Issue 6, 2 October 2026
What changed in search and AI answers, for marketing teams, in five minutes.
Google quietly started adding UTM parameters to Gemini's outgoing links, confirmed by Google's John Mueller after a Reddit user spotted it. A redditor explained that referrer data alone misses a lot of mobile and in app traffic, so these UTMs should let analytics tools attribute more Gemini visits correctly instead of lumping them into Direct.
OpenAI is rolling out a Try On button on clothing and accessory product listings in ChatGPT, letting shoppers upload a selfie to see items on themselves, with results saved to a new Library and Favorites feature. If you sell apparel, this adds a shopping layer inside ChatGPT itself, similar to a feature Google has already shipped, so product data quality may start to matter for AI shopping journeys too.
Cloudflare moved two products into beta on 30 September: Monetization Gateway, which lets sellers charge AI agents per request using the x402 protocol, and Pay Per Use, which pays publishers when an AI company reports using their content. Both are early and US only for now, but they point to a future where site owners can set terms for AI crawlers rather than just allow or block them.
Microsoft Advertising's A/B testing tool for Search, Shopping, Audience and Performance Max campaigns is now generally available, letting advertisers compare a changed campaign against the original before rolling it out everywhere. If you run Bing Ads, this is a lower risk way to test bidding or targeting changes without gambling your whole budget.
The Information reports Google is paying around 100 publishers through its AI contribution pilot, with amounts ranging from under $1,000 to over $1 million a year, and several small and midsize sites getting less than 0.1% of their ad revenue. Some participants say they still cannot tell how Google calculates the payments, so this is not yet a reliable new revenue line if AI answers reduce your traffic.
A US judge dismissed Penske Media's antitrust case over Google's AI Overviews, ruling that Penske failed to show Google ever made a formal agreement to trade traffic for content. A companion case against Google brought by Chegg was dismissed on the same grounds, and the judge said he was not unsympathetic to publishers' situation but that the claims did not meet the legal bar for antitrust. For now, there is no legal requirement forcing Google to compensate or route traffic to sites whose content feeds its AI answers.
Barry Schwartz reports Google is showing AI Overviews that list entire sports team rosters for some searches, sometimes above the team's own official site, though it does not appear for every team yet. If your site relies on traffic from reference style content like rosters, schedules or specs, this is a sign Google will keep expanding what AI Overviews answer directly rather than linking out.
Helen Pollitt at Getty Images writes that many sites treat schema as a checklist rather than a way to reinforce entities and relationships, which weakens how well AI systems understand brand, authorship and product connections. For marketing teams, the fix is making sure schema matches what is actually on the page and consistently names your brand and products, not just adding markup types to tick a box.
Barry Schwartz reports a second wave of impact from the Google September 2026 spam update landed on 30 September, after an initial wave on 25 to 27 September, with Google having said this rollout would span roughly two weeks rather than the usual two days. If your traffic shifts in the coming days, check the date against these waves before assuming it was something else on your site.
See whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can find and cite your brand. Free, results in 30 seconds, no signup.
LiveRamp expanded its OpenAI partnership so advertisers can use RampID to activate CRM, loyalty and website data for targeting and suppression in ChatGPT Ads, live in 11 markets. This brings ChatGPT ad targeting closer to what is already standard on Google and Meta.
YouTube is updating Shorts recommendations to reduce reach for channels that re-upload other creators' clips without meaningful changes like added commentary or analysis. Channels relying on reposted content for visibility should expect falling reach unless they add original value.
The same ruling that dismissed Penske's case also rejected Chegg's amended antitrust complaint over Google's AI Overviews, with the judge rejecting five separate legal theories including tying and monopoly leveraging. This reinforces that current law offers publishers little direct recourse over AI Overviews reducing referral traffic.
Cyrus Shepard says that opting a site out of Google's AI search features caused AI impressions to fall within minutes, but after opting back in, visibility is recovering much more slowly. Worth noting if you are testing opt-outs, since the downside may hit faster than the upside returns.