AI tools grew 79 percent in a year, and Google search is still more than seven times bigger. That is the headline number in Semrush’s State of Search Q3 2026 report: AI assistants reached 1.29 percent of all U.S. desktop web activity in September, up from 0.72 percent a year earlier. Traditional search engines held between 9.47 and 10.02 percent all quarter.
What Happens If the AI Bubble Bursts? The Q3 Numbers Offer Clues
The AI bubble did not burst this fall. The bill came due instead. In the last week of October, Alphabet fell more than 10 percent after reporting negative free cash flow of $9.07 billion and its first revenue and earnings miss in nearly four years. Amazon spent $77.3 billion on capital equipment in a single quarter, and its free cash flow over the past 12 months swung to negative $42.4 billion. [Continue reading]
AI Website Builders Are Easy Now. Babysitting Them Is Still Your Job.
Bluehost announced on November 5 a global run of AI events for small businesses: a free virtual small business summit on November 10 with Gary Vaynerchuk and Codie Sanchez, plus an AI Builder Tour through 10 cities on four continents that runs into … [Continue reading]
Watching What AI Says About Your Brand Is Not a Plan. Fixing It Is.
Writesonic, an AI search visibility platform that says more than 10,000 brands and agencies use it, released six new and updated features on November 5 that trace what AI says about a brand back to the page it came from. The headline addition is … [Continue reading]
SerpApi Joins i2Coalition as Google Poisons Results for Scrapers
SerpApi, the Austin company that turns Google search results into structured data, announced on November 5 that it has joined the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) and earned the Trust Seal from the coalition's Ethical Web Data … [Continue reading]
Securly Strips AI Overviews as Google Ties School Search to AI
Securly says its web filter can now strip Google's AI Overviews out of student searches, not just block AI Mode. The timing is the story. The update landed on November 4, 2026, one day after Google said its K-12 student accounts will lose Google … [Continue reading]
Why Google Says 77% of My SearchEngines.net Traffic Is Branded
Here's something interesting about owning a generic, keyword-rich domain name: My website, SearchEngines.net, gets most of its Google search clicks from queries that Google Search Console classifies as branded. … [Continue reading]
Paid Search Gets a Second Act: fullthrottle.ai Turns Search and Social Clicks Into Household Audiences
Paid search and paid social can tell marketers a lot about what people want. A search, a click, or an ad engagement can be a strong signal of interest. … [Continue reading]
The Reputation Engagement I Would Rather Have Than the Friday Afternoon One
A reporter emails your company at 4:40 on a Friday asking for comment on something contested. You have about twelve hours before the absence of an answer becomes the answer. Most organizations spend those twelve hours arguing about what to say. … [Continue reading]
A Judge Ordered an Expert’s AI Prompts Produced. There Is Still No Standard, So I Wrote One
An expert witness sat for a deposition last year and was asked to produce the prompts he had typed into an AI system as he prepared his report. He did not have them. He had not kept them, because nobody had told him to, and no rule said he had to. … [Continue reading]
Facebook Says an Account Called “Meta Verrified” Sending Phishing Messages Doesn’t Violate Its Rules
There are certain things you see on the internet that make you stop and wonder if you're missing something. … [Continue reading]
I Read 30 Digital Marketing Tool Licenses. Most Do Not Say What You Think.
You probably put a third-party traffic chart in a client deck this month. A Similarweb screenshot showing a competitor's monthly visits, a Semrush visibility graph, an Ahrefs backlink count. I have done it hundreds of times. … [Continue reading]
131 SEO Experts Just Ranked Google’s Ranking Factors. Backlinks Did Not Die.
Cyrus and Dawn Shepard published the 2026 Google Ranking Factors Expert Survey this morning. One hundred thirty-one SEO professionals scored more than 100 possible ranking factors on a seven-point scale, from strongly positive to strongly negative, … [Continue reading]
AI Local Business Recommendations Went From 6% To 45% In A Year. The Bigger Number Is 88%
Forty-five percent of U.S. consumers used an AI tool to get a local business recommendation in the past twelve months. Last year that figure was 6 percent. … [Continue reading]
IAB: 56% Want Creator Voices In AI Shopping Advice, But Nobody Can Verify Which Creators Are Honest
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released research this morning showing that 56 percent of consumers prefer AI-generated shopping recommendations that include creator or influencer perspectives. Sixty-five percent say they feel more confident … [Continue reading]
Semrush Says Showing Up Once In A ChatGPT Category Is Worse Than Not Showing Up
Semrush released a second study of ChatGPT topic behavior on August 3, and it answers the question the first one left hanging. The July research told us that domain-level SEO metrics do a poor job of predicting who owns a topic. This one identifies … [Continue reading]
Semrush Studied 1,094 ChatGPT Categories. The Number That Matters Is Not 53.7%.
