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SEO + GEO

Joint Statement from Google and Apple

Big news of the week and a short joint statement. Apple will use Google’s Gemini models for Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri. More details in next source.

Apple Will Pay Billions for Gemini After OpenAI Declined, FT Says

Ben Lovejoy reports that Apple’s deal to use Google Gemini models for new Siri features may run about $1 billion per year, structured as a cloud-computing contract that could total several billion over time. Apple says the models will run on its Private Cloud Compute servers to protect user privacy. The Financial Times also says OpenAI chose not to pursue being Siri’s custom model provider, opting instead to focus on building its own AI device.

From Discovery to Influence: A Guide to AEO and GEO

Microsoft Advertising released a PDF laying out why retailers need to stop thinking “ranking” and start thinking “being the best answer” across AI search, assistants and browsers. The playbook is practical and uses both Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Some of the takeaways:

• Treat “answer readiness” as a data discipline: clean feeds, consistent attributes and fewer gaps.

• Use structured data that AI can trust, including Product, Offer and Review markup.

• Expose freshness signals like dateModified and key commerce fields like availability.

• Include explicit start and end dates for promos so AI does not invent or misstate offers.

• For multi-region catalogs, express currency, price and shipping rules clearly to avoid bad matches.

• Add detailed alt text and ImageObject info so image results carry real product meaning.

• Write feature explanations, not fluff, so AI can summarize benefits without guessing.

• Add use-case context in copy, like “day hikes above 40 degrees,” to match intent-based queries.

• Support comparison behavior with clear deltas, like “Your model is $179, competitor is $199.”

• Surface policy details that close sales, like “returns allowed for 180 days,” in crawlable text and feeds.

My Take: This is a good read. One of the rare instances where I see AEO and GEO used together as separate meanings.

Google December 2025 Core Update: 15% of Top 10 Pages Disappeared From the Results

Yulia Deda dug into Google’s December 2025 core update by comparing rankings before (Nov. 10, 2025) and after (Jan. 5, 2026) across 100,000 keywords in 20 niches, and the takeaway is simple: nothing is “safe,” but opportunity is everywhere. Roughly 1 in 7 pages that sat in the top 10 vanished beyond the top 100, while a meaningful chunk of new winners jumped straight into the top 3 from outside the top 20. Other insights:

• Analyzed 100,000 keywords across 20 niches (New York, USA).

• Nearly 15% of pre-update top 10 pages dropped out of the top 100.

• About 13% of post-update top 3 URLs were previously outside the top 20.

• Average age of top 10 domains stayed 15+ years.

• New domains (0 to 2 years) made up under 2% of top 10 rankings.

• 33% of top 3 URLs held the exact same position.

• 16.9% of top 10 URLs stayed in the same position.

• 10.16% of top 20 URLs stayed stable.

• Only 3% of top 100 URLs kept the same position.

What 107,000 Pages Reveal About Core Web Vitals and AI Search

Dan Taylor analyzed 107,352 pages that show up in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode and found a truth: Core Web Vitals are not a growth hack, they are damage control. Most pages already “pass,” so shaving LCP from 2.3s to 1.8s rarely buys extra AI visibility. The real risk lives in the long tail: a small set of painfully slow or jumpy pages correlate with worse AI outcomes because users bounce, trust drops, and those behavior signals echo in AI selection.

Google AI Overview Local Pack Leading to Drops in Visibility

Google is testing AI Overviews inside local packs, and some businesses are watching their Google Business Profile visibility fall off a cliff. Early examples show 50% or bigger drops in impressions and actions when the AI module replaces the traditional 3 pack. Joy Hawkins’ tracking, plus Places Scout data, suggests AI Local Packs already show on about 8% of keywords and rising.

SEO + GEO Ripples

• Google wants to keep the web clickable in the AI era. Preferred Sources lets you tune Top Stories toward outlets you trust, rolling out globally, and it doubles clicks to chosen sites on average. Google will surface links from your news subscriptions in Gemini, then AI Overviews and AI Mode, via a carousel. In AI Mode, expect more inline links plus short “why this matters” intros. Web Guide is now faster and shows up on more queries. Google is piloting AI partnerships with publishers, plus AI overviews and audio briefs in Google News.

• Barry Schwartz reports that Google is cracking down on prediction-based news content that masquerades as real events. After a wave of misleading sports “predictions” appeared in Top Stories and Google News, Search VP Rajan Patel confirmed ranking changes are coming to demote or remove this content. The issue is not predictions themselves, but poor labeling that forces users to click, scroll, and discover the story never actually happened.

