May 27 2026
Gmail Content Linked To AI Mode Brand Visibility Lift via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

A new report from iPullRank looks at how Google’s Personal Intelligence feature influences how brands appear in AI Mode.

The SEO agency analyzed 1,922 AI Mode responses and found a 46-percentage-point lift in mentions of brands seeded through a Personal Intelligence-connected account.

What They Found

In Personal Intelligence-connected accounts, the brands they tested appeared more frequently, with mentions rising from 23.9% to 66.8%.

Those brands also moved into higher positions, with their top-3 placement increasing from 4.5% to 24.9%.

Gmail had the strongest influence on which brands get cited. Brands seeded through email appeared in 53.6% of relevant responses, compared with 10.5% for brands added through Photos.

Results for consumer product categories like coffee machines, hoodies, and running shoes were easier to influence than trust-heavy categories, like banks and SEO agencies.

Personalization Didn’t Replace Web Sources

Even when personal context seemed to influence which brands appeared, AI Mode still grounded many recommendations in web sources.

Other brands’ sites made up about 49% of sources. Sites of brands seeded through Personal Intelligence-connected accounts were also frequently cited, along with their Google Shopping listings. Fully uncited mentions were the least common result type.

How The Test Worked

The team worked with three Google accounts. One was a blank control account without Personal Intelligence. A second blank account was linked to Personal Intelligence and received brand-related signals via Gmail and Google Photos. The third was author Garrett Sussman’s personal account, which had years of Google history.

The test covered eight categories, including coffee machines, running shoes, banks, and streaming services. Each category was tested across Gmail messages and Google Photos images, with six prompt types per category.

What The Analysis Doesn’t Show

iPullRank’s report doesn’t reveal Google’s internal ranking logic for Personal Intelligence-connected accounts.

The team didn’t have access to retrieval processes, model weights, or the Personal Intelligence decision layer. The test also used three accounts over 17 days, which limits the extent of the findings.

Email was the strongest signal tested, but the report doesn’t prove that Gmail is a universal AI Mode ranking factor. It tested an opt-in condition that isn’t enabled by default.

Why This Matters

iPullRank’s analysis is one of the first published attempts to measure how Google’s Personal Intelligence feature may affect brand recommendations. The findings come from a small, controlled test and apply to opted-in accounts only.

The two major takeaways are that email content appeared to have a stronger effect than photos, and that personal context didn’t replace web grounding. Personal relevance signals appear to work as additional factors, rather than overriding web results.

Looking Ahead

iPullRank says it plans to test signal decay, email behavior variants like opened versus unopened messages, and more product categories.

Prompt phrasing is another variable to watch, since different question formats produced different levels of brand visibility in this analysis.

Featured Image: Screenshot from gemini.google/overview/personal-intelligence/, May 2026. 

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 26 2026
Google CEO On AI Overviews: ‘More Opinionated Than It Should Be’ via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged room for improvement in AI Overviews when shown a live product-query result during a Decoder podcast interview with Nilay Patel.

Patel showed Pichai a live search result. Pichai called it “more opinionated than it should be” for the query. The interview was recorded after Google I/O 2026.

What Pichai Said About AI Overview Quality

Patel showed Pichai a “best Chromebook” search result on his phone. The AI Overview gave a confident recommendation. Below it, a Reddit result and a New York Times result each gave different answers.

Pichai responded:

“It’s probably more opinionated than it should be for the particular query you showed me. That was my reaction as a user. That’s the scope for improvement is how I would say it, in a fast-evolving space, but I would expect that to happen in the product.”

He also suggested that the result might have been personalized to Patel’s usage patterns.

Bounce Clicks & Traffic Trends

He addressed publisher traffic concerns, saying that as Google’s technology improves, low-quality clicks are being filtered out. He described this as “a natural evolution.”

“Bounce clicks are going down,” Pichai said. “And so those are all dynamics.”

Google’s VP of Search, Liz Reid, has described AI Overviews as removing “bounce clicks” rather than useful traffic. Google hasn’t shared publisher-facing data to support the claim.

Patel also read a quote from Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch, who told his teams to plan for zero search traffic. Pichai didn’t challenge Lynch’s planning decision. He also didn’t directly address Lynch’s claim that search traffic had fallen more than Condé Nast forecast each year. He told Patel he wasn’t “in a position to tell such an iconic publisher what they should think about their business or plan.”

He also mentioned a Search feature that treats sites a user subscribes to as preferred sources.

“If you’ve subscribed to something, we reflect that as a preferred source for you as a user,” he said, calling it “a new change which we didn’t have before.”

