For most of the last two decades, SEO mostly meant one thing, where you ranked on Google (and occasionally Bing). The customer journey was familiar. Someone searched, scanned a list of links, clicked and explored. Now the journey is increasingly 'ask, get an answer, take action.' And the platforms shaping that journey include ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google itself, which is inserting AI summaries, what Google calls AI Overviews, into search results.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Apple and Google reached a deal to have Gemini power Apple Intelligence and Siri. We are also seeing signs of Google search ranking volatility over the past couple of days. Microsoft Advertising allows up to 50 search themes in PMax campaigns. Google Shopping promotions now support subscriptions and abbreviations.
When AI tools started taking off, Google faced a serious problem: the risk of its search results being flooded with AI-generated spam. If left unchecked, the world's most-used search engine would lose trust - and with it, revenue. Search drives almost 57% of Alphabet's income, totaling over $198bn annually. And that revenue was at risk. AI spam isn't like old-school SEO spam. It's better written, harder to detect, and convincing enough to fool algorithms.
Fabrice Canel, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft Bing, wrote on X, "We're hiring a very Senior Product Manager!" He added that "spam is killing trust in AI & search." "Own the fight: reduce spam across Copilot, Bing & the web using AI/ML at internet scale. Protect millions of users, brands & the AI ecosystem. Join us & build a cleaner future," he added.
This week, we covered more ongoing Google search ranking volatility - January was a heated month. Google AI Overviews show more button officially flows to AI Mode, which is not good for publishers. Gemini 3 is powering AI Overviews globally now. Google is being forced to explore ways to let us say we don't want Google to use our content in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A poll says 33% of you will block Google from doing so.
Revenue was $81.3 billion and increased 17% (up 15% in constant currency) Operating income was $38.3 billion and increased 21% (up 19% in constant currency) Net income on a GAAP basis was $38.5 billion and increased 60%, and on a non-GAAP basis was $30.9 billion and increased 23% (up 21% in constant currency) Diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis was $5.16 and increased 60%, and on a non-GAAP basis was $4.14 and increased 24% (up 21% in constant currency) Non-GAAP results exclude the impact from investments in OpenAI, explained in the Non-GAAP Definition section below
Bing is testing a new report within Bing Webmaster Tools named AI Performance. AI Performance shows you how many citations you are getting from Microsoft Copilot and partners. But while it shows you citations (i.e. impressions), it does not show you clicks from those Bing AI experiences. Microsoft did not announce this but this is something Microsoft is testing with a limited number of trusted beta testers.
What happens when the AI companies (inevitably) encounter spam and attempts at SEO/GEO manipulation in the markdown files targeted to bots? What happens when the .md files no longer provide an equivalent experience to what users are seeing? What happens if they continue crawling those pages but actually toss them out before using the content to form a response? ...And we keep conflating "bot crawling activity" with "the bots are using/liking my markdown content?" How will we know if they're actually using the .md files or not?
At its core, an SEO audit is a step-by-step review of your website's technical health, content quality, and search visibility. An SEO audit identifies technical, on-page, content, and link issues on a website. It helps SEO teams identify, prioritize, and fix the issues that block traffic, rankings, and, importantly, conversions. Businesses and SEO teams should create audits to identify opportunities that advance business goals and growth.