• Robby Stein, VP of Google Search, says that AI Overviews now uses Gemini 3 Pro for complex queries.

AI

New Tech and Tools for Retailers to Succeed in an Agentic Shopping Era

Vidhya Srinivansan at Google says “Agentic commerce” is about to rewrite how customers discover, decide and buy, and lays out what retailers should do now to stay visible. First, the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) aims to standardize how agents, merchants and payments talk, so retailers can plug into multiple AI shopping surfaces without custom one-off integrations. Next, Business Agent lets shoppers chat with brands right in Search, like an always-on sales associate. Google is also adding new Merchant Center attributes for conversational discovery, plus Direct Offers in Google Ads to surface targeted discounts when shoppers are ready to buy.

Gemini Introduces Personal Intelligence

Gemini now has the new Personal Intelligence, a beta that lets you connect Gmail, Photos, YouTube and Search so Gemini can answer with your own context. It can pull tire specs, license plate numbers and travel ideas by reasoning across emails and images, not just web links. Connections are optional, you choose which apps, and you can switch to temporary or non-personalized chats. Google says Gemini does not train directly on your inbox or photo library, and asks users to flag “over-personalization” with feedback. It’s rolling out to US users first, with expansion planned.

ChatGPT’s Approach to Advertising and Expanding Access

OpenAI plans to introduce ads in ChatGPT. Ads will appear only in the free and Go tiers, never inside responses, and will be clearly labeled and separated from organic answers. Users will be able to control personalization, opt out of targeted ads, and review or clear ad-related data. Ads will not be shown to minors or alongside sensitive topics like health or politics. OpenAI also confirms that conversations are not shared with advertisers and that ads cannot influence model outputs. The focus is expanding access while preserving privacy, clarity, and user control.

Veo 3.1 Ingredients to Video: More Consistency, Creativity and Control

Google introduces the upgraded Veo 3.1 and shows how creators can turn simple ingredient images into expressive, story-driven videos with consistent characters, backgrounds and objects across scenes. The update adds native vertical 9:16 output for Shorts and other mobile formats, plus 1080p and 4K upscaling for broadcast-ready quality. They also highlights better dialogue, smoother motion and tighter visual control, making it easier to build narratives without complex prompts. Veo 3.1 is now available across the Gemini app, YouTube, Flow, Google Vids, the API and Vertex AI.

AI Ripples

• Google released TranslateGemma, an open translation model family built on Gemma 3, tuned for fast, high-quality translation across 55 languages. They also keep Gemma’s multimodal skill, so it can translate text inside images. It ships in 4B, 12B and 27B sizes and is available on Kaggle and Hugging Face, with deployment options in Vertex AI.

• Matt G. Southern breaks down Google’s push into AI Mode checkout and the backlash around “personalized upselling.” Google says price games are off-limits: merchants cannot show higher prices on Google than on their own sites, and “upsell” means suggesting premium versions, not charging you more. Google also claims its Direct Offers pilot can only lower prices or add perks like free shipping.

CONTENT

Moving From a Google-Shaped Web to an Agent-Shaped Web: A Refutation of Misinformation About Chunking

Mike King argues that “chunking” is not gimmicky LLM bait, it is smart content design for an agent-first web. He explains how RAG and passage indexing retrieve passages, not pages, so clear boundaries, tight topics and strong headings make your ideas easier to pull, score and reuse. His demo shows splitting one mixed paragraph into two raised cosine similarity for “machine learning” by 19.24% and “data privacy” by 1.29%, and adding a heading boosted another score 17.54%.

My Take: If you read my intro last week, you’ll know I agree with his text. He gets into the technical details more.

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

Translate with ChatGPT

Want an alternative to Google Translate? ChatGPT is giving you one with their free translate tool. It will translate text, voice, or an image.

Apple Introduces Apple Creator Studio, an Inspiring Collection of the Most Powerful Creative Apps

Taking on Adobe’s creative suite, Apple announces Apple Creator Studio, a new subscription that bundles pro creative tools into one monthly fee. For $12.99 a month or $129 a year, creators get Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro and Pixelmator Pro on Mac and iPad, plus Motion, Compressor and MainStage on Mac, and premium features in Keynote, Pages and Numbers. New AI assists include transcript and visual search in Final Cut, beat detection, a montage maker, Magnetic Mask in Motion, Synth Player and Chord ID in Logic, and smarter templates and formula help in iWork. Launches Jan. 28 with a free trial.

WAYS WE CAN WORK TOGETHER

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AI in CX that grows loyalty and profitability

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