Shopify Retires Knowledge Base App, Moves AI Agent Facts To Admin
Shopify’s AI agent knowledge base now lives in the admin. Policies and contact details publish by default. Some app users need to re-add their facts.
About
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.
Articles
Looking Things Up Now Rivals Writing In ChatGPT, OpenAI Data Shows
Looking things up now makes up about as large a share of consumer ChatGPT messages as writing, though the increase is smaller than earlier data.
Google Updates Spam Guide For Shared Pages, Generated Content & Apps
New spam guidance says to noindex or block crawling on pages made for sharing. Google’s docs say a URL blocked in robots.txt can be indexed.
Meta Pushes Its Updated Business Terms Back To Nov. 20
Meta delayed its updated business terms amid complaints to EU and UK regulators. The permission to crawl sites tied to its business users hasn’t changed.
ChatGPT Rarely Named Some Brands Even When Sources Mentioned Them
Brands logged-out ChatGPT rarely named without search also showed up less when it searched, even with cited-page coverage, in new comparison-prompt data.
Google Explains 503s, Robots.txt Limits & Bracket URLs – SEO Pulse
Google reminds sites to use 503s during PHP patch downtime. Other updates cover robots.txt controls, bracket URLs, and JPEG XL in Google Images and Discover.
How Rank Trackers Say They Handle Suspect Google Results
Rank trackers describe how they check suspect Google results, what customers see during checks, and what they say about reprocessing and past results.
Google CEO Says Agents Will Hit Sites Two Ways, Pages And APIs
Google’s CEO expects AI agents to reach websites by browsing pages and through protocols, and says protocols scale better but will take longer to develop.
Google Explains The Limit Of Robots.txt For AI Content Use
Google’s new robots.txt video says the standard covers crawling, not how content gets used, and recommends percent-encoding non-English robots.txt paths.
Google Reminds Sites To Serve A 503 During PHP Patch Downtime
Taking a site offline to patch PHP? Serve a 503 from outside PHP and keep robots.txt reachable. Days of server errors may get URLs dropped.
Google Images & Discover Previews Don’t Support JPEG XL
Chrome and Firefox now display JPEG XL, but Google says it isn’t currently supported in Google Images or Discover previews.
Google Crawls Raw And Encoded Bracket URLs Separately
Google’s John Mueller says raw and percent-encoded brackets are different URLs and recommends using one form across links, canonical tags, and sitemaps.
ChatGPT Search Can Draw On More Pages After A Cloudflare Pilot
Cloudflare says its network signals helped OpenAI index hundreds of millions of new pages for ChatGPT search.
Search Share Fell To 12% For North American Publishers: Chartbeat
Search’s share of North American publisher pageviews fell to 12%, but a lower share alone doesn’t show fewer search pageviews.
Meta Drops Training From Its Crawl Clause And Keeps The Crawl
Meta removed training from the crawling clause in its upcoming Commercial Terms. The permission to crawl sites tied to business users is still in place.
DeepSeek Opens Its In-House Search Engine To Developers
A Chinese AI lab opened its search engine to developers. Each result carries a page-level authority tier, and DeepSeek says it filters GEO manipulation.
AI Search Tools Cited A Made-Up Concept Within A Week, Paper Finds
Researchers posted about a made-up concept on sites AI search tools cite. Four English-web tools cited it within a week. Other topics mostly didn’t land.
OpenAI’s API Only Partly Matched ChatGPT’s Citations, Paper Finds
A paper tested whether Google results and OpenAI’s API can stand in for ChatGPT’s citations. They matched cited sites more often than the exact pages.
Google’s Indexing API Docs No Longer Explain How To Get Approval
Google removed the Indexing API approval form and steps from its docs. Default quotas are listed, but the pages don’t say how to request more.
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.
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.