Answer Engines
4Can ChatGPT ads drive sales? Brands weigh a cost per click six times Google's
Brands do not expect ChatGPT ads to deliver much in holiday sales, and the cost per click runs about six times Google's, according to Digiday Japan. Sensor Tower counted more than 1,400 companies advertising on ChatGPT in August, up 8% from July, with Capital One, Expedia and Cloudflare the biggest spenders.
ChatGPT Data: 1 In 5 Consumer Messages Now Seek Information
About one in five consumer messages in ChatGPT now ask for information, roughly the same share as writing, according to OpenAI data reported by Search Engine Journal. The increase is smaller than in earlier periods.
AI Discoverability, Page types, and more
Ahrefs added an AI Discoverability issue category to Site Audit and Page types to Site Explorer. Both shipped in a release of five updates.
Research & Data
2Breadth beats repetition: how to measure AI visibility reliably
SISTRIX analysed 10,826 daily measurement series across four AI models and eight countries and found that asking the same prompt on different days returns different brand names. It recommends querying many different prompts instead: in its daily ChatGPT question about the best robot vacuum, Ecovacs appeared on 12 of 28 days, Mova on 11 and Xiaomi on 3, with no visible pattern. Looking at a single day, the company says, says almost nothing about those brands.
AI traffic insights now available in Vercel Observability
Vercel Observability now reports how AI bots use a site: requests by verified bot, the pages crawlers fetch most for indexing or training, pages assistants retrieve in response to queries, Markdown requests and errors. The metrics can be queried from the dashboard or the CLI with vercel metrics, which requires Observability Plus.
Search & Platforms
1Agent-to-Agent Marketing
2Amazon Business targets procurement efficiency with new AI and reporting features
Amazon Business added tools to its Business Assistant, which the company says now answers questions about a customer's orders, spend and activity, and introduced Amazon Business Value Intelligence. Both were announced at the Amazon Business Reshape event in Nashville on Oct. 27.
Shopify Retires Knowledge Base App, Moves AI Agent Facts To Admin
Shopify moved its AI agent knowledge base into the store admin, and policies and contact details now publish by default. Some merchants who used the retired knowledge base app need to re-add their facts.