Google is updating AI Mode in Chrome with side-by-side page viewing and a plus menu for adding tabs, images, and files as context.

The post Google AI Mode in Chrome Gets Side-by-Side Browsing appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 32GB 6400MHz CL36 kit drops to $395, near its all-time low of $380.

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/corsair-vengeance-rgb-ddr5-6400mhz-32gb-kit-down-to-395-on-amazon/

When it comes to value for money, Meta's Quest 3 VR headsets are a class apart, especially when compared with the stratospherically priced Apple Vision Pro headsets. Even so, the Quest 3 is about to succumb to the inevitable by increasing its prices in a matter of days amid memory-led cost pressures. And so, this might be the perfect time to grab one of these headsets. Meta is succumbing to the inevitable cost pressures: Grab the Quest 3 VR headset before its prices explode The Meta Quest 3 VR headset allows you to instantly turn any environment into a high-fidelity […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/grab-this-512gb-quest-3-vr-headset-today-for-499-on-amazon-before-meta-pushes-through-with-its-price-hike/

The inevitable has come to pass as Apple’s MacBook Neo has experienced a major popularity surge to the point that the company cannot keep up with the voracious demand. While the technology firm has set up a robust supply chain to combat any demand problems, it’s also the case of Apple having to deal with its A18 Pro chipset supply issues, forcing delivery times on its online store to reach a long waiting period, where buyers will have to endure not being able to get their hands on a unit until May. With delivery times reaching up to three weeks, it’s […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/macbook-neo-sold-out-for-the-entirety-of-april-on-apple-store/

The Galaxies Spring 2026 Showcase is here, featuring a solid hour of game announcements and updates for upcoming games, including a few select world premieres to showcase the latest indie titles coming to PC and consoles. Just as we did with the recent Triple-I Initiative Showcase, this roundup will cover everything that was announced so you don't miss out on adding something to your wishlist or picking up any shadow drops. Some of the more notable reveals include the premiere of Mojo Party, a trivia party game from the people behind the Watch Mojo YouTube channel. The show also included […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/galaxies-spring-showcase-2026-everything-announced/

Despite rumors initially pointing to a reveal happening today, a new report from Insider-Gaming points to Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced getting its full reveal next week. But most importantly, the report claims that we have a release date to look forward to for the upcoming remake. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced will reportedly launch on July 9, 2026. This comes after Ubisoft reportedly held a private presentation for content creators and select members of the press today, ahead of next week's full public reveal. It's unfortunate, of course, that today's reveal was seemingly postponed, but all signs are pointing […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/assassins-creed-black-flag-resynced-release-date-july-2026/

The debate over the use of generative AI tools for game development has raged across the industry for well over a year, and it doesn't seem to be letting up any time soon. As with anything related to AI, opinions are often polarized between those who want to take advantage of the new technology to improve games or simply to speed up the ever-growing development times, and others who are revolted at the mere idea of using it for any creative endeavor. In my most recent interview, Mitchell Patterson, CEO of backend developer Wolfjaw Studios, stressed that AI won't magically […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/wolfjaw-ceo-ai-game-development-good-developers/

All the way back in 2021, a former Ubisoft producer, Jade Raymond, and PlayStation Studios came together to form Haven Studios, a new team that was set to make a new multiplayer-focused game for PlayStation, which was revealed to be a new heist shooter, Fairgames, two years later in 2023. As we've continued to wait for any sign of Fairgames' release, Raymond left the studio, it was rumored to be cancelled at one point, and now, a new report claims it has pivoted to be a new kind of game in what is seemingly the hottest genre around: extraction shooters. […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/haven-studios-fairgames-reportedly-pivoting-to-extraction-shooter/

House of Pitches is a social platform where early-stage founders match with aligned investors through a swipe-based discovery experience. Create a startup profile, pitch your idea, and connect with investors who are genuinely interested in what you're building. Founders can then book office hours directly with matched investors, get real feedback on their pitch, and track engagement. No cold emails, no ghosting, just a simple process that connects the right founders with the right investors.

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MurmurCast aggregates your favorite YouTube channels and podcasts, then uses AI to transcribe and summarize every episode so you can scan what matters and dive deeper when you choose. It delivers personalized daily briefs that keep you informed without the noise.

Paste any YouTube link for on-demand transcripts, search across all your past summaries, and see which channels are most valuable with smart ranking.

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Microsoft Advertising is rolling out a slate of updates aimed at making Performance Max campaigns easier to manage, measure, and migrate — especially for advertisers already using Google Ads.

Driving the news. Microsoft now lets advertisers import Google PMax campaigns that use new customer acquisition (NCA) goals, a feature that has been generally available in Microsoft since early this year.

The update is now live for all advertisers.

That means marketers can more easily port over campaigns designed to prioritize first-time buyers without rebuilding them from scratch.

What’s new. Microsoft says imported Google PMax campaigns with NCA goals will carry over if they don’t already exist in the advertiser’s account. Existing Microsoft NCA settings won’t be overwritten.

For audience lists:

• Google website visitor segments will convert into Microsoft remarketing lists.
• Google’s “all visitors” and “all converters” lists will map to Microsoft equivalents.
• Unsupported lists, like Customer Match, will prompt advertisers to use fallback options.

Microsoft also says it takes a more conservative approach to “unknown” customers, classifying them as existing customers to avoid overcounting new customer conversions.

Why we care. This could make cross-platform campaign expansion faster and lower the friction of testing Microsoft’s PMax inventory removing the need of rebuilding campaigns from scratch. The added landing page reporting and search term visibility also give marketers better insight into what’s driving performance, which can help improve optimization and budget decisions.

More visbility for PMax. Microsoft is also adding landing page (Final URL) reporting for PMax campaigns. Advertisers can now see spend, clicks, impressions, conversion value, and ROAS by landing page.

They can also segment by campaign, asset group, and other dimensions.

Microsoft also said search term reporting is becoming more visible by default, with more transparency updates — including auction insights and added publisher URL metrics — planned later.

Other key updates:

• Seasonality adjustments now support portfolio bid strategies, expanding a tool advertisers use for short-term events like promotions.
• Campaign name limits are increasing from 128 to 400 characters, helping agencies and enterprise teams manage naming conventions at scale.
• Autogenerated assets are expanding to underbuilt Responsive Search Ads to improve ad relevance and performance.
• Merchant Center users can now update store names and domains directly without contacting support.

The bottom line. These updates make it easier to scale across platforms, save time on campaign setup, and get better visibility into what’s actually driving performance — giving advertisers more control over both efficiency and results.

If you were waiting to buy the flagship AMD Zen 5 X3D chip, you can pre-order it before it launches officially. AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition Listed On Amazon for $999; Newegg Lists it As Well, but No Pre-Order Option At $899 official MSRP, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 was already too expensive, but at $999, the Dual Edition has become the most expensive mainstream CPU in the current generation. After revealing the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, AMD announced that it's going to see a retail launch on April 22, which is roughly six days away from now. The […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-9-9950x3d2-dual-edition-lists-for-999-on-amazon/

All of Apple’s notebook competitors have been raising the prices of their products left, right, and center, leaving the Cupertino giant’s MacBook series the only viable option if exceptional value is what you’re searching for. Who would have thought that in the year 2026, Apple would become the only brand in the world whose portable Macs are the only sane alternative to purchase? What’s even better is that the M5 MacBook Air prices aren’t just stabilized, but some 13-inch and 15-inch configurations are available for $150 off on Amazon, meaning that from just $949, you can become the proud owner of […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/m5-macbook-air-impressive-price-to-performance-several-models-150-off-on-amazon/

TSMC, in its Q1 2026 earnings call, talked a bit about Intel as a competitor in the foundry business while stating the benefits of its A14 process node. TSMC Posts Record Revenues But Acknowledges Its Competitors & Their Respective Technologies Good For The Industry For Q1 FY26, TSMC is reporting a revenue of $35.9 billion, up 6.4% Q-Q. During the earnings call, TSMC's Chairman and CEO, C.C. Wei, highlighted the company's current foundry ventures, updates on upcoming nodes, and also stated what he thinks about the competition & the situation regarding the current supply chain. Starting first with Intel, and […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/tsmc-calls-intel-formidable-competitor-emib-attractive-technology/

NVIDIA has pushed the latest drivers to get players ready for Pragmata, the latest third-person action game from Capcom which is set to release tomorrow, April 17, 2026. The new drivers help players with all tiers of NVIDIA gear, though anyone sporting the latest RTX 50 Series graphics cards will undoubtedly have the best experience as they can take full advantage of the game's support of DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation and DLSS Ray Reconstruction. With path-tracing and DLSS 4 both on, players with that high-end hardware can hit upwards of 200 FPS according to NVIDIA. It's also worth […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/pragmata-nvidia-geforce-drivers-now-available/

Apple silicon has truly come of age, and if any skeptic still requires an incontrovertible proof, look no further than the performance cores within the new M5 Pro chips, which are now going toe-to-toe with similar cores within Intel's Panther Lake chips, but at a fraction of their overall power draw. The SPEC integer rate metric shows the Apple M5 Pro chip's performance cores go toe-to-toe with similar cores within Intel's Panther Lake chips, while being incredibly efficient For the benefit of those who might not be aware, Apple introduced a new fusion architecture with its M5 Pro and M5 […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apples-new-performance-cores-within-the-m5-pro-chip-are-outcompeting-similar-cores-within-intels-panther-lake-chips/

The next entry in 4A Games' Metro franchise, Metro 2039, was fully unveiled today by the development team during a dedicated streaming event. It will be released this Winter on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, and Xbox app). First and foremost, it won't be an open world game, unlike Metro Exodus, which featured semi-open world environments. 4A Games is returning to a handcrafted experience that focuses mainly on Moscow's tunnels. Another significant change is that Artyom, the protagonist of the first three games, has been replaced by the so-called Stranger. This is perhaps not so surprising to those […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/metro-2039-announced-new-protagonist-moscow-tunnels-winter/

ChatGPT citations favor pages that rank well, match the query in their headings, and stay tightly focused, according to an AirOps study of 16,851 queries. The top retrieval result was cited 58% of the time, and pages that answered the main query more narrowly outperformed broader, more comprehensive guides.

