Oct 6 2025
OpenAI Launches Apps In ChatGPT & Releases Apps SDK via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

OpenAI has launched a new app ecosystem within ChatGPT, along with a preview of the Apps SDK, enabling developers to create conversational, interactive applications based on the Model Context Protocol.

These apps are now accessible to all logged-in ChatGPT users outside the European Union, across Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans.

Early partners include Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, and Zillow.

How ChatGPT Apps Work

Apps naturally integrate into conversation, and you can activate them by name, such as saying, “Spotify, make a playlist for my party this Friday.’

When using an app for the first time, ChatGPT prompts you to connect and clarifies what data might be shared. For example, OpenAI demonstrates ChatGPT suggesting the Zillow app during a home-buying discussion, allowing you to browse listings on an interactive map without leaving the chat.

John Weisberg, Head of AI at Zillow, said:

“The Zillow app in ChatGPT shows the power of AI to make real estate feel more human. Together with OpenAI, we’re bringing a first-of-its-kind experience to millions — a conversational guide that makes finding a home faster, easier, and more intuitive.”

Developer Opportunities & Reach

OpenAI positions the Apps SDK as a way to “reach over 800 million ChatGPT users at just the right time.”

The SDK is open source and built on MCP, allowing developers to create their own chat logic and custom interfaces. You can also connect to your own backends for login and premium features, and easily test everything through Developer Mode in ChatGPT.

OpenAI has provided detailed documentation, design guidelines, and example apps to support developers.

Submission & Monetization

Developers can begin building immediately. OpenAI has announced that formal app submissions, reviews, and publication will commence later this year, along with a directory for browsing and searching apps.

Additionally, the company plans to disclose monetization details, including support for the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which enables instant checkout within ChatGPT.

Safety & Privacy

All apps must follow OpenAI’s policies, be audience-appropriate, and have clear third-party rules. Developers should provide privacy policies, collect only necessary data, and be transparent about permissions.

OpenAI’s draft guidelines also require apps to be purposeful, avoid misleading designs, and manage errors effectively. Submissions must demonstrate stability, responsiveness, and low latency; apps that crash or hang will be rejected.

Rollout & Availability

Today’s rollout does not include EU users, but OpenAI has announced plans to introduce these apps to that region soon.

Additionally, eleven more partner apps are scheduled for release later this year. OpenAI also intends to expand app availability to ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, and Education plans.

Looking Ahead

Apps that appear within AI-led conversations could transform the way services are found and accessed.

Instead of relying on traditional rankings or app-store positions, visibility might be driven more by conversational relevance and demonstrated value within the chat.

Teams responsible for app functionality should think about how users will naturally request these services and identify the key moments when ChatGPT is likely to recommend them.

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Oct 6 2025
YouTube View Drops Likely Tied To Ad-Block List Change via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Creators have reported view declines on YouTube since mid-August.

YouTube’s official Liaison account says the change wasn’t on YouTube’s side and points to a widely shared explanation on X: an ad-blocking list update that interferes with how views are logged.

What YouTube Has Said

Responding to creators, YouTube’s Creator Liaison wrote:

“The change wasn’t on YouTube’s side… this is the most common explanation I’ve personally seen.”

The post links to an analysis that attributes the decline to the EasyPrivacy update. YouTube hasn’t announced any separate product or policy changes related to view counting.

What Changed

Tech creator ThioJoe highlighted an EasyPrivacy update that added a rule blocking the request youtube.com/api/stats/atr.

The thread argues that blocking this request may prevent the player from sending the data YouTube uses to log a view.

The EasyPrivacy commit shows the single-line addition in easyprivacy_specific.txt for ||youtube.com/api/stats/atr.

EasyPrivacy is a community-maintained filter list developed by the EasyList project. Ad blockers use these lists to determine which network requests to block. EasyPrivacy specifically targets tracking requests like analytics and behavioral beacons to help reduce data collection.

Several popular ad blockers, such as uBlock Origin Lite, include EasyPrivacy as part of their default or recommended list of filters.

Why This Affects YouTube Views

When a YouTube video plays, the player sends small background requests to log what happened. Think of them as receipts that say a playback started or progressed.

The thread at the center of this discussion points to one of those requests, …/api/stats/atr, as being blocked by the EasyPrivacy change.

If that request is blocked, a playback may not be recorded as a view in analytics even though the video still loaded for the viewer.

What Creators Reported

Posts discussing the issue indicate that the timing of the drops coincides with the EasyPrivacy change, and the rule was incorporated into uBlock Origin Lite shortly afterward, according to posts in the same thread.

