Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Reddit is discontinuing RSS feeds and ending free API access to prevent AI systems from scraping its data.

LinkedIn announced Hiring Assistant 2, which now offers stronger personalization and candidate matching capabilities.

Meta introduced an AI creative partner within its video editing app to help users discover patterns and create content.

A Chrome extension experiment demonstrates that local AI models like Gemini Nano can handle certain SEO workflows without requiring cloud-based frontier models.

SERoundtable observes that Google is showing AI Overviews more frequently for searches on major brand names, with exceptions for Google's own brand and news publication queries.

OpenAI has enabled its Dots product to automatically run read-only research checks on connected apps between user conversations.

Wikipedia, podcasts, and Reddit have become key citation sources for AI-driven search results, making PR expertise in these channels critical for organic visibility.

Salesforce is acquiring Listen Labs, an AI-powered customer research platform, for approximately $2 billion to add qualitative research capabilities to its CRM and marketing products.

Google's AI contribution program involves only about 100 publishers, signaling limited initial scope for publisher partnerships.

State attorneys general are leveraging Meta's $18 billion teen safety settlement as a template to negotiate similar restrictions on rival platforms like TikTok and YouTube.

Google Maps now requires users to sign in with a Google account to view all reviews, sort results, and leave feedback on business listings.

Google is compensating roughly 100 publishers at approximately 0.1% of their advertising revenue through its AI contribution pilot.

Google is testing a new grid layout for sponsored product ads that mirrors the appearance of organic product listings rather than the traditional carousel format.

Bing is testing descriptive feature labels (like

Erase.com's analysis of 714 suppression campaigns shows that starting position and negative type matter far more than publishing volume, and AI Overviews may require pushing negatives beyond page two.

OuterBox unveiled OBxFrontier, a custom AI service that automates workflow tasks by building AI agents tailored to client systems.

Search Engine Journal is hosting a webinar where STAT's Tom Capper will discuss how to measure AI Overviews and LLMs for enterprise SEO.

Google confirmed Google Analytics experienced a loading outage and has restored access for some users, with full resolution expected soon.