Google’s John Mueller explains a robots.txt quirk that can cause Googlebot to ignore robots.txt rules. The post Google Says Why It May Ignore Robots.txt And Negatively Impact SEO appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

GatherUp’s Annie Jackson and Jason Wertham show how to audit what ChatGPT and AI Overviews say about your locations, and which inputs change the answer. The post Emergency Brand Audit: What AI Says About Your Locations appeared first on Search Engine Journal

Stop measuring creator partnerships by view counts. The value shows up downstream, in traffic, AI citations, and conversions your dashboard isn’t tracking.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

This week…

A court dismisses Google’s DMCA claims against SerpApi, the EU fines Google €890 million, major publishers weigh leaving Google, and Search growth eases.

Google continues to add more AI features to the Google Merchant Center portal. We saw Merchant Advisor added earlier this year, AI performance reports added just the other week, and now we are seeing more AI sprinkled throughout Merchant Center.

Microsoft is testing fading out the related searches in the Bing Search results. When you hover over a related search, that one stands out and the other related searches options then get faded/blurred out.

Last May, Google announced AI Max within Google Ads is rolling out in closed beta globally. Well, more are now seeing AI Max for Shopping campaigns this past week. This also includes text customizations and final URL expansion within AI Max.

Google Ads now uses its AI to make recommendations within the conversion summary dashboard. Google will give you actions to “improve your conversion measurements,” and those recommendations are labeled “Recommended by Google AI.”