These posts also note that the impact is most noticeable on desktop, where browser extensions are more common, while mobile app viewing seems less affected. Some creators have mentioned that their RPM remained relatively stable despite a decrease in raw views, and their like-to-view ratios increased because likes still count even when some views do not.

These insights come from public threads and are not official platform-wide metrics from YouTube.

Why This Matters

If you noticed unexplained drops starting mid-August, some of the decline might be due to ad-blocked sessions rather than a change in audience interest or YouTube policies.

For reporting and planning, compare trends on desktop and mobile, review revenue and watch-time alongside view counts, and note the affected period for teams and clients.

The key takeaway is that updates to third-party filter lists can influence your analytics data even if the platform itself remains unchanged.

Featured Image: miss.cabul/Shutterstock

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Oct 6 2025
Builderius Brings AI-Assisted GraphQL Development To WordPress via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Builderius WordPress website builder announced the ability to develop sites using GraphQL together with AI. The new functionality enables developers to use the power of GraphQL with the assistance of AI.

Why GraphQL

GraphQL can be a more efficient way to fetch data than traditional approaches in WordPress, using visual query builders, PHP, or REST API. It enables websites, or in this case Builderius, a visual builder for WordPress, to fetch only the specific data they need in one request, reducing the inefficiencies of how dynamic data is typically fetched within WordPress. Unlike the WordPress REST API, which delivers fixed sets of data from multiple endpoints, GraphQL gives developers more control and efficiency by returning exactly what’s asked for in a single query.

AI-Assisted Learning Setup

Builderius provides schema documentation and setup instructions that enable AI tools (like Claude or ChatGPT) to function as teaching assistants for learning GraphQL. Users are able to learn GraphQL through step-by-step project work as the AI guides them, explaining, structuring, and improving queries. This approach helps users learn GraphQL concepts while applying them in actual WordPress projects, supporting both productivity and ongoing learning.

Builderius is providing schema documentation and configuration guides that enable AI tools to act as interactive learning partners for getting started using GraphQL within Builderius. Instead of merely generating code, the AI integration helps users understand the structure and reasoning behind queries, enabling them to apply GraphQL concepts effectively in real development work. This approach blends hands-on learning with practical application, helping developers become proficient while building dynamic WordPress sites.

According to Builderius:

“Once configured, you can simply start new conversations by asking what you want to build. The AI will remember its role and your learning progression across all chats in the project.

…Your AI will explain the relationship between built-in WordPress queries, custom GraphQL queries, and dynamic data tags. You’ll understand how data flows from your queries into your visual layouts, with concrete examples.”

Read more at Builderius:

Master GraphQL by Building: AI as Your WordPress Development Partner

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Jozsef Bagota

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Oct 3 2025
Microsoft Launches New Bing Places For Business via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Microsoft has rolled out a redesigned Bing Places for Business platform, moving business listing management to bing.com/forbusiness and introducing a new recommendation tool with streamlined import workflows.

The platform lets businesses create and manage listings across Bing Search and Bing Maps at no cost. Consolidating the experience under the Bing.com domain is meant to make the product easier to find and use.

Why Did Microsoft Rebuild It?

Microsoft says the redesign follows months of research with business owners who reported difficulty discovering the product, navigating the interface, and importing locations at scale.

Microsoft wrote:

“Before we wrote a single line of code, we spent months listening to business owners about their challenges and goals.”

Here’s what Microsoft added after those discussions.

What’s New?

Improved Google Business Profile Import

For multi-location brands and agencies, Microsoft has overhauled the Google import flow.

The update aims to preserve key attributes, such as names, hours, and contact details, while also introducing more efficient management features, including dashboards, bulk editing, and real-time status updates.

Recommendation Tool

A new Recommendation Tool evaluates listing health and suggests specific additions, such as photos, website and social links, hours, and category-specific items. For restaurants, that can include menu links or online ordering.

The feature is designed to help owners who may be newer to local SEO prioritize high-impact fields.

Automatic Migration

Current Bing Places users and their listings are being migrated automatically. Logging in with existing credentials redirects to the new experience.

What’s Next

Microsoft says more updates will roll out in the coming months, including deeper integrations with Bing Maps and Copilot and expanded support for agencies and partners.

Why This Matters

A Bing Places profile can appear in Bing search results and on Bing Maps. That includes the map results and the place page people see when they click through for directions, call, or website info.

