Agent Beat

Today on Agent Beat: Google AI Mode Now With Up To Four Ads, plus Google Adds Home Service Booking & Quote Links To AI Mode.

• Google AI Mode Now With Up To Four Ads
• Google Adds Home Service Booking & Quote Links To AI Mode
• Almost no one uses AI agents to book their Uber, company says
• Google Brings UCP Direct Checkout To AI Mode In Canada
• Which content gets picked by Xiaohongshu's AI assistant Diandian
• WebMCP: What it is, why it matters, and what to do now
• Businesses Treat Your AI Agent 3 Different Ways
• Affiliate marketing is the gateway to AI visibility
• AI tools that summarize press articles could infringe copyright, EU advocate general says

Today on Agent Beat: AI traffic drives 83% more revenue per visit, plus Every OpenAI Publisher Partnership, and How Often ChatGPT Cites Them.

• AI traffic drives 83% more revenue per visit
• Every OpenAI Publisher Partnership, and How Often ChatGPT Cites Them
• Forbes joins Google's News AI pilot, seeking a way forward as referrals fall 45%
• Google’s Search Volume Is About 5x ChatGPT’s, OpenAI Says
• Which Types of Mentions Correlate the Strongest With AI Visibility?
• AI referrals to retail sites grow 71% and those visitors spend more, study finds
• Google AI Mode Biased: It Only Shows Links To Google Flights
• If you don’t define your weakness, AI will
• NTT East to launch a service for centralised distribution of company and store information and visibility in generative AI search
• Fake Googlebots too: why US and UK media are pushing to regulate unauthorised AI scraping
• Karpo raises tens of millions to build an AI assistant that plans an evening out
• Reddit tests ads in search results as traffic declines and growth concerns mount
• Brazilian court bars Meta from using press content for its AI
• AI inference startup Fal doubles its valuation to $16B as demand surges
• Siri AI is now available to all developers, but not to users in the EU

Today on Agent Beat: Google Search Ad Visits Out-Earned ChatGPT Ads In U.S., plus NY Times Accuses Brave Of Scraping And Exploiting Content.

• Google Search Ad Visits Out-Earned ChatGPT Ads In U.S.
• NY Times Accuses Brave Of Scraping And Exploiting Content
• Reddit Stock Drops 33% After CEO Confirms Declining Google Search Traffic
• What channels grow when organic search shrinks?
• Google AI Overviews For Brands Moved To Right Column
• 3 AI Models Shopped Shopify’s Catalog: Each Picked A Different Winner
• Sedestral connects its SEO agents to Claude and ChatGPT through MCP
• Google Says No AI Click Reporting News Yet, Ahead Of UK Deadline
• Gary Illyes Implies Click Data Not Coming To Google Search Console AI Reporting
• Google Says Technical SEO Remains Key For AI SEO
• Walmart commits $6 billion to Symbotic for its AI and robotics solutions
• TikTok Search Ads Adds Brand And Category Keyword Packs

Today on Agent Beat: From restaurant guides to payments, here’s how TikTok is building a super app, plus Most marketers say AI works. Few can prove it.

• From restaurant guides to payments, here’s how TikTok is building a super app
• Most marketers say AI works. Few can prove it.
• 16% of shoppers start on ChatGPT, but only 5% buy on the spot
• Amazon launches Alexa+ with generative AI in Japan at 3,000 yen a month, no extra charge for Prime members
• CNN builds for an AI agent ad market expected in 2027
• Where human recall and AI recommendation diverge: choosing strong category entry points
• Why Tohoku Electric Power, well known locally, does not appear in AI search, and why it is working on GEO
• SEO is dead? Not true: how to optimize for AI search before competitors erase you
• Articles that can be summarized lose: the right 7 steps for making content with AI and 2 pieces of advice
• Cracks are emerging in the AI spending boom
• Google's Gary Illyes: AI Made Bot Impersonation Worse
• AMD to acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 billion in stock
• Meituan releases LongCat-2.5, a 1.6-trillion-parameter model trained on domestic chips
• Anthropic says Claude carried out 26% of its measured AI research in August

Today on Agent Beat: Google limits the number of result-link fetches, another hurdle for AI bots and rank trackers, plus Norwegian media win a first victory against Meta and its AI.

• Google limits the number of result-link fetches, another hurdle for AI bots and rank trackers
• Norwegian media win a first victory against Meta and its AI
• Accurate Facts Can Still Produce A False AI Answer, And Courts Are Starting To Hold The Platform Responsible
• Zest’s new AI agent finds restaurants and books reservations over text
• Google Reveals How AI Search Is Reshaping What Users Query
• New asset: AI Search Visibility Pitch Deck
• AI Knows Your Brand: It Rarely Puts You On The Shortlist
• 20 Best ChatGPT Tracking Tools in 2026: A Quick Comparison
• 85% act after an AI recommendation: Criteo survey on the purchase entry point, and the CEO on conversational ads
• Google Opens Connected Apps Preview For AI Mode & Gemini
• Mistral releases weights for its trillion-parameter AI model, targeting cybersecurity
• OpenAI reportedly lowers funding target for new round
• DoorDash to acquire Instacart in $17 billion grocery delivery deal
• Anthropic expected to receive high ‘junk’ rating from credit agencies following IPO, FT report says
• AWS will be a $1T business, Jassy says: but first, it will spend big

Today on Agent Beat: Google Gemini Stopped Attaching UTM Parameters To Cited URLs, plus Making it easier for websites to express AI training preferences.

