Anything Engine Optimization

The Lead

Google claims AI Search sends 'billions of clicks' weekly, without the data

Google search executive Nick Fox says AI features in Search now send billions of clicks to websites each week; no methodology accompanied the claim. Search Engine Journal notes it lands amid third-party studies showing CTR declines.

Via Search Engine Land ↗ · Jul 17 · Search Engine Journal ↗

Google put a number on AI-search clicks and didn't show the math — while third-party studies keep finding declines. When the operator of the largest answer surface starts arguing about outbound traffic, the measurement fight has moved from vendor decks to Google's own messaging.

Monday, July 20, 2026

Research AEO

Semrush study: most ChatGPT topics have no dominant brand

A Semrush analysis of ChatGPT visibility across 50,000 brands finds most topics still have no clearly dominant brand, and argues AI visibility accrues at the topic level rather than to individual pages or keywords.

Via Semrush ↗ · Jul 20 · Jul 20 Semrush study — vendor-published

Engines AEO

Bing Webmaster Tools previews AI visibility insights, including citation share

Microsoft added four AI-performance capabilities in preview to Bing Webmaster Tools — Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare — extending its AI Performance reports toward citation-level visibility data.

Via Bing Blogs ↗ · Jun 16 · Jul 20 catch-up (Jun 16)

Google's illustration of AI Mode connected apps

Google Search

Google AI Mode adds Instacart, Canva and YouTube Music integrations

Google connected more apps to AI Mode, letting answers act across Instacart, Canva and YouTube Music accounts — another step toward the answer layer as an action layer.

Via Search Engine Land ↗ · Jul 16 · Jul 20

Law & Money

Publishers file class action over books used to train Gemini

A proposed class action alleges Google trained Gemini on copyrighted books without authorization, joining an unusually crowded month of AI-training litigation, per Search Engine Journal.

Via Search Engine Journal ↗ · Jul 17 · Jul 20

Research GEO

arXiv survey maps generative engine optimization research, 2023-2026

A critical survey of 45 studies frames GEO as a stochastic, partially observable pipeline spanning retrieval, citation, prominence and user behavior — not a single ranking task.

Via arXiv GEO ↗ · Jul 15 · Jul 20

Research

Researchers propose framework for 'agent-ready' websites

A new arXiv paper outlines design principles for sites AI web agents can reliably read, act on, and decide with — machine readability, actionability, decision reliability.

Via arXiv GEO ↗ · Jul 13 · Jul 20

Google Search

Search Console adds Generative AI performance reports

Google's Search Central announced performance reporting for generative-AI search experiences in Search Console, giving sites first-party impression and click data for AI surfaces.

Via Google Search Central Blog ↗ · Jun 3 · Jul 20 catch-up (Jun 3)

Google Search AEO

Google renames NotebookLM crawler user-agent to Google-GeminiNotebook

The user-agent string changed alongside the product's rebrand to Gemini Notebook — relevant to anyone managing AI-crawler access in robots.txt, per Search Engine Roundtable.

Via Search Engine Roundtable ↗ · Jul 17 · Jul 20