Why we care. This study clarifies how to earn ChatGPT citations: win retrieval, mirror the query in your headings, and answer one question extremely well. In this study, that mattered more than breadth.

The findings. Retrieval rank was the strongest signal. Pages in the top search position were cited 58.4% of the time, versus 14.2% for pages in position 10.

• Heading relevance was the strongest on-page factor. Pages with the strongest heading-query match were cited 41.0% of the time, compared with roughly 30% for weaker matches.
• Focused pages also beat comprehensive ones. Pages that answered the main query more narrowly outperformed broader, more comprehensive guides, undercutting the usual “ultimate guide” approach.

What drove ChatGPT citations. In this study, pages that won citations usually ranked well, used headings that closely matched the query, and stayed focused on answering it.

• Structure helped, but only slightly: Pages with JSON-LD markup posted a 38.5% citation rate versus 32.0% for pages without it, and articles with 4 to 10 subheadings performed best.
• Beyond a certain point, length hurt performance: Pages between 500 and 2,000 words performed best, but pages longer than 5,000 words were cited less often than pages under 500 words.

Freshness helps, up to a point. Pages published 30 to 89 days earlier performed best, while pages newer than 30 days performed worse. This suggests new content may need time to build retrieval signals.

• Pages more than 2 years old were cited less often, which suggests that content refreshes could help if you’re already ranking for the right queries.

About the data. AirOps said it scraped ChatGPT’s interface, not the API, and analyzed 50,553 responses generated from 16,851 unique queries run three times each. The dataset included 353,799 pages and more than 1.5 million fan-out detail rows across 10 verticals and four query types.

The study. The Fan-Out Effect: What Happens Between a Query and a Citation

Google announced Chrome updates that let searchers use AI Mode in a more engaging, deeper way. Chrome lets you do it all without switching tabs and potentially losing your place.

What’s new. Chrome added three new features:

• Search side-by-side: In AI Mode on Chrome desktop, clicking a link opens the webpage next to AI Mode. That makes it easier to visit relevant sites, compare details, and ask follow-up questions without losing the context of your search. Here’s what it looks like:

• Search across your tabs: On Chrome desktop or mobile, you can tap the new “plus” menu on the New Tab page, or the existing plus menu in AI Mode, to add recent tabs to your search. That lets AI Mode deliver more tailored responses and suggest more sites to explore.
• Multi-input and easy tool access: You can also mix and match multiple tabs, images, or files like PDFs and bring that context into AI Mode. Tools like Canvas and image creation are also available wherever you see the new plus menu in Chrome.

Why we care. These new Chrome-specific features for U.S. English users unlock more AI Mode capabilities. Again, they’re limited to Chrome users for now, but they show the direction Google is taking AI Mode.

New Ahrefs data shows Reddit pages appeared often in ChatGPT retrievals but rarely as visible citations.

The post ChatGPT Often Retrieves But Rarely Cites Reddit Pages, Data Shows appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

PureMac strips system cleanup back to basics, offering full app uninstallation with leftover file removal alongside tools for clearing caches, logs, and other clutter. It's positioned as a free, open-source alternative to CleanMyMac, it runs on-device with no telemetry or subscriptions.

We all know mass layoffs are a major issue the video games industry has been facing for the last several years. It doesn't matter if you helped develop the best-selling game of the year, or if your game died within a year, game developers cannot trust that their jobs will be safe, and a new survey from Skillsearch has just put some numbers to how it is impacting the way developers navigate the industry. Spotted by GamesIndustry.Biz, Skillsearch's Salary and Satisfaction survey collected data from over 1,000 video games industry professionals across Europe, North America, the UK, APAC, and MENA, […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/survey-shows-video-game-developers-are-considering-leaving-due-to-layoffs-instability/

Today, Battlefield Studios unveiled the 2026 Battlefield 6 roadmap. Season 3 will begin next month, with two classic maps returning after being reimagined: Season 3 also sees the debut of BR Solos — Battle Royale Solo as an official mode, as well as BR Ranked Play & Leaderboards, launching first in Battle Royale Quads in REDSEC. Battlefield Studios plans to expand the Ranked Play experience to Battlefield 6 multiplayer in future seasons. Season 4 will launch in July, introducing the previously teased Naval Warfare to Battlefield 6. The two new maps are: Naval-specific features include aircraft carriers with operational flight […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/battlefield-6-2026-roadmap-naval-warfare-season-4/

As the AI industry enters the maturity phase, traditional terms have become outdated, which is why NVIDIA suggests that the new ways to think about AI TCO should be evaluated based on "Cost Per Token". NVIDIA Wants Everyone To Rethink AI TCO With "Cost Per Tokens" Metric Tokens are the single most important metric for AI. While yesterday's data centers were evaluated on their raw computing power, today's AI factories are evaluated on their token output. But it's not important for who does the most tokens, efficiency and cost are still the values that matter the most. That is why […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nvidia-wants-everyone-to-rethink-ai-tco-explains-why-cost-per-token-is-the-only-metric-that-matters/

Apple has turned into the mythological King Midas on memory, coveting it above everything else even as LPDDR5 modules now cost their literal weight in gold. We've been noting ad nauseum that Apple is hoarding memory resources not just to preserve its planned product launch roadmap this year but also to sabotage some of its competitors. Well today, we are placing Apple's memory-related moves within some much-needed context. Apple is all set to consume multiple exabytes of precious DRAM this year, and is not above sabotaging its competitors to get its way We reported on a specific bit of supply […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apple-all-set-to-consume-2-4-exabytes-of-lpddr5-memory-this-year-even-as-dram-costs-explode/

Glen Schofield, the Dead Space creator and more recently the founder of Striking Distance Studios, the team behind the Dead Space spiritual successor, The Callisto Protocol, is the kind of industry veteran who is almost always up for sharing his thoughts on what he believes the path forward for the industry is. Last year, while also admitting that the commercial failure that was The Callisto Protocol might have been the last game he gets to direct in his long career, he also talked about the current state of the video game industry and why it's so difficult for anyone looking […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/glen-schofield-thinks-true-creatives-can-save-aaa-gaming-asks-artists-to-learn-some-form-of-ai/

Dageno AI is a GEO data and agent platform for global brands. It connects website data, traffic, prompts, social signals, and brand mentions in one unified layer. With Dageno, teams can understand how AI platforms represent their brand, identify visibility gaps and growth opportunities, optimize content and source coverage, and turn insights into automated execution. Unlike point tools or consulting, it closes the loop from monitoring to analysis to action.

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SmoothApply offers a free resume builder with over 90 ATS-friendly templates and AI tools to enhance, proofread, and condense your content. You can edit directly on the preview, switch designs instantly, and export polished PDFs or DOCX files in seconds.

It also includes a cover letter generator, job application tracker, and shareable resume links. You can build on any device, tailor multiple versions for different roles, and get a real-time 11-point ATS score to help your resume pass employer filters.

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Gen Z workers surveyed by Gallup said they would trust work done without AI over AI-assisted output by more than 2-to-1, with the gap widening.

The post Gen Z Workers Pick Human-Only Output Over AI-Assisted appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Intel has launched a new range of 18A CPUs for the mainstream market Intel has officially launched its Core 3 (not Core Ultra 3) series of mobile CPUs, promising users “exceptional battery life” and “AI-ready” performance for value buyers, commercial PCs, and edge devices. These new CPUs are “purpose-engineered for value” and are built on […]

The post Intel launches its Core Ultra 3 series CPUs for “everyday computing” appeared first on OC3D.

AMD confirms that its 6th Gen EPYC Verano CPUs will be the first to utilize SOCAMM2 memory, further expanding its perf/W AI solutions. AMD Confirms SOCAMM2 Memory Support With 6th Gen EPYC Verano CPUs, Tightening The DRAM Supply Chain Even More Last year, AMD confirmed its next-gen EPYC Verano CPUs for AI at rack scale. These chips will be coupled with the company's next-gen MI500 accelerators and will come together using Vulcano interconnect. At the time, AMD didn't disclose much, and the first impression was that Verano would likely use Zen 7 cores. But that isn't the case, as AMD […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-epyc-verano-cpus-lpddr5x-socamm2-memory-perf-watt-optimized-ai-rack/

Apple is all set to debut a veritable flood of AI features at its upcoming WWDC 2026, including the AI-heavy iOS 27 and the accompanying chatbot-style Siri. In the runup to that highlight event, however, four tantalizing Apple Intelligence features have been discovered by the developer Nicols Alvarez within the iOS backend code. Apple's upcoming AI features are getting leaked left, right, and center as the WWDC 2026 approaches along with the unveiling of the iOS 27 update As per insights gleaned from the iOS backend code, Apple's Visual Intelligence is getting two major upgrades. First, users will soon get […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/apple-starts-laying-the-groundwork-for-its-ios-27-ai-revamp-as-4-features-get-leaked/

UXUI Principles gives designers, PMs, and developers a research-backed standard to validate AI-generated interfaces. Access a library of 168 UX principles with over 2,098 academic citations, an AI Design Validator, flow checklists, and 600+ copy-paste prompts that guide AI tools to respect cognitive laws. Use it to catch issues before launch, defend decisions with citations, and ship interfaces that convert.

