Issue 28, 3 November 2026
What changed in search and AI answers, for marketing teams, in five minutes.
Google has started showing AI Overviews for brand searches in the right-hand column on desktop, in place of the knowledge panel, rather than at the top of the main results. If your brand name gets searched, check what Google's summary says about you there, because it is now sitting where people used to see facts you controlled, not an AI's version of them.
Barry Schwartz's monthly roundup confirms the September 2026 spam update finished in October and notes AI Overviews now appear on roughly 80% of Google searches, even for typos and queries with no good answer. With AI summaries covering nearly every search, how your content performs inside them now matters as much as classic rankings.
Reddit shares fell around 33 to 36% after CEO Steve Huffman told CNBC that search-referral traffic from Google declined "meaningfully" this quarter because of "the shift to AI mode and AI overviews," prompting Reddit to lean harder on logged-in direct visits. It is a concrete sign that even a site Google often cites heavily is not immune to AI Overviews eating referral clicks, a warning for any business still counting on organic traffic to hold steady.
Replying to a LinkedIn post claiming Google staff said click and query data for AI Overviews and AI Mode were coming to Search Console, Gary Illyes said "I don't think we've phrased it like this" and that the team has "nothing to announce yet." If you are waiting for a straightforward way to see how many clicks AI answers actually send you, do not expect it soon, you will need third-party estimates instead.
A working paper found a US visit from a Google search ad brought advertisers $2.45 in revenue versus $0.89 from a ChatGPT ad, with ChatGPT converting at 0.37% against 1.17% for search, and 73 of 87 advertisers tested saw zero sales from their ChatGPT ads. The paper is under review and the authors value a ChatGPT ad click at roughly $0.26, well below the $1.72 the largest known account paid, so treat early ChatGPT advertising as unproven rather than a reliable channel yet.
Search Engine Journal reports that Google's Search Console AI report currently counts impressions only, with AI clicks folded into the standard Performance report, while the UK's Competition and Markets Authority expects separate AI click and click-through-rate metrics under rules taking effect December 3. Gary Illyes again said there is nothing new to share, so UK advertisers and marketers should watch this deadline closely for any forced change in reporting.
An independent tester gave three Claude models the same 20 Shopify products via Shopify's new Shop MCP connection and the same request 50 times each; Haiku 4.5 and Sonnet 5 favoured the dark roast with the most reviews, while Opus 5 picked the medium roast 48 times out of 50 as the "safest crowd-pleaser." With agentic shopping now able to search Shopify's catalogue without an API key, which model a shopping agent uses could quietly decide which of your products gets bought.
In an interview with David Iwanow, John Mueller said listicles built purely to game AI chatbot rankings follow a predictable cycle where "the systems catch up" and treat the tactic as spam, and argued a site with a genuinely solid foundation does not face that expiration date. For marketing teams tempted by quick AI-citation hacks, Mueller's advice is to keep investing in fundamentals rather than chase tactics likely to stop working.
PageSpeed Insights now runs Lighthouse 13.6.0, released October 27, which simulates page loading differently and tends to produce higher scores, especially on JavaScript-heavy sites, according to Google's Barry Pollard. Before crediting a recent score jump to your own site work, check which Lighthouse version ran the test and look at real user (CrUX) field data instead.
See whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can find and cite your brand. Free, results in 30 seconds, no signup.
SEJ's recap of a seoClarity webinar recommends matching product attributes to the language shoppers actually use, keeping product feeds, pages and structured data consistent, and tracking AI mentions and citations separately from paid results. If you sell products, align your feed and page copy with how customers phrase their searches before spending on richer descriptions that AI systems may not retrieve anyway.
The New York Times alleges Brave Browser and Brave Search scrape and monetise publisher journalism, including selling it to AI companies and enabling paywall bypass, despite Brave's privacy-first positioning. It is another sign that how content gets scraped and resold to AI tools is becoming a live legal fight publishers are pursuing.
The Athletic displays comment counts on its homepage to highlight its most discussed articles, a simple social-proof signal that The Telegraph's SEO director says more publishers should try. If you run a content site, showing engagement signals on-site is a low-cost way to pull clicks away from AI summaries and back to your own pages.
Rob Hoffman suggests republishing bottom-of-funnel blog posts as LinkedIn articles on your company and personal pages, calling it "high impact, low effort" because LinkedIn articles are currently easy to rank inside AI search answers.
LabraSEO