Wissenswertes

Key Takeaways: Google started testing Personal Intelligence in the US: With Personal Intelligence Google provides personalized results and responses - using personal data from various apps such as Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube and Google Search " When enabled, Gemini accesses your data to answer your specific requests and to do things for you. And because this data already lives at Google securely, you don't have to send sensitive data elsewhere to start personalizing your e

Key Takeaways: On January 11th Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol : UCP will soon power a new checkout feature on eligible Google product listings in AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app, allowing shoppers to check out from eligible U.S. retailers right as they’re researching on Google UCP is built to work across verticals and is compatible with existing industry protocols like Agent2Agent ( A2A ), Agent Payments Protocol ( AP2 ) and Model Context Protocol ( M

Key Takeaways: Google officially carried out the December 2025 Core Update from 11th to 29th of December - while especially one week later volatility spiked Solis found movements across multiple verticals such as Publications, eCommerce, SaaS : This is yet another iteration to reward specialization, expertise and showcase more commercially oriented content from brands or specialized retailers , rather than generic ecommerce platforms or publications.  Gabe: The December 20

Key Takeaways: Google sued SerpApi for scraping search results and selling the data over copyright and the fact SerpApi’s answer to SearchGuard is to mask the hundreds of millions of automated queries it is sending to Google each day to make them appear as if they are coming from human users SerpApi is used by ChatGPT, Perplexity and other LLM chats for grounding there results as well as by Search Analytics Tools, Apple, Meta aso, After removing the num=100 parameter in Se

Key Takeaways: Dan Petrovic analyzed 7,060 queries via Google's Vertex AI Search that likely powers Gemini Chunk size: The total words retrieved for grounding is surprisingly stable throughout queries at a median of 2.000 words (within 1.500 to 3.000 words) This budget is devided among sources based on their relevance ranking: First position with 28% to 5th position with 13% share. 77% of pages get 200-600 words selected. The typical page gets ~377 words. Longer, more exte

Key Takeaways: Anderson analyzed the Google Leak & DOJ testimony: A deep dive mapping Google's Search Essentials and Helpful Content questions to leaked Content Warehouse attributes like Q*, siteAuthority, contentEffort, and predictedDefaultNsr. From Navboost to contentEffort he provides a clear understanding of how Google is or likely is working ICYMI: Back in 2024 the Website Boosting article from Mario Fischer visually outlined it pretty well Example I: EEAT decoded E-E-A-

Key Takeaways: Based on SEMrush data Long found that major social media channels like X, linkedIn, Threads gained visibility in Google Search since mid of October Inline with this development, Google added a new social feature in the Google Search Console that is controversely discussed - as the data it provides is of low quality and full of anomalies especially with the introduction of AI Overviews and the push of AI Mode Clark shared first insights that he was surprised a

Key Takeaways: Metehan discovered in Google's Discovery Engine 7 ranking signals that likely power AI Mode (Vertex AI search) Base Ranking → core algorithm output Gecko Score → embedding similarity Jetstream → cross-attention model (handles negation better than embeddings) BM25 → yes, keyword matching still matters PCTR → 3-tier engagement system Freshness → time-sensitive query adjustment Boost/Bury → manual business rules His key takeaways: Ancestor headings travel WITH

Key Takeaways: A study by Seer Interactive found massive CTR drops from Google comparing September 2025 vs. June 2024 Paid CTR without AIO dropped by -32% Paid CTR with AIO dropped by -68% Organic/SEO CTR without AIO dropped by -41% Organic/SEO CTR with AIO dropped by -61% Google proclaims that AIO is a successful feature for users and Google is sending more traffic to the web - data throughout different industries cannot support those claims Green raises important points:

Key Takeaways: Mantica shows data from running Google Ads AI Max for 4 month: AI Max lost against all match types , doubled costs for conversions Google responds to criticism on X (AdsLiaison): [AI Max is] designed to help you capture incremental conversions or conversion value , depending on your objective. It does this by expanding your reach to additional relevant traffic using broad match and keywordless matching in the backend. It pairs this reach with optimizing your a

