Google’s Gary Illyes recently answered the question of whether AI-generated images used together with “legit” content can impact rankings. Gary discussed whether it had an impact on SEO and called attention to a technical issue involving server resources that is a possible outcome.
Does Google Penalize for AI-Generated Content?
How does Google react to AI image content when it’s encountered in the context of a web page? Google’s Gary Illyes answered that question within the context of a Q&A and offered some follow-up observations about how it could lead to extra traffic from Google Image Search. The question was asked at about the ten-minute mark of the interview conducted by Kenichi Suzuki and published on YouTube.
This is the question that was asked:
“Say if there’s a content that the content itself is legit, the sentences are legit but and also there are a lot of images which are relevant to the content itself, but all of them, let’s say all of them are generated by AI. Will that content or the overall site, is it going to be penalized or not?”
This is an important and reasonable question because Google ran an update about a year ago that appeared to de-rank low quality AI-generated content.
Google’s Gary Ilyes’ answer was clear that AI-generated content will not result in penalization and that it has no direct impact on SEO.
He answered:
“No, no. So AI generated image doesn’t impact the SEO. Not direct.
So obviously when you put images on your site, you will have to sacrifice some resources to those images… But otherwise you are not going to, I don’t think that you’re going to see any negative impact from that.
If anything, you might get some traffic out of image search or video search or whatever, but otherwise it should just be fine.”
AI-Generated Content
Gary Illyes did not discuss authenticity; however it’s a good thing to consider in the context of using AI-generated content. Authenticity is an important quality for users, especially in contexts where there is an expectation that an illustration is a faithful depiction of an actual outcome or product. For example, users expect product illustrations to accurately reflect the products they are purchasing and screenshots of food to reasonably represent the completed dishes after following the recipe instructions.
Google often says that content should be created for users and that many questions about SEO are adequately answered by the context of how users will react to it. Illyes did not reflect on any of that, but it is something that publishers should consider if they care about how content resonates with users.
Gary’s answer makes it clear that AI-generated content will not have a negative impact on SEO.
Brave Search announced the release of AI Grounding with the Brave Search API, a way to connect an AI system to grounding in search to reduce hallucinations and improve answers. The API is available in Free, Base AI, and Pro AI plans.
The Brave Search API is for developers and organizations that want to add AI grounding from authoritative web information to their AI applications. The Brave API supports agentic search, foundation model training, and creating search-enabled applications.
State Of The Art Performance (SOTA)
Brave’s announcement says that their AI Grounding API enables state of the art performance in both single-search and multi-search configurations, outperforming competitors in accuracy, claiming they can answer more than half of all questions with a single search.
According to Brave:
“Brave can answer more than half of the questions in the benchmark using a single search, with a median response time of 24.2 seconds. On average (arithmetic mean), answering these questions involves issuing 7 search queries, analyzing 210 unique pages (containing 6,257 statements or paragraphs), and takes 74 seconds to complete. The fact that most questions can be resolved with just a single query underscores the high quality of results returned by Brave Search.”
Pricing
There are three pricing tiers:
Free AI 1 query/second and a limit of 5,000 queries/month
Base AI $5.00 per 1,000 requests A limit of up to 20 queries/second 20M queries/month Rights to use in AI apps
Pro AI $9.00 per 1,000 requests A limit of up to 50 queries/second Unlimited queries/month Rights to use in AI apps
Brave’s AI Grounding API offers a reliable way to supply AI systems and apps with trustworthy information from across the web. Its independence and privacy practices make it a viable choice for developers building search-enabled AI applications.
Google announced that they’re testing a new AI-powered Google Finance tool. The new tool enables users to ask natural language questions about finance and stocks, get real-time information about financial and cryptocurrency topics, and access new charting tools that visualize the data.
Three Ways To Access Data
Google’s AI finance page offers three ways to explore financial data:
Research
Charting Tools
Real-Time Data And News
Screenshot Of Google Finance
The screenshot above shows a watchlist panel on the left, a chart in the middle, a “latest updates” section beneath that, and a “research” section on the right hand panel.
