Michael Stricker

OpenAI Has Tripled Their Crawl of the Web: An Analysis of 7B+ Log Files 👇 excellent research by @chris_nectiv & @botify going through 7 billion different log files to gather insights into ChatGPT’s crawling behavior via the activities of three OpenAI bots. Some outcomes: * ChatGPT appears to be losing users * OpenAI may be relying on cached resources * OpenAI has tripled their crawl of the web since August 2025 * OAI-SearchBot has increased 3.5x since August 2025 * OpenAI now spends slightly more time searching than training * Google still dwarfs OpenAI in web crawling Read: botify.com/blog/openai-tr…

Reddit removed the “noreferrer” attribute, so GA4 has been properly recording Reddit referral traffic since Feb 1. As someone who builds Reddit campaigns for clients, I am very excited about having more data to report on 🔥

🚨 How do you measure AI search optimization success when traffic no longer reflects real impact? I’ll be covering this in my @brightonseo session next month, including: * How to select the right mix of performance and brand influence metrics depending on your business model * How to define topics and representative prompts to measure visibility directionally across AI answers * How to combine first-party data, log file analysis, sentiment, conversions, and revenue signals to estimate impact and guide optimization... even when attribution is incomplete. See you at the Auditorium 2, Brighton Centre on Thu 30 Apr, 2026 at 11:20 AM. 🙌

🚨 Google is responsible for nearly 3/4ths of all desktop web searches; ChatGPT is smaller than you might think - A new study from @randfish showing how: * Google’s 2025 US market share is closer to ~70% than 90% when platforms beyond traditional search engines are included. * Most AI Search and AI Answers happen on Google: Even if you combine every prompt on ChatGPT, Claude, Deepseek, and the rest and assume every prompt is a search-equivalent, Google dwarfs them. * Amazon, Bing, and YouTube still receive more desktop search activity than ChatGPT, despite the latter’s buzz. If you’re worried about AIO/SEO-for-AI/GIEIO, you should be worried about search visibility in those places, too (if their audiences are relevant to your business). Much more! Check it out: sparktoro.com/blog/new-resea…

Told you so! It’s not AIOs, it’s the ads

This tool shows which parts of the page will represent it in Google's AI search: gs.dejan.ai Google takes bits and pieces of text from pages and assembles a small query-specific extractive summary for each grounding source and this forms a broader model context together with personalization, user prompt and any attached media. Apart from your branding this is all you have to influence the model.

❤️ Your Top SEO & AI Search News from today's #SEOFOMO [February 15, 2026] 👇 * ​Microsoft is introducing an AI Performance Report in Bing Webmaster Tools - The first AI Platform to Offer An Official Report * ​Google AI Mode rolls out UCP-powered Checkout - The ecommerce agentic shift is now starting in Google... * ​OpenAI is testing ads in ChatGPT - Let's see whether ad standards are followed * ​Cloudflare introduces Markdown for Agents - Convert HTML to markdown, automatically * ​Search Isn’t Just Turning to AI, it’s being Re-Monetized: Text Ads Are Taking a Bigger Share of Google SERP Clicks (Data) - Stop treating organic search decline as just an “AIO problem”. * ​Why Your SEO KPIs Are Failing Your Business (And How To Fix Them) - It's time to reframe SEO KPIs around real business value * ​From Performance SEO To Demand SEO - Why AI Visibility Creates Demand, Not Just Traffic * ​ChatGPT Has 12% of Google’s Search Volume but Google Sends 190x More Traffic to Websites - ChatGPT’s CTR is 96% lower than Google’s CTR. Much more! From SEOs like @patrickstox @gfiorelli1 @seomeetsdesign @bngsrc @TaylorDanRW @jbobbink @dejanseo and more ... Read here: seofomo.co/posts/your-top… PS: Remember to subscribe to seofomo(.)co to avoid missing out 👀