Why This Matters

Pichai looked at a live AI Overview and called it too opinionated for the query. The comment lands in a broader debate over AI Overviews’ effect on organic clicks. A field experiment found that AIOs reduced external clicks per affected search by about 38%, but that study measured click behavior, not whether subjective AI Overview recommendations were accurate.

The bounce clicks explanation continues the pattern across Google executives’ appearances. Pichai used similar language to that Reid used in Bloomberg’s Odd Lots earlier this year. Alphabet’s Q1 earnings showed Google Search & other revenue up 19%. The company still hasn’t released traffic data publishers would need to verify the claim.

The subscription preference signal is a concrete product change worth monitoring. Pichai called this “a new change which we didn’t have before.”

Looking Ahead

Google added more link surfaces to AI Search at I/O. Pichai described the result as showing “scope for improvement” and added that he would expect such iteration to occur in the product.

SEJ covered the I/O announcements and Pichai’s separate comments on the agentic coding gap from a Hard Fork interview earlier this week.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 25 2026
Google Says AI Mode Can Now Scale Faster Across Languages via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern
  • Reid said AI Mode’s multilingual model architecture has made it easier to expand across countries and languages.
  • She said Google uses existing Search ranking work to help ground AI Mode responses based on location.
  • The interview restated the I/O keynote announcements without rollout timelines.

In a post-keynote interview, Google’s Liz Reid told NDTV that AI Mode’s multilingual models have made it easier to expand across countries and languages.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 25 2026
Reddit CEO: LLMs ‘Would Not Exist’ Without Reddit Data via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said large language models “would not exist as we know them” without Reddit’s content. He called the platform’s user-generated data “modern oil” for AI.

Huffman made the comments during an interview at Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies Summit.

What Huffman Said About Reddit’s Value To AI

Huffman described the position Reddit’s data holds in the AI ecosystem.

Huffman said:

“LLMs would not exist as we know them without Reddit. Reddit is one of the single largest sources of training data for the LLMs and Reddit continues to be one of the primary sources of both training data and we’re also the most cited, the most cited platform across all models.”

He attributed the citation claim to Profound, a firm that tracks AI citation data.

Huffman explained why AI companies depend on the content.

“There’s no artificial intelligence without actual intelligence. At the end of the day, these models are quite simple. They’re regurgitating on an absolutely massive scale what they’ve consumed elsewhere and a large portion of that consumption is actually just the human conversation on Reddit because it’s natural and it covers basically every topic imaginable.”

Deals For Some, Lawsuits For Others

Reddit announced data licensing agreements with Google and OpenAI in 2024. Huffman referenced those as Reddit’s original two AI data deals and didn’t announce any additional agreements.

“Since we did the original two deals with Google and OpenAI, that was over two years ago, so we’ve learned a lot. They’ve learned a lot. The whole world’s learned a lot. Specifically how valuable Reddit’s data is and how useful it is. And so we’re being I think very deliberate and selective there. But yeah, we’re open and open for business.”

For companies that haven’t agreed to licensing terms, Reddit has taken legal action. The company sued Anthropic in California Superior Court, alleging unauthorized use of Reddit content and violations of Reddit’s terms. Reddit filed a federal lawsuit against Perplexity in the Southern District of New York, along with three data-scraping firms, alleging DMCA anti-circumvention violations and related claims.

Huffman drew a line between the two groups.

“Companies like Google and OpenAI where we had good relationships, we can actually do a deal and put some guard rails on use and access to our data on behalf of our users but then collaborate on making products for the next generation of the internet.”

He added that “not every company is willing to be a collaborative partner and so unfortunately we have to go the other way which is lawsuits.”

Huffman told the audience Reddit’s position on commercial use is simple. “Commercial use of our data requires commercial terms,” he said. Reddit began charging for commercial API access in 2023, a move that preceded the current licensing deals.

Huffman said Reddit still provides free data access to researchers and universities and tries to remain flexible for non-commercial use.

What Changed Reddit’s Openness

According to Huffman, Reddit’s willingness to share data freely changed when the AI industry moved away from open research. As SEJ previously reported, Reddit limited access for many search engine crawlers while Google remained an exception.

“Historically, Reddit has been like we’re born of the open internet and Reddit has been open and very permissive for access to its data. And honestly, I think we would be in a different position today if the AI companies were still basically open and open source and doing open research.”

Huffman said the issue was that Reddit couldn’t longer track how its data was being used. “People are using our data and we don’t know what it was being used for,” he told the audience.

Beyond commercial terms, Huffman said Reddit wants to prevent its data from being used to identify users, target them with ads, or to replace or disintermediate the platform.

