Google, Bing and OpenAI agree on one robots.txt opt-out for AI training, but nobody reads it yet

You’re getting a Bat-Signal for AI training: one robots.txt rule telling every participating AI company not to train on your content.

Google, Bing and OpenAI promised to look up, but they didn’t. Yet.

Before you copy and paste: It’s a normal robots.txt group naming a shared token instead of a crawler. Search Engine Journal traced it to an individual IETF draft by Anthropic’s Kevin Kelley, so it’s a proposal, not a standard.

Google makes it a package deal: From early 2027, Google will treat the opt-out like blocking Google-Extended, its AI training control, unless your file names Google-Extended.

That also cuts your pages out of Gemini Apps answers and their clicks. Search, AI Overviews and AI Mode have separate controls.

Bing lets you split the bill: From February 2027, Bing will honor the shared rule and a page-level grounding tag, which decides if your pages can inform AI answers.

Block training, allow grounding, and Copilot can still cite you.

Still limiting AI use with NoArchive or NoCache? Bing ignores them after March 1, 2027.

Publish the new settings, and from December 15, log a temporary grounding preference in Bing Webmaster Tools.

OpenAI’s in, GPTBot stays: OpenAI will honor the shared rule within months, and your rules for GPTBot, its training crawler, keep working.

Careful with the other off switch: Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode opt-out lives in Search Console. Cyrus Shepard’s small test found it costly:

• AI impressions earned an estimated 0.9% CTR
• Organic clicks dropped too while the site was out

Until someone answers the Bat-Signal, your old rules do all the work.

Microsoft now takes 90-day-old conversions, Google sets a 15-conversion bar for PMax stability

Sesame Street had a number of the day. PPC just got two: 90 and 15.

Fashionably late is fine now. Microsoft’s Conversions API sends sales and leads from your CRM or point-of-sale system to Microsoft Advertising.

It became generally available on October 28 and now accepts events up to 90 days old, up from 7. Long sales cycles finally fit.

One catch: events still need to land inside your conversion goal’s attribution window, so match it to your sales cycle.

Cue the Spider-Man pointing meme. Bing made AI Mode official, splitting its AI search in two:

• AI Mode for back-and-forth research
• AI Overview for AI summaries next to regular results

Only the names are new, and they mirror Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews.

AI Mode answers link to their sources, so add Bing to your AI visibility tracking.

Microsoft’s PMax takes requests. The October update brings:

• Age and gender targeting, now generally available
• Search term and auction insights reports
• Device targeting for all advertisers in the coming weeks

The Count would approve. Google’s PMax troubleshooting page now names a number for stable performance: at least 15 conversions over 30 days.

Google says hitting it helps keep spend consistent and ROAS strong. PPC News Feed spotted the change. Short of 15? Merge low-volume campaigns before BFCM instead of splitting them.

Go ahead, touch the budget. Google Ads product manager Tal Akabas says changing tCPA, tROAS or budgets on an established campaign won’t trigger Learning, the recalibration phase advertisers dread.

Results can still shift, and new bid strategies or big conversion-goal changes can still trigger it. Your BFCM budget bump won’t wipe the campaign’s history.

Both platforms want the same holiday gift: more conversion data.

AI cites your content but skips your name? Congrats, it ghosted you

Say a buyer asks AI Mode what your service costs. It quotes your pricing page, links you as a source and never says your name. Not nice.

A report analyzing 3,981 domain appearances across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode found that 61.7% were citations with no brand mention.

Only 13.2% earned both. Buyers get your answer, not your name.

That’s a ghost citation, and Marcus Miller mapped out how to find and fix yours.

1) Start the hunt in Search Console: Search Console’s Generative AI performance report shows which pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Add the questions those pages answer to about 20 prompts across awareness, consideration and action. Run each three times in AI Mode, Gemini and ChatGPT.

2) Sort the living from the dead: Log two things: Cited? Named? Both means alive, named only remembered, neither invisible. Cited but unnamed is a ghost, a near miss: the model already picked your content.

Don’t sweat informational ghosts: “what is” and “how does” queries had an 89.3% citation rate but an 18% mention rate.

Save the hunt for consideration and action prompts, where names make shortlists.

3) Ask why it ghosted you: Is your brand in the cited claim or only nearby?

Who did AI name instead, and where does the web mention them but not you? Ask AI what you’re known for. Vague answer? The association ends at your site.

What do those rivals have that you lack: original data, a narrower focus?

4) Make it say your name: Name your research and methods, and put your brand in the claim itself. Say who you’re for and who you’re not.

The report also found comparative content earned 2.4x more brand mentions than informational content.

The Crew’s take: Just don’t crown yourself. In Lily Ray’s study we covered in June, AI Overviews cited brands’ self-ranking “best” listicles but didn’t recommend those brands 69% of the time.

Re-run the prompts after 90 days, tracking named citations next to branded search impressions and brand ad CTR. Aim for an answer that gets worse without your name.

For most Americans, social media is now a news source

The feed is the new front page.

That’s according to Pew Research Center’s recent report that found 58% of US adults now say social media is an important way they keep up with the news.

In 2022, that number was 43%. Here’s how it looks mapped out:

The biggest change is at the top. In 2022, only 5% called social media their most important news source. Now 13% do, more than double.

Over the same period, the share who say social media isn’t important for news fell from 56% to 42%.

Age makes the gap bigger. Among adults ages 18 to 29, 76% say social media is an important way they keep up with the news, and 22% call it their most important source.

Among those 65 and older, it’s 41%.

Your posts and ads now compete with breaking news in the same scroll. More and more, that news comes from creators, not newsrooms, and it moves faster than any content calendar.

What to do: When you pitch a story, include news creators alongside journalists. Also, set up a fast approval process so your brand can respond the same day when your industry trends.