Key Takeaways: Profound analyzed ChatGPT citations for the used queries (Query Fanout) for 420 prompts (97 single-query, 323 multi-query) to compare how they were influenced by Google's Top 10 for the queries Findings: First Queries significantly rely more heavily on Google's Top 10 while further queries source citations from beyond (e.g. other sources such as Reddit, Wikipedia aso. or Google's Top 30, Top 100 or even Bing, Brave and others) In middle and last queries ranki

Key Takeaways: xAI launched Grokipedia that promotes to be a Wikipedia that is fact checked and rewritten by Grok: " ... it rewrites those pages, removing falsehoods, correcting half-truths, and adding crucial & missing context" Grokipedia currently has almost 1m articles and is indexable on Google As Brick and Jeffrey point out already over 900.000 pages are indexed on Google - some ranking already and are cited in LLM chats It will be interesting to see how Google approac

Key Takeaways: Metehan developed a script to run via Screaming Frog that analysis meaningful images of websites automatically Google’s investing heavily in visual understanding. Their visual search fan-out technique runs multiple queries in the background based on comprehensive image analysis . With this tool you can check whether your images provide meaning to search engines and LLMs to add value to your content OR rather whether your visuals meet your product or brand iden

Key Takeaways: SE Ranking analyzed over 50.000 keywords in the US, mostly focussed on eCommerce / electronics Most impactful factors: Total number of referring domains Total domain traffic Page trust ... Their concluded recommendations: "1️⃣ + 2️⃣ Grow 𝐃𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 & 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 + 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫: Make your brand visible across a variety of channels — media, social, review platforms, and traditional SEO backlinks. 3️⃣ Invest in 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐄

Key Takeaways: According to AlsoAsked Data on English queries the share of AI generated People Also Ask in Google SERPs increased from 17,8% to 37,8% . According to my observations this is likely similar in German/Germany Thus, data points in Google Search Console and tracking tools likely affected as spots for direct mentions and links are taken over bei AI Overviews-like answers Update 12/25 : while the maximum was hit in October (41.4%) Google seemed to have doubled down

Key Takeaways: Nach der Ankündigung am 07.10. ist nun auch seit dem 13.10. der AI Mode bzw. KI Modus in Deutschland ausgerollt Mit der Integration in der Suchleiste wird der AI Mode prominent angeteasert Christian Kunz fasst es gut zusammen: " Das Ergebnis dürften deutlich weniger Klicks sein. Das zeigen aktuelle Studien. Dabei dürfte klar sein: Der KI-Modus wird bleiben, und Websitebetreiber und SEOs müssen damit zurechtkommen . Dafür gibt es verschiedene strategische Ansät

Key Takeaways: Peham (OtterlyAI) reports that ChatGPT cites less sources the shares of Reddit and Wikipedia decline Potential reasons: OpenAI tries to save money doing less search grounding for guests / logged-out users (tests from Claneo supporting it) A potential clean-up as both Reddit and Wikipedia were "overcited" Ray: Google dropping the num=100 parameter led to search tools getting less results for grounding (one search only gets 10 results) - consequently Reddit an

Key Takeaways: RexBERT is a language model specifically trained on E-Commerce data that outperforms general-purpose models Potential...

Key Takeaways: ChatGPT 5 also uses query fan-out and outlines it in the conversation response There are bookmarks to retrieve the initiated searches triggered for a certain prompt Kronenberg: ChatGPT might use a so called meta search that provides search grounding from different sources such as Bing or Google or other features: "OpenAI-Caches: eigene Zwischenspeicher und Crawling-Daten Filter & Re-Ranking: bevorzugt werden vertrauenswürdige Institutionen wie BBC, Reuters,

Key Takeaways: Google dropped the ?num Parameter from search that enabled to view 100 results for a query at one glance: https://www.google.com/search?q=paintball&num=100 Tracking tools like DataForSEO, SISTRIX & SEMrush as well as scrapers such as from ChatGPT, Perplexity etc. relied on that parameter to initially get more than 10 results This results in increasing costs for both trackers and LLM chat bots to provide Google search based data / grounding Plus: Google Search