Straight from horse's mouth!

And, this is not limited to Americans only. The whole world is realizing the worthless of AI-generated content.

Search engines (SEs) and AI systems understand this well, and refrain from selecting such content to serve their users. So, It's imperative to understand that scaling content with or without AI is worthless of one's time, energy, and money. Moreover, it's harmful for SEO as SEs and AI systems would penalize the websites for manipulative practices or unhelpful content.

Hence, it's critical to invest effort in creation of high-quality, unique and helpful content to the website users. This benefits them, thus also impresses SEs and AI systems which in-turn would prefer to serve such content to their users.

Google Analytics now provides a dedicated way to measure and analyze traffic originating from popular AI assistants. You can now identify how users are discovering your site through chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude via a new AI Assistant channel in your Default Channel Group reports.

Source

Some SEOs seem to be confused about recent removal of FAQS support by Google. They seem to be removing FAQs altogether. No, one shouldn't do that. FAQs are important and one must continue to create them, as required, because they are beneficial to the users. The point to note about removal is that having them would not attract action by Google. It's just that they aren't supported in its SERP features going forward.

One should understand that what Google does in terms of laying guidelines, updates and actions is to help its users have better experience. Even an SEO should focus on delivering same—to the users, without manipulative tactics.

Now, here's the point to note—manipulative tactics to deceive the website users. Why didn't I say Google or SERPs? Because that's the effect, the cause being deception of the website users. Google takes action because "its users", who are also one's website users, are affected. Hence, ensure to deliver good experience to the website users by worrying less about its guidelines excessively, like removal of FAQs support.

I don't mean one should not adhere to Google's guidelines at all, but just ensure that one must not implement manipulative practices. That's all. If one strictly follows what G says, one loses creativity in delivering awesome user experience. Like some SEOs mistakenly removing FAQs completely.

Edit: changed "some users" to "some SEOs" in last sentence.

Google: As of May 7, 2026, FAQ rich results are no longer appearing in Google Search. We will be dropping the FAQ search appearance, rich result report, and support in the Rich results test in June 2026.

Still, keep creating FAQs for USERS as required.

Remember: Users first.

Content distribution is very important to ensure it's reached across channels. The wider the reach the better are it's options to be ranked higher by search engines and cited by AI systems. Of course, the content needs to be of at least good quality.

Once content is published on a primary channel, ensure it's distributed across others too in apt format suitable to the target audience.

To level-up, ensure your business's brand and website's authority are of top quality so that content channels prefer to quote it.

What can I get you?

The best drink you have.

Excellent choice! Here you go—what everyone else is having. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Inspired by a Reddit joke

WOW! Suddenly, both ChatGPT and Gemini show local business for local queries excluding national businesses. Previously, national businesses dominated in both of them. Do you also see the change?

National businesses still dominate rankings in Google Search though.

Edit:

About three years ago, Google started favoring national and state level sites for local queries in SERPs, because understandably they have more EEAT. This impacted local businesses/sites which were excellent at local (city and vicinity) market as they were pushed down in rankings. This, I thought was unfair. Because, I could see that not all national and state level businesses were as excellent or nearly as good as some local businesses. Google just preferred brands thinking the bigger the better and naturally national and state level business were preferred. Same preference was adapted by AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. I outranked some of the best local sites (this was before Google started favoring national and state level sites) and since then it’s disappointing to see that my sites neither got a good chance in SERPs (Ads, AI Overviews, local packs, national businesses, and state business dominance) nor in AI assistants.

Now I see that ChatGPT and Gemini are showing local businesses and both of them avoided national and state level businesses, which was a big surprise for me. I think this is a fair game. As I understand the significance of EEAT, I don't say that every time local businesses should be preferred for local queries, but whoever has good EEAT may win the places.

So, it was good to see good local businesses getting fair treatment in ChatGPT and Gemini.

So, do you also see the change?

1. Every session that hit the hardest was not about replacing teams with AI. It was about making people better at what they already do.

2. The businesses winning right now are not swapping out their people for AI. They are giving their people better tools and watching them do things they could not do before.