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3PL Hub connects ecommerce brands with vetted third-party logistics partners through a free directory, a smart matching tool, and a concierge RFP service. It rejects commissions from 3PLs to stay impartial and helps you compare providers with line-by-line cost modeling, SLAs, tech stacks, and operational capabilities so you can choose the right fulfillment partner with confidence.

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Google is making Gemini a core part of ad enforcement, saying the AI upgrade helped catch more scams while sharply reducing mistaken suspensions of legitimate advertisers. The move shows how quickly ad safety is turning into an AI fight over speed, scale, and accuracy.

The details. In its 2025 Ads Safety Report, Google said it blocked or removed 8.3 billion ads and suspended 24.9 million advertiser accounts last year. It said more than 99% of policy-violating ads were stopped before they ran.

• Google credited Gemini with cutting incorrect advertiser suspensions by 80%, processing 4x more user reports than the year before, and spotting scam signals faster by better understanding ad intent.
• Scams were a major focus. Google said it removed 602 million scam-related ads and suspended 4 million scam-linked accounts.

By the numbers:

• 602 million scam-related ads removed
• 4 million scam-linked accounts suspended
• 4.8 billion ads restricted
• 480 million web pages blocked or restricted
• 245,000+ publisher sites actioned
• 35 policy updates made in 2025

The U.S. picture: Google said it removed 1.7 billion ads and suspended 3.3 million advertiser accounts in the U.S. in 2025. The most common violations included abuse of the ad network, misrepresentation, sexual content, personalization violations, and dating and companionship ads.

Why we care. This directly affects whether campaigns launch, stay live, or get flagged. Google is signaling that AI will play a bigger role in deciding which ads run and which accounts get stopped. For advertisers, that raises the stakes on policy compliance while also promising fewer costly false suspensions.

How it works: Google said Gemini analyzes hundreds of billions of signals, including account age, behavior patterns, and campaign activity, to detect malicious intent earlier than older systems built more heavily around keywords and rule matching.

The company also said that by the end of 2025, most Responsive Search Ads would be reviewed instantly at submission, blocking harmful ads before launch. It plans to expand that capability to more formats this year.

Yes, but. Faster automated enforcement does not always mean smoother enforcement. Some advertisers in the U.K. and U.S. have recently reported bulk ad disapproval alerts despite finding no actual policy issues. That adds pressure on Google to prove tighter AI enforcement will not create new disruptions for legitimate brands.

Bottom line: Google wants advertisers to see Gemini as both shield and filter — tougher on scams, but more precise with legitimate accounts. The real test is whether that balance holds as enforcement gets faster and more automated.

Google’s blog post. Gemini is stopping harmful ads before people ever see them

Open ChatGPT, then search for a local business you know has a strong online presence. Ask for a recommendation in that category. Chances are, it comes up. If you check what the AI cites as sources, you’ll almost certainly find the business’s own website in the mix.

That tells you something important: AI doesn’t conjure answers out of thin air. It pulls from whatever it can find. If your website isn’t the best, most complete, most authoritative source of information about your business, the AI will assemble its answer from scraps. You lose control of your own narrative.

That’s what’s driving a growing question among business owners and marketers: “Do I even need a website anymore? If AI answers everything, why does it matter?”

Your website isn’t just a marketing tool anymore. It’s a source document. AI treats it as an authoritative input. The real question is who gets to define your business: you or someone else. Here’s what’s changing, where conventional wisdom falls short, and what to do about it.

Zero-click doesn’t mean zero opportunity

A lot of marketers are seeing the same thing right now: impressions holding steady or rising, but clicks dropping. People get what they need without ever landing on a page, leading some to declare websites obsolete. That’s the wrong read.

Fewer clicks don’t mean less importance. They mean the nature of the click has changed. Look at where AI Overviews actually appear.

According to our analysis of Ahrefs data, of the 46 million+ keywords that trigger an AI Overview, nearly 99% are informational. Navigational keywords account for just 0.13%. Someone wanted a quick fact, got it, and moved on. Those were never high-intent visits anyway.

The clicks that drive revenue, the ones tied to bookings, calls, purchases, and consultations, still happen. Commercial and transactional keywords make up just 12.5% and 3.5% of AI Overview triggers, respectively. 

(Note: These percentages exceed 100% in total because keywords can carry multiple intent classifications, a single keyword can be both informational and commercial, for example.) 

Those are exactly the queries where people are closest to a decision. They just happen further down the funnel, after a recommendation has already been made. When someone is ready to decide, they validate and check the website.

Dig deeper: Your homepage matters again for SEO — here’s why

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AI recommends, your customer decides. Know the difference.

When someone asks an AI assistant, “Who’s the best plumber near me?”, the AI might surface a few names. It’s pattern-matching based on reviews, location signals, website content, and business profile data. It’s offering a starting point, not a final verdict.

The AI isn’t picking up the phone or handing over a credit card. Especially for high-stakes local decisions, a contractor in your home, a doctor for your kid, a mechanic for your car, most people aren’t going to act on an algorithm’s suggestion without doing their own digging first.

What actually happens after the AI recommends? The customer: 

• Googles the business. 
• Reads the reviews. 
• Looks at photos. 
• Checks the website to see if you offer exactly what they need, and at a price they can stomach.

That validation phase is where decisions are made. And your website is at the center of it. AI might have gotten you in the door, but your website is what closes it.

Dig deeper: If you can’t say what problem your brand solves, AI won’t either

AI is actually making your website more valuable

AI systems are reading your content to determine what you do, who you serve, and how you help. They’re cross-referencing your site with your Google Business Profile, directory listings, and reviews to ensure consistency. 

When everything lines up, they gain confidence recommending you. When it doesn’t, you get skipped. This means your website is now effectively a source document for AI.

Either it provides clear, structured information, or AI fills the gaps with third-party content — a stale Yelp review from 2019, an outdated directory listing with the wrong hours, or a competitor’s blog post that happens to rank well.

I know which one I’d rather have the AI pulling from.

Dig deeper: Why local SEO is thriving in the AI-first search era

The visibility gap between traditional search and AI is enormous

If you want a sense of how selective AI is compared to traditional search, SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, which analyzed nearly 350,000 locations across 2,751 multi-location brands, puts it starkly:

• Only 1.2% of locations were recommended by ChatGPT.
• 11% by Gemini.
• 7.4% by Perplexity.
• 35.9% appeared in Google’s traditional local 3-pack.

AI is up to 30 times more selective than traditional local search. Here’s the kicker: strong performance in the local pack doesn’t guarantee AI visibility. 

SOCi found that in retail, only 45% of brands leading in traditional local search also appeared in AI recommendations. More than half were invisible to AI entirely.

The brands making it into AI recommendations? 

The ones with accurate, consistent information across platforms, strong review volume and sentiment, and well-structured website content. That last one is where most local businesses are leaving the most value on the table.

Your website is the only place you control the narrative

Everywhere else — Google, Yelp, review sites, social media, and AI summaries — you’re at the mercy of other people’s opinions and platform algorithms. You don’t get to decide what gets shown or how it’s framed.

Your website is different. You decide what to highlight, the story to tell, and the objections to address. You can showcase what makes you different and guide visitors exactly where you want them to go.

More importantly, you can feed AI the narrative you want it to use. If your site has well-structured service pages, detailed FAQs, and content that answers real questions your customers ask, AI can pull directly from that when generating responses. You’re essentially writing your own introduction.

On the flip side, if your site is thin or generic, AI fills in the blanks with whatever else it can find. You lose the ability to define yourself.

Dig deeper: Your website still matters in the age of AI

What to actually do about it

This doesn’t require a rebuild, just more intentional structure and content. Here’s where to focus.

Treat your website as a source of truth

Stop writing vague claims like “we’re the best in the business.” AI doesn’t know what to do with that. Write specific, factual, helpful content about what you do, who you serve, and what results you deliver.

Every piece of information on your website — your services, hours, location, and pricing approach — should align with what’s on your Google Business Profile and across your directory listings.

As Search Engine Land contributor Will Scott notes: 

• “Disambiguation through context is critical. When they’re building their ontologies, their map of relationships of knowledge, consistency matters a lot.”

Structure your content so AI can actually read it

AI reads for structure, not just keywords. An AirOps analysis of 217,508 retrieved pages found that only 15% of the pages ChatGPT retrieves actually earn a citation in the response.

Being crawled isn’t enough. How your content is organized determines whether it gets used. That means:

• Schema markup: Specifically LocalBusiness, FAQPage, and Service schemas. This cheat sheet tells AI and search engines exactly what your business is, what it offers, and where it’s located.
• Clear headings and short sentences: Use H2s and H3s to break content into scannable sections, and keep your sentences tight. The AirOps research found that pages averaging 11 to 14 words per sentence had roughly a 7% higher likelihood of being cited, likely because shorter sentences are easier for AI to parse and extract cleanly. Don’t bury critical information in long paragraphs.
• An FAQ section: Built around the actual questions you hear in emails, calls, and consultations. Write answers in natural language. This directly mirrors how people search conversationally, and AI loves it. The same research found that pages with 7 to 26 list sections were 6% to 15% more likely to earn a citation.
• Individual service pages: Not one catch-all “Services” page. Separate pages for each service with details about what’s included, who it’s for, and what to expect. Pages with 5 to 7 statistics supporting their claims had a 20% higher likelihood of being cited, so don’t just describe your services, back them up with specific, concrete details AI can confidently pull from.

