What moved in search, and whether it matters.

Short, dated notes on Google and AI search as they change. What happened, what we make of it, and whether you need to do anything. We read it every morning so you don't have to.

November 9, 2026

CNET's owner appeared in AI answers 2.7bn times and clicks still fell

Ziff Davis, the US publisher behind CNET, IGN and PCMag, told investors its pages were shown in Google's AI features about 2.7 billion times last quarter, nearly 10 times the clicks those sites got from Google Search. Organic Google referrals fell about 37% in a year.

Appearing in AI answers and getting visitors are now 2 separate things, and only one of them pays. If your impressions hold while your clicks slide, nothing is broken on your site, so do not spend money trying to fix it.

November 8, 2026

Your pages are in an AI index you cannot block without leaving Google

The New York Times and 3 other US papers are suing Brave over a search index of more than 30 billion pages that it sells to AI companies. Brave's crawler has no name of its own, so robots.txt cannot target it.

Most businesses have no idea their content feeds AI answers through indexes they have never heard of. There is no lever to pull on this one, so do not break your Google visibility trying to find one.

November 7, 2026

UK AI spending shows ChatGPT is no longer the only one to watch

A study of 14.2 million UK bank and card accounts found ChatGPT's share of consumer AI subscription spending fell from 73.5% to 52.5% between December 2025 and July 2026, while Claude's rose from 7.4% to 29.4%.

Nearly every AI visibility tool watches ChatGPT and stops there. On this data about half of UK paid AI spending now sits elsewhere, so a ChatGPT only view of how you show up in AI answers is half the job.

November 6, 2026

That jump in Search Console clicks is not real visitors

Some sites saw clicks in Google Search Console jump between 31 October and 2 November while impressions stayed flat. The extra clicks look like bots, not people.

If your clicks spiked in early November, don't read it as growth. Check it against real visits first.

November 5, 2026

Search Console now lets you compare device types side by side

The performance report in Google Search Console now lets you select several device types together, as it already did for countries.

A small change, but a useful one. Look at mobile and desktop together, because the gap between them is often where the problem is.

November 5, 2026

Google AI Mode now books home services through partner platforms

Google's AI Mode can now take someone from a question about a home repair straight to booking a tradesperson, through partners including Angi, Thumbtack, Housecall and Jobber.

For now it's a US story run through marketplaces. The direction matters more: the booking is starting to happen inside the answer.

November 5, 2026

ChatGPT cites buying guides and reviews, not the news

An Ahrefs study of 5.5 million ChatGPT answers found it leans on product reviews, buying guides and best of lists far more than news, even from publishers OpenAI has deals with.

If you want AI tools to recommend you, press coverage is the wrong lever. Comparison and review content is the right one.

November 3, 2026

Google now writes the description of your business on brand searches

On desktop, Google has started showing an AI written summary of a business in the right hand panel when someone searches its name, where the knowledge panel used to sit.

Search your own business name this week and read what Google says about you. It can get things wrong.

November 2, 2026

Opting out of AI Overviews cost one site its ordinary clicks too

Cyrus Shepard opted a site out of Google's AI features and watched what happened. AI impressions vanished, but normal organic clicks fell as well.

Switching off AI Overviews isn't a free way to protect your traffic. For most businesses we'd leave it on.

October 31, 2026

One robots.txt line will soon opt you out of AI training

Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic have backed a shared robots.txt rule that tells AI companies not to train on your site. Google plans to support it in early 2027.

Nothing to change yet. When it arrives, most businesses will want to block training but stay visible in AI answers, and Bing will let you do both.

October 29, 2026

Ads are coming to Google's AI Mode in the UK

Google switched on ads inside AI Mode in 10 more countries on 28 October. The UK is due to follow before the end of the year.

Organic space in AI answers is about to shrink. If you track your AI Mode visibility, take a baseline now.

October 28, 2026

Ignore the noise

The October ranking drops were partly bad data, not Google

Rank tracking tools reported repeated volatility through October. Their own measurements show Google has been feeding them wrong results, so some of those drops never happened.

If a ranking report scared you this autumn, check Search Console before acting on it. It may not be real.

October 25, 2026

Ignore the noise

llms.txt makes no difference to AI citations

A SISTRIX study of nearly 100,000 pages found that having an llms.txt file made no difference to whether AI tools cited a site. Basic page structure helped a little.

If someone is selling you llms.txt as AI optimisation, save your money. Clear headings and a contents list do more.

October 23, 2026

AI Overviews now show on almost 9 in 10 commercial searches

Semrush tracked 400 commercial keywords for a year. The share showing an AI Overview went from about 46% to about 88%.

Your comparison, pricing and review pages will get fewer clicks even if they hold their positions. Plan and report with that in mind.

October 22, 2026

ChatGPT sends less than 1% of the traffic Google does

Marie Haynes looked at a year of data from 100 websites. ChatGPT sent 0.62% as many visits as Google organic search.

AI traffic converts well but the volume is tiny. Build for it, but don't move budget away from search to chase it.

About Signals

Every morning at 7am we read the Google and AI search news so our clients don't have to.

If we discover something interesting or relevant, it goes here with our take on it. Quiet days stay quiet.

How we call it

Act on it

Worth doing something this week

Keep an eye

Real, but wait and see

Ignore the noise

Loud headline, little substance