The fingerprint you pressed into Google’s ranking systems now feeds the AI answers on top of them. Here’s where it persists and goes dark. The post Do The Answer Engines Keep Your Fingerprint, Or Do They Start Fresh Every Time?

Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt spoke about the Google Search Console indexing report in its latest Search Off the Record podcast. One item was on how quality issues, including low-quality AI-generated content, can result in those pages not being trusted and not being indexed by Google. That might lead to the page indexing report showing a “crawled – currently not indexed” status, in some cases.

Apple has posted new Apple Maps policies where it now says it is prohibiting home services, such as plumbing, electrical, locksmith, HVAC, pest control, roofing, or general contracting services. It also says bail bonds, cryptocurrency ATMs and some medical services are also banned from Apple Maps Ads.

Google Ads updated its Performance Max product level reporting back on June 15th.

Google sent out an email to those who use the Google Manufacturer Center to remind them that the ability to manually add or update products directly in Manufacturer Center has been removed. Instead, Google said use the Manufacturer Center API or upload a product file.

Gary Illyes from Google said that you are better off not using a lastmod date in your XML Sitemap if those dates are wrong. He said on Bluesky, “probably better off without the lastmods

Google announced it will consolidate and merge the Shopping ads and free listings policies into a single Shopping policy sometime in September 2026. Keep in mind, there may be specific ads or free listing policies listed in that consolidated policy document, where some policies only apply to ads and some only to free listings but it will be in a single policy document.

Google just sent out an email to Google Ads advertisers noting that it will turn on local inventory ads by default in your Shopping campaigns. Google added that you can change this setting by August 31st by using the “inventory filter” instead of the “Local products” setting.

AI SEO that prioritizes content that is specific may be a key to getting cited by AI search engines. The post AI SEO: Writing That’s Specific May Get Cited More appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

The new Search Console social tracking hides AI click loss and turns your verified profiles into free training data for Google’s models. The post Google Is Using Social Media Signals To Mask AI Search Click Loss appeared first on Search Engine Journal .