Write for your customer’s questions

Most business websites are written for the business, not the customer. Corporate speak, vague value propositions, and industry jargon nobody searched for. Customers don’t search for buzzwords. They search for questions:

• “Do you take my insurance?”
• “How long does the repair take?”
• “What’s the difference between [service A] and [service B]?”
• “Can you help with [specific problem]?”

If your website answers those questions directly and clearly, you become the best answer AI can find when someone asks. Not sure what questions your customers are actually asking? 

Check your Google Business Profile Q&A section, your customer service emails, transcripts of your calls or meetings, and your reviews. The questions are already in front of you.

Dig deeper: How to apply ‘They Ask, You Answer’ to SEO and AI visibility

Do an AI audit of your own business right now

Here’s an exercise worth doing today: open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode, and ask each one about your business. Ask contextual questions a real customer might ask, such as: 

• “What do people say about [your business]?”
• “Is [your business] good for [specific service]?”

This is actually the first thing we do when onboarding a new client. We build a brand interpretation document. 

It’s a snapshot of what AI systems currently know about a brand, pulled from the most important third-party sources in that industry. It tells us whether what’s being said about the brand is accurate, current, and coming from the right places, or whether it’s outdated, wrong, and sourced from somewhere you’d never choose yourself.

Ask your preferred AI what it knows about your business, then have it summarize consensus from key industry sources. Pay close attention to what comes back and where it came from. 

• Is it citing your website? 
• Your Google Business Profile? 
• A review platform? 
• A third-party directory? 
• Is any of it inaccurate or out of date?

That audit tells you exactly where your information gaps are and how to fix them.

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What’s at stake if you let your site go stale

If your website is thin, outdated, or poorly structured, AI fills the gaps with whatever it can find. That content may be inaccurate, negative, or just plain wrong. Maybe an old review mentions a service you no longer offer, or a directory has the wrong phone number. AI doesn’t fact-check. It aggregates.

Beyond accuracy, there’s the positioning problem. Without a strong website, what you’re known for and what makes you different gets shaped by third-party sources. Your expertise gets undersold. Your unique value gets lost in the noise.

AI might surface your name, but your website builds the trust that turns a recommendation into a call, a booking, or a sale. That’s where the decision happens.

Dig deeper: How AI is reshaping local search and what enterprises must do now

Google has unique policies for Google Shopping that are stricter than its general advertising policies. If Google thinks you’ve violated any of them, it can suspend your Merchant Center.

That cuts off access to Google Shopping, Local Inventory Ads, product feeds in Performance Max and dynamic remarketing, and free listings for products. That means losing your highest-ROI channel overnight.

Here’s how Google’s system works — and what you can do to fix suspensions and get back online.

Case study: How we reinstated a suspended Merchant Center

A UK-based ecommerce retailer came to us after their Google Merchant Center account was suspended for “Misrepresentation,” cutting off their Shopping ads entirely.

Like many legitimate merchants, they were blindsided. Their store was real, their products were accurate, and they had no idea what Google’s specific objection was.

We started with a full compliance audit of their website and Merchant Center account, working through every area Google scrutinizes.

What we found wasn’t one big violation. It was a long list of smaller gaps that, in combination, signaled untrustworthiness to Google’s systems.

The website’s Contact Us page lacked a physical address, a domain-based email address, and clear customer service hours, all of which Google expects from a legitimate business.

Their policy pages (shipping, returns, refunds, and payment) either didn’t exist or lacked the specific detail Google looks for. Missing elements included cancellation windows, defective item procedures, and accepted payment methods.

Beyond policies, their site lacked an order tracking feature and a cookie consent mechanism (required under UK law). A bot blocker was preventing Google’s automated crawlers from crawling the site.

Inside Google Merchant Center itself, Shopify’s automatic shipping sync was creating conflicting data. 

We documented every required change in detail and handed the client a clear, prioritized action list. Once they made all the changes, we requested a review from Google.

Google approved the appeal and reinstated the account.

Key takeaway: Google evaluates the totality of your website and feed, not just individual policy pages. A successful reinstatement almost always requires fixing multiple issues across your site before submitting an appeal.

Dig deeper: Google Ads account suspensions: What advertisers need to know

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Step 1: Identify the type of suspension

Google will email you the policy they believe you’ve violated.

You can also find this information on the Needs attention tab in your Merchant Center.

Read the suspension notice carefully because Google’s description, vague as it often is, will be your starting point for the following audit steps.

Misrepresentation

Misrepresentation is the most common policy we see cited for Google Merchant Center suspensions.

This policy covers a wide range of problems, from inaccurate information in Merchant Center, to missing policy pages on your website, to bad reviews about your business on third-party websites.

Follow the steps outlined in this guide to focus on improving four key areas:

• Your Merchant Center settings.
• Your product feed.
• Your website.
• Your online reputation.

Counterfeit products

You’re most likely to see this suspension reason if you’re reselling products from other brands (such as Pokémon cards, Prada bags, or Nike sneakers).

Helpful actions to take:

• Say on your website whether you have a relationship with the manufacturer.
  • Are you an authorized reseller?
  • Do you purchase directly from the manufacturer?
  • Do you purchase from third parties?
• Explain your authentication process.
• Don’t list prices significantly lower than the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP).

Website needs improvement

Rather than citing a specific policy violation, Google is flagging that your website doesn’t appear sufficiently complete or functional.

Use incognito mode and multiple devices to check your website for:

• Placeholder images or text.
• Missing policy pages.
• Problems adding products to cart or finishing the checkout process.

Unsupported shopping content

Google has a list of things that can be advertised via “regular” Google ads, but not via Google Shopping.

Services as a whole may not be advertised, which is why you won’t see ads for lawyers, doctors, or consultants on Google Shopping.

It gets tricky when services are bundled with products (you can advertise car tires, but you can’t advertise the labor to replace the tires on your car).

Google tends to aggressively flag things as services, or unsupported digital goods, that don’t actually fall within those policies.

What to do:

• Separate services from physical products on your website.
• Add explanation text to product pages clearly stating that what you’re selling is a physical good and not a service.
• Avoid keywords like ebook and PDF that could trigger Google to think you’re selling disallowed digital goods.

Healthcare and medicines

Google restricts advertising healthcare-related products. The policies are country-specific, so be sure to carefully read the policy for the country, or countries, you’re targeting.

To sell prescription and over-the-counter drugs in the U.S., advertisers must undergo third-party certification through a company such as LegitScript and a separate certification process with Google.

Google explicitly lists pharmaceuticals and supplements that aren’t allowed to be advertised. Unfortunately, this list is not comprehensive. We’ve had cases where Google support informed us that products not on this list are not allowed to be advertised.

What to do:

• Get certified (if you meet the certification requirements).
• Avoid making claims about the benefits of what you sell that can’t be directly verified by linking to studies from your product pages.
• Add appropriate disclaimers to your product pages and customer testimonials.

Dig deeper: A guide to Google Ads for regulated and sensitive categories

DMCA violation

If someone reports your website for content that violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Google will suspend your Merchant Center. These reports are filed in the Lumen database, where you can see what content has been flagged and when the report was made.

What to do:

• If you’re violating copyright, remove the content from your website.
• If you’re not violating copyright, document how this content is original to your website and why you believe the report was wrong.
• After requesting a review of your suspension, you will probably have to engage in back-and-forth with Google support to argue why you should be allowed back on their platform.

Step 2: Audit your Merchant Center settings

Merchant Center settings are misconfigured in almost every suspension case we work on.

Go through every single page in your Merchant Center to make sure you’ve entered as much information as possible and that everything you’ve entered is accurate and matches what’s on your website.

Business info

• Your store name must comply with Google’s policies.
• Your physical address needs to be exactly right (no misplaced words or numbers) and should match the physical address on your website’s Contact page.
• You should have accurate contact information, and a link to your Contact page, and relevant social media profiles.

Shipping and returns

• Every product in your feed needs to be covered by at least one shipping rule and a return policy.
• The shipping methods, handling and shipping times, cost structure, return timeline, refund process, exceptions, and restocking fees need to exactly match the information on the Shipping and Returns policy pages on your website.

Step 3: Audit your product feed data quality

Think of your product feed as your ads. Just as saying inaccurate things in your ads can lead to disapprovals, providing inaccurate or insufficient product data to Google can result in item disapprovals and account suspensions.

Item disapprovals

In addition to account-level suspensions, Google often disapproves specific products for product-level violations.

There are many things that can cause item disapprovals. Top issues include:

• Links or images that don’t load.
• Mismatches between pricing or availability.
• Missing weight or shipping information.
• Invalid GTINs.
• Unsupported product categories like weapons, digital goods, or services.

These problems don’t necessarily cause account suspensions, but you should fix as many as possible before requesting a review. You want Google to see you as committed to sending high-quality data and not violating any of their policies.

Wrong prices and URLs

The price in your product feed must match the price shown when someone lands on that product’s page. Two common mistakes:

• Using a parent product URL with a product variant’s price, which causes a mismatch between the price in the ad and the price on the product page.
• Putting a sale price in the feed that is not on the product page, or vice versa.

GTINs

Global Trade Identification Numbers (GTINs) are the numbers, such as UPCs and ISBNs, that manufacturers assign to their products.

• If your products don’t have GTINs, you can set the value of the field identifier_exists in your feed to FALSE.
• If your products have GTINs and you have access to them, send those numbers to Google in your feed.

You don’t have to send a GTIN, but if you do, it must be accurate.

We’ve seen cases where advertisers created fake GTINs, thinking it would help their products perform better. Instead, Google suspended the entire account.

Copied product photos and descriptions

Resellers who copy product images and descriptions from manufacturers may run into problems, especially if you don’t provide the product GTINs in the feed.

Ideally, you should take your own product images and write your own product descriptions, so that everything on your website is original.

