TL;DR AI search reshaped how people discover and evaluate brands in 2025. Visibility now depends on freshness, off-site credibility, content clarity and how clearly content can be interpreted inside answers—not just how it ranks. Brand visibility is in a constant state of fluctuation. Only 30% of brands stay visible from one answer to the next,…
Kevin Indig just settled an argument that’s been running in half-finished form since AI Overviews launched. Does topical authority that rewards brands for going deep on a subject instead of wide, actually carry over into AI search? Or is ChatGPT enough of a blank slate that a generalist brand can walk in and grab a…
This post was sponsored by Victorious. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. When we ask an AI platform to describe a brand, it almost always knows the answer. But when a buyer asks that same platform which brand to consider, it draws on only a small fraction of the brands it…
Right now, most publishers block AI bots. According to Vince Nero’s excellent research, 79% of top news sites block AI training bots via robots.txt. Only 18% block no AI crawlers at all. Not a perfect science, as the robots.txt is so easily circumvented, but still. No one is playing nice anymore. Multiple publisher x AI…
If you run ecommerce campaigns on target CPA or target ROAS and any of them sit at “Limited by budget,” Google’s August 17 bidding change is going to move your numbers, and we’re likely not talking about the direction you want. Starting August 17, campaigns that are limited by budget and use a target-based bid…
Alphabet’s second quarter earnings results show that Google is earning massive amounts of money but is also spending so much that it reported a negative free cash flow due to infrastructure spending. Massive Earnings Q2 2026 revenue is $119.8 billion, which is up 24% year over year. Where The Money Comes From The earnings release…
The attribution you are waiting for from ChatGPT is coming, and it is not coming to you. I ran a survey this month (it’s still open; please take it) asking whether dedicated AI visibility platforms are worth paying for, and I deliberately never asked about attribution. It showed up anyway. One consultant wrote that the…
If your local search traffic has felt off lately, you’re not imagining it. Fewer clicks. Fewer calls. Customers finding answers and moving on without ever hitting your site. That’s not a seasonal dip or a technical issue. That’s AI Overviews doing exactly what Google designed them to do. Local SEO used to be predictable. Optimize…
Anthropic announced that users on its paid plans can now teach Claude Cowork a skill by recording a walkthrough of a task, which Claude can then use to create a skill that it can subsequently use to complete the same task. It’s called Record a Skill. Anthropic tweeted: “New in Claude Cowork: teach Claude a…
So research, competitive analysis, and simply synthesizing what the client has said all fall to the wayside. They get done fifteen minutes before or after a meeting, by whoever happens to have the time to spare, if at all. The cracks start to show. Every time the client has to clue in the agency or…