Click share is up. Homepage clicks are down.

Google's 120 Twiddlers; Ahrefs New DR4; Semantic Keyword Research; 3 in 4 Homepages Lost Clicks; Being Unblockable; and Much More!

Author

Yoyao
November 07, 2026 • Est. Learning Time: 11 minutes

FIRST …

I’m starting to get Black Friday emails now and it reminds me to start prepping my annual Black Friday / Cyber Monday Deals issue.

If you have any BF/CM deals to share, do reply and let me know. I’ll add it to the issue!

FLOYI BLACK FRIDAY EARLY ACCESS

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The Build requires an annual plan and is limited to 5 spots.
In December, it goes to $797.

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SEO + GEO

Resoneo breaks down Google's KScorer schemas, documenting 56 signals that assess possible interpretations of a search. Its analysis describes how entities, terms in the top results, user interactions, and location can help Google choose between meanings such as the jaguar animal and the car. One rank-weighted signal gives the first result ten times the weight of the tenth when their entity support is equal. Resoneo's reconstruction also describes interaction signals that estimate the usefulness of answer cards.

Glen Allsopp previews DR4, Ahrefs' revised metric for comparing backlink profiles, scheduled to arrive in the standard interface on December 1, 2026. The update gives subdomains their own scores and puts more weight on links from sites estimated to receive organic search traffic:

  • Fewer sites will carry a score

  • Subdomains stand on their own

  • DR4 correlates more strongly with the number of top-10 Google rankings than DR3. For root domains alone, DR3's correlation is stronger.

  • Spam-labeled sites lose ground

Glen’s created a demo page to compare the DR3 vs DR4 numbers.

Lazarina Stoy explains a semantic keyword research workflow that maps more than search volume and keyword difficulty. She layers entities, query paths, synthetic queries, context and intent to identify what people need across search and AI systems. The resulting keyword universe feeds content briefs and accounts for the formats a brand can actually produce.

Andy Crestodina shares an Orbit Media study connecting homepage facts with AI recommendations, with correlation rather than causation as its limit.

  • Researchers analyzed 704 websites across four industries and 1,916 responses from four AI tools.

  • The main analysis excluded the top quarter of companies by domain authority, leaving 575 companies.

  • Across homepages with 15 to 60 facts, recommendation rates rose from 5% to 30%.

  • Homepages naming at least five clients or results were recommended 30% of the time, versus 11% for those naming none.

  • Homepages with at least three credentials were recommended 25% of the time, versus 12% for those with none.

  • Two or more awards, rankings or ratings corresponded to a 22% recommendation rate, compared with 13% for none.

  • Homepages with specific capabilities were recommended 25% of the time, compared with 13% without them.

Marcel D. reports that People Inc. is developing custom APIs to deliver article text and metadata to AI systems. The proposed format uses Markdown alongside author and publication details to make journalism easier for agents to process. The article also describes Time and Forbes testing machine-readable content and highlights the publisher's need to control access and updates.

Ryan Law examines how often OpenAI publishing partners appear in Ahrefs' US ChatGPT citation data.

  • Ahrefs checked 85 partner domains against a snapshot of US ChatGPT answers.

  • Its ChatGPT index contains 5.5 million US answers.

  • Ten partner domains ranked among the 50 most-cited sites in the sample.

  • Forty-seven partner domains appeared among the top 500 cited sites.

  • Partners among the 200 most-cited domains accounted for 7.5% of citations in March 2026, 15.8% in July and 12.5% in late September.

Matt G. Southern reports that Google says Gemini's Business Profile tools are rolling out to Workspace accounts. Google's bulletin says owners can use Gemini to update profiles and add media, while its help page still says work and school accounts are unsupported. Google has also moved the Message button next to Call on eligible Maps listings, though chat options remain limited by region and profile.

David Konitzny shares a test of revised YouTube descriptions against unchanged videos and the wider YouTube trend. Daily retrievals across tracked AI models rose 359% for revised videos, 17% for unchanged videos and 25% for YouTube overall. The post says the videos themselves did not change and cautions that the results do not establish that description length caused the increase.

Resoneo shares mechanisms it identifies in Google schemas that can adjust results after an initial ranking.

