews 10th Feb Microsoft Copilot Bing Webmaster Tools ships AI Performance, the first citation-level AI report 9th Feb ChatGPT Ads go live in ChatGPT for US users on the Free and Go tiers 5th Feb Google Discover The February 2026 Discover core update, the first Google has ever named for Discover on its dashboard 5th Feb Social Platforms Reddit: 80 million weekly searchers, and one unified search 4th Feb AI Overviews Ahrefs: AI Overviews now cut top-result CTR by 58% 4th Feb AI Mode Alphabet Q4: AI Mode queries per user have doubled since launch 2nd Feb Grok SpaceX absorbs xAI, and the site starts calling itself SpaceXAI

27th Jan AI Overviews Gemini 3 becomes the default AI Overviews model worldwide 27th Jan AI Mode AI Overviews now hand off into AI Mode conversations 26th Jan Grok The European Commission opens a DSA investigation over Grok 23rd Jan Google Discover Google confirms AI-written Discover headlines are a feature, not an experiment 22nd Jan AI Mode Personal Intelligence connects Gmail and Photos to AI Mode 22nd Jan Social Platforms TikTok's US joint venture closes: the algorithm gets American governance 20th Jan Social Platforms X open-sources its recommendation algorithm, for the second time in its history 16th Jan ChatGPT OpenAI announces ads and takes ChatGPT Go worldwide at 8 dollars 14th Jan Gemini Personal Intelligence connects Gmail, Photos, Search and YouTube to Gemini 12th Jan Google Discover Chartbeat data: Discover referrals down 21% globally, 29% in the US 12th Jan AI Overviews Google restricts health queries in AI Overviews after Guardian probe 8th Jan Microsoft Copilot Copilot Checkout launches in the US with PayPal, Stripe and Shopify 6th Jan Grok xAI closes a 20 billion dollar Series E with Nvidia and Cisco investing 5th Jan Instagram What Mosseri's AI-authenticity message actually said, and the "algorithm shift" it never announced

29th Dec Google Updates December 2025 core update wraps up the year 28th Dec Google Discover Marfeel: AI Summaries are 51% of the Discover feed, and their clicks default to YouTube 19th Dec AI Overviews AI Overview ads expand to 11 more countries 18th Dec Claude Claude for Chrome reaches every paid plan 18th Dec Instagram Instagram caps hashtags at five per post 17th Dec AI Mode Gemini 3 Flash becomes the default AI Mode model worldwide 17th Dec Gemini Gemini 3 Flash becomes the app default, with a Fast, Thinking and Pro picker 15th Dec AI Overviews Semrush: AIO prevalence peaked at 24.61% in July, settled near 16% 15th Dec AI Overviews Ahrefs: AI Overviews and AI Mode agree on the answer and disagree on the sources 15th Dec AI Mode Ahrefs: AI Mode cites more, and it barely cites what AI Overviews cites 10th Dec Instagram "Your Algorithm" launches on Reels 9th Dec AI Overviews European Commission opens Article 102 investigation into Google's AI search features 5th Dec Perplexity The New York Times sues Perplexity, a day after the Chicago Tribune 4th Dec AI Overviews Publishers take their AI Overviews evidence to the US Department of Justice 1st Dec AI Mode Gemini 3 Pro in AI Mode expands to nearly 120 countries

18th Nov AI Overviews Gemini 3 launches and comes to Search on day one 18th Nov AI Mode Gemini 3 comes to AI Mode on launch day, a first for Search 18th Nov Gemini Gemini 3 Pro lands app-wide and Gemini Agent arrives 7th Nov Microsoft Copilot A Search mode arrives inside the Copilot app 5th Nov AI Mode AI Mode gets an official button on Chrome's mobile new-tab page 4th Nov Perplexity Amazon sues Perplexity over Comet's shopping agent