Reddit’s Own AI Efforts

Huffman acknowledged what he called a “paradox.” Reddit’s content powers external AI systems, but the company also uses AI across its platform.

The most visible product is Reddit Answers, an LLM-powered search feature. It reads posts and comments, then organizes them into responses built from verbatim user quotes. Huffman noted it’s designed for questions without definitive answers.

“What Reddit Answers does is a couple of things that are unique to Reddit. One, it basically only answers in verbatim quotes from actual people. And then the second thing it does is it tries to present multiple perspectives because the whole point if you’re on Reddit, you want the human perspective.”

Behind the scenes, Reddit uses AI for content moderation and classification. LLMs can evaluate whether a comment crosses into bullying, something Huffman described as previously difficult because of the subjectivity involved.

Huffman presented AI moderation as a way to reduce exposure to the worst content, not as a replacement for Reddit’s community moderation model.

“The worst job on the internet used to be looking at the worst content on the internet and deciding whether it could be online or not,” Huffman said. “That job just goes away.”

The Gray Area Of AI-Written Posts

Huffman also addressed the challenge of users writing content with AI tools and pasting it into Reddit. That’s different from automated bot activity, he stressed.

“The most annoying thing that I see not just on Reddit, but all over the internet is somebody who wrote their post or comment with ChatGPT and then pasted it into Reddit. Like, is that a bot? Certainly feels like a bot, but there’s a human behind the idea.”

Huffman cast the issue as one of intent. “It’s very important to us that there’s a human behind the idea, behind the content, behind the prompt,” Huffman said. But he also noted that “the writing sucks” when users rely on AI to compose their posts.

Rather than creating a policy to address it, Huffman indicated Reddit will let its community handle the issue. Users are already downvoting AI-written content and calling it out in comments. Huffman said Reddit will “empower the users more and the subreddits more to just reject that sort of content altogether.”

He compared the broader question to calculators in math class. “Kids these days are just learning how to write with AI. What are we going to do about it?” he said. “We kind of have to learn, I think, along with everybody else.”

Why This Matters

Huffman’s comments reinforce Reddit’s pitch that its user discussions are a core input for AI systems.

The AI-written content problem Huffman described is one SEJ covered as part of a broader YouTube AI slop investigation. Reddit’s decision to let community voting handle AI-generated posts, rather than building detection tools, is a different path than platforms that have deployed automated labeling.

Looking Ahead

Huffman told Fast Company that Reddit is “in the market talking to folks all the time” about new data deals, though he didn’t hint at a third agreement.

Reddit’s lawsuits against Anthropic and Perplexity are both ongoing. The Anthropic case was the subject of a federal court remand hearing in March.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 25 2026
Pichai Says Google Is ‘A Bit Behind’ On Agentic Coding via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged the company is “a bit behind” the frontier on agentic coding.

Pichai called coding “very foundational” to Google’s AI work. He made the comments on the New York Times Hard Fork podcast. The interview came days after Google’s I/O developer conference.

Where Google Sees The Gap

When asked about Google’s position in the AI race, Pichai highlighted areas of strength and those where Google trails.

Google’s models are “very capable” on text, multimodality, voice, audio, and reasoning, he said. But in agentic coding, tool use, instruction following, and long-horizon tasks, Google is “a bit behind at this moment.”

On what that looks like for developers, Pichai drew a clearer line. Google has been strong at creating single-shot web front ends. The gap is in longer-running tasks, where developers work on complex codebases.

Pichai said:

“There is a gap to the frontier where others are, but we are working, you know, we are well aware of it.”

Why Pichai Says Google Lacked Coding Data

Pichai pointed to a developer product gap. Google didn’t have the same external coding product surface generating developer data flows, he said.

He cited Anthropic’s relationship with Cursor as an example. Google “maybe quite didn’t have the surface” that competitors had, he added.

That’s now changing. At I/O, Google announced Antigravity 2.0 as a standalone desktop application for agent-based coding workflows. Internal usage at Google has been growing fast, according to Pichai.

He added:

“We are doubling every week and people are really putting the models to work. That is helping us hill climb quite a bit.”

At the I/O keynote, Pichai had shared internal token usage numbers. He called the growth unlike anything he’d seen inside the company.

What Pichai Said About Gemini 3.5 Flash

The interview came a day after Google launched Gemini 3.5 Flash and made it the default model for AI Mode globally. Pichai acknowledged early complaints about pricing, model quality, and usage limits.

Google had tightened usage limits at launch to avoid outages, he explained, calling the restrictions “rightfully a source of frustration.” The company would make progress on limits “very soon.”