Research
The new finance page enables users to ask natural language questions about finance, including the stock market, and the AI will return comprehensive answers, plus links to the websites where the relevant answers can be found.
Closeup Screenshot Of Research Section
Charting Tools
Google’s finance page also features charting tools that enable users to visualize financial data.
According to Google:
“New, powerful charting tools will help you visualize financial data beyond simple asset performance. You can view technical indicators, like moving average envelopes, or adjust the display to see candlestick charts and more.”
Real-Time Data
The new finance page also provides real-time data and tools, enabling users to explore finance news, including cryptocurrency information. This part features a live news feed.
The AI-powered page will roll out over the next few weeks on Google.com/finance/.
Google’s John Mueller says small businesses may be hurting their search visibility by choosing generic keyword domains instead of building distinctive brand names.
Speaking on a recent episode of Search Off the Record, Mueller and fellow Search Advocate Martin Splitt discussed common challenges for photography websites.
During the conversation, Mueller noted that many small business owners fall into a “generic domain” trap that can make it harder to connect the business name with its work.
Why Keyword Domains Can Be a Problem
The topic came up when Splitt mentioned that his photography site uses a German term for “underwater photo” as its domain. Mueller responded:
“I see a lot of small businesses make the mistake of taking a generic term and calling it their brand.”
He explained that businesses choosing keyword-rich domains often end up competing with directories, aggregators, and other established sites targeting the same phrases.
Even if the domain name exactly matches a service, there’s little room to stand out in search.
The Advantage Of A Distinct Brand
Mueller contrasted this with using a unique business name:
“If your brand were Martin Splitt Photos then people would be able to find you immediately.”
When customers search for a brand they remember, competition drops. Mentions and links from other websites also become clearer signals to search engines, reducing the chance of confusion with similarly named businesses.
Lost Opportunities For Word-of-Mouth
Relying on a generic keyword domain can also make offline marketing less effective.
If a potential client hears about a business at an event but can’t remember its exact generic name, finding it later becomes more difficult.
Mueller noted:
“If you’ve built up a reputation as being kind of this underwater photography guy and they remember your name, it’s a lot easier to find you with a clear brand name.”
Why This Matters
For service providers like photographers, event planners, or contractors, including the service and location in a domain name can feel like a shortcut to local rankings.
Mueller’s advice suggests otherwise: location targeting can be achieved through content, structured data, and Google Business Profile optimization, without giving up a distinctive brand.
Looking Ahead
While Mueller didn’t recommend immediate rebrands for existing sites, he made it clear that unique, brandable domains give small businesses a defensible advantage in search and marketing.
For those still choosing a domain, the long-term benefits of memorability and differentiation can outweigh any short-term keyword gains.
OpenAI has released GPT-5, now the default model in ChatGPT for all users, including those on the free tier.
The new model is positioned as OpenAI’s most capable and reliable system to date. OpenAI emphasizes a stronger focus on accuracy, instruction following, and long-form reasoning.
Available Now To All ChatGPT Users
For the first time, OpenAI is making its latest flagship model available to free users.
GPT-5 is rolling out now to Free, Plus, Pro, and Team accounts, with support for Enterprise and Education expected next week.
Free-tier access includes basic usage of GPT-5, with requests routed to a smaller “GPT-5 mini” variant once limits are reached.
Paid subscribers receive higher usage limits, and Pro users gain access to GPT-5 Pro, a version designed for more complex, resource-intensive tasks.
Accuracy, Reasoning, and Transparency Take Priority
According to OpenAI, GPT-5 significantly reduces hallucinated facts and is more likely to admit when it lacks the context to provide a reliable answer.
Evaluations show GPT-5 produces 45% fewer factual errors than GPT-4o, with up to 80% fewer errors when deeper reasoning is enabled.
The model also performs better on benchmarks tied to real-world problem-solving, such as coding, legal analysis, and health-related queries.
What’s Changed in the System
Rather than a single model, GPT-5 acts as a dynamic system that automatically decides whether to respond quickly or think more deeply, depending on prompt complexity.
Users can also request explicit reasoning with natural language prompts like “think hard about this.”
