Discounted ChatGPT Go Is Now Available In 98 Countries via @sejournal, @martinibuster

ChatGPT Go, OpenAI’s heavily discounted version of ChatGPT, is now available in 98 countries, including eight European countries and five Latin American countries.

ChatGPT Go offers everything that’s included in the Free plan but more. So there’s more access to GPT-5, image generation, extended file upload capabilities, a larger context window, and collaboration features. ChatGPT Go is available on both Android and Apple mobile apps and on the macOS and Windows desktop environments.

The eight new European countries where ChatGPT Go is now available are:

  1. Austria
  2. Czech Republic
  3. Denmark
  4. Norway
  5. Poland
  6. Portugal
  7. Spain
  8. Sweden

The five Latin American countries are:

  1. Bolivia
  2. Brazil
  3. El Salvador
  4. Honduras
  5. Nicaragua

The full ChatGPT availability list is here. Note: The official list doesn’t list Sweden, but Sweden appears in the official changelog.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Nithid

Google Q3 Report: AI Mode, AI Overviews Lift Total Search Usage via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google used its Q3 earnings call to argue that AI features are expanding search usage rather than cannibalizing it.

CEO Sundar Pichai described an “expansionary moment for Search,” adding that Google’s AI experiences “highlight the web” and send “billions of clicks to sites every day.”

Pichai said overall queries and commercial queries both grew year over year, and that the growth rate increased in Q3 versus Q2, largely driven by AI Overviews and AI Mode.

What Did Google Report In Its Q3 Earnings?

AI Mode & AI Overviews

Pichai reported “strong and consistent” week-over-week growth for AI Mode in the U.S., with queries doubling in the quarter.

He said Google rolled AI Mode out globally across 40 languages, reached over 75 million daily active users, and shipped more than 100 improvements in Q3.

He also said AI Mode is already driving “incremental total query growth for Search.”

Pichai reiterated that AI Overviews “drive meaningful query growth,” noting the effect was “even stronger” in Q3 and more pronounced among younger users.

Revenue: By The Numbers

Alphabet posted $102.3 billion in revenue, its first $100B quarter. “Google Search & other” revenue reached $56.6 billion, up from $49.4 billion a year earlier.

YouTube ads revenue reached $10.26 billion in Q3. Pichai said YouTube “has remained number one in streaming watch time in the U.S. for more than two years, according to Nielsen.”

Pichai added that in the U.S. “Shorts now earn more revenue per watch hour than traditional in-stream.”

The quarter also included a $3.5 billion European Commission fine that Alphabet notes when discussing margins. Excluding that charge, operating margin was 33.9%.

Why It Matters

Google is telling Wall Street that AI surfaces expand search rather than replace it. If that holds, the company has reason to put AI Mode and AI Overviews in front of more queries.

The near-term implication for marketers is a distribution shift inside Google, not a pullback from search.

What’s missing is as important as what was said. Google didn’t share outbound click share from AI experiences or new reporting to track them. Expect adoption to grow while measurement lags. Teams will be relying on their own analytics to judge impact.

The revenue backdrop supports continued investment. “Search & other” rose year over year and Google highlighted growth in commercial queries. Paid budgets are likely to remain with Google as AI-led sessions take up a larger share of usage.

Looking Ahead

Google plans to keep pushing AI-led search surfaces. Pichai said the company is “looking forward to the release of Gemini 3 later this year,” which would give AI Mode and AI Overviews a stronger model foundation if the timing holds.

Google described Chrome as “a browser powered by AI” with deeper integrations to Gemini and AI Mode and “more agentic capabilities coming soon.”

The company also raised 2025 capex guidance to $91–$93 billion to meet AI demand, which supports continued investment in search infrastructure and features.


Featured Image: Photo Agency/Shutterstock

Chrome To Warn Users Before Loading HTTP Sites Starting Next Year via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google Chrome will enable “Always Use Secure Connections” by default with the release of Chrome 154 in October 2026, the company announced.

The change means Chrome will ask for user permission before loading any public website that doesn’t use HTTPS encryption. Users will see a bypassable warning explaining the security risks of unencrypted connections.

Google is rolling out the feature in stages. Chrome 147 will enable it for over 1 billion Enhanced Safe Browsing users in April 2026. All Chrome users will get it by default six months later.

What’s Changing

Public Site Warning

The warning system applies exclusively to public websites. Chrome excludes private sites including local IP addresses, single-label hostnames, and internal shortlinks.

Chris Thompson and the Chrome Security Team wrote:

“HTTP navigations to private sites can still be risky, but are typically less dangerous than their public site counterparts because there are fewer ways for an attacker to take advantage of these HTTP navigations.”

Here’s an example of what the warning will look like:

Image Credit: Google

Warning Frequency

Chrome limits how often users see warnings for the same sites. The browser won’t repeatedly warn about regularly visited insecure sites.

Testing data shows the median user sees fewer than one warning per week. The 95th percentile user sees fewer than three warnings per week.

Current HTTPS Adoption

HTTPS usage has plateaued at 95-99% of Chrome navigations across platforms. When excluding private sites, public HTTPS usage reaches 97-99% on most platforms.

