OpenAI Drops UTM Parameters From ChatGPT Results (GPT-6)

OpenAI seems to have removed or replaced the UTM parameters it placed on links within the ChatGPT results. This makes it harder to know if a click came from ChatGPT versus some other platform. This seems to have started with the release of GPT''6, which was a week ago.

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Google Search On PDFs: Conversion, Links, HTML, Ranking, Limits, Crawling...

Google's Martin Splitt and John Mueller just posted a Search Off the Record podcast on the topic of PDFs, it is named PDFs in Search: Indexing, AI & Pitfalls. It goes over how PDFs are converted for crawling and indexing, how Google processes links, images, what are the file limits and do they rank in search and AI search.

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Gemini 4 Argon In Google Search Via AI Mode

Google announced Gemini 4 Argon a couple of weeks ago and today announced that it is now an option in Google Search via AI Mode for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers globally.

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Google Ads Data Strength Best Practices Updated

Google has revamped its Data Strength Best Practices help document with much greater emphasis on sending more first-party data and identifiers, using Data Manager correctly, adopting AI-powered campaigns, and supporting its recommendations with performance statistics. It is a big update to the document.

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The Industry Mourns The Loss Of Nick Wilsdon - Loved By Industry

I am sad to report that Nick Wilsdon has passed away yesterday, October 11, 2026. Nick Wilsdon has been in the SEO industry for over two decades and was a close friend to many in the search marketing industry.

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Google: Poor Image Quality Won't Stop Products From Showing In Search Or Ads

Google has updated its Google Merchant Center low image quality help document to now say that poor image quality will not stop those products from showing in Google Search or Google Ads.

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Google Search Console Performance Report Extremely Delayed

The search performance reports in Google Search Console is now over 64 hours delayed, which is incredibly unusual for this report. Generally, we see this report updated within a few hours but over the past few days, post-spam update, the report has been lagging.

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Bing Tests Removing Favicons From Search Result Snippets

Microsoft Bing is testing dropping favicons from Bing search result snippets. This makes the search results page look much less graphical.

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Google Ads Self-Services Conversion Lift Measurement

Google Ads now lets advertisers set up Conversion Lift measurement themselves. Google updated its help documentation to say that you no longer need a Google Ads representative to set up Conversion Lift measurement; you just need at least 1,000 observed conversions and a $5,000 budget.

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Google September 2026 Spam Update Has Finished Rolling Out

The Google September 2026 spam update is now done rolling out. It started on Thursday, September 28, 2026 at around 12:00 pm ET and completed on October 8, 2026 at 4:37 am ET. This was different from the previous few spam updates in that this one took two weeks to roll out whereas the others took only two days to roll out.

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Google Search Crawl Rate Doc Adds Retry-After HTTP & More

Google has just pushed some updates to the reduce the Google crawl rate documentation. Most of the changes are just organizational to the content on the page but under the "Urgently reduce crawler traffic (for emergencies)" section, Google added new information on how to use Retry-After HTTP header.

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Google Email Shares Number Of Preferred Source Subscribers

Google Search Console is sending out emails informing site owners how many people are subscribing or following them as a preferred source on Google. It says "people are choosing domain as a preferred source" and then lists the number of "Preferred source selections."

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OpenAI Tests New Product Labels On ChatGPT Results

OpenAI is testing new labels appended to the ChatGPT product results. These labels can add information about the product it is displaying, such as "best all-rounder," "best for beginners," "best cushioning," and so on.

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OpenAI To Test Visual ChatGPT Ad Format During AI Image Generation

OpenAI announced "new visual ad format in ChatGPT" that it will be testing "later this month in the US with an initial group of advertisers." The new visual ad format is an "ad format during image generation in ChatGPT." So if you ask ChatGPT to make an image for you, it will show a special ad for that process.

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Google Ads To Allow Some Advertisers To Use Different Business Names

Google Ads will update its business name policy to allow some advertisers to use a business name that differs from the ad's destination domain. This is limited to certain cases, specifically three cases and it also excludes advertisers who are not the direct verified brand.

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Google Helpful Content Doc With New Main Content & EOT/SA Sections

Google has updated the creating helpful, reliable, people-first content help document to primarily add two new sections. First, it added that the main content is super critical, added what is main content and then explained how Search Quality raters review content quality of the main content.

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Google: Manually Factcheck & Review AI-Generated Content For Accuracy

Google has updated Google Search's "guidance on using generative AI content on your website" document to tell those who use AI-generated content to "manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing."

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ChatGPT Adds Virtually Try On Clothing & Accessories

OpenAI announced that it is rolling out virtual try-on for clothing and accessories for ChatGPT on the mobile and web interfaces. This also includes saving these to your ChatGPT Library.

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Google Ads: Have At Least One Asset Group To Avoid Invalid Final URL Error

Google Ads updated its destination not working policy document to "provide additional examples for destination issues for advertisers," the company said. But Google also added a new line that says "Make sure your campaign has at least one asset group configured. If an asset group is missing, you may receive an "invalid final URL" error during setup even if your destination URL is working correctly."

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OpenAI ChatGPT Ads Gains Bulk Product Creation, Product Review Status & More

OpenAI just sent out an email to advertisers about new ChatGPT Ads product updates that include several new features. The new features include bulk creation for product feed campaigns, product review status, report conversions beyond your campaign goal through the API, separate account, brand, and legal names and ChatGPT Ads are live in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

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Google Tests Sponsored Products Grid That Looks Like The Organic Product Grid

Google is testing making the sponsored products search results block or grid look more like the organic products/shopping grid. Instead of showing a long carousel of products across the top or on the right, this shows a product grid format we are more accustomed to for the free product listings.

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Bing Sponsored Ads With One-Line Consumer Review Extension

Microsoft Advertising now shows "consumer review" ad extensions in the Bing search results sponsored results section. These are one-line snippets of text, added under the sponsored result, that come a "from consumer review."

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Google Working To Restore Google Analytics

Google has confirmed there are issues with Google Analytics loading the platform. Google updated its status report to say that it has "restored for some users" and Google expects "a resolution for all users in the near future."

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Google Appeals Europe's DMA Mandate To Share Search History Data

Google has officially appealed to the European Union to stop the European Commission's Digital Markets Act (DMA) mandate requiring it to share search history data with competitors. Google said, "We're appealing decisions that will force us to share people's private search history without sufficient anonymization and weaken vital security protections on Android."

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Google Globally Rolls Out Monitoring Capabilities In AI Mode

Google is now rolling out monitoring capabilities in AI Mode in Google Search globally for everyone. When Google first announced this feature, it was only available for Ultra and Pro paid subscribers, but now it is available to all Google users.

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