Dig deeper: Google Ads’ three-strikes system: Managing warnings, strikes, and suspension

Step 4: Audit your website

Even if your Merchant Center settings and product feed are clean, your website itself can be the reason you’re suspended.

Crawl issues

Google will suspend your account if they’re not able to crawl your website.

For example, we’ve seen clients block visits from countries from which a high volume of spam traffic was originating. This accidentally blocked Google’s robots from accessing the website and caused a suspension.

We’ve also seen mistakes with the robots.txt file accidentally excluding Google’s bots from accessing key pages, which looks to Google like you’re trying to hide something.

Missing information

You need clear and distinct policy pages on your website, including:

• Privacy.
• Shipping.
• Refund and return.
• Terms of service.
• Order tracking.
• Payment.

You also need accurate contact information on your Contact page and a comprehensive About page.

Inaccurate or inconsistent information

Any claims you make on your website must be true. For example, if you say you offer free shipping on orders over $25, then you have to actually give free shipping when a cart value is greater than $25.

We often see inconsistencies on websites, such as:

• Different return windows mentioned on the Return policy page than in the Return policy pop-up on the Shopify checkout page.
• Old phone numbers that no longer work and haven’t been removed.
• Template language referencing other businesses or products you don’t sell that you never removed from policy pages.

Badges and awards

Adding badges and awards (such as the Better Business Bureau badge and Trustpilot review widgets) to your website is a way to demonstrate credibility.

When you add badges, awards, or “As seen on” logos to your website, make sure to hyperlink them to supporting pages, or else Google may think you’re making unsupported claims.

Step 5: Audit your digital footprint

Google wants only trusted businesses to run Google Shopping ads, so they look beyond your website and Merchant Center at your digital footprint as a whole.

Reviews

If you don’t have reviews on third-party websites like Trustpilot and BBB, or worse, if there are many negative reviews about your business, Google will view you with more suspicion.

Make a focused effort to ask your customers for reviews and respond professionally to all reviews (positive or negative), so that Google sees you’re an active, engaged business.

Social media

Google expects websites to have profiles on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

There is even a place in your Merchant Center where you can directly link to your social profiles.

It can be helpful to claim profiles for your business and make sure that your business info in those profiles (domain, phone number, physical and email addresses) match what’s on your website.

Authorized resellers

If you’re an authorized reseller for another brand, establish as much of a connection to that brand online as possible. For example:

• Ask the brand to link to your website from their social media profiles and website.
• Post any information you’re legally allowed to share about your contract on your website so that Google sees you’re being transparent.
• Create an authentication guide that details how you authenticate the products you sell.

Step 6: Request a review

After you have followed steps 1-5 to identify and fix as many potential problems as possible, you are ready to ask Google to review your suspension.

To request a review:

• Log in to your Google Merchant Center account.
• Click Products & store.
• Click Products.
• Click Needs attention.
• In the box that says “Suspended account for policy violation,” click Fix.
• Click the button labeled “I disagree with the issue.”

Google sometimes makes the button unclickable until you go through identity verification, and in some cases, it also requires a video verification process.

Google doesn’t let you write any context when you request a review. Clicking the button is your only option.

Google limits how many reviews you may request. The limit varies per account, but often is three or less. Once you’ve reached that limit, Google will tell you that it will no longer accept additional review requests, and the button will no longer be clickable.

Google will not review your appeal unless there is at least one product in your Merchant Center.

What if I’m suspended for multiple things?

Google sometimes flags Merchant Centers with multiple policy violations at the same time. Fix everything possible on your website and in your account, and then appeal the suspensions one at a time.

Start with the suspension that looks the most comprehensive. For example, misrepresentation is a more “egregious” suspension in Google’s eyes than sale of service, so start by appealing the former.

If one policy issue is a suspension and another is a warning (suspended for misrepresentation and warned for website needs improvement), appeal the warning first.

Common questions about Google Merchant Center suspensions

Why is my Google Merchant Center suspended?

Google will tell you what policy it believes you’ve violated via email, and in a notification in the “Needs Attention” tab in your Merchant Center.

These policies are usually quite broad, and narrowing down exactly why you were suspended can be difficult, which is why it’s vital that you fix as many potential problems as possible before appealing your suspension.

How long does a Google Merchant Center suspension last?

In most cases, it lasts forever unless you successfully appeal the suspension.

That said, we’ve seen cases where Google re-crawled a website after changes were made and automatically reinstated an account prior to the advertiser requesting a review (but don’t count on this happening).

Can Google Merchant Center support help me?

Sometimes, if you know how to ask the right questions, Google Merchant Center support will provide some ideas about what went wrong, or will point to specific data issues with your products.

What happens if Google rejects my appeal?

Typically, Google will put your Merchant Center into a cool-down period during which you can’t request another review.

The first cool-down period is usually seven days, and the timeline gets longer with subsequent rejections.

How many times can I appeal a Google Merchant Center suspension?

Google typically limits appeals to between one and three attempts, though exceptions exist.

Why does Google keep suspending my Merchant Center account?

It’s not uncommon for Google to accept an appeal of a Merchant Center suspension and then suspend that account again for the same policy.

This could be due to Google’s automated systems re-flagging you for something that its manual reviewers decided was not a violation.

It could also be because Google is unfortunately inconsistent with how it flags policy violations and enforces its policies.

Can I ask customers to write reviews of my business online?

You can. If you’re sending product reviews to Merchant Center, you must disclose to Google if you incentivize customers to leave reviews.

Dig deeper: Dealing with Google Ads frustrations: Poor support, suspensions, rising costs

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Preventing Google Merchant Center suspensions

All of the steps outlined in this guide to fix suspensions are things you should proactively do to help prevent suspensions from happening.

Doing these things before you’re suspended can potentially save you tremendous time, frustration, and opportunity cost.

Here are a few more ideas to help stop suspensions:

• Check your website weekly via incognito mode on mobile and desktop devices to make sure your website functions properly.
• Get a real physical business address, and feature that address on your Contact page and in your website footer.
• Regularly ask your clients to write reviews about you, and respond professionally to every single review.
• Consistently read the policies on your website to make sure they are still accurate, and update them immediately if you change your processes.
• Monitor your Merchant Center daily for disapprovals, and quickly fix anything that Google says needs attention.

Google has policies in place because it wants to protect consumers.

By following Google’s policies and showing that you’re a legitimate advertiser, you can protect your ability to use one of the most important channels available for growing an ecommerce brand.

Windows 11 users may soon be able to pause updates indefinitely Microsoft has started testing a new Windows update that allows Windows 11 users to pause OS updates indefinitely. If implemented as-is, this would allow Windows users to end forced updates by pausing updates for a time in the far-off future. Right now, Windows 11 […]

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Read full article at https://wccftech.com/cpu-and-motherboard-sales-are-declining-fast/

One of the biggest challenges in AI search is that visibility is being shaped by systems you can’t directly observe.

Nothing like Google Search Console exists for ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity. No reporting layer showing what’s crawled, how often, or whether your content is considered at all.

Yet these systems are actively crawling the web, building datasets, powering retrieval, and generating answers that shape discovery — often without sending traffic back to the source.

This creates a gap. In traditional SEO, performance and behavior are connected. You can see impressions, clicks, indexing, and some level of crawl data. In AI search, that feedback loop doesn’t exist.

Log files are the closest thing to that missing layer. They don’t summarize or interpret activity. They record it — every request, every URL, every crawler. 

For AI systems, that raw data is often the only way to understand how your site is actually being accessed.

Some visibility is emerging — just not from AI platforms

That lack of visibility hasn’t gone entirely unaddressed. 

Bing is one of the first platforms to introduce this natively. Through Bing Webmaster Tools, Copilot-related insights are beginning to show how AI-driven systems interact with websites. It’s still early, but it’s a meaningful shift — and the first real example of an AI system exposing even part of its behavior to site owners.

Beyond that, a new category of tools is emerging. Platforms like Scrunch, Profound, and others focus on AI visibility, tracking how content appears in AI-generated responses and how different agents interact with a site. 

In some cases, they connect directly to sources like Cloudflare or other traffic layers, making it easier to monitor crawler activity without manually exporting and analyzing raw logs.

That visibility is useful, especially as AI systems evolve quickly. But it isn’t complete. 

Most of these tools operate within a defined window. Some only surface a limited timeframe of agent activity, making them effective for near-term monitoring, but less useful for understanding longer-term patterns or changes in crawl behavior.

AI crawler activity isn’t consistent. Unlike Googlebot, which crawls continuously, many AI agents appear sporadically or in bursts. Without historical data, it’s difficult to determine whether a change in activity is meaningful or normal variation.

Log files solve for that. They provide a complete, unfiltered record of crawler behavior — every request, every URL, every user agent. With continuous retention, they enable analysis of patterns over time and revisiting data when something changes.

Dig deeper: Log file analysis for SEO: Find crawl issues & fix them fast

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Not all AI crawlers behave the same way

In log files, everything appears as a user agent string. On the surface, it’s easy to treat them the same, but they represent different systems with different objectives. That distinction matters, because it directly affects how they access and interact with your site.

AI-related crawlers generally fall into two groups: training and retrieval.

Training crawlers

Training crawlers, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, and Google-Extended, collect content for large-scale datasets and model development.

Their activity isn’t tied to real-time queries, and they don’t behave like traditional search crawlers. You’ll typically see them less frequently, and when they do appear, their crawl patterns are broader and less targeted.

Because of that, their presence – or absence – carries a different implication. If these crawlers don’t appear in your logs at all, it’s not just a crawl issue. It raises the question of whether your content is included in the datasets that influence how AI systems understand topics over time.

