Wednesday, November 4, 2026
10 stories · 2 topics · 7 outlets
Research & Data
3Which Types of Mentions Correlate the Strongest With AI Visibility?
The research compared different brand mention types to see which correlate most strongly with AI visibility. It focused on mention types rather than the brand factors tested in earlier research, which covered web mentions, anchors, search volume and referring domains.
AI referrals to retail sites grow 71% and those visitors spend more, study finds
Traffic from AI tools grew 71% year on year, according to a study of the U.S. market. Shoppers arriving from ChatGPT and other AI tools spend more on merchants' sites, the study found.
Answer Engines
7Every OpenAI Publisher Partnership, and How Often ChatGPT Cites Them
OpenAI's publisher deals license content to OpenAI, and ChatGPT shows summaries of that content with attribution and a link back to the source. These publishers are some of the most visible sites.
Forbes joins Google's News AI pilot, seeking a way forward as referrals fall 45%
Forbes joined Google's paid News AI pilot, under which Google gains wider rights to use Forbes content while testing ways to show readers background before they click, including detailed article summaries and audio briefings that carry source attribution and direct links. Nina Gould, Forbes' chief innovation officer, said the deal is paid and declined to give terms. Forbes' referral traffic from external sites is down about 45% year over year.
Google’s Search Volume Is About 5x ChatGPT’s, OpenAI Says
OpenAI says ChatGPT handles search-like queries equal to about a fifth of Google's search volume, counting each question that sends it to the web. Traffic data differs from that comparison.
Google AI Mode Biased: It Only Shows Links To Google Flights
A test found that Google AI Mode responses about flights linked only to Google Flights, every time. Those answers carried no links to other travel sites.
If you don’t define your weakness, AI will
Andrew Au, co-founder and co-CEO of B2B agency Intercept, argues that companies should publish clear limits on who their product serves, where it falls short and when another option fits better, because AI tools fill in the gaps when pages avoid those limits. Product pages written to keep every buyer in play leave the buyer, or the AI working for the buyer, to decide fit.
NTT East to launch a service for centralised distribution of company and store information and visibility in generative AI search
NTT East plans to offer a service that distributes company and store information from one place and tracks how that information appears in generative AI search results.
Fake Googlebots too: why US and UK media are pushing to regulate unauthorised AI scraping
DataDome's September report found scraping made up 70.9% of the malicious bot traffic it analysed, an increase of 185% over the 12 months studied. John Roberts, chief innovation officer at People Inc., said the publisher blocks tens of millions of AI crawler requests and lets through only 38 bots a day, as crawlers shift from named agents to anonymised ones, pose as human visitors, impersonate Googlebot and arrive through residential proxies.