  • The analysis identifies 120 twiddlers across web, image and video results.

  • An internal 2018 document counted more than 65 twiddlers in production for web search.

  • Resoneo counts six in its AI and ranker group, including a Bard filter.

  • The analysis identifies a search-plan annotation associated with planned retrieval queries.

  • Quality-related entries include expertise, authenticity and topic authority signals.

  • Other entries cover spam demotions, copyright removals and SafeSearch.

  • The catalog also groups signals for user preferences, proximity and repeated queries.

Rand Fishkin answers questions about reaching audiences when fewer people click through to websites.

  • Match reporting metrics to the channels receiving investment.

  • Use branded search and direct visits alongside channel-level reach measures.

  • Continue publishing on a website and adapt articles for the platforms where audiences spend time.

  • Small brands can start with two or three channels where their audience is concentrated.

  • Agree on success measures before starting a new channel test.

  • Use small tests over time or across locations to estimate results when budgets are limited.

Toby Brissett explains how to decide whether an ecommerce category deserves its own page. He recommends checking unbranded demand, the range of products shoppers can actually buy and whether stock will last beyond a brief promotion. Compare the search results and existing category pages before creating a URL for a narrower selection.

Matt G. Southern reports that DataForSEO and Serper say Google is restricting how quickly result redirects can be followed. Some request modes may therefore return Google goto links instead of the destination URLs in ranking data. DataForSEO says its standard mode resolves all redirects with added delay, while high-priority and live modes resolve about half.

Celeste Gonzalez reports on an SE Visible test of how prompt framing relates to ChatGPT's descriptions of brands.

  • Prompt sentiment and response sentiment had a Spearman correlation of 0.66 across the 180 prompts.

  • Negative prompts shifted sentiment about twice as far from the neutral baseline as positive prompts did.

  • Neutral prompts produced average net sentiment of about +20 on a scale from -100 to +100.

  • Only 44% of prompts received the same sentiment classification in all five runs.

  • A majority sentiment appeared in 96% of prompts, with at least three of five runs agreeing.

  • Net sentiment varied by an average of 27 points between runs.

Kevin Indig compares traffic channels across US and French websites as organic search declines. In his Similarweb analysis, email visits rose 16.3% in the US and 17% in France from January through August 2026 versus the same period in 2025. Paid search also grew, while direct traffic held up better than organic search across a matched set of sites over two years.

Jenny Lee Lynch analyzed Search Console data for 110 homepages across six industries, comparing the third quarter of 2026 with the same period in 2025. Of those homepages, 74% lost organic clicks, with a median decline of 21%. SaaS had the steepest median decline at 35%, while the eight-site healthcare sample showed a 3% median decline.

Danny Goodwin shares Semrush's third-quarter 2026 desktop search analysis.

  • US Google searches leading to organic clicks on external sites rose from 39.74% in July to 46.11% in September.

  • The September US organic click share was the highest in the report's 15-month study.

  • The US zero-click share fell from 24.97% in July to 22.99% in September.

  • In Europe, September organic click share was 49.56% and zero-click share was 20.99%.

  • AI tools represented 1.29% of US desktop activity in September, up from 0.72% a year earlier.

  • Traditional search represented 9.47% of US desktop activity, down from 10.29% a year earlier.

  • Google accounted for 92.43% of US desktop searches and 94.47% in Europe in September.

  • Google AI Mode's share of US desktop activity rose from 0.15% in July to 0.31% in September.

Aimee Jurenka examines why a strong backlink profile does not guarantee AI search visibility. In the Ahrefs study she cites, branded web mentions correlated more strongly with AI Overview mentions than raw backlink counts did. About 26% of the brands studied received no AI Overview mentions despite all having a Domain Rating above 40, though the correlations do not establish what caused the difference.

Emma Baker reports on a study of roughly 2,000 scored brand mentions across four AI engines. The research found that the ideal customer was identified correctly in only 60% of scored responses, while 34% contained at least one invented fact. The study focused on dental practice software and found that being mentioned often did not guarantee accurate positioning.

