One GEO Tool Shuts Down. The First of Many?

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SEO + GEO

SEO Services Market Value Doubles by 2030 Analysis 2030

MarkNtel Advisors paints a clear picture of where SEO is heading. The global SEO services market, valued at USD 81.46 billion in 2024, is projected to hit USD 171.77 billion by 2030, growing at 13.24% annually. Driving this surge are AI-powered tools, global e-commerce expansion, and a sharp rise in digitalization supported by government policies. Agencies dominate over freelancers due to scale and data resources, while North America leads with the highest SEO adoption.

Why I'm Shutting Down Lorelight (And What It Taught Me About GEO)

Benjamin Houy is not going to be a part of the SEO growth, at least not with Lorelight - an AI visibility monitor. After helping brands track mentions across ChatGPT and other AI platforms, he realized the insights didn’t change anyone’s behavior. The secret to AI visibility, he found, isn’t a new trick - it’s the same timeless formula: create useful content, earn mentions from trusted publications, and build genuine expertise.

My Take: I see AI visibility tracking as something of a commodity and that’s exactly why I never built it into Floyi. But it does have the AIRS Analyzer that goes beyond simple mention-tracking. It doesn’t just say if you’re cited, but helps you understand why. Then gives you a detailed content blueprint and brief to position your content to stand out. It runs deep analyses across eight AI responses and citations, plus Google and Bing SERPs, for real strategic insight. That’s the difference between tracking visibility and building visibility.

If you do want to create your own AI tracker, here’s the open-source FireGEO that Firecrawl released ~4 months ago and is ready to go. All the code is already there, so you just need to follow the steps. Read the blog post on FireGEO.

Who Rules AI Search? What 3 Months of AI Visibility Index Data Tells Us

Patrick Geaney breaks down three months of Semrush’s AI Visibility Index to show how ChatGPT and Google AI Mode treat brands and sources very differently. ChatGPT is expanding its source diversity fast, nearly doubling across industries, while Google AI Mode is playing it safe with smaller changes. Some of the takeaways:

• ChatGPT’s number of brand mentions jumped 12% in September. Google AI Mode’s brand mentions dropped 4% over the same period.

• ChatGPT increased its source diversity by roughly 80%, showing major volatility.

• Google AI Mode sources rose only 13%, staying relatively stable.

• 61 of the top 100 brands appeared in both ChatGPT and Google AI Mode.

• Reddit usage dropped 82% in ChatGPT but rose 75% in Google AI Mode.

• Source overlap between ChatGPT and Google AI Mode is just 30%, meaning content visibility strategies must differ by model.

The Best of Published Decks From the Latest BrightonSEO October 2025

Aleyda Solís gathers a goldmine for anyone who missed BrightonSEO’s October 2025 event or just wants the best of it in one place. Her roundup curates top presentation decks across strategy, AI, content, and technical SEO, each packed with insights from industry leaders. Think of it as your backstage pass to the conference - minus the travel, queues, and sore feet.

Ahrefs Evolve 2025 Recap: What You Missed

Si Quan Ong breaks down the four hard themes from Ahrefs Evolve event. First, search is everywhere - TikTok, Reddit, and AI Overviews now rival Google. Second, your website isn’t the hero anymore, third-party mentions fuel visibility. Third, AI isn’t your intern but your co-strategist. Use it to elevate thinking, not replace it. And fourth, you can’t out-AI the machines, but you can out-human them by taking creative risks and showing personality.

Multi-Location SEO: How to Scale Without the Chaos

In this detailed guide, Miriam Ellis and Chris Shirlow turn the chaos of managing local SEO for dozens of branches into a clear, repeatable system. They break down how to create unique location pages, optimize every Google Business Profile, and keep data, reviews, and backlinks consistent across markets. Standardize everything. Build a master spreadsheet of verified info, use tools like GMBspy to align your business categories, and automate wherever possible.

My Take: If you’re getting into local SEO, this is a nice reminder of things. I picked up a couple things I forgot myself.

Google's New Search Ad Layout Is Causing Accidental Clicks

Barry Schwartz reports that Google’s latest ad layout may be boosting ad revenue for all the wrong reasons. The new “Sponsored results” label groups multiple ads together, with a “Hide sponsored results” button awkwardly placed at the bottom - after you’ve already seen and likely clicked on them. Even seasoned SEOs are accidentally hitting ads they meant to avoid.

My Take: I’ve been saying this for years that every time Google’s SERP design changes, it’s another step to increase the likelihood of ad clicks. This latest design change is the most drastic because they removed the individual sponsored labels. It’s all about Google’s bottom-line. More ad clicks = more ad revenue = happier shareholders = bigger bonuses for execs.

Differentiated Delivery: Evolving and Cloaking Your Robots.txt Into an Active Bot Gatekeeper

Brett Tabke shows how to turn your old robots.txt into a smart, active gatekeeper. He covers how static files are no match for today’s rogue AI crawlers and teaches readers to use “differentiated delivery” to serve custom robots.txt files depending on the bot. From simple .htaccess tweaks to dynamic scripts in Perl or Python, he walks you through protecting bandwidth, filtering abusive bots, and shielding proprietary data.