• Google Gemini Stopped Attaching UTM Parameters To Cited URLs
• Making it easier for websites to express AI training preferences
• Reddit CEO Says Google’s AI Mode ‘Does Not Drive Traffic’
• Shopify Now Lets Stores Pay The Company Behind Your AI Shopping Agent
• DoorDash said it’s only received ‘several hundred’ orders from AI agents
• Google AI Overviews & AI Mode 0.9% Click-Through Rate, Opt Out Study Says
• Supporting a shared AI training control for websites
• Online publishers file complaint against Google with the European Commission
• ChatGPT Ads Turns On Automatic Ad Changes By Default
• ChatGPT Gets Wider Ads, Multi-Image Ads Expands, Expansion & More
• Big Brands Dominate AI Search But Leave Openings For Smaller Sites
• Control AI crawlers and assistants separately in Vercel Firewall
• Microsoft Bing New AI New Controls With AI Training From AI Search Grounding
• Bing Showing Ads Within AI Overviews

Today on Agent Beat: As search traffic dries up, Reddit announces it’s shifting to a logged-in experience, plus ChatGPT in October: GPT-6, a week without UTM parameters and two weeks without a source list.

• As search traffic dries up, Reddit announces it’s shifting to a logged-in experience
• ChatGPT in October: GPT-6, a week without UTM parameters and two weeks without a source list
• How Stable Are AI Citations? 10 Things We Learned Tracking 37,500 Citations
• OpenAI’s Agents Can Silently Block Your Site: & Your Logs Won’t Show It
• How the Same 16,000 Users Behave in AI Search vs. Google
• Google: Ads In AI Mode Earning Less Than Traditional Search Ads
• HubSpot Lost 80% Of Its Traffic: CMO Kipp Bodnar Explains Why Revenue Kept Growing
• Is Google Testing Dropping Citations Cards From AI Overviews?
• Google Merchant API With New October 2026 Updates
• Google Search Revenue Growth Slowed To 12%: AI Mode Ads Are A Reporting Blind Spot

Today on Agent Beat: Ads in AI Mode expand to new markets., plus ChatGPT Shopping treats US and European merchants differently.

• Ads in AI Mode expand to new markets.
• ChatGPT Shopping treats US and European merchants differently
• You Can Now Build Apps For Google Search: Connected Apps Platform
• AI-Cited Pages More Often Got Straight To The Answer
• YouTube, Facebook and Reddit are the most-cited sources in French AI Overviews
• Google Expands Ads In AI Mode To More Countries & Multiturn Ads In U.S.
• Yahoo Shopping starts AI Best Proposal, ranking products by price, delivery, rating and overall best
• Google loses ground as French shoppers turn to AI for purchases
• Customer reviews and generative AI: reputation now plays out in LLM answers
• The invisible sale: customers an AI sends elsewhere, unseen
• Google Business Profiles Finally Adds Third-Party Ordering Controls

Today on Agent Beat: Google Privacy Update Lets Connected Apps Shape AI Mode Ads, plus Can ChatGPT ads drive sales? Brands weigh a cost per click six times Google's.

• Google Privacy Update Lets Connected Apps Shape AI Mode Ads
• Can ChatGPT ads drive sales? Brands weigh a cost per click six times Google's
• Breadth beats repetition: how to measure AI visibility reliably
• ChatGPT Data: 1 In 5 Consumer Messages Now Seek Information
• AI traffic insights now available in Vercel Observability
• Google: Disabled Discover Clicks Were A Bug In An Experiment
• AI Discoverability, Page types, and more
• Amazon Business targets procurement efficiency with new AI and reporting features
• Shopify Retires Knowledge Base App, Moves AI Agent Facts To Admin
• Ahrefs opens beta of Traffic Analysis estimating competitors' AI, ad and social traffic
• Google Warns Tools On User-Generated Spam Guidance & More
• Discord is making its public communities more searchable, and people have concerns
• Ant Group releases Lingguang 2.0, a personal agent that keeps managing tasks

Today on Agent Beat: ChatGPT Rarely Names Some Brands Even When Sources Mention Them, plus Over 80% Of Google Searches Have AI Overviews.

• ChatGPT Rarely Names Some Brands Even When Sources Mention Them
• Over 80% Of Google Searches Have AI Overviews
• Organic traffic is down, but it’s not all AI
• Train tickets and phone plans: Grok Bot does online errands, and does them well
• ChatGPT Ads With Learn More Arrow Link; Some Served Through Amazon DSP
• SEO or GEO? Why the same article can rank on Google and be cited by AI
• Hakuhodo starts Shomei AIO, pairing brands with newspaper and book publishers on articles built around AI questions
• Generative UI Could Turn Google Into Your Booking.com
• Bing Copilot: a patent details how AI engines sort web sources
• Inalienable Human-in-the-Loop
• Google Discover Tests Disabling Clicks In Sources Section