Google is adding AI image generation to AI Overviews and rebuilding the Google Images homepage, both timed to the service's 25th anniversary. Google Search Advocate John Mueller responded to a plan to…
The agentic web is splitting into two bets: identity via llms.txt and capability via WebMCP. Llms.txt, a file that tells AI models what a website covers, is being enabled by default on millions of Wor…
Google's John Mueller responded to a post on Bluesky criticizing the trend of creating separate markdown versions for AI agents, stating that a properly made website works well for both AI agents and …
Google has introduced the Open Knowledge Format (OKF) and Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) specification, adding new layers to the web's machine-readable infrastructure. These developments, alongside …
Google's John Mueller stated that Google does not use llms.txt or llms-author.txt files, and that Cloudflare's Content-Signal robots.txt directive has no effect on any crawler or LLM. Mueller advised …
A randomized field experiment found Google's AI Overviews cause a 39.8% drop in organic clicks, but the lost clicks showed no difference in bounce rates, dwell time, or return-to-search behavior, cont…
Google began rolling out its June 2026 spam update on June 24, expanding spam policies to include manipulation of generative AI responses such as buying or altering citations. The update, reported by …
Google began rolling out its June 2026 spam update on June 24, clarifying that manipulating generative AI responses in Search, such as buying or altering citations, now falls under its spam policies. …
Google's John Mueller stated that most of Google's search quality principles will remain unchanged for AI agents, emphasizing that websites useful for human users will generally also serve agentic bro…
Google Search Advocate John Mueller clarified that in Search Console's generative AI report, an impression is counted when a link to a page appears in an AI Overview or AI Mode, and multiple appearanc…
Google Search Advocate John Mueller explained that the new Search Console generative AI report counts an impression only when a link to a site is shown in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and if a link requir…
Google is expanding access to its Search Console AI performance reports to more users, showing how content performs in AI responses, AI Mode, and AI Overviews. John Mueller confirmed the incremental r…
Google Senior Search Analyst John Mueller said on the Search Off the Record podcast that llms.txt files cannot be used by large language models to differentiate which websites to surface, calling them…
Google's John Mueller and Martin Splitt argued on a podcast that stripping web pages to markdown for AI SEO removes crucial elements like links and navigation that aid search engine discovery and rank…
Ahrefs analyzed logs from 137,000 domains and found 97% of llms.txt files received zero requests, with only 1,100 domains seeing any traffic. AI retrieval bots from ChatGPT and Perplexity accounted fo…
Google's John Mueller said on a Search Relations podcast that llms.txt files cannot be used by LLM systems for discovery because they are self-reported and untrustworthy, pointing back to standard HTM…
Google's John Mueller argued that llms.txt files cannot help large language models differentiate between websites for discovery, as the files are self-reported and inherently untrustworthy. Mueller su…
A developer built an AI SEO system called Asymmetric Ghost Payload (AGP) that operates entirely at the CDN layer, using Cloudflare Workers to optimize content for LLM crawlers. The system was tested o…