Rank Tracker Data, ChatGPT Tags & AI Search Links – SEO Pulse
A rank tracker logged Google pages missing their usual sites, some ChatGPT links lost tracking tags, and Google and Bing changed AI search links.
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Follow on YouTube. Matt G. Southern is the Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal, where he’s covered Google, SEO, and AI for over 13 years.
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Meta’s New Terms Expand Crawling Rights Beyond Advertisers
New terms let Meta crawl sites tied to business users and use the content to train its products, widening rights ad buyers had already granted.
Google Takes Applications For A UGC Pipeline Separate From Crawling
Google is accepting applications from forums and social platforms for a UGC pipeline separate from crawling.
ChatGPT Traffic Drop Appears To Be A Tracking Problem
ChatGPT-attributed traffic fell sharply in several analytics datasets this month, and analysts tie the drop to ChatGPT links that open without tracking tags.
Google’s Universal Cart Is Live: How Carts Get To Your Store
Universal Cart is rolling out across Search and the Gemini app, with checkout inside the cart or a one-way handoff to the store’s own site.
Google Puts Inline Links Higher In More AI Search Responses
Google is changing how links appear in AI Mode and AI Overviews, moving inline links higher and expanding the carousels that highlight Preferred Sources.
Google Launches A Video Series For Odd Technical SEO Questions
Google’s new Search Central video series tackles unusual technical SEO questions, starting with emoji, non-English characters, and keywords in your URLs.
Bing Webmaster Tools Sorts AI Search Queries Into Topics
Bing’s AI Performance report adds a view that sorts cited queries into topics and lists queries where other sites are cited but your site isn’t.
Google Adds Experimental Soft Navigation Metrics To CrUX
Experimental Core Web Vitals that count in-app page changes are now in the Chrome UX Report, with Search Console set to follow.
Google Adds Gemini 4 Argon To AI Mode For Pro & Ultra Subscribers
Google added Gemini 4 Argon to AI Mode for paid subscribers and opened the model to developers, enterprises, and the Gemini app.
YouTube To Test Ask YouTube Inside The Shorts Player
YouTube is planning a limited, English-only test of Ask YouTube on select Shorts and says the watch-page feature will soon reach Shorts and live streams.
ChatGPT’s Most-Cited Sites Tilt Toward Primary Sources, Data Shows
Government health, research, and regulator sites climbed ChatGPT’s U.S. citation ranks while explainers fell.
Google Is Hiring To Generate AI Content For Discover
Open job listings describe teams that generate and recommend AI content for Discover, plus a design lead to turn it into a proactive concierge experience.
Anthropic Says Claude Bypassed Site Limits During Internal Tests
Anthropic cut live web access for internal evaluations after Claude submitted real forms and worked around website restrictions.
Google Ends Spam Update, Shares Crawl Timing Ranges – SEO Pulse
Google’s spam update finishes, a talk recap puts site moves in months, Search Console combines countries, and new guidance targets fake author profiles.
AI Overviews Have Spread To Most Big-Brand Searches
Recent tracking data found AI Overviews on most brand-name searches it checked.
Claude’s New Rules Target Fake Sources Built To Sway AI Answers
Anthropic’s updated usage policy names seeding search and AI answer sources with misleading content, and drops automated publishing from its high-risk list.
Google Completes September 2026 Spam Update After Nearly 14 Days
Google’s latest spam update has finished rolling out after nearly two weeks, taking longer than any of the three earlier spam updates it ran this...
ChatGPT Gets GPT-6 And Intelligent UI For Interactive Answers
OpenAI is rolling out GPT-6 in ChatGPT with Intelligent UI, which can add visuals and interactive tools to answers.
Google Opens Its SynthID Watermark Detector To The Public
Google opened its SynthID Detector to everyone, allowing users to check images, video, and audio for watermarks from Google and partner AI tools.
Google Opens Search Profiles In India & Canada, Brazil Next
Google is opening Search profiles to creators and publishers in India and Canada, with Brazil to follow soon.
Google Search Console Lets You Filter By Multiple Countries
Google is updating Search Console’s Performance report filters so you can view combined Google Search traffic for several countries in a single filtered view.
OpenAI To Watermark ChatGPT Text In The EU, Opens API Opt-In
OpenAI will add an invisible watermark to ChatGPT and Codex text in the EU. Its tests show editing can weaken it.
Google’s Mueller Says AI Crawlers Access Sitemaps & RSS In His Logs
Google’s John Mueller says AI training crawlers usually don’t offer sitemap submission and suggests default sitemap names or RSS feeds to help them find sites.
Google Shows How Long Crawling, Indexing & Recovery Can Take
Google’s Gary Illyes showed timing ranges for crawling, indexing, site moves, and core update recovery at Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe in Barcelona.
Google Wants AI Content Fact-Checked, Gemini UTM Tags – SEO Pulse
Google adds fact-checking to its AI content guidance, Gemini links show UTM tags, desktop CTR fell in Q2, and a judge dismisses two AI suits.
OpenAI Founding Member: Make LLMs Write Like An Aircraft Manual
Andrej Karpathy suggests asking LLMs to explain topics in an aerospace writing standard, or to answer with diagrams, HTML pages, or custom explainer videos.
Google Adds Fake Author Warning To Helpful Content Guidance
Google’s people-first content guidance now warns site owners against fabricated author profiles, a form of deception its rater guidelines already described.
When A Search Query Becomes A Standing Instruction
Google’s AI Mode monitoring and OpenAI’s dots keep requests active, with different tasks, sources, controls, and questions about site visibility.
Google Tells Sites To Fact-Check AI Content Before Publishing
Google’s guidance on AI-generated content now says to fact-check it by hand before publishing, and the review extends to titles, alt text, and other metadata.