NetContentSEO Research & Publishing

Articles

Research, experiments and analysis on AI visibility, generative search, SEO and how artificial intelligence systems understand the web.

AI Overviews Appear on 14% or 52% of Searches—Both Numbers Can Be Correct
AI & Search Sep 8, 2026

AI Overviews Appear on 14% or 52% of Searches—Both Numbers Can Be Correct

How often does Google show an AI Overview? Depending on the study you read, a defensible answer can be roughly 14% of searches—or more than half.That spread looks like a contradict...

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Google’s Gary Illyes Puts AI Search Measurement and New SEO KPIs on the Agenda
Google Sep 8, 2026

Google’s Gary Illyes Puts AI Search Measurement and New SEO KPIs on the Agenda

SEO’s next major problem may not be how to optimize for AI search. It may be how to measure whether any of that optimization is working.That question is explicitly on the agenda to...

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Four AI Engines Agree on the Best Local Business Just 4% of the Time
AI & Search Sep 8, 2026

Four AI Engines Agree on the Best Local Business Just 4% of the Time

Local search used to offer businesses a relatively understandable objective: become one of the strongest results for an important query in a specific market. Generative AI is makin...

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The EU No Longer Treats ChatGPT as Just a Chatbot — It Is Officially a Search Engine
ChatGPT Sep 8, 2026

The EU No Longer Treats ChatGPT as Just a Chatbot — It Is Officially a Search Engine

ChatGPT is no longer merely competing with search engines for users’ questions. In the European Union, it is now officially regulated as one.On August 31, the European Commission d...

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Publishers Say AI Answers Aren’t Just Using Their Content — They’re Replacing the Visit
ai Sep 8, 2026

Publishers Say AI Answers Aren’t Just Using Their Content — They’re Replacing the Visit

The newest publisher lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft is about copyright, but its most consequential argument may be about something broader: what happens when an AI answer bec...

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AI Visibility Has Become Important Enough to Get Its Own Major Marketing Conference
writing Sep 8, 2026

AI Visibility Has Become Important Enough to Get Its Own Major Marketing Conference

AI visibility has spent the past two years moving through the familiar stages of a new marketing discipline: first a curiosity, then a collection of experiments, then a wave of too...

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GA4 Reporting Problems Continue After September 1 — Don’t Mistake Missing Data for a Traffic Collapse
Search Ecosystem & Dialogue Engines Sep 7, 2026

GA4 Reporting Problems Continue After September 1 — Don’t Mistake Missing Data for a Traffic Collapse

If your GA4 reports suddenly showed zero traffic—or a dramatic collapse—starting on September 1, 2026, the first conclusion should not be that your website lost its audience overni...

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Publishers Can Leave Google AI Search Without Leaving Google Search — but Is the Opt-Out Really Fair?
Google Sep 7, 2026

Publishers Can Leave Google AI Search Without Leaving Google Search — but Is the Opt-Out Really Fair?

Google has finally given publishers something they have demanded since AI-generated answers began moving to the top of search results: a way to leave Google’s generative AI search....

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Google Turns AdSense Support Into an AI Conversation—With an Accuracy Disclaimer
Google Sep 7, 2026

Google Turns AdSense Support Into an AI Conversation—With an Accuracy Disclaimer

Google has turned a major part of AdSense support into a conversation with AI—and attached an unusually direct warning to the experience.On September 3, Google announced that its A...

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Google Lets Traditional Exact-Match Search Ads Enter AI Mode
Google Sep 7, 2026

Google Lets Traditional Exact-Match Search Ads Enter AI Mode

Google is testing a notable expansion of who can advertise inside AI Mode. Standard Search campaigns using exact- and phrase-match keywords can now serve text ads in Google’s conve...

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Ahrefs Makes AI Overview-Aware Traffic Estimates the Default
ai Sep 7, 2026

Ahrefs Makes AI Overview-Aware Traffic Estimates the Default

Ahrefs has made its adaptive organic traffic estimation model the default, a change that quietly alters one of the SEO industry’s most familiar metrics: the number a third-party to...

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