Claiming and keeping your listing up to date helps Microsoft show accurate location, hours, and contact details across Bing’s local results and Maps. In short, you control what customers see when they find you on Bing.

The improved Google import process simplifies keeping your Bing listing in step with your Google Business Profile.

Availability

The new Bing Places for Business is live at bing.com/forbusiness.

Featured Image: PixieMe/Shutterstock

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Oct 3 2025
New Report Reveals An 8% Mobile Landing Page Conversion Gap via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

A report from Unbounce shows that unoptimized mobile landing pages are costly, finding 83% of visits come from mobile devices, yet desktop pages convert 8% better.

Based on over 57 million conversions and 41,000 pages, the study highlights the need for the industry to adapt as mobile traffic increases but underperforms.

Highlights From The Report

Mobile Optimization: The Overlooked Priority

Unbounce’s Conversion Benchmark Report has a clear message:

“If you’re still building your landing pages for desktop first, with the mobile version being just a quick box to check before publishing, chances are you’re missing out big time.”

While mobile accounted for the vast majority of landing page visits, desktop pages outperformed by a notable margin.

The report asserts:

“An 8% gap in conversion rates is significant, but it gets even worse when you look at the number of conversions lost. If all industries optimized their pages, we might have reported over 1.3 million more conversions.”

Industry-Wide Benchmarks

Unbounce’s research indicates that the median conversion rate across all industries is 6.6 percent, with specific verticals varying from 3.8 percent to 12.3 percent.

Marketers can use this benchmark as a reference point, the report notes:

“Higher than the median? Your page is converting better than most. Lower than the median? Your page is converting worse than most.”

It warns that benchmarks only measure how often conversions happen, not their value or quality. This is especially important for campaigns aimed at high-value leads or sales, where just the raw conversion rate might not provide the full picture.

Simple Copy Converts

The research highlights that simpler language on landing pages tends to perform better.

Pages written at a 5th to 7th grade level see an 11 percent conversion rate, which is 56 percent higher than pages at an 8th to 9th grade level, and more than twice as effective as professional-level writing.

Unbounce warns:

“There’s a high likelihood that your conversion rate will drop as you add more difficult words to the page.”

Complex words with three or more syllables have a negative impact, showing a 24.3 percent decrease in connection with conversion rates.

As Unbounce puts it:

“Simple copy converts.”

Email & Paid Social Lead

Analyzing conversion performance across paid and organic channels, the report reveals that email is the top performer with an average conversion rate of 19.3 percent.

Paid social platforms such as Instagram (17.9 percent) and Facebook (13 percent) also perform well, surpassing paid search channels like Google Ads.

Why This Matters

As digital marketing evolves to prioritize mobile users and attention spans become shorter, maintaining fresh and optimized landing pages is key to ensuring your campaigns succeed.

These findings align with industry trends toward minimal UX, more A/B testing, and re-evaluating marketing channels.

Looking Ahead

Unbounce’s study serves as a reminder to examine landing pages more closely, particularly on mobile devices, and benchmark results against industry standards.

The full report provides practical advice, including optimizing for various devices, simplifying landing page messaging, and implementing A/B testing. Acting on these insights could help recover lost conversions.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

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Oct 2 2025
Perplexity Launches Comet Browser For Free Worldwide via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Perplexity released its Comet browser to everyone today, shifting from a waitlist to free desktop downloads worldwide.

Comet bakes an AI assistant into every new tab so you can ask questions, summarize pages, and navigate without jumping between search results and multiple tools.

Perplexity first introduced Comet in July in a limited release. Since then, the company says “millions” have joined the waitlist, and early users asked 6–18 times more questions on day one.

The move poses a challenge to traditional search engines and browsers by adopting an AI-first approach to web navigation, which reduces the need for multiple searches and the management of numerous tabs.

What Makes Comet Different

At the core of Comet’s functionality is the Comet Assistant, an AI-powered helper that browses alongside users and handles tasks such as research, meeting support, coding assistance, and e-commerce activities.

The assistant appears in every new tab, ready to answer questions or complete actions without requiring users to navigate away from their current workflow.

Unlike traditional browsers where users must open a separate search engine, copy information between tabs, or use multiple tools, Comet integrates assistance directly into the browsing experience. You can ask questions in natural language, and the assistant provides answers drawn from web sources.

Background Assistants

Perplexity also announced Background Assistants today. These assistants work simultaneously and asynchronously in the background, handling tasks without requiring active user supervision.

The Background Assistants join the recently announced Email Assistant, currently available to Max Subscribers. The Email Assistant can be cc’d on email threads to handle scheduling, draft replies, and manage inbox tasks without opening a separate application.

Mobile & Voice Coming Soon

While Comet has been desktop-only since its July launch, Perplexity recently previewed mobile versions for iPhone and Android.

The mobile version will include voice technology, allowing users to interact with Comet assistants through speech rather than typing.

Availability

Comet is now available for free download at perplexity.ai/comet for desktop users.

For tips on using the browser, see Perplexity’s resource hub.

Featured Image: Sidney van den Boogaard/Shutterstock

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Oct 2 2025
W3C Rolls Out A New Evocative Logo via @sejournal, @martinibuster

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) unveiled a new logo for the organization that is designed to transcend one language family and expresses abstract qualities like timelessness and reliability. The result is an abstract logo in the familiar blue and white colors, purposely designed to be evocative, to suggest but not concretely explain.

This evocative way of communication is called polysemy, where something can represent multiple related things, depending on the viewers personal experience and subjective interpretation. It’s a valid design choice for an organization that extends around the world and involves people with diverse backgrounds.

Transcending Language Family

The previous W3C logo emphasized the letters and numbers W3C. That works for English users but probably less so for users who speak other languages, especially those who use other kinds of letter scripts, and for people who are oriented to RTL (right-to-left) spelling.

The goal of creating a logo with a “style that transcends a single language family” makes sense for a global organization.

The W3C explains:

“We moved from using distinct letters and numerals in the logo to creating an abstract symbol to represent W3C. We chose a forward-looking style that transcends a single language family. This approach emphasizes W3C’s worldwide connection.”

What Does The Logo Symbol Mean?

What the symbol means requires multiple mixed metaphors. The explanation is that the circle depicts unity and forward motion. The symbol within the circle is a coil, which they explain is openly evocative of many things like a wave, a hand, or DNA. They also say that part of the coil is evocative of a heart.

Screenshot Of New W3C Logo

They essentially chose a symbol that does not represent anything but is evocative of whatever the individual sees in it.

Here’s how it’s explained:

“This circle depicts unity, constant motion, and moving forward. The symbol is a coil, inspired by the concepts of completion and progress reflected in our work. To some, the coil evokes waves — to others, a hand, or the spiral structure of a DNA helix. It has a curl that resembles a heart. This imagery communicates that W3C is the ‘DNA at the heart of the web’.”

W3C Video About The Logo

There is a video that accompanies the logo that helps explain how the logo reflects the mission of the W3C as a global non-profit entity that champions ideals of accessibility, internationalization and so on. Like the logo, it expresses ideas in the form of concepts, expressed in a poetic style.

Part of it explains:

From the very beginning, from a single dot to a complex system, we are open, we are human, we are innovative, we are inclusive, we are for you, we are for everyone.
We champion accessibility.  We champion internationalization.  We champion privacy. We champion security.”

What do you think? Does the new logo work for you?

Read more about the new logo at the W3C:
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) adopts a new logo to signal positive changes

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Oct 2 2025
Yoast Announces New AI Visibility Tool via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Yoast announced the release of their Brand Insights tool, which helps track and monitor brand sentiment and visibility in AI platforms like ChatGPT. The new tool, currently in beta, is a new direction for Yoast because it’s not a plugin and doesn’t need CMS access. The complete tool is called Yoast SEO AI+.

The tool offers sentiment-tracking analysis by keywords, competitor rank benchmarking, citation analysis, and the ability to monitor specific brand questions.

The citation analysis is interesting because it tracks brand mentions. The sentiment analysis is also useful because it shows a graph based on keywords broken down by positive and negative sentiment.

Niko Körner, Senior Director of Product at Yoast explained:

“With Yoast AI Brand Insights, our customers can not only track their brand’s visibility, sentiment, and credibility in AI platforms like ChatGPT, but also see how they compare against the competition. As AI answers become a new starting point for customer journeys, this competitive perspective is crucial to staying ahead.

We worked hard to create a simplified KPI that truly reflects brand performance in the age of AI. Our AI Visibility Index combines sentiment, rank in LLM answers, brand mentions, and citations into one clear metric.

Soon, we will also be launching actionable recommendations to help businesses improve their AI visibility. This launch is only the beginning, and we are already working on improvements and expanding support for more large language models.”

The new Yoast tool is modestly priced, a sign that  Yoast is focusing on providing SEO tools for SMBs  who are interested in getting ahead in AI search.

