OpenAI Preps Dual-Mode Codex Upgrade to Beat Claude
The release is expected this week. They need to catch up to Claude Code and Cowork -> OpenAI is laying the groundwork for a major Codex update that would push the platform well beyond its origins as a coding agent. "Hidden references in the current Codex client reveal a new onboarding flow that will ask users to choose between a basic setup and a professional, developer-focused configuration — a clear signal that OpenAI intends to serve two distinct audiences from a single surface. This aligns with the company's publicly stated plan, led by applications chief Fidji Simo, to add agentic capabilities to Codex that go beyond programming before eventually merging ChatGPT and the Atlas browser into one desktop super app." "The timing matters. OpenAI has been under pressure after Anthropic gained strong momentum with Claude Code and Cowork, and Simo told employees the company could not afford to be distracted by side projects. Broadening Codex to handle non-developer tasks, normal chat is already possible through the app, positions it as the foundation for OpenAI's super app strategy, gradually absorbing ChatGPT functionality so that everything lives in one place. The release is expected this week, making it one to watch for anyone tracking how the AI platform war is shifting from standalone tools toward unified workspaces." https://t.co/tp8sdoiiT3
Google's Gemini to Launch Proactive “Your Day” Feed
"Your Day" -> Google preps Gemini-powered ‘proactive feed’ called ‘Your Day’ "It’s unclear what the interface for Your Day will be, but a series of cards detailing upcoming events and relevant reminders seems likely. Like Personal Intelligence, this should be sourced...
AI Back‑Button Tactics: Smart UX, Risky Geo Strategy
Published on the same day Google just announced a new manual action for hijacking the back button. Good timing @MediaWyse :) -> AI buttons: Smart UX play, risky GEO tactic, or both? https://t.co/lDNUuhP7Q2
OpenAI Accuses Anthropic of Inflating $8B Run Rate
The AI Wars Rage On -> Internal memo: OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer says Anthropic is "grossing up rev share with Amazon and Google" and overstating its "run rate by roughly $8B" "Dresser also addressed the intensifying competition between...
Google Engineer Proposes Unified Agentic Engine Optimization Stack
New post from @addyosmani (a Google engineer working on Gemini and Cloud). And yep, he has a new version of the acronym AEO -> Agentic Engine Optimization (AEO) I think at some point, Google needs to come out with an official...
News Sites Block Wayback Machine Over AI Copyright Fears
The AI Data Wars Rage On -> Originality AI: 23 major news websites and Reddit block the Internet Archive's crawler; journalists and advocacy groups sign a letter supporting the Archive "Other publishers have justified their decision to block the Wayback Machine...
Meta Creates AI Zuck Avatar for Employee Feedback
Anyone ever see the movie "Surrogates"? We are creeping closer to that -> Meta is building photorealistic, AI-powered 3D characters; Mark Zuckerberg helped train and test an AI version of himself that offers feedback to staff "The Financial Times reports...
Skepticism Persists as Apple Explores New Smart Glasses
After being a Google Glass Explorer and testing out various versions of smart glasses, I'm still not a believer they will be a hot item... Yet companies keep going down this path. We'll see how it goes for Apple ->...
AI-Generated Content Floods SERPs, Threatening Sustainability
It works until it doesn't... but it's still working for now. This one will be interesting to watch. Massive scaled content abuse. Nearly 1M pages indexed now. Surging like crazy in the SERPs. Including news surfaces. I don't think this...
Sixteen AI Agents Collaborate to Synthesize Answers
"Contemplating mode" -> When 16 agents work on your prompt and then synthesize an answer...
Google Reveals Mobile Page Size Limits and Bot Constraints
I covered the latest SOTR podcast on SER -> Google Discusses Page Weight, Average Mobile Homepage Size, and Googlebot File Limit Sizes https://t.co/h3ts9Sdtec https://t.co/lxKeanoNJe
Gemini Adds Interactive Simulations to AI Responses
For example, see my Mt. AI simulation below :) -> The Gemini app can now generate interactive simulations and models "Previously, responses were largely just text with static diagrams. Now, we’re delivering functional simulations that can help you better ...
OpenAI Targets $102 B in Ad Revenue by 2030.
$102B in ad revenue by 2030. We'll see -> Docs: OpenAI expects ads to generate ~$2.4B in 2026 revenue, to quadruple to nearly $11B in 2027, and to hit ~$102B in 2030, or 36% of its total revenue then "If it...
Clarifying Site vs URL Impressions in Looker Studio
Good post from Dana. I know many have been confused by this in Looker Studio -> Site Impression vs URL Impression in Google Search Console: Looker Studio Guide "When you add a GSC data source in Looker Studio, you pick your...
Claude Managed Agents Simplify Scalable Autonomous AI Development
Claude Managed Agents -> Anthropic announces Claude Managed Agents, offering developers an agent harness and other tools to build and deploy AI agents at scale, available in public beta "Managed Agents handles the complexity. You define your agent's tasks, ...
