Brand Bias in Prompts: An Experiment
We tested 300 prompts to measure how common brand mentions are in LLM responses. See the data on how brand, soft-brand, and non-brand queries impact visibility, including a surprising look at the volume of brand mentions generated by Gemini.
How Thisisagency.ai approaches Ethical AI, copyright, and the Law – by Design, not by Accident.
There’s a conversation happening in boardrooms, courtrooms, and congressional hearings right now that every AI company is trying very hard to avoid having in public: where does your training data come from, and do you have the right to use it? M…
GSC Logging Error Yielded Inflated Impressions Since May 2025
Google announced a logging error on Friday, April 3rd in the data anomalies report and explained that error prevented the accurate logging of impressions in GSC since May of 2025. That’s right, almost a full year of inaccurate impressions…
Gemma 4 Brand Authority Map
We asked Google’s open-weight model Gemma 4 (31B) to “name 100 brands at random” 14,044 times and compared the results to our earlier Gemini 3 Flash experiment (200,000 runs). Of the top 50 brands in each model, 39 overlap. The 11 that are unique to each reveal a pattern: Gemini remembers luxury and automotive (Porsche, […]
Grokipedia Continues To Drop in Search Visibility And AI Search Visibility
In February I shared how Grokipedia started dropping heavily in Google after initially surging. It became yet another example of what I call “Mt. AI”. That’s when sites scaling heavily with AI-generated content initially surge in Google, but then dro…
Chrome’s New Shopping Classifier
One of our AI SEO hall-of-famers, Olivier de Segonzac from RESONEO has managed to gain access to Google’s shopping classifier model. We’ve examined the model, reverse engineered its inference pipeline and this article is what we found. Model Demo Below is a real-world implementation of the model tested by loading a shopping-related page and following […]
Reddit Brand Strategy for AI Search — Whiteboard Friday
Learn how to build a Reddit brand strategy for AI search. Victory Umurhurhu explains how to navigate Reddit communities to boost visibility and build audience trust.
Codename: Agency is now Thisisagency.ai
Codename: Agency is now called this Thisisagency.ai.
Read the full article here Codename: Agency is now Thisisagency.ai © Copyright 2006-2025 Shaun Anderson
AI Summaries Have Created 2 Unsolvable SEO Problems
As the misguided hype about Google’s AI Overviews “stealing clicks” begins to die down (slowly) in the face of contrary evidence (never mind the fact that no one was entitled to whatever clicks they were receiving from Google SERPs to…
Search Central Live is Coming to Shanghai in 2026!
We are hosting Search Central Live Shanghai 2026 on May 15.
This event is structured for the local community, with a specific focus on
optimizing sites that target users outside of China.
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 1, 2026
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Going offline for Passover tonight through Saturday night…
Programming Note: Offline For Passover Thursday & Friday
This is a programming note that I am completely offline for the Passover holiday Thursday and Friday. I am likely not going to schedule any stories, I apologize (still in recovery mode)…
Google Ask Maps Fully Available In US and India
Earlier this month, Google rolled out the “Ask Maps” feature. Now, Google said it is “available to everyone in the U.S. and India.”
Google Explains Googlebot Crawling, Fetching & Byte Limits
Google posted a new blog post named Inside Googlebot: demystifying crawling, fetching, and the bytes we process alongside episode 105 of the Search Off the Record segment named Google crawlers behind the scenes.
Microsoft Advertising Merchant Center Enables Store & Domain Name Updates
You can now update your store’s name and / or domain name directly in Merchant Center within Microsoft Advertising.
Google On Why Core Updates Take Weeks To Fully Roll Out
Google’s John Mueller explained, one again, why it takes weeks to roll out a core update. It is often because there are different components to core updates through the rollout stages, and each needs to be pushed individually.
Bing Tests Sponsored Label That Is Almost Transparent
Microsoft is at it again with its sponsored labels tests. This time, Microsoft is testing almost transparent sponsored labels within the Bing search results. The labels are super grayed out and super hard to see.
ChatGPT Enables Location Sharing For More Localized Near Me Results
Last week, OpenAI announced a new feature for ChatGPT named location sharing. This allows you to share your precise location with ChatGPT, so ChatGPT can give you more localized and near me results.
Google Ads PMax Asset Group Theming
Google Ads is rolling out asset group theming for Performance Max campaigns. This lets you copy an asset group and apply this theme to your text and images using Google AI.
Google May Call, Text or WhatsApp To Confirm Business Details
Google is sending out emails with updates on how Google Business Profiles may verify your business details. Google said it may “reach out using automated messages via call, text, or WhatsApp to the verified phone number on your Business Profile.”