AI Mode Likes Us. When It Finds Us.

Google Core Update; Keywords in Names for Local SEO; Modern Web Guidance 1.0; Organic Growth Stack; Google AI Search Opt Out; and Much More!

Author

Yoyao
November 14, 2026 • Est. Learning Time: 10 minutes

FIRST …

ChatGPT likes Floyi. Gemini too.
AI Mode still needs convincing.

That's what Floyi’s upcoming Prompt Tracking feature showed us.
It should be out before Black Friday, and this is your first look, so you don’t forget to keep Floyi on your BF list 😄 

ChatGPT mentioned Floyi in 15 of 30 answers. AI Mode mentioned Floyi in only 7.
But they recommended us in all 15 and 7.

Most prompt trackers stop at numbers like these.

Floyi’s Prompt Tracking connects each prompt to your topical map, so you can see which topics to strengthen and which to add.

But - Floyi isn't just adding a new topic to an already long list of keywords.

Floyi's going to help you figure out where that topic goes in your content plan, because it already has your map.

Then once you want to create a brief or draft, the internal links and anchors are already figured out for you from the map.

SEO + GEO

Google began rolling out its November 2026 core update on November 10. The global update applies to all languages and Google said it could take up to two weeks to finish. Google did not provide new guidance specific to this update.

Microsoft Bing introduces two ways to search without AI-generated answers. A preview extension for Chrome and Edge applies a toggle across Bing searches and also sets Bing as the default search engine. Users can also add the -ai operator to an individual search without installing the extension.

Michael Tandoh analyzes Search Console data from 166 brands covering roughly 9.5 billion monthly impressions and 105 million monthly clicks over about 16 months.

  • Position three received more than 50% fewer clicks in 2026 than in 2025 in the tracked data.

  • Moving from position four to three corresponded to 18 additional clicks per 1,000 impressions, compared with one extra click when moving from eight to seven.

  • Average unbranded position ranged from 17 for the smallest sites to 10 for the largest.

  • Mobile rankings were slightly better than desktop for the same query on 79% of sites.

  • A top-three ranking remained in the top three a year later 76% of the time.

  • Image search accounted for 15% of impressions and less than 4% of clicks.

Miriam Ellis rounds up local search changes, research and product developments from the third quarter of 2026.

  • Google advised businesses that generative AI features draw on Business Profile details and Merchant Center product feeds.

  • A Collected Info tab lets businesses review and delete details Google collected from recent calls.

  • Ask Maps added ordering workflows with Square and Toast for participating restaurants.

  • Tell Maps lets users suggest listing updates conversationally and submit photos of storefront signs.

  • Google added email notifications about suggested Business Profile edits.

  • Yelp and ChatGPT announced a partnership involving local business reviews.

Miriam Ellis also shares Whitespark research into business-name keywords and local pack rankings, with correlation as its limit.

  • The study examined more than 1.4 million local business listings across 17 industries.

  • In beauty and personal care, exact-match names had a 15.59% top-three rate versus 2.50% for names without keywords.

  • In home services, exact-match names had a 4.57% top-three rate versus 2.21% for names without keywords.

  • In legal services, exact-match names had a 7.53% top-three rate versus 2.51% for names without keywords.

  • In travel and tourism, exact-match names had a 29.54% top-three rate versus 6.05% for names without keywords.

  • Names beginning with keywords correlated with more top-three rankings in 15 of the 16 industries with enough data to assess placement.

Rand Fishkin examines Similarweb browser traffic estimates for the top million websites alongside estimates of worldwide internet users.

  • Traffic to the top million sites peaked at 2.243 trillion visits in the first quarter of 2022.

  • Traffic fell to 1.914 trillion visits in the first quarter of 2026, 14.7% below that peak.

  • The third quarter of 2026 reached 1.970 trillion visits, 12.2% below the peak.

  • Estimated internet users increased from 4.95 billion in late 2021 to 6.15 billion in the third quarter of 2026.

  • Estimated visits per internet user declined 29.2% over the comparison.

Glenn Gabe examines Search Console data for five sites around the July 22, 2026 launch of AI Overviews in France.

  • One site fell from about 750 to 400 daily clicks as generative AI impressions rose.