Other updates include:
A redesigned safety system that favors partially helpful answers over blanket refusals
Reduced sycophantic responses and more honest communication about limitations
Improvements in coding performance, including front-end UI generation and debugging
Support for multimodal input, including charts and images
Looking Ahead
GPT-5 is positioned less as a revolutionary jump and more as an effort to build trust through accuracy, reliability, and broader access.
For SEOs and digital marketers who rely on AI tools for drafting, analysis, or ideation, GPT-5’s improvements may help reduce the time spent verifying or correcting outputs.
Google Ads just dropped another wave of updates to Performance Max today.
For those who’ve been asking for better audience targeting, clearer reporting on new customer acquisition, and more transparency around auto-generated assets, these updates will feel like long-overdue upgrades.
Let’s break down what’s new, why it matters, and how advertisers should respond.
What’s New in Performance Max
Google has announced three core areas of updates for Performance Max campaigns:
Expanded audience and campaign controls
Improved new customer acquisition reporting and diagnostics
More granular creative reporting and AI-powered asset recommendations
Most are either rolling out now or available broadly, with some elements in beta. Let’s walk through the details.
Expanded Controls Over Audience Targeting and Search Inventory
Performance Max has long leaned on automation, sometimes at the expense of control. Google is slowly changing that, and this release continues that shift.
Campaign-Level Negative Keyword Lists
Advertisers can now apply negative keyword lists across Performance Max campaigns. Previously, campaign-level negatives had to be managed individually, which created friction for accounts with dozens of asset groups.
With this update, advertisers can centralize keyword exclusions. For example, excluding terms like “cheap” or “free” across multiple luxury or premium product campaigns.
Image credit: Google, August 2025
You still have the option to apply unique negative keywords to individual campaigns, but this rollout makes managing brand suitability far more scalable.
More Search Themes per Asset Group
Google has doubled the search theme limit from 25 to 50 per asset group. This matters for brands that want to influence where their Performance Max ads show up in Search, without leaning on historical keyword builds.
By expanding your search theme input, you’re giving Google more information to better match your ads to queries. It also helps widen your eligible inventory while staying relevant.
Device and Demographic Targeting Updates
You can now fully control which device types your Performance Max campaigns appear on, something that was previously only partially available.
For example, a gaming company can restrict campaigns to mobile devices, or a B2B advertiser can exclude tablets entirely.
Age targeting is now also available, allowing advertisers to exclude or target specific age ranges.
Google is also testing gender-based demographic targeting in beta. These controls bring Performance Max closer in line with what’s long been possible in Search, Display, and YouTube campaigns.
New Customer Acquisition Reporting Gets Smarter
One of the most frustrating parts of new customer acquisition bidding has been the vague “Unknown” label in reporting. That’s changing with today’s updates in Performance Max reporting.
No More “Unknown” Conversions
In lifecycle reporting for new vs. returning customers, Google previously bucketed a portion of conversions as “Unknown”. This left advertisers with limited visibility into actual performance.
Google has now improved the backend logic that determines if a user is new or existing, meaning those “Unknown” labels should be gone moving forward.
This matters for two key reasons:
You can now get a more accurate read on how many new customers you’re acquiring.
Bidding strategies that rely on new customer signals will become more effective as the data improves.
For even more precision, Google encourages advertisers to update their conversion tracking tags to include the new customer acquisition parameter. This signals to Google whether a conversion is from a new or returning customer, based on first-party data.
New Goal Diagnostics and Recommendations
Alongside the reporting improvements, Google has added new diagnostics that surface goal-related issues in Performance Max.
These include broken or missing conversion tags, goal misconfigurations, or other tracking issues that could be holding back performance.
The diagnostics come with actionable recommendations to help advertisers resolve the problem. While this might not be the most glamorous update, it will save time and frustration during campaign setup and troubleshooting.
Creative Reporting and Asset Control Get a Boost
Asset transparency in Performance Max has been a long-standing pain point. While things have improved in the last year, these new changes go further.
Final URL Expansion Asset Reporting
Advertisers can now view reporting for assets generated through Final URL Expansion (FUE). This is Google’s feature that dynamically creates assets based on landing page content.