SEO + GEO Ripples

• Grokipedia, Elon Musk’s new AI-powered encyclopedia, launched with over 800,000 machine-written pages. Google and Bing wasted no time indexing hundreds of them. Grokipedia’s growth mirrors the “scaled content abuse” Google’s been cracking down on all year. Yet, it’s getting indexed fast. This is a reminder that authority, trust, and timing can bend even Google’s toughest rules if you play your cards right.

• Google has rolled out AI Mode to 180 countries, introducing powerful new “agentic” capabilities that help users handle real-world tasks like booking restaurants and, soon, appointments and event tickets. The update also brings personalized results for users who opt in, tailoring recommendations to their preferences, and a new link-sharing feature that lets others continue the same AI conversation.

• Google is cleaning house again, retiring several structured data types and underused features in a move to “simplify the search results page.” Gone are practice problem and dataset structured data, the Today’s Doodle box, nutrition facts, nearby offers and events, bikeshare statuses, and TV season selectors. Google is trimming the fat, keeping only data that they say truly enhances user experience.

• Dan Taylor dives into how AI Overviews and ChatGPT actually “see” travel sites. His research found that over 70% of AI citations come from landing pages, not blogs or homepages. ChatGPT pulls from slightly deeper, more diverse sources, but both reward clear structure and commercial intent. For travel brands, that means flatten your site architecture, build landing pages close to the root, and align each one tightly with user intent. Even if you’re not in travel, there’s still interesting info here that you can use to help you check your niche/industry.

AI

Opal Is Now Available in More Than 160 Countries

Google Labs’ Opal, the no-code AI mini-app builder, is expanding to over 160 countries. That opens the door for anyone to automate work, create content, or test new ideas without writing a line of code. Users are building tools that extract data, generate reports, and automate repetitive tasks like newsletters (not here though) and contract reviews. Creators are using Opal to spin up marketing assets, dynamic visuals, and interactive stories in minutes.

AI Ripples

• NotebookLM can now instantly turn notes into flashcards and quizzes to memorize terms, dates, and key ideas or test how well they’ve understood a topic. You can adjust difficulty levels, choose the number of cards, and select which sources to include. Great for focused study or quick reviews on the go. The app’s chat also got a big Gemini-powered boost, now with 50% better quality, 4x larger context, and 6x longer memory.

• Apple is quietly partnering with Google to supercharge Siri using a custom Gemini-based AI model running on Apple’s secure cloud. Apple chose Gemini over Anthropic’s Claude, which carried a $1.5 billion price tag. The upgraded Siri, expected in iOS 26.4 by spring 2026, will handle complex queries through Google’s summarizer tech while keeping user data local to Apple’s devices.

• Japan’s top creative powerhouses, including Studio Ghibli and Bandai Namco, have joined forces to challenge OpenAI’s use of copyrighted material in training its Sora 2 model. Their trade group, CODA, argues that OpenAI’s opt-out policy crosses the line under Japanese copyright law, which requires explicit permission before use.

MARKETING

Amazon Offers AI Translation for Self-Published Kindle Books

Amazon just rolled out Kindle Translate, a beta AI tool that helps self-published authors turn their ebooks into multilingual moneymakers. Right now, it translates between English and Spanish and from German to English - completely free for Kindle Direct Publishing users. Authors can pick their target languages, preview the translation, and even price each version separately. Amazon says every translation gets an automatic accuracy check before publication and carries a “Kindle Translate” label. With less than 5% of Kindle titles available in multiple languages, this could be a quiet gold rush for indie authors ready to expand globally.

Raptive Sues Google for Ad Tech Monopolization Seeking Billions in Damages

Luis Rijo reports that Raptive, the media company behind ads for over 6,000 creator websites, has filed a massive antitrust lawsuit accusing Google of rigging digital ad auctions for more than a decade. The 93-page complaint alleges Google used insider data, deceptive pricing tactics, and tools like Project Bernanke to undercut publishers while protecting its dominance. Raptive claims these schemes robbed creators of fair ad revenue and stifled market competition.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Bluesky Hits 40 Million Users, Introduces ‘Dislikes’ Beta

Bluesky just crossed 40 million users and is taking a bold step to clean up social media conversations with a new “dislikes” beta. Instead of fueling negativity, dislikes will train the algorithm to show users less of what they don’t want, fine-tuning personalization and reply rankings. Bluesky is also testing tools that detect toxic replies, highlight relevant conversations, and let users better control who can respond.

Time to get more active on Bluesky?

WAYS WE CAN WORK TOGETHER

Floyi - The only AI-powered tool that builds 4-level topical maps. Don’t just plan your content strategy - make it unstoppable.

TopicalMap.com Service - Let us do the heavy lifting. We handle the research, structure, and strategy. You get a custom topical map designed to boost authority and dominate your niche and industry.

Topical Maps Unlocked 2.0 - Unlock the blueprint to ranking success. Master the art of structuring content that search engines (and your audience) love - and watch your rankings soar.

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