Barry Schwartz reports that Google is notifying sites about changes to site reputation abuse manual actions for European Economic Area search results. The manual action no longer affects results shown to users in the EEA, but it can still affect results outside the region. Google may also treat an affected section independently in its systems over time.

Barry Schwartz reports that Google has added home services booking links to AI Mode in the US. The links connect users with providers including Angi, Thumbtack, Housecall and GetJobber, with ServiceTitan planned next. Google says searchers can research providers and move to booking from the results.

Ryan Jones examines how altered search results served to automated scrapers could affect SEO measurement. He cites Nozzle research finding misleading results in roughly 8% of 27.5 million observed search result pages. Ryan suggests repeated scraper requests could inflate Search Console impressions and lower reported click-through rates, but presents effects on real users as a hypothetical rather than a measured count.

Barry Schwartz reports on Gary Illyes' response to a claim that clicks and queries were coming to Search Console's AI reporting. Gary said the team wants to provide useful data but had nothing to announce. Barry reads the response skeptically, while the article notes that John Mueller disputed that interpretation, leaving future metrics unconfirmed.

Sally Mills lists the SEO controls she expects a content management system to provide without repeated developer intervention.

  • Editors need semantic HTML elements for content such as tables and lists.

  • Server-rendered content gives crawlers access without relying on JavaScript execution.

  • Sitemap controls should allow individual pages or folders to be excluded.

  • An editable robots.txt file supports crawl control.

  • Canonical tags and page-level meta robots controls let teams manage duplicate URLs and indexing.

  • Page titles, meta descriptions and Open Graph tags should be editable.

  • Custom error pages should return the correct HTTP status.

  • Redirect controls should enforce a consistent host, capitalization and trailing-slash policy.

  • A CMS should allow a URL structure that fits the site's information architecture.

SEO + GEO Ripples

AI

Google introduces Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash, which generates and edits videos up to 15 seconds long. Creators can adjust clips through follow-up prompts and guide output with reference images, short motion clips and audio cues. Google says 720p video costs $0.07 per second, 30% less than Omni 1.1, and the model is generally available through the Gemini API and Gemini for business.

OpenAI introduces Images 2.6 in ChatGPT, Codex and the API. The company says image generation is 50% faster and offers Flare for speed and Sunburst for higher-quality output and consistency across edits. The release also adds GIF creation for animating existing images. 2.6 pricing is the same as 2.5 pricing at $5/1M text input and $30/1M image output.

Meta is rolling out voice conversations and expressive avatars in the Muse app, starting in the US. Users can speak with Muse while it works on a task and choose voice only, an avatar alongside the conversation or a full-screen avatar. Meta says the experience is available on mobile, web and Mac, with voice conversations for AI Glasses and Muse Charm coming later.

Slobodan Manic examines how Brave's search index reaches AI companies through its search API. The New York Times alleges in a lawsuit that Brave copied more than 30 billion pages without identifying its crawler or giving site owners a way to block it. The article notes those allegations remain claims and identifies Cohere, Mistral and Perplexity among companies named on Brave's own API page.

AI Ripples

MARKETING

Ross Simmonds describes how resourceful marketers respond when a plan hits a constraint. His examples show how the same obstacle can lead to a different next question:

  • No budget becomes a question of what can ship for free.

  • A legal rejection prompts a closer look at the specific objection and a revised route.

  • An algorithm change leads to a review of which channel deserves attention next.

  • A claim that buyers are absent from Reddit becomes a question of who checked and when.

  • A past failed test prompts a check of what has changed since it ran.

  • A hard problem can arrive with a proposed solution instead of a question alone.

My Take: It’s a good read on thinking differently to ‘unblock’ yourself.

CONTENT

Motoko Hunt explains how global teams can use AI to assemble content while retaining market-specific evidence and review. Her proposed fact registry records who owns each claim, where it applies, its source and approval status. Local teams supply customer questions, proof and regulatory judgment while AI handles drafting, translation and structure.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Andrew Hutchinson reports on Reddit's 35-page planning guide for 2027. It covers major US events, seasonal trends and quarterly engagement patterns, alongside notes on how people use Reddit for shopping research. The Reddit planning guide includes a seasonal marketing calendar.

WHAT I'VE BUILT FOR YOU

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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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