  • That same site saw click-through rate fall from 2% to 1.1% while impressions stayed stable.

  • A second site fell from about 80 to 25 daily clicks around the rollout.

  • For a third site, click-through rate fell from 1.2% to 0.4% after launch.

  • A fourth site retained strong clicks and click-through rate despite a rise in generative AI impressions.

  • A fifth site also had largely stable clicks and impressions after the rollout.

Google explains how to identify Search traffic using the HTTP Referer header in analytics or server logs. The header normally contains the referring origin rather than the search query, and other services on the same origin can share that value. Privacy settings, redirects and differences between a Search Console click and a recorded session can produce mismatched counts.

Barry Schwartz reports on Google guidance about crawl spikes after moving to a content delivery network. Faster responses can prompt Googlebot to crawl more, while an empty CDN cache sends first-time requests back to the origin server. Google recommends preparing the cache, allowing verified crawlers and monitoring server health during the transition.

Yahoo Scout has left beta and Yahoo has introduced Pivot Search. The updated search experience lets people move between traditional results and Scout answers, while Yahoo is also adding Scout across its properties. Yahoo says the new search experience is available on desktop and mobile web in the US, UK, Europe and Switzerland.

Matt G. Southern shares the Google version 1.0 of Modern Web Guidance, a free set of instructions for AI coding agents. The release adds a static audit for selected patterns in existing project files, and Firefox and Edge are joining the project. Google also publishes evaluations comparing agent output with and without the guidance.

Rémi Kerhoas analyzes search terms data from more than 400 agency-managed Google Ads accounts across the US, UK and France. The US data showed no clear shift toward longer queries despite Google saying AI Mode queries are longer than traditional searches. Google Ads does not break out performance by traditional and AI search results, leaving the analysis unable to isolate AI search activity.

Ross Simmonds reports on a Foundation and AirOps study of roughly 380,000 AI answers across 81 enterprise software topics and 6 AI surfaces. Reddit appeared in 52% of AI Mode’s citing answers and 39% of AI Overviews, compared with 21% of ChatGPT answers in the study. YouTube appeared in 47% of AI Mode’s citing answers and 38% of AI Overviews, while G2 appeared in 23% to 30% of citing answers on five of the six surfaces. Ross recommends refreshing product and comparison pages, contributing useful answers in communities and tracking citations separately by surface.

Cyrus Shepard reports on a single-site experiment in which Zyppy opted out of Google AI search features for 28 days and then opted back in.

  • Zyppy opted out on September 1, 2026 and opted back in on September 29.

  • AI-feature impressions fell by more than 99% during the opt-out period.

  • Before the change, the site recorded roughly 500 to 1,000 AI search impressions per day.

  • They estimated AI search click-through rate at 0.9%, with a range of 0.7% to 1.1%.

  • The analysis estimated a 2.3% increase in regular organic click-through rate when the site appeared in AI Overviews.

  • They estimated that AI search contributed about 21% of total search clicks directly and 23% including the estimated halo effect.

Hilman Ramadhan reports that SerpApi continues to see intermittent misleading results from automated Google searches, even when the request returns a normal-looking page. The company has observed the issue on first and later search results pages, as well as in Google Shopping. SerpApi says it has adjusted its collection methods and monitors stable queries for anomalies, but a real-time API may have no historical baseline for a new query.

SEO + GEO Ripples

AI

Robby Stein says Gemini 4 Hydrogen is rolling out globally in Google Search. Google says the model improves handling of complex questions and query fan-out, with more images, comparison tables and custom tools in responses. The company also says the update supports all current AI Mode languages.

OpenAI introduces ChatGPT Wallet for purchases made by agents on a user’s behalf. Users review and approve each purchase with a security check, while a payment token replaces their actual card details. The initial rollout is through dots for eligible US ChatGPT Pro subscribers aged 18 and older.

OpenAI launches Businesses in ChatGPT in beta, allowing eligible businesses to claim and update their information through Business Hub. Verified businesses can add product feeds and view aggregated mentions, clicks and discovery topics when privacy thresholds are met. Business Agents are available initially to eligible US ecommerce and online service businesses, with conversations labeled separately from ChatGPT answers.