On model quality, he acknowledged that the new model could have regressions in some areas. Some issues are “easy to address” through post-training, and Google would fix them quickly, he added.

SEJ covered the Gemini 3.5 Flash launch and other I/O announcements earlier this week.

Why This Matters

Pichai’s comments go further than Google’s I/O keynote messaging on where the company trails. At the event, the focus on Gemini 3.5 Flash and Antigravity was more confident. This interview offered a more candid read on the competitive picture.

Pichai described the gap as a feedback loop problem. Coding products that developers use daily generates interaction data that improves the next model. By his own account, Google is now building that loop through Antigravity after lacking a similar developer-facing surface.

Looking Ahead

Pichai said Google is making progress on coding and called the space “very dynamic.” Google says Gemini 3.5 Pro is being used internally and is expected to roll out next month. It hasn’t said whether the model will narrow the coding gap Pichai described.

Featured Image: YouTube / Hard Fork podcast

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 22 2026
Google Launches Core Update Amid I/O AI Search Overhaul – SEO Pulse via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Welcome to the week’s Pulse: This week’s updates touch rankings, the Search interface, AI Mode behavior, and Google’s guidance around AI agents.

Google launched a core update, announced what it called the biggest upgrade to the Search box in over 25 years, released first-party AI Mode usage data, and sent mixed signals on llms.txt from two different product teams.

Here’s what matters for you and your work.

Google Begins Rolling Out The May 2026 Core Update

Google began rolling out the May core update on the 21st, per a message on the Google Search Status Dashboard.

Key facts: This is the second Search core update of 2026 and the fourth confirmed ranking update this year. The rollout may take up to two weeks. Google hasn’t published a companion blog post or shared goals for the update.

Why This Matters

The timing puts this update in the middle of Google I/O week. Ranking movement over the next two weeks will overlap with other changes Google announced, which could make it harder to isolate what caused any shifts you see in Search Console.

Your baseline should be the weeks before May 21, compared against performance after the rollout finishes. Wait at least one full week after completion before reviewing data.

What SEO Professionals Are Saying

Marie Haynes, founder of Marie Haynes Consulting Inc., connected the timing to I/O:

“Makes sense seeing as Gemini 3.5 Flash is now powering the AI features of Search.”

Harpreet Singh Chatha, SEO & AI Search Consultant, suggested this update could be targeting websites that are over-optimizing for AI citations:

“Calling it now. If you’ve been doing dumb [things] to show up in AI answers this one’s coming for you.”

Read our full coverage: Google Begins Rolling Out May 2026 Core Update

Google Redesigns Search Box, Upgrades AI Mode & Previews Search Agents At I/O

Google announced Gemini 3.5 Flash as the new default model in AI Mode, redesigned the Search box with AI capabilities, and previewed information agents coming this summer.

Key facts: Google described the redesigned Search box as its biggest upgrade in over 25 years. It expands dynamically, supports multimodal inputs like images and files, and provides AI-powered suggestions beyond autocomplete. Information agents will monitor the web and deliver updates. New features include agentic booking, generative UI, and Personal Intelligence expansion to nearly 200 countries.

Why This Matters

The Search box redesign prompts users to describe needs in longer, conversational queries. Paired with Gemini 3.5 Flash in AI Mode, responses mostly come from AI rather than traditional pages.

Information agents continuously search and synthesize updates, raising questions about whether your content is cited or overlooked in those summaries.

What SEO Professionals Are Saying

Jake Ward, SEO/content entrepreneur building Mentions, wrote:

“My feed is full of ‘SEO is dead’ posts today. But none of this should be a surprise. Every platform we use is moving towards AI-first, agentic, proactive experiences like this. And clicks were already dying. We’ve watched CTR decline for 2-3 years straight now. However, search is very much alive, just different. We’re moving further into a world of visibility > clicks.”

Read our full coverage: Google’s New Search Box Hands Queries To AI Agents, I/O Reveals

Google Releases First AI Mode Usage Data After One Year

Google published a report on how people use AI Mode in the U.S., drawing on internal Search data and Google Trends one year after launch.

Key facts: AI Mode has over 1 billion monthly users, with queries doubling each quarter. Searches are thrice as long as traditional ones, and follow-up queries increase 40% monthly in the U.S. Over 16% of searches are multimodal, using voice, images, or video. Planning queries grow at 80% the rate of overall usage. Trends data isn’t publicly available.

Why This Matters

The key insight is the behavioral data, not milestone numbers. Users write longer queries, follow up more, and use multiple input types, changing content and how it surfaces.

Pages with short keywords may not match AI Mode’s conversational patterns. Growth in planning queries is significant; when users ask AI Mode to compare products, evaluate services, or research, that content has commercial value, even without clicks.

