LabraSEO

Search and AI merge into one product 🔀, Preferred sources go live 📌, GSC click spikes from bots 📈

Issue 28, 4 November 2026

What changed in search and AI answers, for marketing teams, in five minutes.

Headlines & Launches

Google says Search and AI are becoming one product (7 minute read)

On Google's Q3 earnings call, executives described AI Mode, AI Overviews and traditional Search merging into a single product, with heavy emphasis on agentic search. Alphabet revenue grew 25% year on year and Search ad revenue grew 12%, but the stock fell on concern that AI Mode currently carries fewer ad slots than classic results. Expect the line between "search" and "AI answer" to keep blurring, which means your SEO and AEO work are becoming the same job.

Google will switch off Search and Gemini for K to 12 accounts by default (4 minute read)

Google announced it will turn off Google Search, Gemini, Gemini Notebook and Gemini in Classroom for K-12 student accounts, with access off until a school administrator explicitly enables it. Google said the change follows requests from schools, teachers, researchers and policymakers, and more detail will follow before rollout. If students are part of your audience, expect a drop in reachable school-network traffic once this lands.

Google explains how to block popups from being indexed (4 minute read)

Google's John Mueller told a Reddit user that blocking a separate domain serving a legally required popup via robots.txt "would generally work," and that a specific JavaScript file behind a popup can also be disallowed, though not a shared file that does several things. This is a practical fix if an age-verification or legal popup is getting indexed instead of your page content.

Deep Dives & Analysis

Reddit mentions track AI visibility better than press coverage, Ahrefs finds (10 minute read)

Ahrefs analysed 10,000 brands against 260 million AI prompts and found Reddit mentions correlate with AI visibility at 0.75, ahead of general webpage mentions (0.70) and press coverage (0.67). Brands with 10 times more webpage mentions get 3.7 times more AI mentions, though brand size only explains part of the link. If you are deciding where to spend PR effort for AI visibility, this suggests community discussion deserves at least as much attention as traditional press placements.

OpenAI's publisher deals are shaping who ChatGPT cites (13 minute read)

Ahrefs checked 85 of OpenAI's licensed publisher partners in Brand Radar and found 10 are among ChatGPT's 50 most-cited domains, and 47 are in the top 500. Partner sites' share of citations among ChatGPT's 200 most-cited domains rose from 7.5% in March 2026 to a peak of 15.8% in July, still at 12.5% in late September. If a licensed partner like Vogue, Tom's Guide or Good Housekeeping covers your brand, that coverage carries extra weight in ChatGPT answers; this is Ahrefs' own commercial research, so treat the figures as directional.

ChatGPT's search volume is about a fifth of Google's, OpenAI says (3 minute read)

OpenAI's consumer product lead Adam Fry told Alex Kantrowitz that ChatGPT's search-like queries, counted each time a question sends it to the web, run at roughly one-fifth of Google's volume, a comparison first reported by Big Technology. Fry did not specify which Google figure, time period or regions the comparison covers, and separate referral data shows Google still sending far more actual website traffic. Use this as a rough scale marker, not a traffic benchmark, when sizing how much weight to put behind ChatGPT visibility work.

Unrelated Google results are tied to single query words, two rank trackers find (5 minute read)

SE Ranking and Nozzle both found that odd, unrelated results Google started showing in September mostly match just one word of the search term, and mostly appear at position 9 or worse, concentrated on page two. Both firms sell rank tracking software, so they have an interest in explaining the anomaly to their customers. If your October rankings report shows strange drops, check positions below the top results and on page two before assuming a real ranking loss.

Tactics & Tools

Check Search Console for fake click spikes before trusting the numbers (11 minute read)

Marie Haynes and others, following a post from Joy Hawkins, found multiple sites across different industries showing sudden 2x to 6.5x click spikes in Search Console between October 31 and November 2, with impressions flat, concentrated on pages ranked 12 to 54 with CTRs of 45 to 100% on desktop. The cause is unconfirmed, either bot or agent retrieval or a Google logging bug, but it is not real human traffic. Filter or discount this period in your reports so it does not distort trend lines or get reported as a genuine traffic win.

RankZero's free AI SEO audit (Sponsor)

See whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can find and cite your brand. Free, results in 30 seconds, no signup.

Google confirms blocking non-visible JavaScript resources is fine (4 minute read)

Roger Montti's follow-up on John Mueller's robots.txt guidance clarifies that while Google generally expects crawlers to access everything a user sees, blocking a specific JS file tied to a legally required popup is acceptable, as long as it is not a shared file that also renders page content. Site owners who over-block JS risk losing rankings, so check with a developer before touching robots.txt rather than blocking broadly.

Quick Links

Google AI Mode flight answers only link to Google Flights (3 minute read)

Barry Schwartz tested AI Mode flight queries for multiple US and international routes and found 100% of links pointed only to Google Flights, a pattern first flagged by Natzir on X. If you sell flights or travel, this is a visibility channel AI Mode currently keeps for itself, and it is the kind of self-preferencing EU regulators tend to scrutinise.

Performance Max may filter out your brand searches (3 minute read)

Google Ads updated its documentation to say Performance Max campaigns may filter out navigational and brand-specific queries in favour of dedicated Search campaigns. Make sure your brand Search campaigns have enough budget and strong ads so you do not lose this traffic to the gap.

Higher ad strength RSAs win more impressions but convert better only 45% of the time (8 minute read)

A study of over 5,900 Google Ads accounts by Brad Geddes found Google steers more impressions to higher ad strength responsive search ads, yet the better-converting ad in a group is the higher-rated one less than half the time. Review pinned and lower-rated ads in your account before holiday traffic peaks rather than optimising purely for the ad strength score.

Ahrefs lists 25 people to follow for AEO and GEO research (19 minute read)

Ahrefs compiled a list of 25 researchers and practitioners publishing original studies on AI search, built from a longlist of 87 names checked against publishing output since 2023. Useful as a reading list if you want primary research rather than secondhand summaries on AI visibility.

From X and LinkedIn

Brodie Clark: A hidden analytics tab has appeared for Google's agentic checkout program (1 minute read)

Brodie Clark found an undocumented Analytics tab inside Merchant Center for a client onboarded to Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), which lets shoppers buy via AI Mode and Gemini. It splits sales into cart transfers to your site versus native checkout completed entirely on Google (credited to organic shopping), plus account linking. It is rolling out gradually in the US, with Australia and Canada expected next year, so ecommerce teams should check Merchant Center now and plan how they will track off-site AI purchases.

Edward Sturm: Preferred sources button is a sleeper AI visibility feature (2 minute read)

Edward Sturm says Google's preferred sources button, now addable by any site via a documented snippet, increases how often a selecting reader's choice shows your content in AI Mode, AI Overviews, Top Stories and Discover, and is not limited to news publishers. He argues most site owners will overlook it, so adding the button to a blog or footer is a quick, low-effort move worth testing.

Glen Allsopp: Fiverr's CEO says agents do not have brand loyalty (1 minute read)

Glen Allsopp highlights Fiverr CEO comments from an earnings call warning that AI agents "don't care and they don't have brand loyalty," comparing the uncertainty to early SEO and flagging Microsoft Copilot as a threat to how enterprise software gets chosen. Worth reading if your sales rely on being the default pick rather than being actively chosen each time.