Windows shows 98% HTTPS on public sites. Android and Mac exceed 99%. Linux reaches nearly 97%.

Why This Matters

You face security risks when clicking HTTP links. Attackers can hijack unencrypted navigations to load malware, exploitation tools, or phishing content.

Google’s transparency report shows HTTPS adoption stalled after rapid growth from 2015-2020. The remaining 1-5% of insecure traffic represents millions of navigations that create attack opportunities.

Website owners running HTTP-only sites have one year to migrate before Chrome warns their visitors.

You can enable “Always Use Secure Connections” today at chrome://settings/security to test how the warnings affect your site traffic.

Looking Ahead

Google continues outreach to companies responsible for the highest HTTP traffic volumes. Many sites use HTTP only for redirects to HTTPS destinations, creating an invisible security gap the new warnings will close.

Chrome plans additional work to reduce HTTPS adoption barriers for local network sites. The company introduced a local network access permission that allows HTTPS pages to communicate with private devices once users grant permission.

Users can disable warnings by turning off the “Always Use Secure Connections” setting. Enterprise and educational institutions can configure Chrome to meet their specific warning requirements.


Featured Image: Philo Athanasiou/Shutterstock

Google Labs & DeepMind Launch Pomelli AI Marketing Tool via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Pomelli, a Google Labs & DeepMind AI experiment, builds a “Business DNA” from your site and generates editable branded campaign assets for small businesses.

  • Pomelli scans your website to create a “Business DNA” profile.
  • It uses the created profile to keep content consistent across channels.
  • It suggests campaign ideas and generates editable marketing assets.
Trust In AI Shopping Is Limited As Shoppers Verify On Websites via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

A new IAB and Talk Shoppe study finds AI is accelerating discovery and comparisons, but it’s not the last stop.

Here are the key points before we get into the details:

  • AI pushes people to verify details on retailer sites, search, reviews, and forums rather than replacing those steps.
  • Only about half fully trust AI recommendations, which creates predictable detours when links are broken or specs and pricing don’t match.
  • Retailer traffic rises after AI, with one in three shoppers clicking through directly from an assistant.

About The Report

This report combines more than 450 screen-recorded AI shopping sessions with a U.S. survey of 600 consumers, giving you observed behavior and stated attitudes in one place.

It tracks where AI helps, where trust breaks, and what people do next.

Key Findings

AI speeds up research and makes it more focused, especially for comparing options, but it increases the number of steps as shoppers validate details elsewhere.

In the sessions, people averaged 1.6 steps before AI and 3.8 afterward, and 95% took extra steps to feel confident before ending a session.

Retailer and marketplace sites are the primary destination for validation. Seventy-eight percent of shoppers visited a retailer or marketplace during the journey, and 32% clicked directly from an AI tool.

The share that visited retailer sites rose from 20% before AI to 50% after AI. On those pages, people most often checked prices and deals, variants, reviews, and availability.

Low Trust In AI Recommendations

Trust is a constraint. Only 46% fully trusted AI shopping recommendations.

Common friction points where people lost trust were:

  • Missing links or sources
  • Mismatched specs or pricing
  • Outdated availability
  • Recommendations that didn’t fit budget or compatibility needs

These friction points sent people back to search, retailers, reviews, and forums.

Why This Matters

AI chatbots now shape mid-journey research.

If your product data, comparison content, and reviews are inconsistent with retailer listings, shoppers will notice when they verify elsewhere.

This reinforces the need to align details across channels to retain customer trust.

What To Do With This Info

Here are concrete steps you can take based on the report’s information:

  • Keep specs, pricing, availability, and variants in sync with retailer feeds.
  • Build comparison and “alternatives” pages around the attributes people prompt for.
  • Expand structured data for specs, variants, availability, and reviews.
  • Create content to answer common objections surfaced in forums and comment threads.
  • Monitor the queries and communities where shoppers validate information to close recurring gaps.

Looking Ahead

Respondents said AI made research feel easier, but confidence still depends on clear sources and verified reviews.

Expect assistants to keep influencing discovery while retailer and brand pages confirm the details that matter.

For more insight into how AI influences the shopping journey, see the full report.


Featured Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock

Google’s Advice On Canonicals: They’re Case Sensitive via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller answered a question about canonicals, expressing his opinion that “hope” shouldn’t be a part of your SEO strategy with regard to canonicals. The implication is that hoping Google will figure it out on its own misses the point of what SEO is about.

Canonicals And Case Sensitivity

Rel=canonical is an HTML tag that enables a publisher or SEO to tell Google what their preferred URL is. For example, it’s useful for suggesting the best URL when there are multiple URLs with the same or similar content. Google isn’t obligated to obey the rel=canonical declaration, it’s treated as a strong hint.

Someone on Reddit was in the situation where a website has category names that they begin with a capitalized letter but the canonical tag contains a lowercase version. There is currently a redirect from the lowercase version to the uppercase.

They’re currently not seeing any negative impact from this state of the website and were asking if it’s okay to leave it as-is because it hasn’t affected search visibility.

