LabraSEO

ChatGPT business analytics πŸ“Š, Brave's 30 billion pages πŸ΄β€β˜ οΈ, Google Shopping's EU grip πŸ›’

Issue 32, 9 November 2026

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

Headlines & Launches

OpenAI is building Search Console style tools for ChatGPT (3 minute read)

OpenAI is developing a tool that lets businesses claim their brand in ChatGPT, see how often they're mentioned, add product info, and track daily impressions and clicks on their links, according to a feature spotted by Juozas KaziukΔ—nas. It is still being built and only for verified businesses, but it means a brand's presence in ChatGPT answers may soon be something you can measure and manage directly, much like Search Console today.

Google AI Mode now asks if you want to continue your search (3 minute read)

Google is showing a warning, "Continue with this search? Malicious queries could result in unsafe or harmful actions," before some AI Mode searches run, spotted by Damien Andel. Barry Schwartz suspects this doubles as a way to block bots and scrapers from automating AI Mode queries, which matters if you rely on tools that scrape AI Mode to track your visibility there.

Google Shopping dwarfs rivals in Europe after the DMA change (3 minute read)

BrightEdge data cited by Barry Schwartz shows Google's Shopping box now appears 16 to 35 times more often than the next largest comparison shopping service across Spain, Italy, France and Germany, with 71% of its appearances landing in the top four results. Google dropped free product listings in the EU over the Digital Markets Act, but for ecommerce sellers the practical result is that Google's own Shopping unit, not independent comparison sites, controls the premium shopping real estate.

Gemini's Business Profile tools are coming to Workspace accounts (4 minute read)

Google says Gemini's Business Profile tools, which let owners manage listings and upload photos and videos through Gemini chat, are rolling out to Workspace accounts, and region limits for the EEA and UK have quietly been lifted. Google Maps listings with chat enabled are also getting a new "Message" button next to "Call," so local businesses should check that any chat inbox linked to it is actually being monitored.

Deep Dives & Analysis

Four separate studies agree AI assistants send a sliver of Google's traffic (9 minute read)

Greg Jarboe rounds up four datasets, including Marie Haynes's analysis of 100 sites and over 145 million sessions, finding ChatGPT sends just 0.62% of the volume Google organic sends (0.73% for all LLMs combined), and SEO Works data showing organic search sent 39 times more traffic than AI assistants over the past year. None of the datasets could confirm the "hidden AI influence" many assumed was boosting direct and branded search, so if you're being asked to justify AI visibility spend, these numbers are a useful reality check against overclaiming its traffic impact today.

Brave sells its search index to AI firms, and your site is probably in it (5 minute read)

The New York Times is suing Brave, alleging it copied more than 30 billion webpages without identifying its crawler or giving site owners a way to block it, then sold access through the Brave Search API to companies including Cohere, Mistral, Perplexity and You.com, Slobodan Manic reports for Search Engine Journal. Brave hasn't responded to the claims, but if an AI assistant cites your content without you ever having allowed a named crawler, this kind of indirect, resold indexing may be how it got there.

Tripadvisor says search changes will keep weighing on growth into 2027 (5 minute read)

Tripadvisor took a $369.5 million writedown on its legacy hotels and advertising business, which it tied largely to "changes in the search landscape," and CFO Mike Noonan told investors SEO will remain a growth headwind next year even as the company shifts spend from free search traffic to paid channels. It is a concrete example of a major site absorbing real financial damage from the same organic traffic declines many SEOs have been describing anecdotally.

Cloudflare's CEO calls AI agent optimisation the new SEO (4 minute read)

On Cloudflare's earnings call, CEO Matthew Prince said OpenAI is now paying Cloudflare for signals that tell its crawler when a webpage has changed, so it avoids needlessly re-fetching the same page, and floated the idea that sites might charge AI agents less if the agents explain why they're visiting. Cloudflare didn't break out revenue for these products, but the move signals a shift toward sites actively managing and monetising AI crawler visits rather than just allowing or blocking them.

Tactics & Tools

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.

Quick Links

Google confirms issues with Merchant Center, API and Feeds (3 minute read)

Google acknowledged an ongoing problem affecting Merchant API, Merchant Center and Feeds on the morning of November 6, without giving a cause. If your product feed looks broken or your shopping data stops updating, check Google's status page before troubleshooting on your end.

Bing tests an AI generated visual summary on search results (3 minute read)

Bing is trialling a button on individual search snippets that opens an AI generated infographic summarising the page's content, spotted by Khushal Bherwani. It's an early test, but it's another surface pulling attention away from the click through to your actual page.

Google is pushing AI Mode users to turn on Personal Intelligence (3 minute read)

Google is showing pop-ups in AI Mode urging searchers to connect more of their Google apps for personalised results, spotted by Sachin Patel. More personalisation signal for Google could mean AI Mode answers increasingly reflect a searcher's own data, which is harder for any single piece of content to influence.

TikTok is building out keyword based search ads, with some differences from Google Ads (10 minute read)

TikTok's keyword Search Ads Campaign, live in the US since September 2024, now ships with impression share metrics and ready made keyword packs, but match type reporting and bidding setup differ from Google Ads conventions, Matt G. Southern reports. Paid search teams testing TikTok should expect some habits to carry over and others to need relearning.

From X and LinkedIn

Edward Sturm: Check Search Console for pages stuck at position three to twenty before writing anything new (1 minute read)

Edward Sturm suggests filtering Search Console's Performance report to show only queries with average position greater than three, then rewriting and strengthening those existing pages instead of publishing new content, since position one gets almost double the click rate of position two and 3.5 times the rate of position four. It's a quick, low cost check your team can run this week before committing budget to new pages.

Jake Ward: A B2B SaaS site went from 1,000 to 120,000 monthly visitors without a single new page (1 minute read)

Jake Ward describes auditing 300plus existing blog posts for a client, picking the 60 with the most untapped potential, and spending 90 days improving titles, introductions, internal links and search intent match, which grew traffic more than two years of publishing had. The lesson for marketing leads under pressure to keep a content calendar full: optimising what you already have can outperform adding more.