SEO News: I'm now seeing UCP-powered checkout for the first time in Google's AI Mode shopping results. I've now experienced it for Wayfair's free listing results, where a prominent 'Buy' button appears on the item, allowing you to purchase it directly from search results. Here are some observations so far on how the Universal Commerce Protocol works at the checkout level: When does the 'Buy' CTA appear on listings? It seems to only trigger if you are signed in to your Google account. If you're not signed in, the CTA won't appear on free listings. Right now, it only has the capacity to show on either Etsy or Wayfair, with Shopify, Target, and Walmart coming soon. Payment option already being linked Unlike ChatGPT's Instant Checkout feature, because you're already signed in to your Google account to see the feature, it is highly likely that your card is already attached to your Google Pay account. This means you can essentially pay for the product in only one click - compared to ChatGPT, which likely involves more clicks. Comparing against the old 'Buy Now' on free listings The 'Buy' button is different to its predecessor, the 'Buy Now' add-on integration in GMC Next, which allows a direct link to your own checkout on-site with the product already being attached. This new process does not involve a click to your website if the customer has confidence in the quality of the information being presented. What is the opportunity here? This is all about product feeds and your organic shopping strategy. With this specific outlet for transactions being made, it shouldn't matter whether they land on your website or not as an eCommerce SEO. Your job is to get the sale, which can be influenced by visibility and the effectiveness of your feed management strategies. At the moment, this experience is confined to a handful of retailers and surfaces, but it will likely expand quickly with the interest that Google is receiving. It is my expectation that there will be additional tools and reporting to come in GMC Next related to UCP-powered checkout in the near future, so keep an eye out for them in your dashboard (we have already seen the rollout of the Business Agent tab so far).

ICYMI: OpenAI wants advertisers to prompt to create ads and not have to hire marketing companies seroundtable.com/openai-wants-a…

It begins.

Huge -> "It’s unclear what the Apple/Google partnership means for the ChatGPT integration in the future." "The multi-year partnership will lean on Google’s Gemini and cloud technology for future Apple foundational models, according to a joint statement obtained by CNBC’s Jim Cramer." “After careful evaluation, we determined that Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and we’re excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for our users,” Apple said in a statement on Monday."

Huge news. Google announced the Universal Commerce Protocol. UCP is built to power agentic experiences across the commerce ecosystem. It creates a clear language for consumer surfaces (such as AI Mode on Search, Gemini, and others) to connect to business backends (for product discovery, cart checkout etc) in a standardized and secure way. It's in partnership with Walmart, Shopify and more. And you can implement it on your site as well to enable sales directly from Google's AI surfaces.

This is not done yet, but it has a lot on it. A site to stop the lies from the top. Like today. Raw video and social media posts that are from #Jan6th Many were dropped the day of the attack. Read about the effort here. x.com/schachin/statu… Visit the site here Jan6.live -- #J6 #January6th

Today we released the December 2025 core update. We'll update our ranking release history page when the rollout is complete: status.search.google.com/incidents/Dsir…

Finally, a new core update. On LinkedIn Google said, "This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites."

The benefit of not enabling site owners to block AIOs or AI Mode separately -> CEO Matthew Prince says Cloudflare has blocked 416B AI bot requests for its customers since July 1, and that Google can see 3.2x more internet pages than OpenAI "Prince cites stats that Cloudflare has not previously shared publicly about how much more of the internet Google can see compared to other companies like OpenAI and Anthropic or even Meta and Microsoft. Prince says Cloudflare found that Google currently sees 3.2 times more pages on the internet than OpenAI, 4.6 times more than Microsoft, and 4.8 times more than Anthropic or Meta does. Put simply, “They have this incredibly privileged access,” Prince says." wired.com/story/big-inte…

Whoa, Google Search Console just rolled out another gem: a new AI-powered configuration to analyse your search traffic. The new feature is designed to reduce the effort it takes for you to select, filter, and compare your data. It handles 3 key elements: • Applying filters: Narrow down data by query, page, country, device, search appearance or date range. • Configuring comparisons: Set up complex comparisons (like custom date ranges) without manual setup. • Selecting metrics: Choose which of the four available metrics—Clicks, Impressions, Average CTR, and Average Position—to display based on your question. A few examples of what you can ask: • Targeted filtering: "Show me queries on phone searches that contain the word 'sports' in the last 6 months." • Complex comparisons: "Compare traffic for my pages that contain '/blog' in this quarter to the same quarter last year" • Metric selection: "Show me the Average CTR and Average Position of my queries in Spain in the last 28 days." • Specific content analysis: "Show clicks for pages that include the word 'google'." Now available in your accounts - check it out!

Google Search to drop more search features and structured data types: - Practice problem - Dataset - Today's Doodle box - Nutrition facts - Nearby offers and events - Local bikeshare station status - TV season selector - and more seroundtable.com/google-drops-s…

Apple to pay Google $1B for custom Gemini model