AI Bot Traffic Up 300%; Tarpitting Reclaims 97% Requests
Yep, I wrote a post in October about the insane amount of AI bot crawling and scraping going on -> AI bot traffic surged 300%, hitting publishers hardest: Report Regarding some publishers "tarpitting" to frustrate bots: "Uncontrolled web scraping inflicts heavy technical...
Google’s March 2026 Core Update Rolled Out in 12 Days
OK, the March 2026 core update is complete. Now to assess the impact... From Google on X -> The rollout was complete as of April 8, 2026 (at 5:12 ET). So it was 12 days, 4 hours. https://x.com/googlesearchc/status/2041867321552027833
Google Photos Adds Digital Wardrobe for AI Styling
And since you can connect Google Photos as part of Personal Intelligence, your "Wardrobe" could influence AI responses in Gemini and AI Mode -> Google Photos wants to remember what you wore so you don't have to *Google is working on...
Google Launches Universal Commerce Protocol Onboarding Guide
Focus on ecommerce? -> Google Publishes Universal Commerce Protocol Onboarding Guide (Enabling agentic shopping) "To participate, merchants must complete the technical implementation first, then submit an interest form and wait for approval. Once selected, they can access onboarding in Merchant...
Avoid Manual Triggers That Cause AI Content Spikes
Scaling AI-generated content for AEO/GEO purposes? "Mt. AI" can result from an algorithmic drop or a drop from a manual action. See below what the manual action could look like. You don't want this. You really don't want this. :)...
Desktop AI Mode Launches Directly From AIOs
Jumping from AIOs to AI Mode (but on DESKTOP). Nice find by @brodieseo -> Google Testing Jumping To AI Mode Directly From AIOs ON DESKTOP As Brodie said, "This is as close as we've now come to the "AI Mode as...
Google Signals Multi‑Threaded, Agentic Search Future
I brought up Jarvis in early 2023 after ChatGPT launched. It was pretty clear where all of this was headed :) -> New on SER: “Jarvis Approaching”: Google's Sundar Pichai Signals an Agentic, Multi-Threaded Future for Search https://t.co/SdV7iiPKmZ https://t.co/oEYGGNbdvB
Google Search to Evolve Into Multi‑Agent Task Manager
Jarvis -> Sundar Pichai sees Google Search evolving into an ‘agent manager’ “If I fast-forward, a lot of what are just information-seeking queries will be agentic in Search. You’ll be completing tasks. You’ll have many threads running.” “Search would be an agent...
Chrome's Gemini Introduces Reusable Prompt “Skills” Feature
Skills are coming to Gemini in Chrome. Once you activate the flag in Chrome Canary, you can save any prompt you use as a skill that can be reused in the future. You can then summon the skill by typing...
Spotify Adds AI Podcast Playlists for Premium Users
This will be interesting to test out. I listen to a lot of podcasts... I've used "Prompted playlists" for music but now it can work for podcasts -> Spotify expands Prompted Playlists, its AI feature for creating playlists, to ...
AI Engines Heavily Cite Top Journalists and Outlets
The ranking is based on 15 million AI response citations gathered by Muckrack in what it calls “generative pulse data” -> Which journalists and news outlets are most cited by AI answer engines? https://t.co/FbjYIvK7H0 https://t.co/28XLOVzZ9t
AI Coding Surge Overwhelms Security Review Capacity
Vibe coding security risks (based on the sheer amount of new code being introduced at companies) -> The rapid adoption of AI coding tools has let workers generate massive volumes of code, leaving companies scrambling to review and secure the...
Gemini 3 AI Overviews 91% Accurate Yet Millions Err Hourly
They tested both Gemini 2 and 3, but Google said the study was flawed since most people would not search for those queries -> Analysis: Gemini 3-based AI Overviews are accurate ~91% of the time, meaning across 5T searches...
Google Trusts Site, Driving Massive Post‑update Rankings
https://t.co/g44C5uqw6b seems... trusted by Google. :) Massive gains with the December 2025 broad core update. I'm seeing this when analyzing a client's situation btw. They are everywhere when checking important queries for that client... https://t.co/YDIijP80Sf
Semrush Data Shows Unusual Turkey Traffic Spike Anomaly
OK, let's talk turkey. No really, I mean the country. :) Semrush data looks very wonky for the country. Every site I'm checking surged through the roof for Turkey, but not for other countries. There must be some type of...
Use Reddit Trends Data to Boost SEO Insights
Are you using Reddit Pro? -> How to use Reddit Trends data for SEO *Topic Ideas *Brand sentiment *Monitor competitors *Trends and popularity https://t.co/rCR4e4Lk9j via @seosmarty https://t.co/GMd5sR5w28
Blocking AI Crawlers Reduces AI-
Do News Publishers That Block AI Crawlers Get Cited Less Often by AI? "Using data from Citation Labs’ AI citation-tracking tool, XOFU, we examined 4 million citations from 3,600 prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, and AI Mode, across 10 industries."...
OpenAI Urges Policy Overhaul to Curb Rogue AI Threats
What are we doing? This is terrifying. Read what Altman said below... -> OpenAI unveils policy proposals for a world with superintelligence: higher capital gains taxes, a public AI investment fund, strengthened safety nets, and more "The threats of inaction...