At the same time, it’s important to consider how much data you’re analyzing. Training crawlers don’t operate on a continuous crawl cycle like Googlebot.

Their activity is often sporadic, which means a short log window (a few hours, or even a single day) can be misleading. You may not see them simply because they haven’t crawled within that timeframe.

That’s why analyzing log data over a longer period matters. It helps distinguish between true absence and normal variation in how these systems crawl.

Retrieval and answer crawlers

Retrieval crawlers operate differently. Agents like ChatGPT-User and PerplexityBot are more closely tied to live, or near-real-time, responses. Their activity tends to be event-driven and more targeted, often limited to a small number of URLs.

That makes their behavior less predictable and easier to misinterpret. You won’t see the same volume or consistency you would from Googlebot, but patterns still matter.

If these crawlers never reach deeper content, or consistently stop at top-level pages, it can indicate limitations in how your site is discovered or accessed.

Traditional crawlers still matter, but they’re no longer the full picture

Googlebot and Bingbot still provide the baseline. Their crawl behavior is consistent and typically gives a reliable view of how well your site can be discovered and indexed.

The difference is that AI crawlers don’t always follow the same paths. It’s common to see strong, deep crawl coverage from Googlebot alongside much lighter, or more shallow, interaction from AI systems. That gap doesn’t show up in Search Console, but becomes clear in log files.

What AI crawler behavior actually tells you

Once you isolate AI crawlers in your log files, the goal isn’t just to confirm they exist. It’s to understand how they interact with your site – and what that behavior implies about visibility.

AI systems crawl the web to train models, build retrieval indexes, and support generative answers. But unlike Googlebot, there’s very little direct visibility into how that activity plays out.

Log files make that behavior observable. There are a few key patterns to focus on.

Discovery: Are you being accessed at all?

Start by checking whether AI crawlers appear in your logs.

In many cases, they don’t — or appear far less frequently than traditional search crawlers. That doesn’t always indicate a technical issue, but highlights how differently these systems discover and access content.

If AI crawlers are completely absent, they may be blocked in robots.txt, rate-limited at the server or CDN level, or simply not discovering your site.

Presence alone is a signal. Absence is one too.

Crawl depth: How far into your site do they go?

When AI crawlers do appear, the next question is how far they get.

It’s common to see them limited to top-level pages – the homepage, primary navigation, and a small number of high-level URLs. Deeper content, including long-tail pages, or location-specific content, is often untouched.

If crawlers aren’t reaching those sections, they’re not seeing the full structure of your site. That limits how much context they can build and reduces the likelihood that deeper content is surfaced in AI-generated responses.

Crawl paths: How AI systems actually see your site

When AI crawlers access a site, they don’t build a comprehensive map the way traditional search engines do.

Their behavior is more selective and influenced by what’s immediately accessible, which means your site structure plays a larger role in what they reach.

In log files, this appears as concentrated activity around a small set of URLs. 

• Requests are typically clustered around the homepage, primary navigation, and pages that are directly linked, or easy to discover. 
• As you move deeper into the site, crawl activity often drops off, sometimes sharply, even when those pages are important from a business, or SEO, perspective.

The practical implication: pages buried behind JavaScript-heavy navigation, or weak internal linking, are significantly less likely to be accessed.

As a result, the version of your site AI systems interact with is often incomplete. Entire sections can be effectively invisible because they sit outside the paths these crawlers can follow. 

This is where log file analysis becomes particularly useful, because it exposes the difference between what exists and what’s actually accessed.

Crawl friction: Where access breaks down

Log files also surface where crawlers encounter issues. This includes:

• 403 responses (blocked requests).
• 429 responses (rate limiting).
• Redirects and redirect chains.
• Unexpected status codes.

For AI crawlers, these issues can have an outsized impact. Their activity is already limited, and failed requests reduce the likelihood they continue deeper into the site.

Cross-system comparison: How does this differ from Googlebot?

Comparing AI crawler behavior to Googlebot provides useful context.

Googlebot typically shows consistent, deep crawl coverage across a site. AI crawlers often behave differently – appearing less frequently, accessing fewer pages, and stopping at shallower levels.

That difference highlights where your site is accessible for traditional search, but not necessarily for AI-driven systems. As those systems become more influential in discovery, crawl accessibility becomes a multi-system concern – not just a Google one.

How to analyze AI crawler behavior with log files

You don’t need a complex setup to start getting value from log files. Most hosting platforms retain access logs by default, even if only for a short window.

You’ll find that retention varies across hosting providers, but it’s often limited to anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Kinsta, for example, typically retains logs for a short rolling window, which is enough to get started but not for long-term analysis.

Start with the logs you already have

The first step is simply to export access logs from your hosting environment.

Even a small dataset can surface useful patterns, particularly when you’re looking for presence, crawl paths, and obvious gaps. At this stage, you’re not trying to build a complete picture over time. You’re looking for directional insight into how different crawlers are interacting with your site right now.

Use a log analysis tool to make the data usable

Raw log files are difficult to work with directly, especially at scale.

Tools like Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer make it possible to process that data quickly. Logs can be uploaded in their raw format and broken down by user agent, URL, and response code, allowing you to move from raw requests to structured analysis without additional preprocessing.

This is where the data becomes usable.

Segment by crawler type

Once the logs are loaded, segmentation becomes the priority. Start by isolating user agents so you can compare AI crawlers, Googlebot, and Bingbot.

This is critical, because behavior varies significantly across systems. Without segmentation, everything blends together. With it, patterns start to emerge.

To filter your views by bot, select your bot at the top right of the Log File Analyser. This will update all subsequent analysis to the bot you’ve selected.

You can begin to see:

• Whether AI crawlers appear at all.
• How their activity compares to traditional search.
• Whether their behavior aligns or diverges.

Analyze crawl behavior against your site structure

From there, shift from presence to behavior.

Look at which URLs are being accessed, how frequently they appear, and how that maps to your site structure. This is where the earlier analysis becomes practical.

You’re not just asking what was crawled. You’re asking:

• Are crawlers reaching deeper content?
• Which sections of the site are being skipped entirely?
• Does this align with how your site is structured and linked?

This is where crawl paths, accessibility, and prioritization start to surface as real, observable patterns.

Use response codes to identify friction

Filtering by response code adds another layer of insight.

This helps surface where crawlers are encountering issues, including:

• Blocked requests.
• Rate limiting.
• Redirect chains.
• Unexpected responses.

For AI crawlers, these issues can have a greater impact. Their activity is already limited, so failed requests reduce the likelihood that they continue further into the site.

Cross-reference crawlable vs. crawled

One of the most valuable steps is comparing what can be crawled with what is actually being crawled.

Running a standard crawl alongside your log analysis allows you to identify this gap directly. Pages that are accessible in theory, but never appear in logs, represent missed opportunities for discovery.

Understand what your logs don’t show

As you work through log data, it’s also important to understand its limitations.

Server-level logs only capture requests that reach your origin. In environments that include a CDN, or security layer like Cloudflare, some requests may be filtered before they ever reach the site. That means certain crawler activity, particularly blocked, or rate-limited, requests, won’t appear in your logs at all.

This becomes relevant when interpreting absence. If specific AI crawlers don’t appear in your data, it doesn’t always mean they aren’t attempting to access the site. In some cases, they may be getting filtered upstream.

How to scale: Continuous log retention

Log file analysis breaks down quickly if you’re only looking at short timeframes.

A few hours of data, or even a single day, can show you what happened. It can also make it look like nothing is happening at all. With AI crawlers, that distinction matters.

Their activity isn’t continuous. Training crawlers may appear intermittently, and retrieval agents are often tied to specific events or queries. 

A short log window can easily lead you to the wrong conclusion. A crawler that doesn’t appear in your data may still be active. It just hasn’t shown up within that window.

This is where retention changes the analysis. Once you’re working with a longer dataset, you’ll see how often it appears, where it shows up, and whether that behavior is consistent over time. What looked like absence starts to resolve into patterns.

Moving beyond your hosting limits

At that point, the limitation isn’t analysis. It’s access to data over time.

Most hosting environments aren’t designed for long-term log retention. Even when logs are available, they’re typically tied to a short rolling window. That makes it difficult to revisit behavior, compare time periods, or understand how crawler activity evolves.

To get beyond that, you need to store logs outside of your hosting environment. Log storage options include: 

• Amazon S3 is one of the most common approaches. It provides flexible, low-cost storage that allows you to retain logs continuously and query them when needed. If the goal is to build a historical view of crawler behavior, it’s a practical and widely supported option.
• Cloudflare R2 serves a similar purpose and can be a better fit for sites already using Cloudflare. It keeps storage within the same ecosystem and simplifies how log data is handled, particularly when edge-level logging is part of the setup.

The specific platform matters less than the shift itself. You’re moving from whatever your host happened to keep to a dataset you control.

Bridging the gap with automation

Not every setup supports continuous streaming, and most teams aren’t going to build that infrastructure upfront.

If your retention window is limited, automation becomes the practical way to extend it.

Instead of manually downloading logs, you can schedule the process. Many hosting providers expose logs over SFTP, which makes it possible to pull them at regular intervals before they expire.

A scheduled SFTP job – whether built in a workflow tool like n8n, or scripted – is enough to turn a short retention window into something you can actually analyze over time. That’s often the difference between one-off analysis and something repeatable.

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Getting closer to a complete view

As your dataset grows, so does the need to understand its boundaries. Log files show you what reached your site. They don’t always show you what tried to.

In environments that include a CDN, or security layer, some requests may be filtered before they reach your origin. That becomes more noticeable over time, particularly when certain crawlers appear less frequently than expected.

At that point, edge-level logging becomes a useful addition. It provides visibility into requests that are blocked or filtered upstream and helps explain gaps in origin-level data.