You’ll be able to see what text and visuals were created through FUE and how they performed.
Image credit: Google, August 2025
More importantly, if you don’t like what Google created, you now have the ability to remove those assets from your campaign.
This is a big win for brands concerned about creative consistency, especially when it comes to legal language or brand tone. While FUE can be useful for scale, it hasn’t always produced on-brand results. So, this added visibility is a welcome change.
AI-Powered Creative Recommendations
Performance Max will now generate image-specific recommendations to help you improve performance. These suggestions will include both what types of visuals to add and how to optimize existing ones for better performance on various channels (like YouTube vs. Discover).
Image credit: Google, August 2025
Best of all, these recommendations link directly into the built-in AI-powered image editor in Google Ads, so you can make changes right inside the platform without needing to re-upload or redesign assets elsewhere.
It’s clear Google wants advertisers to take a more active role in creative strategy, even inside an automated campaign structure.
Wrapping Up
Google is clearly listening to advertisers’ calls for more transparency and control. These updates to Performance Max mark another step toward striking a better balance between scale and strategy.
While not every advertiser will need to use every new feature, the option to do so means there’s more room to tailor Performance Max campaigns to your business goals, creative preferences, and customer insights.
Whether you’re looking to fine-tune audience reach, fix tracking issues, or clean up your creative assets, there’s something in this update that’s worth your attention.
Ecosia has begun delivering its own search results for the first time in its 16-year history, starting with users in France who will receive a portion of results from a new European search index developed jointly with Qwant.
The rollout marks the first implementation of the European Search Perspective (EUSP) joint venture, which has created Staan (Search Trusted API Access Network), a privacy-focused search infrastructure designed for Europe.
Current Implementation & Timeline
French users are now receiving search results directly from EUSP’s independent European index. Ecosia aims to serve 30% of French search queries through the new infrastructure by the end of 2025.
“Having our own search infrastructure is a critical step for digital plurality and for building a sovereign European alternative. With more control over our offering, we can better serve users, develop ethical AI, and double down on our mission to build tech that benefits people and the planet.”
Technical Independence
Ecosia and Qwant have historically relied on syndication platforms from major US tech companies. The new infrastructure allows both companies to deliver results independently and make backend improvements without relying on external providers.
The broader goal is to reduce reliance on digital infrastructure controlled by foreign companies.
Open Index, Structured For Growth
EUSP isn’t limited to Ecosia and Qwant. The index is open to other companies building search or generative AI tools.
It is also structured to allow outside investment, unlike Ecosia’s steward-owned model, where 99.99% of shares belong to a foundation.
Kroll said the goal is to create an infrastructure that supports competition and innovation in Europe while maintaining strong privacy protections:
“This isn’t just about better search. It’s about the freedom to build and shape the future of tech in Europe.”
Looking Ahead
Ecosia’s partnership with Qwant could lead to more diversity in how European users access and interact with search.
While the initial rollout is limited to France, the infrastructure is designed to scale and support other companies and markets over time.
Google’s latest blog post claims AI is making Search more useful than ever. Google says people are asking new kinds of questions, clicking on more links, and spending more time on the content they visit.
But with no supporting data or clear definitions, the message reads more like reassurance than transparency.
Rather than take Google at its word or assume the worst, you can use your own analytics to understand how AI in Search is affecting your site.
Here’s how to do that.
Google Says: “Quality Clicks” Are Up
In the post, Google says total organic traffic is “relatively stable year over year,” but that quality has improved.
According to the company, “quality clicks” are those where users don’t bounce back immediately, indicating they’re finding value in the destination.
This sounds good in theory, but it raises a few questions:
Look at CTR changes before and after May 2024 (when AI Overviews began expanding).
Pay attention to queries that are longer, question-based, or likely to trigger summaries.
You may find impressions are holding steady or rising while CTR declines. That suggests your content is still being surfaced, but users may be getting their answers directly in Google’s AI-generated response.
2. Approximate “Quality Clicks” With Engagement Metrics
To test Google’s claim about higher quality clicks, you’ll need to look beyond Search Console.