GSC Logging Bug Inflated Impressions Since May 2025
Yep, almost a year of inflated impressions in GSC. Was "The Great Decoupling" as bad as we thought? We'll all find out soon. My latest on SER -> GSC Logging Error Yielded Inflated Impressions Since May 2025 https://t.co/pDMNoq6Qxz https://t.co/KiDPUNx2gE
Meta Tests Instagram Plus as Subscription Trend Grows
Meta starts testing a premium subscription on Instagram -> Meta is testing an Instagram Plus subscription in a few countries, offering features including anonymous Story viewing and extended 48-hour Story durations "Snapchat and X have proven that there is a market for...
Ghost Citations: Content Cited, Brand Remains Invisible
Being cited but not mentioned? Good post from @johnlovett -> LLM Ghost Citations: Why Your Content Is Working and Your Brand Isn't "Your content gets cited. Your competitors get recommended. You don’t. That gap is a ghost citation problem. A ghost...
GSC Misreported Impressions Since May 2025, Fix Pending
Almost a year of inflated impressions? Could this error have caused some of the alligator graphs we have seen? -> Google Search Console misreported impression data since May 13, 2025 due to a logging error. Corrections will roll...
Penguin Random House Sues OpenAI for Copying Children's Books
Another AI lawsuit, this time for OpenAI (again) -> Penguin Random House sues OpenAI for copyright infringement, alleging its LLM "memorized" a popular German children's book series and can reproduce the content "In response to the prompt “Can you write a...
Chrome Builds Shopping Profiles via Structured Content Extraction
Super interesting from Dan -> Chrome’s New Shopping Classifier "The classifier doesn’t look at raw HTML. It doesn’t look at the DOM directly either. Chrome uses a structured content extraction system called AnnotatedPageContent, accessible via the Chrome DevTools Protocol method...
Reddit Scrubs R/All, Forces Algorithmic Feed
Reddit removed /r/all -> Reddit kills r/all feed to push algorithmic personalization (after testing the removal in January) "Users are being pushed toward r/popular and the personalized Home feed as Reddit doubles down on algorithmic content curation." https://t.co/56Gwy3kccX https://t.co/58PYtgwYph
Grokipedia Loses Visibility Across Google and AI Platforms
Grokipedia drops in search (and more with the March 2026 core update) and then Grokipedia drops in AIOs, AI Mode, and yes, ChatGPT. Again, drop in Google and you can drop in AI Search (across surfaces and platforms). First screenshot...
ChatGPT Ads Prioritize Clarity Over Creative Hype
Interested in ChatGPT Ads? -> Data shows ChatGPT ads favor clarity over creativity (Adthena analysis) *The average headline clocks in at just 30 characters and around 5 words. *Body copy averages 116 characters and roughly 19 words. "The overall tone across these ads...
Reddit Pro Boosts Engagement and Adds Verification Badges
Are you using Reddit Pro? -> Reddit says publishers using its Pro Tools have seen post views grow by 46%, comments by 48%, and profile views nearly double since the tool's September launch Verification checkmarks added -> "In addition to...
Anthropic Unveils Always‑on Claude Agent, Expanding Workflow Capabilities
The OpenClaw effect? -> Anthropic tests its own always-on "Conway" Claude agent "That instance seems to be able to run Claude Code, support external webhooks, work with Chrome, and send notifications, which suggests Anthropic is exploring a far...
Experts Demand Google Ban AI Videos for Children
Oh boy -> Child development experts have demanded that Google prohibit AI-generated videos from being shown to young viewers on its video platforms YouTube and YouTube Kids, and halt investments in using AI-generated videos for children “This content, riddled with...
Google Forces Ads Due to Negative User Signals
The kiss of death from a Navboost standpoint. Just saw this on a site two days in a row. The negative user interaction signals people are sending Google about the site will be insane. It's forcing me to trigger and...
Gemini Live Transforms News Briefs Into Interactive Deep Dives
Focus on news SEO? Heads-up, I tried it this morning and it's pretty darn good. And you can interrupt it to find out more about a story -> Gemini Live just killed boring news briefs "News summaries in Gemini Live are...
Amazon AI Chatbot Ads Get Few Clicks, Cost Half the Price
88 clicks versus 500K. Whoa -> More data about ads in AI: Amazon's "sponsored prompts" for its Rufus AI assistant are yielding significantly lower traffic than traditional ads, but are more cost-effective "Amazon’s new form of chatbot ads have only...
OpenAI Unveils Unified AI Superapp for Seamless Agent Experience
OpenAI explains why it's building a Superapp (one agent-first experience) -> The "OpenAI flywheel is simple. More compute drives more intelligent models. More intelligent models drive better products. Better products drive faster adoption, more revenue and more cashflow." "That...
Paul McCartney Banned for Self‑Promoting Concert Photos
Ah, Reddit -> Paul McCartney Banned From Reddit After Promoting Himself in Paul McCartney Subreddit "Sir Paul McCartney was banned from Reddit after sharing pictures of a concert in the r/PaulMcCartney subreddit. Over the weekend, Paul McCartney’s Reddit account attempted to...