Google’s report is based on internal, unverifiable data, and AI Mode search trends aren’t available publicly.

What SEO Professionals Are Saying

Jeffrey Cohen, chief business development officer at Skai, wrote:

“Shoppers aren’t typing ‘running shoes.’ They’re asking ‘what are the best running shoes for a wide foot that I can wear for a half marathon training on pavement under $150.’ That’s not a keyword. That’s a brief. Planning queries grew 80% faster than AI Mode overall in the last 6 months. That means shoppers are using AI as a research partner long before they hit buy. The brand that shows up during research owns the consideration phase. The transition from keyword to conversation has been talked about for years. The data says it’s already here.”

Alisa Scharf, CAIO at Seer, pointed to the measurement gap:

“For those of us who weren’t yet investing in tracking visibility in AI Mode, we’ve gotta bug our product or procurement teams to get more tracking established. Can’t optimize what you can’t measure. If anyone from Google follows me — It’s really pretty wild that none of these metrics are available for free in Google Webmaster tools. I so rarely shake my fist in the general direction of Palo Alto, but this is becoming obscene. Big props to the team at Bing who’s investing in a real control center of information with their Webmaster Tools.”

Read our full coverage: Google Reveals First AI Mode Usage Numbers After One Year

Google’s Llms.txt Guidance Splits Between Search & Lighthouse

Google’s Search team and its Lighthouse team are giving different guidance on llms.txt. Meanwhile, Mueller clarified where markdown pages for LLMs do and don’t help.

Key facts: Google’s AI guide states llms.txt isn’t needed for AI Search. Lighthouse 13.3 checks for llms.txt by default, flagging sites with errors. Mueller said markdown pages are useful for documentation but not for most websites. He differentiated discovery (search visibility) from on-page tasks, advising sites to focus on being found.

Why This Matters

The answer depends on your traffic. If agentic tools visit and complete tasks, markdown versions of your docs may help those tools. If you’re planning for the future, Mueller recommends prioritizing current needs first, saying, “Prioritize needs before dreams.”

The conflict between the Search and Lighthouse teams exists, and Google hasn’t resolved it. Search Central offers guidance for Search visibility, while Lighthouse assesses agentic browsing readiness, not ranking or AI Mode eligibility.

What SEO Professionals Are Saying

Chris Long, co-founder of Nectiv, wrote:

“Chrome just released documentation on their new Agentic Browsing audits. Somewhat buried in there, they reference how the audit will check for the LLMs.txt file. It mentions how it ‘checks for the presence of a machine-readable summary at the domain root.’ This is less than a week after their documentation talking about how SEOs don’t need to worry about additional files + markup. I’m starting to turn around on the LLMs.txt a bit. Some seriously smart people including Crystal Carter, John-Henry Scherck, Joost de Valk are turning me around on it a bit. It also seems very clear that Google doesn’t want us to test this stuff. To just keep doing SEO as we’ve normally done it without looking behind the scenes and waiting for their guidance.”

Read our full coverage: Mueller Explains Why Google Uses Markdown On Dev Docs | Google’s llms.txt Guidance Depends On Which Product You Ask

Theme Of The Week: The Quiet Rebuild

Google is rebuilding Search around AI while telling everyone the fundamentals still apply.

The optimization guide published last week says AEO and GEO are “still SEO.” Mueller says to focus on current needs. The core update rollout looks like any other. But the same week, Google announced what it called the biggest upgrade to the Search box in over 25 years, reported that AI Mode has surpassed 1 billion monthly users, announced always-on information agents, and released data showing user behavior is already shifting toward longer, multimodal, follow-up-heavy queries.

The gap between Google’s public guidance and its product roadmap keeps widening. The infrastructure is changing faster than the guidance.

Top Stories Of The Week:

More Resources:

Featured Image: PeopleImages/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 22 2026
WordPress 7.0 Faces Security Concerns Over AI API Keys via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Oliver Sild, founder of Patchstack WordPress security company, shared concerns about the security of AI API keys in WordPress 7.0, sharing that there “will be an absolute rush by hackers to steal API keys.” To underline this point, an actual security bug was discovered in WordPress 7.0 that exposes API keys.

AI API Keys Are Valuable

AI API Keys are secure passwords (keys) that enable a WordPress plugin or theme to interact with an AI like Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini. An API key enables an AI company to bill users for using their systems, which is separate and in addition to the all-you-can-eat model of their monthly plans.