It’s not required to get value from log analysis, but it becomes relevant once you’re trying to build a more complete picture of crawler behavior across systems.

Log files show you what reached your site. They don’t show everything, but they’re the only place this interaction becomes visible at all.

You’re not optimizing for one crawler anymore. And the teams that start measuring this now won’t be guessing later.

IAB's annual report shows search ad growth fell while social media and digital video posted stronger year-over-year gains.

The post Search Ad Growth Slows As Social & Video Gain Faster appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

It looks like AMD’s bringing back its strongest AM4 gaming CPU to combat the world’s memory shortage The leaker HXL has unveiled an image that appears to confirm the return of AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU. When memory pricing skyrocketed in 2025, we called on AMD to bring back its AM4 X3D CPUs. These CPUs […]

The post The King Returns – AMD to revive Ryzen 7 5800X3D as “AM4 Anniversary Edition” appeared first on OC3D.

AMD confirms LPDDR5X SOCAMM2 memory support for EPYC Verano CPUs in 2027 AMD has confirmed that its 6th-generation EPYC Verano CPUs will support LPDDR5X SOCAMM2 memory modules when they launch in 2027. This year’s 6th Generation EPYC “Venice” CPUs will launch with support for DDR5 RDIMM and MRDIMM memory. Between Verano and Venice, AMD will […]

The post AMD confirms SOCAMM2 memory support for 2027 EPYC “Verano” CPUs appeared first on OC3D.

From Kaby Lake to Core Ultra, we revisit Intel's flagship CPUs to see how a decade of design choices shaped performance, power, and ultimately, how the company lost its lead.

AMD is set to bring back one of the most popular X3D chips, which will help boost sales of AM4 platform and offer gamers a new hope. AMD to Re-Launch 8-Core/16-Thread Zen 3-Based Ryzen 7 5800X3D Processor In Q2 2026 As it Completes 10-Years of AM4 Launch We have awesome news for you guys! AMD is reportedly bringing the most popular Ryzen 5000 processor to the market. After discontinuing it last year, AMD is now re-launching the Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor very soon, and the timing couldn't be better. AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D launched in April 2022 as the first […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-7-5800x3d-reportedly-making-a-comeback-in-q2-2026-as-am4-turns-10/

PRAGMATA features a few useful abilities with clear uses, and some whose benefits are not apparent. This is the case of Critical Shot, an early-game ability that can make your life much easier in some unexpected ways. The Benefits of Finishing Enemies With a Critical Shot Finishing enemies with a Critical Shot, even without having it upgraded at level 3 or without having already collected certain mods that enhance the ability, is always worth it, for two reasons: How to Unlock Critical Shot Critical Shot can be unlocked after completing Sector 01: Solar Power Plant. Access the Unit Printer in […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-why-you-should-always-finish-bots-with-a-critical-shot/

PRAGMATA generally does a very good job of explaining its intricate mix of third-person shooting and hacking puzzle-solving, but not every mechanic is explained as thoroughly as it should be. This is the case of the Multihack hacking node, one of the best hacking abilities in the entire game, which can turn the most difficult combat encounters into a walk in the park with the right setup. Multihack: The Best Tool For Crowd Control According to the in-game description, Multihack is a "hacking node that links enemies together, opening multiple targets. OPEN time is extended while damage to affected targets […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-how-does-multihack-work-master-this-hacking-node-for-ultimate-crowd-control/

PRAGMATA's Training Simulations, such as Medic Training, Mouse Trap, and Floor It, feel more like puzzles, forcing you to take full advantage of the game's mechanics to clear them with all optional objectives. This is also the case of the Bad Blood Training Simulation, where you need to use hacking mechanics to your advantage to perfect it. Simulation Objectives & Rewards Objective Reward Defeat All Enemies 1 Cabin Coin Defeat 4 Enemies with friendly fire 300 Lunafilament Complete within 100 seconds 4 upgrade components Defeat 4 Enemies With Friendly Fire + Complete Within 100 Seconds To clear these objectives, you […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-bad-blood-training-simulation-guide-defeat-4-enemies-with-friendly-fire/

In PRAGMATA, certain advanced bots are equipped with modules that can cause Jamming, scrambling the hacking matrix, preventing Diana from opening them up to expose their weak points, and depriving you of one of your most effective combat tools. If you find you cannot complete hacking because red nodes sever your connection to the enemy, you must physically disable the jamming source to regain full hacking capability. Identifying the Jamming Source Enemies that can jam Diana's hacking do so with specific parts. You can easily identify these components by their red color. Complete vs. Partial Hacking Matrix Restoration In the […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-how-to-stop-enemy-jamming/

Hacking is the biggest part of the PRAGMATA experience, but also one of its most divisive. Some will inevitably love alternating between shooting and hacking, while others will find hacking breaks the pace of third-person shooter combat too much. Thankfully, for the latter group, the game does feature Auto-Hacking, though it is not available from the start. How to Unlock To get access to this feature, you must first complete Sector 2: Mass Production Array. Once finished, it can be unlocked from the Unit Printer in the Shelter for 1 Pure Luneum. How Does It Work Any time you aim at […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-how-to-unlock-auto-hacking/

PRAGMATA features an intricate economy with multiple currencies centered around upgrading Hugh’s suit and weapons and Diana’s hacking capabilities. Understanding what these currencies are used for is essential for unlocking and upgrading everything you need as you make your way through the campaign. Every Currency and Its Use There are five currencies you will need to manage as you explore the lunar research station: Where to Find Them Currency Primary Source Lunafilament Defeating enemies or found scattered throughout the Lunar Base. Pure Lunum Found in exploration or as a reward for Training Simulations. Upgrade Components Found in exploration or as […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-every-currency-and-how-to-get-it/

Among PRAGMATA's optional Training Simulations, there are some of them that can be difficult to complete while clearing all of the optional objectives. Besides the Medic Training Simulation, the Mouse Trap simulation can be challenging to clear fully, as you will need to be patient and make full use of the Decoy Gun. Simulation Objectives & Rewards Objective Reward Defeat all enemies Lunafilament x300 Defeat all enemies with the Recycler 1 Cabin Coin Complete within 50 secs 2 Upgrade Components NOTE: For any replay of any training mission, you can get 50 Lunafilament for clearing objectives you already cleared in […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-mouse-trap-training-simulation-guide-defeat-all-enemies-within-the-recycler/

PRAGMATA is CAPCOM's new third-person shooter, combining a sci-fi setting with unique combat mechanics mixing shooting and puzzle solving. This unique combination turns every encounter against the bots roaming the dilapidated Lunar Base into an intense and exhilarating experience. In this Complete Walkthrough and Guides Hub, you will find everything you need to master the game's unique combat system and character progression system, discover every secret, and survive against the dangers lurking all over the lunar research base. Getting Started PRAGMATA is quite different from a traditional third-person shooter. These guides will help you get started on the most basic mechanics […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-complete-walkthrough-guide-combat-secrets-upgrades-training-simulations-collectibles/

Exploring the Lunar Base in PRAGMATA can be a daunting task for completionists. Each area contains a set number of hidden items, but the game’s initial scanner does not mark them on your interface. This often forces players to check every corner to find essential materials. However, if you are struggling to find those last few components, there is a specific ability that makes full exploration significantly more enjoyable. Unlock Object Scan To make your search easier, you must wait until you unlock Sector 03: Terra Dome. At this point, you can learn the Object Scan ability by interacting with […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-how-to-easily-find-all-hidden-items/

In PRAGMATA, Upgrade Components are a limited resource found across the Lunar Base that allow you to enhance Hugh's Suit and Primary Unit (main weapon) as well as Diana's Hacking. While you may think that spreading components across the three may work best, doing so will make the beginning of the game more challenging, especially when you start encountering more powerful bots that pack a punch and have quite a bit of health. As such, you should prioritize upgrading some components over the others. Quick Summary: The Best Upgrade Priority If you want to have as few troubles as possible […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-upgrade-guide-which-part-to-upgrade-first/

PRAGMATA features a lot of different currencies and collectibles to find on the lunar research base, providing you with plenty of incentives to fully explore each sector. Among these collectibles are Mr. Cabin figurines, which are very reminiscent of the Mr. Raccoon Memoriam found in Resident Evil Requiem. Here's where to find all of them. Tip: Use Closed Captions for easier hunting. If you prefer to find these collectibles yourself but are struggling to pinpoint their locations, there is a helpful trick hidden in the settings. Enabling Closed Captioning in the Language tab of the Options menu provides a visual […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-every-mr-cabin-locations-and-the-secret-setting-to-find-them-easily/

As you explore the first few sectors of the base in PRAGMATA, you will find multiple Attack and Tactical Units to help you deal with bots. In the beginning, you will need to make choices with your loadouts based on very limited space, but you won't be so limited in terms of weapon options for the entirety of the game. Quick Summary: Can You Carry Multiple Units? Yes, but not at the start of the game. You must progress to Sector 03: Terra Dome and complete a specific mid-boss encounter to unlock the ability to carry two weapons per unit […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-how-to-carry-multiple-attack-and-tactical-units/

Unlike some of the other currencies, Cabin Coins in PRAGMATA are a limited resource. You will only find these by thoroughly scouring sectors or mastering the optional objectives in Training Simulations like Bad Blood or Floor It. Because you never find these coins in droves, you cannot afford to spend them blindly. The Mr. Cabin Stamp Card hides many of its rewards, and while some unlock vital gameplay enhancements, others are purely cosmetic 3D models. To help you avoid wasting your rare coins, we have listed all rewards below. NOTE: The guide currently lists all the rewards of the Trainee […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-all-mr-cabin-stamp-rewards-spend-your-cabin-coins-wisely/

