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Google is adopting new AI training controls, under consideration by the IETF, that should simplify and streamline AI training controls for publishers and site owners.
Microsoft just announced new Bing AI content controls "offering newer, simpler, and clearer preferences that allow you to make choices about training, grounding, or both while remaining eligible for Bing search results," Krishna Madhavan, Principal Product Manager, Microsoft Bing, wrote.
OpenAI just sent its weekly email update to advertisers announcing the ChatGPT Ads are live in 26 more countries, a new wider standard ad unit format, Multi-image ads are now available in open beta to all advertisers, Shopify integration is now available internationally and Shopify integration is now available internationally.
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. Ads in Google AI Mode make Google less per search, but Google has more searches. Google's John Mueller said AI spam tactics will be caught...
This week, we reported on Google Search volatility not once but twice this week. Google warned tools on user-generated spam guidelines. Google downplayed the importance of fresh indexing reporting. Google explained...
Everyone has been asking, what is the click-through rate you get from Google Search AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. Well, a new small study says the click-through rate is about 0.9%. The study also showed that when you opt out of showing in Google's Search generative AI, it also leads to a drop in clicks in the main web results.
Microsoft is now showing ads within the Bing AI Overviews powered by Copilot. I don't think I've seen ads within the AI responses in Bing Search and I personally still cannot trigger them, but Khushal Bherwani shared a screenshot of an ad within an AI Overview in Bing Search.
Halloween is tonight/tomorrow and to celebrate both Google and Bing has special easter eggs (or should I call them pumpkins) for its search results. Google asks you to find a costume using AI Mode, which is boring. But Bing has a floating ghost that explodes into candy when you tap it.
Gary Illyes from Google was recently interviewed by Aneta Samkoff, host of the Odys Podcast. The topic was all about bots and crawlers and they covered a lot of ground. Gary said bot impersonation is more of a problem now because of AI. Bot impersonation is when rogue bots pretend to be someone they are not, like pretending to be Googlebot.
Google seems to have stopped appending UTM parameters on Gemini links, the cited URLs in Gemini's AI responses. Google started adding UTM parameters to links in Gemini in early September, but then, around September 28th, Google stopped.
Google Search may be bringing back the ability to see 100 search results per page by bringing back the num=100 parameter. As a reminder, Google dropped this feature in September 2025 as one of many methods to prevent crawlers from scraping its search results. As you know, third-party tracking tools are not working so well these days.
Google's John Mueller was interviewed by David Iwanow, where he shared information on AI-generated content, the future of SEO, technical SEO, the crawl stats report, redirect chains, ecommerce product data and much more. John was asked about tactics, such as listicles, being used to rank well in AI Search, and he said that eventually the systems will catch up, so don't use those cheap, easy, and fast tactics.
Google seems to be rolling out access to the Google Business Profile AI-powered messaging feature to more businesses. I believe we covered this in June of this year, but since then, Google made some updates to the feature.
Google announced earnings yesterday, and during the earnings call, Philipp Schindler, Google's senior vice president and chief business officer, said that ads in AI Mode have a "lower monetization" than ads in traditional search.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...