AI API keys are highly valuable assets that can be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Hackers steal AI API keys to power networks of AI bots that engage potential victims on social media and dating apps, running thousands of conversations with their targets. They also use stolen AI API keys to conduct scaled phishing campaigns, write malware, and it can also be used to access sensitive data that’s connected to the AI implementation in a WordPress site.

Patchstack founder Oliver Sild warned that WordPress vulnerabilities could become far more valuable to attackers now that websites are becoming increasingly connected to large language models and paid AI APIs.

Sild posted on X:

“WordPress 7.0 combined with plugin vulnerabilities = free AI tokens. There will be an absolute rush by hackers to steal API keys.”

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg pushed back against the idea that WordPress sites are broadly insecure, insisting that the “vast majority” of WordPress sites are secure and saying that he’s run some WordPress sites for over 20 years that have never been hacked.

That may be true, but Automattic’s WordPress.com servers had a security incident in 2011 that exposed sensitive information.

WordPress 7.0 AI-Related Security Bug Surfaces

A newly reported WordPress 7.0 security bug involving AI API key exposure shows that the potential for security issues are real. This specific security issue surfaced in the AI integration setup form which enables a browser to autofill the AI API key, visually exposing it in the browser window. The report explains that the issue could expose credentials during screen sharing, on shared computers, or to anyone with access to an active browser session.

The official WordPress GitHub report explains what the security issue is:

“When entering an API key in the integration setup form (Anthropic provider), the API key value appears in the browser autocomplete/autofill suggestion dropdown in plain text. This can expose sensitive credentials to anyone with access to the browser session or screen.

The API key field should behave like a secure password field and should not display previously entered values as suggestions.”

A New Era Of WordPress Attacks

Oliver Sild also raised concerns in the Dynamic WordPress Facebook group about how AI integrations may change the economics of exploiting WordPress sites.

Sild argued that software vulnerabilities are already the leading cause of security breaches and warned that AI-connected WordPress sites are now significantly more attractive targets because they may contain access to valuable AI services and API credentials.

He also predicted that more threat actors would begin targeting WordPress sites specifically for AI-related credentials and services.

Other developers joined the discussion and expanded it beyond individual vulnerabilities into broader software architectural concerns about how WordPress handles secrets, plugin permissions, and database access.

Andrei Lupu warned that once attackers obtain database access, protecting secrets becomes extremely difficult:

“The reality is that once they have access to db, you are doomed. We need to work on best best practices to prevent that.”

Steve Jones of Equalize Digital suggested WordPress may eventually need a more granular permissions model controlling which plugins and themes can access sensitive services or credentials.

Sild responded that solving the problem would likely require a major architectural overhaul because plugin vulnerabilities that expose database access or administrator privileges effectively compromise the entire site.

Brian Coords, a developer advocate at WooCommerce, joined the discussion to explore whether there are practical ways to isolate API keys without redesigning WordPress itself. But he also acknowledged that arbitrary PHP execution makes the problem difficult to solve because malicious code could still invoke API calls directly from the compromised site.

He shared:

“This applies to secrets pretty generally in WordPress. Is there a solution that doesn’t require a full architectural overhaul?

…Just thinking through it, even if you could theoretically hide the keys and connections themselves outside the environment, even the ability to add PHP to a site means you could still include malicious code make the calls from the site itself.”

WordPress’s AI-Era Architecture

The problem for WordPress is that its plugin trust model was designed before websites contained monetizable AI credentials, connected to automation systems, or envisioned direct access to third-party LLM services.

That does not mean that WordPress 7.0 is insecure by default. As Mullenweg insisted, properly maintained WordPress sites can remain secure. But keeping a site frequently updated doesn’t guarantee that a WordPress site will evade getting hacked. A recent report by Patchstack said that hackers are increasing the speed at which they attack websites in order to exploit the brief window of opportunity between the time a vulnerability is discovered and the moment a site owner gets around to updating their site.

AI API Keys Make WordPress A Bigger Target

One of the takeaways here are that many site owners are unaware of how API keys work, that using them isn’t free. Using AI on a WordPress site can potentially lead to theft of thousands of dollars in AI use. Even a site that doesn’t have sensitive information to steal now becomes a valuable target if they are using an AI key to accomplish tasks like scale meta descriptions across a site or to help with building the website itself.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Yuriy2012

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 21 2026
Google Begins Rolling Out May 2026 Core Update via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has begun rolling out the May 2026 core update, according to the Google Search Status Dashboard

Google also announced the rollout on X through its Search Central account. The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete.

This is the second Search core update of 2026. The March core update finished rolling out on April 8 after 12 days.

What Google Said

As of publication, Google hasn’t published a companion blog post or shared specific goals for the May core update. The only official description so far is the dashboard entry, which states: “Released the May 2026 core update. The rollout may take up to 2 weeks to complete.”

