Monday, September 7, 2026

Shopping ads show rising CTR paired with falling impressions, a pattern that may reflect AI Overviews redirecting lower-intent queries away from paid placements.

A Harvard study rating 940 occupations found search marketing scores lowest on perceived moral objections to automation at 2.31 out of 7.

Google is testing whether traditional Search campaigns using exact and phrase match keywords can serve ads in its AI Mode, potentially expanding advertiser options beyond AI Max and Performance Max.

Google's John Mueller warned that programmatic SEO tactics often produce low-quality content that causes Google's systems to lose confidence in a site's ability to serve users well.

Google's new booking search widgets in the EU now show a disclaimer indicating displayed prices are customized based on device type and potentially other factors.

Google's Merchant Center briefly displayed the raw AI prompts and system instructions meant to stay hidden behind its insight summaries.

New data shows Google Shopping Ads are gaining impressions and clicks as AI Overviews displace organic results.

Apple updated its Applebot documentation to confirm that Applebot-Extended crawlers are excluded from Search rankings, mirroring Google's approach with Googlebot-Extended.

Google embedded a character counter tool directly into AI Overviews, potentially reducing clicks to standalone character-counter websites.

Semrush surveyed 2,338 US consumers and found that 57.5% of AI users have been talked out of purchases by chatbots, and 65% have replaced some product searches with them.