Semrush has published a study that puts real numbers behind an argument the search industry has been having since ChatGPT started answering buying questions. Does any brand actually own a topic inside an AI (artificial intelligence) assistant, or do … [Continue reading]
Study: Home Service Companies That Track Profit Instead of Leads Get 38% More From Their Ad Spend
Home Service Companies That Track Profit Instead of Leads Get 38% More From Their Ad Spend, Study Finds Home service companies may have a bigger advertising measurement problem than an advertising budget problem. … [Continue reading]
LinkedIn Reach Is Up 14% For Executives. The Same Report Says Organic Reach Is Collapsing.
Executive Presence released The Executive LinkedIn Report: 2026 this morning, and the number the Denver firm put at the top of its press release is a 14 percent year-over-year jump in reach. The average executive post pulled 5,083 impressions in the … [Continue reading]
The Dental SEO Playbook Is Changing: Identity Dental Marketing Releases AEO vs. SEO Study
For years, dental practices have focused heavily on one question: How high does the practice rank in Google? That question is still important. But it is no longer the only question that matters. … [Continue reading]
Link Freedom Group Just Bet Tens of Millions on the Future of the Internet
Link Freedom Group is making one of the biggest bets on the future of the internet that the domain name industry has seen in years. … [Continue reading]
The .ORG Impact Awards Just Named 35 Global Changemakers—and the Finalists Are Remarkable
Public Interest Registry has revealed the 35 finalists for the 2026 .ORG Impact Awards, and the list offers a striking look at the organizations and young leaders working on some of the world's most persistent problems. … [Continue reading]
Marlow Launches Its AI Software Builder
AI software development is moving quickly from an interesting experiment into a serious alternative to traditional application development. Now, a new platform backed by a publicly traded domain and technology company is taking aim at one of the … [Continue reading]
Brands Keep Killing Their Best Ads Too Early—New Agentio Report Says Here’s What They Should Do Instead
There is a problem with creator advertising that tends to get overlooked when marketers talk about viral videos, influencers and high-performing social campaigns: even the best ad eventually gets tired. … [Continue reading]
accessiBe Launches AI Accessibility Assistant
accessiBe is adding a conversational AI layer to its accessibility widget, giving website visitors a new way to request accessibility adjustments, ask questions and find information without having to work through a traditional settings menu. … [Continue reading]
Viral Nation Launches AI Discovery as Brands Face a New Problem: Getting Recommended by AI
Viral Nation is taking its social-first approach into a rapidly developing area of digital marketing with the launch of AI Discovery, a new Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) offering aimed at helping brands influence how artificial intelligence … [Continue reading]
Dynadot’s New Domain Report Reveals Winners, Losers, and One Surprise Nobody Saw Coming
A 40 percent jump in registrations sounds like a market booming everywhere. Dynadot’s Domain Intelligence Report for Q1 2026 shows something narrower. A small group of extensions drove most of the growth, .com still rose 9 percent from the largest … [Continue reading]
Domain Parking Is Finished: What the 2025 Numbers Show
Bodis gave domain investors three days' notice. On 28 January 2026 the company announced it was shutting down its services. By 31 January it had stopped monetizing domains altogether, and it dropped its PayPal payout threshold to one cent so … [Continue reading]
I Analyzed Twenty Years of My Own Backlinks. Half of Them Are Gone.
1,301,839 links. 22,260 referring domains. Not one of them bought. Here is what the data says about how long a backlink actually lasts — and what it says about my own site. I have been publishing on this domain since around 2006. Over that time it … [Continue reading]
Parents Fear TikTok. Norton’s Study Says The Damage Is Happening In Game Chat.
Norton released a survey this morning on children, parents, and artificial intelligence. The number the press release leads with is that 85 percent of American parents feel comfortable talking to their kids about online risk. The number that should … [Continue reading]
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