Vahan Petrosyan has a submission guide as he walks through submitting Search Engine Journal to ChatGPT Business Hub. His website submission required DNS verification and an identity check, while a separate attempt to create a physical-location profile led to a waitlist. OpenAI says claiming a profile does not guarantee higher placement.

OpenAI compares ChatGPT usage with Upwork postings to examine changes in freelance work.

  • Of 63 matched work categories, 43 followed a pattern in which tasks relatively common in ChatGPT lost share on Upwork or less common tasks gained share.

  • The other 20 categories showed the reverse pattern.

  • Writing represented a larger share of ChatGPT use, while video and animation represented larger shares of Upwork requests.

  • The task mix in AI-related postings became 45% more diverse between early 2023 and late 2025.

  • That change is equivalent to a rise from about 15 to 21 equally common tasks.

  • AI-related projects had larger fixed-price budgets and involved more hours, while posted hourly rates were similar to other work.

Anthropic introduces Claude Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2 for demanding technical work. The company says both use the same underlying model, with Fable broadly available under stronger cybersecurity and biology safeguards and Mythos available through verification programs. Anthropic reports output speeds up to 30% faster than the prior versions and lists standard API pricing of $8 per million input tokens and $40 per million output tokens.

My Take: I've been using Fable 5.2 and it's good, but it chews through usage quickly. My weekly usage lasted less than 48 hours at Medium reasoning effort 😅 Anthropic has given users resets, so they can spend more time trying it.

Roger Montti reports on Google research analyzing 2.1 million Gemini Nano Banana conversations to study image-generation use.

  • Researchers grouped conversations into five use categories, including social, marketing and product visualization.

  • Nearly 80% of conversations in the social and viral category included people.

  • Meme formats and humor were the least prevalent features in that category.

  • Starting over was about twice as prevalent as requesting minor changes in the social and viral category.

  • Marketing conversations had the highest prevalence of requests specifying exact text and detailed typography.

  • The marketing category had the highest prevalence of conversations involving small businesses, individuals or side hustles.

Erica Santiago shares that AI influencers offer brands more control over content, but consumer trust and ongoing oversight can offset the appeal of lower production costs. She cites a Clutch survey in which 71% of consumers said they would question a human influencer’s recommendation if the creator used AI-generated content, while 53% were less likely to buy from a brand known for using AI in social content. She recommends labeling the persona, assigning someone to approve or pull content and securing rights to any likeness used.

CONTENT

Nitin Manchanda explains how to build programmatic SEO pages around a repeatable search pattern and a structured dataset that makes each page useful. He recommends setting minimum data requirements and mapping each template to a distinct search intent before publishing. His launch checklist starts with 25 to 50 pages, followed by indexation checks and manual review. He also recommends setting a rule for pruning or merging underperforming page groups before launch.

LINK BUILDING + DIGITAL PR

Vince Nero lays out 11 digital PR tactics and a framework for judging whether a story offers value, emotion and a timely reason for coverage.

  • BuzzStream’s 2026 State of Digital PR survey found 95.9% of respondents used data-led content pitching.

  • Proprietary material can include sales data, app usage and search behavior.

  • Survey campaigns can produce original findings for journalists.

  • Experiments and tests can generate results that support a news pitch.

  • Freedom of information requests can surface government data.

  • Expert commentary, interviews and firsthand case studies can help reporters explain a story.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Foundation Team reports that Reddit plans to become primarily a logged-in site, with tests beginning in selected markets outside the US. The company says people arriving from search or shared links should still see the content they clicked, though the boundaries are not final. Foundation says the effect on AI crawlers and licensing partners remains unconfirmed.

Reddit is testing Reddit Reviews, which uses AI to organize product discussions into dedicated review pages. Pages summarize common themes and link back to original conversations, with some showing prices and purchase links. The initial US rollout covers about 10,000 frequently discussed products across four categories.

WHAT I'VE BUILT FOR YOU

Floyi - Build Topical Authority that wins in Google and AI Search. Don’t just plan your content strategy - make it unstoppable.

ReplyDeck - Be active on Reddit without living on Reddit. Schedule replies, stay present in the threads that matter, and get your time back.

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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