That matches how Google handled the March core update, which also launched without a companion blog post. For that update, the company used the description “a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.”

No new guidance came with today’s announcement.

Recent Update Timeline

About six weeks separate the completion of the March core update and today’s rollout. Here’s how the recent timeline looks.

This is the fourth confirmed Google ranking update of 2026 listed on the Search Status Dashboard, and the second Search core update this year.

Why This Matters

Some sites may see ranking movement over the next two weeks as the update rolls out. Don’t make content changes based on early ranking movement.

Wait at least one full week after a core update finishes before reviewing your Search Console data, per Google’s recommendation. Your baseline should be the weeks before May 21, compared against performance after the rollout completes.

Core updates aren’t targeted at specific types of content or policy violations. Pages can move up or down as Google updates its systems to keep pace with changes across the web.

Looking Ahead

No completion timeline has been shared beyond the two-week estimate. We’ll update this article when the rollout is confirmed complete.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 21 2026
WordPress 7.0 Is A Winner: Here’s What You Need To Know via @sejournal, @martinibuster

WordPress released version 7.0, codenamed Armstrong, bringing changes that make it easier for users and developers to control the look and user experience of websites, and a refresh of the admin page that makes the entire CMS behave more like modern publishing software.

WordPress 7.0’s AI integration may grab a significant amount of attention at the risk of overshadowing the other features. There’s a lot to unpack with this release, including greater control over design, improved security, and an updated user experience. Here are the highlights.

WordPress 7.0 Refreshes The Admin Experience

WordPress 7.0 gives the admin dashboard a user interface refresh with the new Modern admin theme. The update improves many parts of the admin area, including admin headers, the Customizer, the color scheme picker, script loader, various user functions, and multisite user signup screens.

The Modern admin theme brings a cleaner visual system that gives the dashboard a more unified interface:

  • A refreshed color palette
  • Higher-contrast styling
  • Updated typography
  • Updated admin header styling
  • Updated Customizer styling
  • Refreshed multisite signup screens
  • Updated color scheme picker
  • Styling updates across user functions

View Transitions

WordPress 7.0 also adds View Transitions to the admin area, creating smoother transitions between supported admin screens as users navigate wp-admin. The feature is designed to make dashboard navigation feel smoother while still respecting system-level reduced-motion settings.

Command Palette Icon

This release adds a Command Palette icon to the upper admin bar. The icon displays ⌘K or Ctrl+K and opens the command palette when clicked, giving logged-in users faster access to tools from anywhere in the dashboard.

Font Library Management Screen

The Font Library also gets its own management screen. Fonts can now be uploaded, installed, and managed from a dedicated place in the dashboard, including for block, hybrid, and classic themes.

Visual Revisions

WordPress 7.0 also improves revision review inside the editor. Visual Revisions add insight into post or page edit history by letting users visually compare two revision versions directly in the Editor using a slider bar to switch between them. The document inspector shows a summary of changes, with color indicators and change sizes for each location, and jumps to that specific location on the page when clicked.

Site Owners Gain More Control Over Mobile Navigation

WordPress 7.0 makes mobile navigation more flexible by letting site owners customize hamburger menu overlays in the Site Editor. Instead of relying on a fixed overlay design, users can build mobile menu overlays with blocks and patterns.

That change gives site owners control over the structure and design of mobile navigation. The overlay can include custom layouts, content, and a dedicated close button that can be placed and styled within the design.

The feature also gives theme developers a new way to package mobile navigation experiences. Themes can include default overlay templates and overlay patterns so users can start with a designed mobile menu instead of building one from scratch.

Responsive Editing Moves Further Into Core

WordPress 7.0 adds more responsive design controls directly into the editor. Editors can now decide whether specific blocks appear or remain hidden on different device types.

That means a block can be shown on desktop and hidden on mobile without requiring a separate workaround or custom code. WordPress also shows visibility indicators in List View, making it easier to see which blocks have device-specific rules applied.

The release also expands breakpoint control, including support for different styling at different screen sizes. That moves responsive editing closer to the normal publishing workflow instead of treating it as a developer-only layer.

WordPress 7.0 Expands Native Design Tools

WordPress 7.0 adds several design-focused features across the block editor. The release includes new Heading, Icons, and Breadcrumbs blocks, along with lightbox support for Gallery blocks and dynamic URL support for Navigation Link blocks.

Layout And Typography Control

The update also expands layout and typography controls. WordPress 7.0 adds support for text indentation, text columns, width and height controls, dimension presets, and aspect ratios for wide and full images.