The person asking the question wrote:

“…I’m running into something annoying on our blog and could use a sanity check before I push dev too hard to fix it. It’s been an issue for a month, after a redesign was launched.

All of our URLs resolve in this format: /site/Topic/topic-title/

…but the canonical tag uses a lowercase topic, like: /site/topic/topic-title/

So the canonical doesn’t exactly match the actual URL’s case. Lowercase topic 301 redirects to the correct, uppercase version.

I know that mismatched canonicals can send mixed signals to Google.

Dev is asking, “Are you seeing any real impact from this?” and technically, the answer is no — but I still think it’s worth fixing to follow best practices.”

If It Works Don’t Fix It?

This is an interesting case because in many things related to SEO if something’s working there’s little point trying to fix a small detail for fear of triggering a negative response. Relying on Google to figure things out is another fallback.

Google’s John Mueller has a different opinion. He responded:

“URL path, filename, and query parameters are case-sensitive, the hostname / domain name aren’t. Case-sensitivity matters for canonicalization, so it’s a good idea to be consistent there. If it serves the same content, it’ll probably be seen as a duplicate and folded together, but “hope” should not be a part of an SEO strategy.

Case-sensitivity in URLs also matters for robots.txt.”

Takeaway

I know that in highly competitive niches the SEO is on a generally flawless level. If there’s something to improve it gets improved. And there’s a good reason for that. Someone at one of the search engines once told me that anything you can do to make it easier for the crawlers is a win. They advised me to make sites easy to crawl and content easy to understand. That advice is still useful, it follows with Mueller’s advice to not “hope” that Google figures things out, implying that it’s best to make sure they do work out.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/MyronovDesign

YouTube Introduces ‘Ask Studio’ AI For Channel Analytics via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

YouTube launched Ask Studio, an AI assistant built into YouTube Studio that analyzes channel data to provide insights and content suggestions.

The tool appears as a chat interface accessed through a sparkle icon in YouTube Studio. You can ask for comment summaries, video performance analysis, and content ideas based on your channel’s data.

What’s New

Ask Studio analyzes three primary types of channel data: comments, analytics, and past content performance.

For comments, Ask Studio can summarize key themes and sentiment across videos. You can ask for summaries on a specific video or get an overall view of what viewers are talking about.

For analytics, Ask Studio pulls from the same performance metrics already in YouTube Studio. It identifies patterns and suggests areas for improvement based on the channel’s data.

For content planning, Ask Studio can generate ideas tailored to what viewers already respond to. You can prompt it for new angles on an ongoing series, ask what topics are resonating with your audience, or get title and outline suggestions.

See a full walkthrough in the video below:

How It Differs From Inspiration Tab

Ask Studio and the Inspiration Tab are both designed to help with content ideas, but they work differently.

Inspiration Tab is a visual surface. It shows idea cards, images, and thumbnail suggestions for creators who like to browse concepts.

Ask Studio is conversational. You type a prompt and get an answer in plain language. It’s meant for creators who already have a direction and want help sharpening the angle, planning the next video, or understanding what viewers are saying.

Both use your channel data, but Ask Studio responds in real time. Inspiration Tab curates pre-generated suggestions.

Availability

Ask Studio is currently available in English to a limited group of creators in the United States.

YouTube says it’s continuing to expand access to more U.S. creators, experimenting with additional languages, and working on international rollout.

Some prompts may return a generic response or “I can’t help with that.” YouTube says that happens when Ask Studio doesn’t have enough context or doesn’t support that request yet.

Why This Matters

Ask Studio can surface patterns in your comments and analytics without manually digging through dashboards or scrolling hundreds of viewer messages. That reduces the time spent on reporting and lets you focus on packaging the next video.

The current limitation is reach. Right now it’s U.S.-only, English-only, and only some channels are in the test group, which restricts access for international creators and teams that work across multiple languages.

Looking Ahead

YouTube says it plans to roll out Ask Studio to more creators in the United States before expanding internationally. The company is also testing additional language support but hasn’t announced specific languages or dates.

The launch continues YouTube’s push toward AI-assisted creator tools inside YouTube Studio, alongside features like the Inspiration Tab for idea generation.


Featured Image: vrlibsstudio/Shutterstock

OpenAI Flags Emotional Reliance On ChatGPT As A Safety Risk via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

OpenAI is telling companies that “relationship building” with AI has limits. Emotional dependence on ChatGPT is considered a safety risk, with new guardrails in place.

  • OpenAI says it has added “emotional reliance on AI” as a safety risk.
  • The new system is trained to discourage exclusive attachment to ChatGPT.
  • Clinicians helped define what “unhealthy attachment” looks like and how ChatGPT should respond.
Google Uses AI To Group Queries In Search Console Data via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google announced Query groups in Search Console Insights. The AI feature clusters similar search queries, surfaces trends, and shows which topics drive clicks.

  • Query groups uses AI to cluster similar search queries.
  • The new card shows total clicks per group and highlights groups trending up or down.
  • Query groups will roll out over the coming weeks to high volume accounts.