Shopify & Bing Added as OpenAI Shopping Partners
Following the recent introduction of its enhanced shopping experience, OpenAI (ChatGPT) added Shopify and Bing as third-party search providers. What does that mean? It means that if you’re on Shopify and want your products to be included in ChatGPT’s search results, you’re in luck, as long as you haven’t opted out of OAI-SearchBot. Businesses on other platforms can also apply to have their products included.
How Much Do You Trust AI Overviews?
Of 1,000+ web users surveyed, Exploding Topics found that 42% of users have experienced inaccurate or misleading content in AI Overviews, and yet only about 18% actually check the sources cited by AIOs. Given this information, it’s not surprising that their study uncovered that only 8.5% of the users always trust AIOs (interestingly, most of whom were in the 30-44 age range) and more than 1 in 5 reportedly never trust them.
We’d love to know your thoughts on their trustworthiness! Please take about three minutes to fill out our short survey: How much do you trust AIOs? We’ll share the results in next month’s newsletter.
Yes, AI Content Should Still Have Guardrails
A recent Ahrefs study reviewed the top 20 ranking URLs for 100,000 random keywords, finding that the vast majority contained some amount of AI-generated content. They concluded that “AI generated content does not hurt your Google rankings,” but this headline doesn’t tell the whole story. When you dive deeper into the data, you find that over 80% of these pages used a combination of AI and human input, and less than 15% were created without the use of AI. Check out the full breakdown:
Our key takeaway from these results? You can leverage AI to craft content that ranks well, but anything you publish on your website should involve humans – add unique insights from real-world experience, always review AI outputs for accuracy, and strive to be the most helpful to your users.
Google’s Insight: SEO’s Vital Role in an AI-Driven World
Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt recently discussed whether AI will eliminate the need for SEO. Mueller emphasized that learning SEO remains crucial because, as long as websites exist, search engines and AI chatbots will rely on their content heavily. He highlighted that websites are the fundamental basis for visibility across all online systems, especially for local businesses and e-commerce, where a simple chatbot response can’t replace the need to find and interact with a full website.
Mueller underscored the ongoing need for human expertise in the SEO process, stating:
…you also need someone like an SEO as a partner to give you updates along the way and say, ‘Okay, we did all of these things,’ and they can list them out and tell you exactly what they did, ‘These things are going to take a while, and I can show you when Google crawls, we can follow along to see like what is happening there.
Mueller emphasized the ongoing importance of an SEO partner in helping businesses effectively manage their online presence. While AI is advancing, he asserted that many aspects of SEO, such as guiding a site through its “SEO journey” and tracking its visibility, won’t be fully replaced by AI anytime soon. Despite the rise of AI, the need for well-optimized websites and expertise to create and maintain them is here to stay. SEO remains a critical foundation for optimizing for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). This chart shows how we are adapting to the rise of AI-powered search engines at ROI Revolution by optimizing our content for both SEO & GEO.
SEO vs. GEO
AI Mode Expands with Search Live and More
Google’s live interaction capabilities have expanded! Now users can conduct a voice search using AI Mode through Google Labs in the Android and iOS apps. This feature will remember past searches and keep working even when you switch to other apps. It will also keep a transcript and let you switch back and forth between voice search and typing.
To use Voice Search in AI Mode, open the Google App, make sure Labs is turned on, and tap the “Live Mode” icon (highlighted in yellow in this screenshot). The microphone will immediately turn on, and you can ask your question to start a conversation. One thing to be aware of: the microphone will continue to work if you close the screen (not the app), and you need to tap the “x” to turn it off.
Google also added AI Mode to Circle to Search and Lens. When you use those functions in the app and an AI Overview is triggered, you can scroll down to the end of the answer to see an option to “Dive Deeper in AI Mode.” (See the Lens screenshots below.)
As Google continues to add AI Mode functionality, we continue to look for opportunities for our SEO clients to show up as sources in these features. Contact us to learn more about optimizing for voice search, AI Overviews, and AI Mode!
Some AI Systems May Use LLMs.txt Despite Google’s Denial
In a recent conversation on BlueSky, Google’s John Mueller reminded users, “FWIW no AI system currently uses llms.txt.”
As if to prove Mueller wrong, OpenAI seems to be doing it. On X, user Ray Martinez shared a screenshot of his log file showing evidence of OAI-Searchbot crawling his site’s LLMs.txt about every 15 minutes.
While the discussion started a few months ago about whether the file would be useful in the future, adoption has been slow, and Google insists it won’t use it. However, the popular WordPress plugin Yoast lets users generate the file easily, offering to help LLMs like Perplexity and ChatGPT understand a website’s most important content.
If you’re only concerned with Google, creating a file may not be worth your time, but if you’re interested in helping ChatGPT, it looks like it could be worth the effort.
Insights Report Now Within Search Console
After beta testing, Google has integrated the Search Console Insights report directly into Google Search Console. You can find access in the left side menu under “Insights” (see screenshot).
The report is meant to summarize useful data for users who may not be as comfortable using the Performance report. Insights will quickly show
- Total clicks and impressions from Google Search and how they compare to the previous period.
- Which pages are attracting the most clicks to help identify trends in pages.
- Top search queries that are bringing users to your site.
Videos Now Included in AI Overviews
Google is showing more videos in AI Overviews –multiple videos in a carousel or one longer-form video with the section that directly answers the query highlighted (sample screenshot below). The length of the video no longer matters.
Although we don’t yet have data to back up our educated guess, a video in an AI Overview could be more likely to garner a click, so if you have a YouTube channel, keep it up to date by adding helpful videos that answer your customers’ questions. It’s just one more way to make the most of your content and prove your expertise and authority in your field.
ROI Answers
Q: Why are URLs ‘disappearing’ from the CWV report in Search Console?
A: Recently, we (and many other SEOs) noticed anomalies in our clients’ Core Web Vitals reports. Starting around July 11th, the total number of URLs in this report appears to drop sharply, though these ‘disappearing’ pages aren’t reflected in the indexing report.
You may see something like this in Google Search Console:
After some investigation, we’ve concluded that there is no cause for alarm at this time; the anomaly has been unofficially attributed to a recent tool update.
Google’s John Mueller replied to an inquiry about this issue on Bluesky with the following:
These reports are based on samples of what we know for your site, and sometimes the overall sample size for a site changes. That’s not indicative of a problem. I’d focus on the samples with issues, rather than the absolute counts.
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