Block-Level Custom CSS

Block-level custom CSS is another significant addition. Instead of applying custom CSS only at a broader theme or site level, users can target individual blocks from inside the editing experience. That gives advanced users and developers more precise control without leaving the block-based workflow.

The new Breadcrumbs block brings site hierarchy into core. It can automatically show a page’s location within the site structure and can be used globally in areas such as a theme header. Developers also get filters to modify breadcrumb output, including taxonomy and term behavior.

Safer Defaults For User Registration

Security is improved with this release. A common sense change in version 7.0 is the removal of the Administrator and Editor roles from the default role selector in General Settings. That prevents sites from accidentally assigning powerful roles to newly registered users through a simple settings mistake.

Site Health will also alert site owners if one of those roles had previously been selected before the update. Developers can still modify the excluded roles through a filter, but the default WordPress behavior now removes the riskiest choices from the setting.

It’s Not Phase 4 But It’s A Winner

The original intent for WordPress 7.0 was to enter Phase Four of the WordPress roadmap with the introduction of real-time collaboration (RTC). But that feature needed more work and was dogged by questions of whether it was necessary.

AI integration into the CMS became the star of the show but the other new features deserve equal billing. Armstrong’s updates make the WordPress editing, publishing, and design environment more cohesive, giving the AI features a stronger foundation inside what may be the most consequential CMS release to date.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/visualroom

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 20 2026
Mueller Explains Why Google Uses Markdown On Dev Docs via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google’s John Mueller says markdown pages serve a specific purpose for developer documentation sites but won’t help most websites, even as search becomes more agentic.

Mueller laid out his reasoning in a Bluesky thread. He was responding to a question from Lily Ray about why Google publishes LLMs.txt files and markdown pages, even though they aren’t needed for search performance.

His response focused mainly on markdown versions of developer documentation, not llms.txt as a standalone file.

Mueller wrote:

“The short answer is that it’s not done for search. There’s more to websites than just SEO :-).”

Mueller’s Discovery Vs. Functionality Framework

His reasoning focuses on two different website goals.

He called the first “discovery,” or being found via a search engine, and the second “functionality,” which helps users complete tasks on the page.

Mueller acknowledged the term wasn’t precise. “There’s probably a more accurate term for this,” he wrote in the thread.

He compared the distinction to calls to action on traditional pages, stating:

“You don’t ‘do them’ for SEO (to be found), but if you’re responsible for the website overall, ensuring a high ‘discovery rate’ (SEO) together with a high conversion rate is useful to justify your work.”

Why Developer Docs Are Different

On developers.google.com, he noted, markdown versions make sense.

Mueller said;

“AI coding has gotten very popular, and these coding systems can be (I think) efficient and accurate with the code they produce if they can easily read / parse reference material, such as developer documentation.”

He added that markdown can help AI systems “understand the context of the documentation they’re looking at, as well as a simplified version of the reference page.”

Mueller called this a workaround rather than a long-term need, adding:

“OF COURSE they can read HTML just fine, so this is imo more of a temporary crutch, perhaps to save some tokens.”

Non-Developer Sites Should Skip It

For everyone else, Mueller was direct, stating:

“For non-developer sites, I don’t think this makes much sense, even with more agentic traffic in the future. Making a markdown version of a shoe’s specs is not going to get you more sales (competitors appreciate it tho).”

He went further in a follow-up post, pushing back on the idea that sites should prepare for a future where agents drive more traffic.

Mueller added:

“And (I know, nobody reads this far), if you think this is important to prepare for when agents are everywhere: your site (all sites) have much more important things to do for SEO than to prepare for a potential future situation that may or may not come. Prioritize needs before dreams.”

Why This Matters

Mueller’s comments show a more detailed position than his earlier statements on the topic.

In February, Mueller called the idea of serving markdown pages to bots “a stupid idea.” His Bluesky comments carve out an exception for developer documentation while holding the line for every other type of site.

The thread also arrived on the same day we reported that Google’s guidance on llms.txt now depends on which product you ask. Google’s generative AI optimization guide says to skip llms.txt, while Lighthouse 13.3 added an experimental audit that checks for the file as part of agentic browsing readiness.

Looking Ahead

Mueller’s distinction between discovery and on-page functionality can help you evaluate whether agentic optimization is worth their time. The test is whether building for agents right now produces measurable results for a specific site.

The “prioritize needs before dreams” line captures a broader tension in the industry right now. Vendors have been promoting llms.txt and markdown optimization as emerging practices, but neither Google’s search documentation nor independent data support investing in these for non-developer sites.

Featured Image: kirill_makarov/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments