Ecommerce Management Advisors
Ecommerce Management Advisors
Google adds an Achievements report in Search Console so you can track click-based milestones, see in-progress goals, and jump to Insights and tips.
New research from OpenAI and Harvard finds that “Seeking Information” messages now account for 24% of ChatGPT conversations, up from 14% a year earlier.
This is an NBER working paper (not peer-reviewed), based on consumer ChatGPT plans only, and the study used privacy-preserving methods where no human read user messages.
The working paper analyzes a representative sample of about 1.1 million conversations from May 2024 through June 2025.
By July, ChatGPT reached more than 700 million weekly active users, sending roughly 2.5 billion messages per day, or about 18 billion per week.
The three dominant topics are Practical Guidance, Seeking Information, and Writing, which together account for about 77% of usage.
Practical Guidance remains around 29%. Writing declined from 36% to 24% over the past year. Seeking Information grew from 14% to 24%.
The authors write that Seeking Information “appears to be a very close substitute for web search.”
The paper classifies intent as Asking, Doing, or Expressing.
About 49% of messages are Asking, 40% are Doing, and 11% are Expressing.
Asking messages “are consistently rated as having higher quality” than the other categories, based on an automated classifier and user feedback.
Non-work usage rose from 53% in June 2024 to 73% in June 2025.
At work, Writing is the top use case, representing about 40% of work-related messages. Education is a major use: 10% of all messages involve tutoring or teaching.
Only 4.2% of messages are about computer programming, and 1.9% concern relationships or personal reflection.
The study documents rapid global adoption.
Early gender gaps have narrowed, with the share of users having typically feminine names rising from 37% in January 2024 to 52% in July 2025.
Growth in the lowest-income countries has been more than four times that of the highest-income countries.
If a quarter of conversations are information-seeking, some queries that would have gone to search may go toward conversational tools.
Consider responding to this shift with content that answers questions, while adding expertise that a chatbot can’t replicate. Writing and editing account for a large share of work-related use, which aligns with how teams are already folding AI into content workflows.
ChatGPT is becoming a major destination for finding information online.
In addition to the shift toward finding info, it’s worth highlighting that 70% of ChatGPT use is personal, not professional. This means consumer habits are changing broadly.
As this technology grows, it’ll be vital to track how your audience uses AI tools and adjust your content strategy to meet them where they are.
Featured Image: Photo Agency/Shutterstock
Google appears to have disabled or is testing the removal of the &num=100 URL parameter that shows 100 results per page.
Reports of the change began around September 10, and quickly spread through the SEO community as rank-tracking tools showed disruptions.
Google hasn’t yet issued a public statement.
The &num=100 parameter has long been used to retrieve 100 results in one request.
Over the weekend, practitioners noticed that forcing 100 results often no longer works, and in earlier tests it worked only intermittently, which suggested a rollout or experiment.
@tehseoowner reported on X:
Google has seemingly removed the ability to do &num=100, can anyone confirm?
If you use the parameter, only 2 pages show. This “2 pages” filter has been tested for a year, but usually if you clicked to page 2 they have the rest the top 100. Now it shows nothing after page 2.
— SEOwner (@tehseowner) September 11, 2025
Keyword Insights wrote:
‼️ Google has killed the n=100 SERP parameter. Instead of 1 request for 100 SERP results, it now takes 10 requests (10x the cost). This impacts Keyword Insights’ rankings module. We’re reviewing options and will update the platform soon.
— Keyword Insights (@keywordinsights) September 14, 2025
Clark and others documented tools showing missing rankings or error states as the change landed.
Some platforms’ search engine results page (SERP) screenshots and daily sensors briefly stalled or displayed data gaps.
Multiple SEO professionals saw sharp declines in desktop impressions in Google Search Console starting September 10, with average position increasing accordingly.
Clark’s analysis connects the timing of those drops to the &num=100 change. He proposes that earlier desktop impression spikes were partly inflated by bots from SEO and AI analytics tools loading pages with 100 results, which would register many more impressions than a normal 10-result page.
This is a community theory at this stage, not a confirmed Google explanation.
Over the past year, many teams reported rising impressions without matching clicks and associated that pattern with AI Overviews.
Clark argues the &num=100 change, and the resulting tool disruptions, offer an alternate explanation for at least part of that decoupling, especially on desktop where most rank tracking happens.
This remains an interpretation until Google comments or provides new reporting filters.
Clark wrote about the shift after observing significant drops in desktop impressions across multiple accounts starting on September 10.
He wrote:
“… I’m seeing a noticeable decline in desktop impressions, resulting in a sharp increase in average position.
“This is across many accounts that I have access to and seems to have started around September 10th when the change first begun.”
Keyword Insights said:
“Google has killed the n=100 SERP parameter. Instead of 1 request for 100 SERP results, it now takes 10 requests (10x the cost). This impacts Keyword Insights’ rankings module. We’re reviewing options and will update the platform soon.”
Ryan Jones suggests:
“All of the AI tools scraping Google are going to result in the shutdown of most SEO tools. People are scraping so much, so aggressively for AI that Google is fighting back, and breaking all the SEO rank checkers and SERP scrapers in the process.”
Take a closer look at recent Search Console trends.
If you noticed a spike in desktop impressions in late 2024 or early 2025 without clicks, some of those impressions may have been driven by bots. Use the week-over-week changes since September 10 as a new baseline and note any substantial changes in your reporting.
Check with your rank-tracking provider. Some tools are still working with pagination or alternative methods, while others have had gaps and are now fixing them.
Google has been reached out to for comment, but hasn’t confirmed whether this is a temporary test or a permanent shift.
Tool vendors are already adapting, and the community is reevaluating how much of the ‘great decoupling’ story stemmed from methodology rather than user behavior.
We’ll update if Google provides any guidance or if reporting changes show up in Search Console.
Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
The judge overseeing the legal battle between WP Engine versus Automattic and Matt Mullenweg issued a ruling that fully dismissed two of WP Engine’s claims, allowed several to proceed, and gave WP Engine the chance to amend others.
Those two counts survived the motion to dismiss. That means WP Engine can try to prove that Automattic/Mullenweg interfered with its contracts and business opportunities. This shows that the judge didn’t throw out WP Engine’s entire “you’re sabotaging our business” approach. If WP Engine wins on these counts they could be eligible to receive damages.
In total, the judge’s order allowed nine claims to proceed and one to partially survive.
These are the remaining claims that survived and are allowed to proceed:
This is the claim that partially survived:
Promissory Estoppel (Count 6)
This is based on specific promises, such as free plugin hosting on wordpress.org, which the court found definite enough to proceed, while broader statements like “everyone is welcome” were too vague to support the claim.
The judge dismissed two of the claims with “leave to amend,” which means the court found an issue with how WP Engine pleaded their claims. The claims were not legally sufficient, but the judge gave WP Engine the option to update its complaint to fix the problems. If WP Engine amends successfully, those claims can return to the case.
1. Antitrust claims of monopolization, attempted monopolization, and illegal tying (Sherman Act & Cartwright Act).
On the antitrust claims, the Court found WP Engine failed to define a relevant market, stating:
“…consumers entering the WordPress ecosystem by electing a WordPress web content management system would know they were locked-in to WordPress aftermarkets. Mullenweg’s purported deception and extortionate acts did not change that fundamental operating principle of the WordPress marketplace.”
2. CFAA extortion claim (Count 3): WP Engine alleged Automattic threatened to block wordpress.org access and demanded licensing fees.
Regarding the extortion claims, WP Engine alleged that Automattic and Mullenweg violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by threatening to block WP Engine’s access to wordpress.org and demanding licensing fees.
The Court dismissed this claim with leave to amend, finding the allegations did not sufficiently establish “extortion” under CFAA standards. The judge noted that merely threatening to block access, even coupled with demands for licensing, did not meet the statutory requirements as pled. However, WP Engine has been given time to amend the complaint (“with leave to amend”).
Two of WP Engine’s claims were fully dismissed:
Count 4
Count 4 was dismissed because the California Penal Code allows government prosecutors to bring criminal charges for attempted extortion, but it does not give private parties like WP Engine the right to sue under that statute. The dismissal was not about whether Automattic’s conduct could be considered extortion but about whether WP Engine had the legal authority to use that law in a civil case.
Count 16
The court dismissed Count 16 because trademark misuse is only recognized as a defense, not as a lawsuit that can be filed on its own. WP Engine may still raise trademark misuse later if Automattic tries to enforce trademarks against it.
The exact wording is:
“With no authority from WPEngine that authorizes pleading declaratory judgment of trademark misuse as a standalone cause of action rather than an affirmative defense, the Court GRANTS Defendants’ motion to dismiss Count 16, without prejudice to WPEngine asserting it as an affirmative defense if appropriate later in this litigation.”
Automattic CEO and WordPress co-founder posted an upbeat blog post about the court ruling that offered a simplified summary of the court order, which is fine, but simplification can leave out details. He’s right that the decision narrows the case and that the attempted extortion claim is out for good.
He wrote:
“…the court dismissed several of WP Engine and Silver Lake’s most serious claims — antitrust, monopolization, and extortion have been knocked out!”
The attempted extortion under California Penal Code (Count 4) was indeed “knocked out.” But the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) extortion claim (Count 3) was dismissed with leave to amend, meaning WP Engine has the opportunity to try again.
The antitrust and monopolization claims (Counts 12–15) were also dismissed but with leave to amend, meaning they too are not permanently gone.
His post is technically correct.
But the simplification leaves out what the judge allowed to move forward:
Automattic’s motion to dismiss Count 1 (intentional interference with contractual relations) and Count 2 (intentional interference with prospective economic relations) were denied, and both will move forward, potentially making WP Engine eligible to receive damages if they win on these counts.
Then there are the others that are moving forward:
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Kaspars Grinvalds
Google published a new edition of its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.
The update clarifies that the Your Money Your Life (YMYL) category now covers election and voting information, along with other government and civics topics that affect people’s lives.
The YMYL framework now uses the label “YMYL Government, Civics & Society,” with the definition calling out “election and voting information” and other informational topics about government and civics.
That takes the YMYL definition beyond the broader societal-impact wording you may remember from earlier editions.
Google’s changelog for this release lists three items: updated YMYL definitions, additional examples for clarity, and minor textual fixes.
YMYL topics are subjects where misinformation could significantly affect health, finances, safety, or the welfare of society. Pages on YMYL topics require the most scrutiny for Page Quality ratings.
The guidelines group YMYL into four buckets: Health or Safety, Financial Security, Government/Civics & Society, and Other.
Reminder: Quality raters follow these guidelines to evaluate search results, but their ratings don’t directly affect how any individual page ranks. Google uses the ratings to check whether its systems are producing helpful results and to guide improvements over time.
If you cover elections, voting procedures, candidate information, or local civic processes, your pages are now treated as YMYL.
That raises the bar for accuracy, sourcing, and author credentials. The guidelines also stress reputation signals from experts in the field when evaluating YMYL topics.
Take some time to review your current civic and government pages to ensure they’re accurate and thorough. Highlight the author’s experience so visitors can trust the content, and be sure to cite primary sources when possible.
For information that can change quickly, such as registration deadlines or polling places, consider setting up a maintenance plan and keeping update logs.
When it comes to reputational signals on YMYL pages, it’s helpful to link to expert references and independent coverage instead of relying solely on traffic snapshots or general popularity.
This edition runs 182 pages and is the first major update to these guidelines since January.
By aligning your civic content with these standards, you’ll be better positioned to meet user expectations and adapt to any changes Google makes in the future.
Expect continued revisions as Google refines examples and rating guidance.
Featured Image: Mameraman/Shutterstock
The Core Web Vitals Technology Report by the open source HTTPArchive community ranks content management systems by how well they perform on Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV). The July update shows that every major platform has improved since June, but not all gains were equal. Joomla posted the largest month-over-month increase, while Duda ranked first in July with 84.96% of sites passing CWV.
Core Web Vitals (CWV) are metrics created by Google to measure how fast, stable, and responsive a website feels to users. Websites that load quickly and respond smoothly keep visitors engaged, while sites that fall short frustrate users and increase bounce rates. For businesses and publishers, CWV scores reflect the user experience and competitiveness online.
The CWV Technology Report combines two public datasets:
Together, these sources provide a consistent picture of how different website platforms perform on Core Web Vitals in the real world.
#1 Joomla — largest gain (+3.23%).
#2 Wix — +2.61%.
#3 Drupal — +1.47%.
#4 Duda — +1.33%.
#5 Squarespace — +1.27%.
#6 WordPress — smallest gain (+0.90%).
This ranking shows which platforms advanced most in July. Joomla experienced the highest level of growth, while WordPress improved the least. Wix’s CWV month over month performance improvement was a notable 2.51%.
Duda once again is the Core Web Vitals champion, ranked by the percentage of websites that has a good CWV score.
#1 Duda — 84.96%
#2 Wix — 73.37%
#3 Squarespace — 68.93%
#4 Drupal — 60.54%
#5 Joomla — 54.78%
#6 WordPress — 44.34%
Joomla showed the fastest growth, but it still ranked fifth in July. Duda led with the highest overall performance.
Core Web Vitals scores translate into real differences in how users experience websites. Platforms with higher CWV scores offer faster, smoother interactions, while those at the bottom frustrate users with slower performance. While all six platforms in the comparison are improving month to month, what matters most is the actual experience users get right now.
I have seen discussions online about whether the choice of content management system has an impact on rankings. Some people assert that plugins make WordPress easier to rank in Google.
There is also a perception that WordPress is faster than Wix, Duda, and Squarespace. The facts, of course, show that the opposite is true. WordPress is the slowest of the content management systems in this comparison.
The percentage of sites built with Duda that had a good Core Web Vitals score is 84.96%. The percentage of WordPress sites with a good CWV score is 44.34%. That means Duda’s percentage of sites with good CWV scores is about 92% higher than those built with WordPress.
Another issue with WordPress is that it has a considerable amount of technical debt, something that private content management systems do not have to struggle with to the same degree. Technical debt refers to the accumulation of outdated code and design decisions that make it harder to maintain, update, or improve the platform over time. It is not unique to WordPress, but it is an issue because of how WordPress is built and how its ecosystem works.
Some reasons for WordPress’s technical debt:
Technical debt was an issue discussed at WordCamp EU 2025, summarized on the official WordPress site as related to contributor burnout:
“Burnout Crisis & Sustainability
- Contributor burnout is pervasive due to:
- High volunteer demands with insufficient systemic support.
- Lack of equitable financial remuneration or stipends for ongoing work.
- Pressure to maintain legacy systems and innovate new features leads to overwhelming workloads.
Consequences
- Loss of institutional knowledge and experienced contributors.
- Increasing technical debt and slowed innovation cycles.
- Threat to WordPress’s long-term ecosystem health.”
WordPress has recently moved to a slower annual release cycle, and one of the benefits of that change (summarized by WordPress here) is that it gives the project time to address the issue of technical debt.
The point is that if the content management system did have an effect on the ability to rank, WordPress sites would probably struggle to rank because of the relatively poor performance scores and the slower pace of development when compared to private content management systems like Wix. But that’s not the case.
WordPress websites rank very well despite all the issues with the platform, including security. So it may be that the choice of CMS does not necessarily matter for SEO, especially since private solutions like Wix and Duda are purposely built with SEO in mind. Nevertheless, performance is important for things that matter, such as conversions and the user experience, and the fact is that the HTTPArchive Technology Comparison Report ranks WordPress last for Core Web Vitals performance in July.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi
Ahrefs has acquired Detailed.com and the Detailed SEO Extension, bringing a widely used on-page auditing tool and its audience under the Ahrefs umbrella.
As part of the deal, Detailed founder Glen Allsopp is joining Ahrefs full-time to work on marketing strategy, research, and product.
The acquisition covers the Detailed website and its browser extension, along with several smaller domains and extensions.
Launched in 2020, Detailed.com is known for long-form, data-driven SEO research and practitioner tips (including its analysis of how a small number of companies operate large networks of ranking sites). Over the past 12 months, Detailed.com recorded 970,000 unique visitors.
The Detailed SEO Extension reports over 450,000 weekly users on Chrome and approximately 7,000 on Firefox.
The extension speeds up page-level checks SEO professionals perform during audits and competitive reviews by surfacing title and meta tags, heading structure, robots directives, and schema markup in a single panel.
It also offers options for highlighting nofollow links, inspecting hreflang, viewing status codes, extracting People Also Ask results, switching the user agent to Googlebot, and jumping the current URL into popular research tools for deeper analysis.
Allsopp told SEJ that the extension and all current functionality will remain free for all users.
If premium capabilities are ever added in the future, they would be additions rather than moving existing features behind a paywall. There are no current plans to introduce paid tiers.
On branding and distribution, the extension will keep the Detailed SEO Extension name. Detailed will operate as “Detailed, an Ahrefs brand.”
Users don’t need to take any action, and updates will continue as normal through existing Chrome and Firefox listings.
Allsopp told Search Engine Journal:
“At a time when so much is happening in SEO and digital marketing as a whole, I want to be at the forefront of the work that helps companies reach more of their target audience. Ahrefs provides tools, data and insights I’ve used in my own business for years, so to be joining the team behind that is really exciting.”
Financial terms were not disclosed.
The move adds a high-usage browser utility and a research-driven content brand to Ahrefs’ portfolio.
If Ahrefs integrates or expands the extension’s capabilities over time, practitioners could see faster iteration on features that support day-to-day site audits, on-page reviews, and competitive analysis.
Featured Image: Screenshot from Detailed.com, September 2025.
New data from the Audience Key content marketing platform indicates that Amazon’s visibility has suffered a significant drop. The decline follows two changes Amazon made to its presence in Google Shopping, although it is uncertain whether those changes are direct or indirect causes.
The first change was the discontinuation of its paid Shopping ads, and the second was the consolidation of its three merchant store names (Amazon, Amazon.com, and Amazon.com – Seller) into a single store identity, “Amazon.” These changes appear to have had a measurable effect on how often Amazon product cards appear in Google’s organic Shopping results.
Audience Key is a content marketing platform that fills a gap in competitive intelligence by tracking and reporting on Google’s organic product grid rankings at scale. This is a new product that has recently rolled out.
According to Audience Key:
“Across 79,000+ keywords, Audience Key’s first-of-its-kind tracking showed the effects of Amazon’s changes to its merchant feed — the approach initially wiped out 31% of its organic product card rankings. Weeks later, Amazon has now disappeared completely — creating a seismic shift that is immediately reshaping e-commerce SERPs and freeing up prime shelf space for rivals.”Tom Rusling, founder of Audience Key notified me today that Amazon has subsequently completely dropped out of the organic search results, beginning on August 18th.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen Amazon completely dropped out of Google’s organic product grids, including for search queries I know for certain they used to rank for and are now completely gone from the search engine results pages (SERPs).
The most immediate change was the overall scale of Amazon’s presence. Before July 25, Amazon’s listings appeared in 428,984 organic product cards. After the change, that presence dropped to 294,983.
Net change: -134,001 cards (31% decline)
This shows that Amazon’s move was not just a brand consolidation but also a large reduction in visibility. It is possible that the brand consolidation triggered a temporary drop in visibility because it’s such a wide-scale change.
The reduction was not spread evenly. Some product categories were hit harder than others. Apparel had the steepest losses, while categories like Home Goods and Laptop Computers also fell sharply.
Smaller categories such as Tires and Indoor Decor declined more moderately, but all showed the same downward trend.
Apparel stands out as the category where Amazon saw the steepest reductions, with its presence cut by more than half across several tracked segments.
Below is the data I currently have, I’m waiting for clarification from Audience Key about whether the following apparel categories are more specific:
The losses were also large in high-volume categories. Home Goods, Laptop Computers, and Outdoor Furnishings all saw reductions, while Business Supplies and Technology products also suffered visibility declines.
Even niche verticals were affected, though the percentage losses were less severe than in Apparel or Home Goods. These declines show Amazon’s reductions were spread across both major and smaller categories.
Another change came from how Amazon presented itself in Shopping results. Before July 25, the company appeared under three names: Amazon, Amazon.com, and Amazon.com – Seller. Afterward, only the unified “Amazon” label remained.
This simplified Amazon’s presence by unifying it under one name, but it also coincided with a decline in overall coverage.
Even with the July drops in visibility, Amazon remained the most visible merchant in Google Shopping, with smaller visibility than before. But that’s not longer the case, the situation for Amazon appears to have worsened.
Audience Key speculated on what is going on:
“We thought the first chapter of this story was complete, but just as we prepared this study for publication, everything changed. Again. Our latest U.S. search data reveals a stunning shift: Amazon vanished from the organic product grids.
Whether this is a short-term anomaly or a more permanent new normal, only time will tell. We will continue to monitor and report on our findings. The sudden removal leaves us — and the industry — asking one big question: WHY???
That is certainly a topic for speculation.”
Audience Key speculates that Amazon may be withholding their product feed from Google or that this is a technical or strategic change on Amazon’s part.
One thing that we know about Google organic search is that large-scale changes can have a dramatic impact on search visibility. Audience Key has a unique product that is focused on tracking Google’s product grid, something that many ecommerce companies may find useful. They are apparently well-positioned to notice this kind of change.
Read Audience Key’s blog post about these changes:
Beyond Paid: The Hidden Organic Shockwave from Amazon’s Google Shopping Exit
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Sergei Elagin
Google has announced that the CrUX Dashboard, the Looker Studio-based visualization tool for CrUX data, will be retired at the end of November 2025. The reason given for the deprecation is that it was not designed for “wide-scale” use and that Google has developed more scalable alternatives.
The CrUX Dashboard was built in Looker Studio to summarize monthly CrUX data. It gained popularity as Core Web Vitals became the de facto standard for how developers and SEOs measured performance.
Behind the scenes, however, the tool struggled to keep up with demand. According to the official Chrome announcement, it suffered “frequent outages, especially around the second Tuesday of each month when new data was published.”
The Chrome team concluded that while the dashboard showed the value of CrUX data, it was not built on the right technology.
To address these issues, Google launched the CrUX History API, which delivered weekly instead of monthly data, allowing more frequent monitoring of trends. The History API was faster and more scalable, leading to adoption by third-party tools.
In 2024, Google introduced CrUX Vis, which was more scalable and faster. Today, in 2025, CrUX Vis receives four to five times more users than the CrUX Dashboard, showing that users are increasingly moving to the newer tool.
Chrome will shut down the CrUX Connector to BigQuery in late November 2025. When this connector is removed, dashboards that depend on it will stop updating. Users who want to keep the old dashboard will need to connect directly to BigQuery with their own credentials. The announcement explains that the CrUX Connector infrastructure is unreliable and requires too much monitoring to maintain, which is why investment has shifted to the History API and CrUX Vis.
Some users have asked Google to postpone the shutdown until 2026, but the announcement makes it clear that this is not an option. Although the dashboard and its connector will be retired, the underlying BigQuery dataset will continue to be updated and supported. Google stated that it sees BigQuery as a valuable, longer-term public dataset.
Check out the CrUIX Vis tool here.
Read the original announcement:
Google is rolling out creative and omnichannel updates across Ads and YouTube.
The tools are designed to help you keep assets fresh, connect store and online demand, and plan spend across key shopping windows.
A new suite of generative tools is coming to Asset Studio, with asset generation in Performance Max and Demand Gen powered by Imagen 4.
In Product Studio, you’ll be able to swap product scenes at scale, replace backgrounds, turn images or text into short videos, and get proactive campaign concept suggestions.
See an example of a campaign concept suggestion below:
Image Credit: GoogleGoogle says the new tools can speed up testing while keeping brand direction intact.
Demand Gen can now optimize for total sales across online, in-app, and in-store conversions. You can also use local offers to show nearby shoppers in-store promotions.
On YouTube, a Creator partnerships hub is meant to simplify brand-creator collaborations, and the YouTube Masthead is now shoppable so you can feature specific products tied to your goals.
New AI-powered insights in Google Merchant Center aim to surface actionable tips. Google is also expanding campaign total budgets from Demand Gen and YouTube to include Search, Performance Max, and Shopping.
You can set a start date, end date, and a total budget for periods between 3 and 90 days, and Google’s systems will pace spend to match peaks in demand.
Google is introducing loyalty features that let you display member-only pricing and shipping benefits, with retention goals available in loyalty mode for Performance Max or Standard Shopping.
If your holiday plan spans multiple bursts, these tools can help you keep creative fresh, capture store demand, and avoid end-of-month pacing surprises.
Start by aligning product feeds and assets, then test omnichannel optimization and short budget windows around your key dates.