In GA4, examine:
Engaged sessions (sessions lasting more than 10 seconds or including a conversion or multiple pageviews).
Average engagement time per session.
Scroll depth or video watch time, if applicable.
Compare these engagement metrics to the same period last year. If they’re improving, you may be getting more motivated visitors, supporting Google’s view.
But if they’re dropping, it could mean that AI Overviews are sending fewer, possibly less interested, visitors your way.
3. See Which Content Formats Are Gaining Visibility
Google says people are increasingly clicking on forums, videos, podcasts, and posts with “authentic voices.”
That aligns with its integration of Reddit and YouTube content into AI Overviews.
To see how this shift might be playing out for you:
Compare the performance of listicles, tutorials, and original reviews to more generic content.
If you create video or podcast content, track any uptick in referral traffic from Google.
Watch for changes in how your forum threads, product reviews, or community content perform compared to static pages.
You may find that narrative-style content, first-hand experiences, and multimedia formats are gaining traction, even if traditional evergreen pages are flat.
4. Watch For Redistribution, Not Just Declines
Google acknowledges that while overall traffic is stable, traffic is being redistributed.
That means some sites will lose while others gain, based on how well they align with evolving search behavior.
If your traffic has declined, it doesn’t necessarily mean your content isn’t ranking. It may be that the types of questions being asked and answered have changed.
Analyzing your top landing pages can help you spot patterns:
Are you seeing fewer entries on pages that used to rank for quick-answer queries?
Are in-depth or comparison-style pages gaining traffic?
The patterns you spot could help guide your content strategy.
Looking Ahead
When you rely on Search traffic, you deserve more than vague reassurances. Your analytics can help fill in the blanks.
By keeping an eye on your CTR, engagement, and how your content performs, you’ll get a better sense of whether AI in Search is helping you. This way, you can tweak your strategy to fit what works best for you.
A new study commissioned by Meta and conducted by Deloitte finds that advanced personalization strategies are associated with a 16 percentage point increase in conversions compared to more basic efforts.
The research also introduces a maturity framework to help organizations evaluate their personalization capabilities and identify areas for improvement.
What the Data Shows
According to the study, 80% of U.S. consumers say they’re more likely to make a purchase when brands personalize their experiences. Consumers also report spending 50% more with brands that tailor interactions to their needs.
The report connects these behaviors to broader business outcomes. In the EU, Meta’s personalized advertising technologies were linked to €213 billion in economic activity and 1.4 million jobs.
While the economic impact data is specific to Meta, the findings reflect a wider trend in digital marketing: personalized engagement influences purchase decisions and brand loyalty.
Derya Matras, VP for Global Business Group at Meta, commented:
“As people want content and services that are more relevant to them, they are increasingly drawn to brands that make them feel understood.”
Maturity Model for Personalization
The report outlines a four-level maturity model to help you assess where you stand with personalization. The study links higher maturity levels with measurable business outcomes.
Level 1: Low Maturity
Data remains siloed, and messaging tends to be generic. Personalization, if present, is rule-based and limited to a few channels.
Level 2: Medium Maturity
Some systems are integrated, enabling basic audience segmentation and limited customization across channels. These organizations may also use analytics tools and consent management.
Level 3: High Maturity
Unified customer profiles and identity resolution enable greater personalization across multiple touchpoints. Predictive modeling and dynamic content are more common.
Level 4: Champion Maturity
Real-time personalization, generative AI, and clean-room tech support tailored omnichannel experiences. Teams collaborate across departments, with AI governance integrated into decisions.
Three Personalization Strategies
The study outlines three personalization strategies:
Customer-based: Tailors experiences to individuals based on personal data and behavior.
Cohort-based: Segments audiences based on shared traits or behaviors.
Aggregated data-based: Uses anonymized, large-scale datasets to identify general trends.
The report doesn’t suggest a single best method. Instead, it offers examples to help you evaluate what fits your capabilities and goals.
Looking Ahead
For marketers assessing their next steps, the maturity framework offers a structured way to evaluate readiness across people, processes, and technology.
Rather than treating personalization as a software problem, the report frames it as a long-term shift in how organizations structure teams and manage data.