Read more here:
Find out how your brand shows up in ai answers – Yoast SEO AI+

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Xharites

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Oct 1 2025
Google AI Overviews Overlaps Organic Search By 54% via @sejournal, @martinibuster

New research from BrightEdge offers insights into how Google’s AI Overviews ranks websites across different verticals, with implications for what SEOs and publishers should be focusing on.

AIO And Organic Search

The data shows that 54% of the AI Overviews citations matched the web pages ranked in the organic search results. This means that 46% of citations do not overlap with organic search results.  Could this be an artifact of Google’s FastSearch algorithm?

Google’s FastSearch is based on ranking signals generated by the RankEmbed deep-learning model that is trained on search logs and third-party quality raters. The search logs consist of user behavior data, what Google terms “click and query data.” Click data teaches the RankEmbed model about what users mean when they search.

Click behavior is feedback about queries and relevant documents, similar to how the ratings submitted by the quality raters teach RankEmbed about quality. User clicks are a behavioral signal of which documents are relevant. So, as a hypothetical example, if people who search for “How to” tend to click on videos and tutorials, this teaches the model that videos and tutorials tend to satisfy those kinds of queries. RankEmbed “learns” that documents that are semantically similar to a tutorial are good matches for that kind of query. The models aren’t learning in a human sense; they are identifying patterns in the click data.

This doesn’t mean that the 54% of AIO-ranked sites are there because of traditional ranking factors. It could be that the FastSearch algorithm retrieves results that are similar to the regular search results 54% of the time.

Insight About Ranking Factors

BrightEdge’s data could be reflecting the complexity of Google’s FastSearch algorithm, which prioritizes speed and semantic matching of queries to documents without the use of traditional ranking signals like links. This is something that SEOs and publishers should stop and consider because it highlights the importance of content and also the importance of matching the type of content that users prefer to see.

So, if they’re querying about a product, they don’t expect to see a page with an essay about the product; they expect to see a page with the product.

Organic And AIO Overlap Evolved Over Time

When AIO launched, there was only about a 32% overlap between AIO and the classic organic search results. BrightEdge’s data shows that the overlap has grown over the sixteen months between the debut of AI Overviews and today.

Organic And AIO Match Depends On The Vertical

The 54/46 percentage split isn’t across the board. The percentage of AIO-ranked sites that match the organic search results varies according to the vertical.

Your Money Or Your Life (YMYL) content showed a higher rate of overlap between organic and AIO.

BrightEdge’s data shows:

  • Healthcare has a strong overlap: 75.3% overlap (began at 63.3%).
  • Education overlap has increased significantly: 72.6% overlap between organic and AIO, showing +53.2 percentage points growth, from 19.4% to 72.6%.
  • Insurance also experienced increased overlap: 68.6%. That’s a +47.7 percentage points growth from the 20.9% overlap when AIO was first introduced.
  • E-commerce has very little overlap with the organic search results: 22.9% overlap (only +0.6 percentage points change).

I’m going to speculate here and say that Healthcare, Education, and Insurance search results may have a strong overlap because the pool of authoritative sites that users expect to see may be smaller. This may mean that websites in these verticals may have to work hard to be the kind of site that users expect to see. A broad and simplified explanation is that FastSearch does not use traditional organic search ranking factors. It’s ranking the kinds of web pages that match user expectations, meet certain quality standards, and are semantically relevant to the query.

What Is Going On With E-Commerce?

E-commerce is the one area where overlap between organic and AIO remained relatively steady with very little change. BrightEdge notes that AIO coverage actually decreased by 7.6%. AIO may be a good fit for research but is not a good format for users who are ready to make a purchase.

Final Takeaways

Although BrightEdge recommends focusing on traditional SEO for sites in verticals that have over 60% of overlap with organic search, it’s a good idea for all sites, regardless of vertical, to focus on traditional SEO and also to focus on precision, matching user expectations for each query, and pay attention to what users are saying so as to be able to react swiftly to changing trends.

BrightEdge offers the following advice:

“Step 1: Identify Your Overlap Profile Measure what percentage of your AI Overview citations also rank organically and benchmark against the 54% average to understand where you stand.

Step 2: Match Strategy to Intent. High overlap (>60%) means focus on SEO; low overlap (<30%>

Step 3: Monitor the Convergence Track your overlap percentage monthly as it has grown +22% industry-wide in 16 months, watching for shifts like September 2024’s +5.4% jump.”

Read BrightEdge’s report:

AI Overview Citations Now 54% from Organic Rankings

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