Early in Pragmata, combat can feel slow, as many powerful bots come with plenty of health. However, by combining specific hacking nodes with Tactical Units, you can create high-damage loops that can make short work of regular bots and deal massive damage to bosses. The key to this high-damage loop is the synergy between hacking's Offense Mode and the Stasis Net Tactical Unit. Unlocking the Essentials To use this highly effective combo, you need to unlock these three components: NOTE: A Bingo on any card is achieved by unlocking every bonus on either vertical or horizontal line on the card. […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-combat-guide-the-best-early-loadout-synergy/

The Medic Training Simulation is one of the first major hurdles for players aiming for 100% completion in PRAGMATA. While completing it isn't difficult, the "Deal Damage Using Enemies" objective can be challenging to clear, requiring a very specific strategy based on the game's core combat mechanics. Simulation Objectives & Rewards Objective Reward Defeat All Enemies 1 Cabin Coin Deal Damage Using Enemies 300 Lunafilament Complete within 100 Seconds 2 Upgrade Components NOTE: For any replay of any training mission, you can get 50 Lunafilament for clearing objectives you already cleared in a previous run How to "Deal Damage Using […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-medic-training-simulation-guide-deal-damage-using-enemies/

PRAGMATA Floor It Training Simulation is a tricky simulation, much more so than the already challenging Medic Training and Mouse Trap simulations. While it is labeled as a combat training simulation, it is also a traversal challenge as you need to disengage locks and quickly alternate between jumping and shooting to complete all three objectives. Simulation Objectives & Rewards Objective Reward Reach Target Area 1 Pure Luneum Destroy All Storage Boxes 1 Cabin Coin Complete Without Taking Damage 300 Lunafilament Complete Without Taking Damage The most difficult objective for this training simulation is to complete it without taking damage. The […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-floor-it-training-simulation-guide-complete-without-taking-damage/

Hacking is a core component of the PRAGMATA combat mechanics and the most difficult to master. As you juggle between hacking and shooting enemies, you may find hacking cumbersome and distracting, but there is a hidden input trick that completely eliminates hacking downtime. Mastering this "Hacking Reset" tech not only allows you to hack more consistently but also lets you build the Hacking Gauge faster to access powerful abilities more often. Why Your Hacking Might Feel Slow A common source of frustration in the first few hours of the game is how hacking and shooting don't seem to mesh well. […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/pragmata-the-hacking-reset-secret-technique-to-optimize-combat-flow/

An independent Valve contractor has just assigned themselves the most daunting task yet: to make gaming viable on 8 GB GPUs. With A Simple Trick, Valve Contractor Unlocked Smooth Gaming On 8 GB GPUs Gaming on low-end GPUs, especially with 8 GB VRAM, is becoming harder and harder. With the majority of games releasing in unoptimized states these days, and the vast majority of PC gamers going for budget hardware as PC component prices rise, PC gaming is becoming hardware for the general audience. But it looks like someone who shares the same feelings as gamers these days has developed […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/valve-makes-gaming-on-8-gb-gpus-viable/

Turf Warz is a location-based mobile game that turns your dog's routine walks into territory battles. Start a walk, let GPS trace your route, and tap when your dog marks to claim territory on the neighborhood map. Build and defend your color, flip rivals, and climb leaderboards. Form pack alliances, track rivalries, and level up each dog across Strength, Speed, and Endurance. Share moments in the Bark Feed, invite friends, and use family sharing so your household holds turf together.

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Evaluator is an AI-powered technical assessment platform. Describe a role in plain English and it generates a tailored technical assessment. Candidates complete it on their own time. AI scores responses across five dimensions: code quality, problem solving, system design, communication, and debugging. Built-in integrity monitoring detects AI-generated answers, copy/paste behavior, and timing anomalies. The free plan includes 10 assessment cycles with every feature.

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Paid search success used to be driven by optimizations. You adjusted bids, restructured campaigns, refined match types, and added negatives. Performance moved accordingly.

That’s still how many accounts are managed. When I audit them, they often look “well optimized”: active management, no glaring structural deficiencies, and targets that match achieved ROAS. On paper, everything checks out. But performance is quietly stuck.

Google Ads no longer responds to isolated optimizations. It builds on what you’ve been rewarding. So when I hear, “That didn’t work,” it usually means the change didn’t override months of prior signals.

What most advertisers still call optimization is actually training. They’re teaching the system the wrong lessons.

Why isolated optimizations don’t move the needle anymore

Today’s Google Ads environment is dominated by Smart Bidding, Performance Max, broad match expansion/AI Max, and modeled conversions. These systems don’t reset when you make a change. They learn cumulatively.

If you raise a ROAS target this week, that action doesn’t override six months of reinforced signals. If you launch a new campaign but shut it down after 10 days, the system doesn’t “forget” that volatility was punished. If brand revenue consistently carries the account, Google learns that safe, predictable demand is the highest priority.

The platform continuously optimizes toward the behaviors that survive, get funded, hit targets, and avoid being paused.

When accounts plateau despite strong management, it’s rarely because bids are wrong. It’s because the system has been trained to avoid uncertainty, but uncertainty is where growth lives.

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What training looks like in a Google Ads account

On the back end, Google Ads is constantly answering one question: What does success look like here?

It infers the answer from:

• Which conversions you include.
• How you value them.
• Which campaigns are protected during volatility.
• How quickly you react to performance swings.

Over time, those signals shape the system’s behavior:

• Which queries it expands into.
• Which audiences it prioritizes.
• How aggressively it competes in auctions.
• Whether it explores new demand or recycles existing buyers.

Training is about the direction you reinforce over months. If repeat customers hit your ROAS target easily and prospecting campaigns fluctuate, which one do you think the system will prioritize over time?

Here’s a pattern I’ve seen more than once.

• Month 1: Non-brand drives 52% of revenue.
• Month 6: Non-brand drives 36%.

ROAS improves, and everyone’s happy. Except new customer growth flattens. The system has simply learned that predictable revenue is more important than incremental revenue. That’s training.

How you might be training Google Ads wrong

These mistakes are subtle and are often framed as good management. That’s what makes them dangerous.

Mistake 1: Training on the easiest revenue

Branded search converts well, returning customers convert well, and promo periods convert very well — so we lean in. We scale budgets behind what works and protect it.

Over time, Google learns that predictable revenue is the safest path to success.

Here’s a simplified example (replace with real data if available):

ROAS improved during this period, but incremental demand declined due to the account’s conservative training. This is one of the most common ceilings we see.

Mistake 2: Punishing volatility

This one hits close to home for most teams. Short-term inefficiency is part of prospecting, but most advertisers respond to it immediately:

• Tightening ROAS targets after one soft week.
• Pulling budget during learning phases.
• Pausing campaigns that explore new or expanded audiences.

From a human perspective, this feels responsible, but from a training perspective, it sends a clear message: exploration (uncertainty) is unacceptable.

The system adapts by prioritizing stability over expansion. It narrows the query mix. It leans harder into repeat purchasers. It becomes increasingly efficient, and increasingly stagnant. If everything in your account feels equally clean, you’re probably recycling demand.

Even if ROAS fluctuates, a prospecting or awareness campaign can still drive meaningful new customer lift if given time to mature, as in the example below:

The difference between plateaued accounts and growing accounts is rarely skill. It’s tolerance for controlled volatility.

Mistake 3: Pretending all purchases are equal

In most DTC setups, every purchase is treated equally, but a first-time, full-price buyer, a repeat customer, and a promo-driven order aren’t equal signals.

When every purchase sends the same signal, Google will favor the one that’s easiest to reproduce. That’s usually repeat behavior. Then we wonder why new customer acquisition gets harder.

For the client above, the implementation of lapsed customer targeting and valuation led to a 53% YoY increase in orders vs. a 12% YoY increase the three months prior.

What intentional training actually looks like

This is where many teams get uncomfortable, because it requires letting go of short-term ROAS obsession in favor of aligning Google Ads with the actual business model.

If a client’s business depends on new customer growth, but you’re optimizing purely to blended ROAS, you’ve misaligned the system from the start. If mis-training is cumulative, so is intentional training. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Maintain efficiency lanes

Efficiency lanes exist to protect baseline revenue. They’re tightly managed. They often include brand campaigns and high-intent non-brand terms with predictable performance.

These campaigns can carry stricter ROAS or CPA targets. They stabilize cash flow. They help CEOs sleep at night. They are not your growth engine.

Build growth lanes

Growth lanes are structured differently. They often include broader match types, category expansion, new audience layering, or creative angles that introduce new use cases. They have looser yet realistic targets.

If your efficiency campaigns run at a 500% ROAS target, your growth campaigns might operate at 350%, with the explicit understanding that they exist to expand demand and acquire new customers.

Here’s the key: you don’t tighten the growth lane every time it fluctuates. You let it learn.

In one DTC account, separating these lanes and holding growth campaigns to a slightly lower ROAS threshold led to a 43% lift in YoY new customers in Q4, while blended ROAS actually improved 10%.

You can see the spend and order relationship below, where an increased investment in new drove measurable change, and the reduction on returning customers didn’t harm the bottom line. 

This controlled asymmetry is how you scale smarter.

Change signals slowly

If you adjust ROAS targets every two weeks, you’re resetting the system constantly.

Targets shouldn’t be adjusted weekly in response to noise. Campaigns shouldn’t pause during early learning unless structurally broken. Creative testing should be protected long enough to produce a clear signal.

Give it time and let data compound. In one account, simply holding ROAS targets steady for 60 days — instead of tightening them after minor dips — resulted in broader query expansion and improved non-brand impression share without increasing spend.