29th Oct AI Mode Alphabet Q3: AI Mode passes 75 million daily active users 28th Oct Google Discover Fake AI-written stories reach millions in the UK feed, and Google promises a fix 27th Oct Grok Grokipedia launches, and briefly becomes a search-visibility story 23rd Oct Microsoft Copilot Copilot Fall Release bundles Copilot Search, connectors and an upgraded Edge 22nd Oct Perplexity Reddit sues Perplexity and the scraping supply chain behind it 14th Oct Instagram Teen accounts default to a PG-13-inspired content standard 10th Oct AI Overviews UK CMA gives Google strategic market status, AI Overviews included 8th Oct AI Mode AI Mode tops 200 countries and territories in its biggest expansion 2nd Oct Perplexity Comet goes free worldwide, with seven publishers signed to Comet Plus

29th Sep ChatGPT Instant Checkout launches: buying inside ChatGPT, starting with Etsy 24th Sep AI Mode Search Live reaches general availability in the US 24th Sep Instagram Instagram passes 3 billion monthly users, and names what drove it 18th Sep AI Mode AI Mode comes to the Chrome desktop omnibox 17th Sep Google Discover Follow comes to Discover, and social posts formally enter the feed 12th Sep AI Overviews Penske Media sues Google over AI Overviews 8th Sep AI Mode AI Mode gets its first non-English languages

29th Aug Claude Cloudflare's crawl-to-refer series: Anthropic crawls tens of thousands of pages per referral 25th Aug Perplexity Comet Plus: 80% of revenue to publishers, seeded by a $42.5 million pool 21st Aug AI Mode AI Mode expands to 180+ new countries and territories in English 11th Aug Microsoft Copilot Bing Search APIs go dark after fifteen years 7th Aug Microsoft Copilot GPT-5 arrives in Copilot with Smart Mode routing 6th Aug AI Overviews Liz Reid says total organic clicks from Search are relatively stable 6th Aug Instagram Reposts launch globally, and they feed recommendations 4th Aug Perplexity Cloudflare accuses Perplexity of stealth crawling past no-crawl directives

30th Jul AI Overviews Authoritas: UK news publishers lose 47.5% of desktop clicks to AI Overviews 28th Jul AI Mode AI Mode launches in the United Kingdom 23rd Jul AI Overviews AI Overviews pass 2 billion monthly users 22nd Jul AI Overviews Pew: users click a result on 8% of visits with an AI summary vs 15% without 16th Jul AI Mode Gemini 2.5 Pro and Deep Search arrive for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers 15th Jul Google Discover AI Summaries launch in the US Discover feed 10th Jul Instagram Public professional Instagram content becomes Google-indexable by default 8th Jul AI Mode AI Mode becomes generally available in India

30th Jun AI Overviews Independent Publishers Alliance files the first EU complaint over AI Overviews 16th Jun AI Mode AI Mode traffic starts counting in Search Console, with no separate filter

27th May Claude Claude web search goes global on every plan 21st May AI Mode Google starts testing Search and Shopping ads in US AI Mode 20th May AI Overviews I/O 2025: AI Overviews pass 1.5 billion monthly users in 200+ countries 20th May AI Mode I/O 2025: AI Mode rolls out to everyone in the US

21st Apr AI Overviews Amsive: AI Overviews cut average CTR by 15.49%, branded queries gain 18.68% 17th Apr AI Overviews Ahrefs: an AI Overview means a 34.5% lower CTR for the top result

21st Mar Claude Claude's search backend identified as Brave, by three independent signals 20th Mar Claude Claude gets web search, with direct citations 6th Mar Grok Tow Center: Grok cited news worse than any other AI search tool tested 5th Mar AI Overviews AI Overviews upgraded to Gemini 2.0 and opened to teens and signed-out users 5th Mar AI Mode AI Mode debuts as a Search Labs experiment

24th Feb AI Overviews Chegg becomes the first company to sue Google over AI Overviews traffic loss

28th Oct AI Overviews AI Overviews expand to more than 100 countries and 1 billion monthly users 3rd Oct AI Overviews Ads go live inside AI Overviews on US mobile

15th Aug AI Overviews AI Overviews go international: UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil

30th May AI Overviews "About last week": Google responds to AI Overviews' viral quality failures 14th May AI Overviews AI Overviews launch in the US at I/O 2024

10th May AI Overviews Google unveils the Search Generative Experience at I/O 2023