A running record

AI Search Changelog

Every dated change from the AI Visibility Report, in one place. What happened, what it means, and where it came from.

Showing 15 of 15 changes

AI search changes by date, newest first
DatePlatformWhat changedWhat it meansSourceIssue
GoogleGary Illyes gives typical timings: new URL discovery about 20 hours, refresh of a known URL about 30 days, core update recovery 3 to 6 months.Set recovery expectations in months before anyone promises a quick fix.Search Engine JournalIssue 08
GoogleHelpful content page defines main content and names the rater criteria: effort, originality, talent or skill, and accuracy.Use the four criteria as the review checklist for anything AI helps write.Search Engine RoundtableIssue 08
GoogleGenerative AI content guide requires manual fact-checking of all AI-generated content before publishing, including titles, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text.Add a human sign-off for AI-written metadata, the fields pipelines automate first.Google Search CentralIssue 08
GeminiGemini 4 Argon announced with a 1 million token output limit, first for Fairwind cyber-defense partners. No mention of AI Mode or AI Overviews.No scanned Google answer surface has changed model yet.GoogleIssue 08
CloudflarePay Per Use enters beta: an AI company registers its crawler, sets a price for a defined use, and self-reports usage; Cloudflare bills and pays monthly.Worth knowing for publishers behind Cloudflare. No major AI engine has publicly enrolled.CloudflareIssue 08
AI Overviews83 percent of US desktop branded searches carry an AI Overview, up from 13.1 percent in November 2025. Vendor-sourced: AhrefsSearch your own name and record what the overview says and which sites it cites.AhrefsIssue 08
OpenAIGPT-6.1 Sol reaches the API at $2 input and $10 output per million tokens; computer use arrives in the Agents API.No change to how ChatGPT cites sources. AI-assisted content gets cheaper to produce, for you and for everyone else.OpenAI API changelogIssue 08
GoogleThe Information reports Google's AI contribution pilot pays about 100 publishers, under one-tenth of one percent of ad revenue for small and mid-sized sites.Being cited is not a revenue line. Make the case for AI visibility on accurate description.PPC LandIssue 08
GoogleSeptember 2026 spam update, Google's fourth of the year, alongside a paper on SAFE, a multi-agent system that judges coordinated synthetic spam.Thin, scaled content is the target. Read ranking moves against the rollout window.Search Engine LandIssue 08
ShopifyGoogle matches Shopify stores to Merchant Center and switches on native checkout in AI Mode and Gemini unless the merchant opts out. Rollout began 18 September; merchants were emailed on 22 September.If you did not choose this, check the Agentic sales channel settings.PPC LandIssue 08
AI OverviewsShare of AI Overviews with an external link in the answer text rises from near zero on 10 September to 26.2 percent. Vendor-sourced: PeecMore citations inside the answer, with less certainty about where each one sends the reader.Search Engine JournalIssue 08
GoogleAI contribution pilot reported: an invitation-only Search Console panel shows monthly earnings when content contributes to AI answers, with no page-level detail.Check Search Console for the panel. It takes minutes.Search Engine RoundtableIssue 07
OpenAISponsored Agents announced: tapping a ChatGPT ad opens a labelled chat with an agent built for the advertiser. In testing with a small group of US advertisers.The ad becomes a conversation. HubSpot and Shopify are the first connections.OpenAIIssue 07
CloudflareDisallow AI Training setting goes live: a site can refuse model training while staying open to search indexing and AI answer retrieval.Check that a training block is not also blocking the retrieval that keeps you in answers.CloudflareIssue 07
ShopifyMeta joins the agentic channels Shopify enrolls stores in by default through "Allow Shopify to manage for me". A catalog revocation can take up to 7 days. Third-party analytics pixels do not fire in Meta's or Google's agentic checkout.AI checkout orders arrive with no session. Tell whoever reads your analytics.Search Engine JournalIssue 08

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