Google released Nano Banana 2.1, its latest image generation and editing model, and it is already rolling out in AI Mode in Google Search, according to Robby Stein, Google's VP of Product in Search. G…
US District Judge Amit P. Mehta dismissed antitrust lawsuits filed by Chegg Inc. and Penske Media Corp. against Google over its AI Overviews feature on September 30, 2026, ruling that the publishers s…
Google's AI Overviews now appear on 93% of branded search queries, according to independent testing by SEO analyst Chris Long, with data from search analytics firm DemandSphere showing branded-query A…
Google added dedicated Generative AI performance reports to Search Console, giving site owners a first-party view of how often their pages appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and generative AI features i…
Google announced at its May 19, 2026 I/O event that Search is becoming an agent platform, with VP of Search Elizabeth Reid calling it "the era of Search agents." The rollout adds persistent informatio…
Google split its Search Console Web search type into text-based and multimodal on September 24, 2026, adding a filter that counts traffic from Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Googl…
A preregistered field experiment with 1,100 US participants found that routing all searches into Google AI Mode cut external publisher clicks by 18.8 percentage points versus standard Google Search, w…
Peec AI data posted to X by Malte Landwehr shows Google's AI Overviews now include external links in over 25% of answers, up from close to 0%, a shift Landwehr described as Google having "massively in…
Google is testing anchor links inside AI Overviews that route users into AI Mode rather than to external web pages, according to SEO practitioner Gagan Ghotra, who posted a video of the behavior on X …
Google is testing a "Dive deeper" experience in Discover that inserts an AI-generated topic overview between a Discover card and the publisher content a user might otherwise open, starting with video …
Google is running an invitation-only pilot that pays publishers whose content meaningfully contributes to answers in AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini, with monthly payments surfaced in a Search Consol…
Google added a Generative AI performance report to Search Console that shows how often site pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, measuring only impressions with no clicks, click-through rate, or …
Google is piloting a program that pays participating publishers when their content "contributes significantly" to answers in the Gemini app, AI Overviews, and AI Mode, with at least dozens of publishe…
A developer outlined a repeatable method for measuring whether AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and AI Overviews cite a website, arguing that citations differ from tradit…
Search Engine Land has published guidance arguing that AI search is shifting link building away from raw backlink counts toward a broader, entity-oriented mix of authority signals, including editorial…
Google launched an AI contribution pilot that pays publishers for the use of their content in Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews, according to Search Engine Roundtable's weekly recap. The same recap rep…
Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft are each testing distinct payment models to compensate websites for AI access to or use of their content, with Google's pilot paying when a site's content "contribute…
A Pew Research Center study of 68,879 Google searches by 900 U.S. adults in March 2025 found that users clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits where an AI Overview appeared, compared with…
Google globally launched dedicated performance reports for its generative AI search features on September 16, 2026, alongside a new toggle letting publishers opt out of having their content used as gr…
Google Search Advocate John Mueller said position and impression tracking for AI Mode, AI Overviews and Google Search will "evolve over time" as those products evolve, writing on LinkedIn in response …