AI Search Newsroom
What changed this week in AI search — model launches, algorithm shifts, citation patterns, and the tooling you need to keep up. Dated, sourced, and safe to quote.
- Citation pattern2026-07-22
ChatGPT expands shopping citations to include indie merchants
OpenAI rolled out an update that surfaces small-merchant product pages alongside big-box retailers in ChatGPT shopping answers.
ChatGPTShoppingSchema - Algorithm update2026-07-18
Google AI Overviews now cite an average of 2.4 sources, down from 4.1
A July 2026 audit of 1,000 AI Overview queries shows Google is collapsing citations to fewer, higher-authority domains.
GoogleAI OverviewsE-E-A-T - Policy2026-07-12
Perplexity launches a publisher API with revenue-share for cited sources
Cited publishers can now enrol in Perplexity's revenue-share program and pipe structured content directly to the answer engine.
PerplexityPublisherMonetisation - Model launch2026-07-05
Claude 4.5 prefers primary sources over aggregators when citing
Anthropic's Claude 4.5 update measurably shifts citation weight toward original research pages and away from aggregator listicles.
ClaudeAnthropicResearch - Benchmark2026-07-01
Benchmark: question-based H2s lift AI citations by 34%
Our July study of 500 pages shows H2/H3s phrased as questions get quoted verbatim by ChatGPT and Perplexity far more often than statement headings.
AEOHeadingsBenchmark - Model launch2026-06-24
Gemini 3 launches with always-on live web grounding
Google's Gemini 3 model grounds every answer with a live web fetch by default, ending the cached-corpus era for its answer surface.
GeminiGoogleCrawling - Tooling2026-06-15
Three major CMS platforms ship native llms.txt support
WordPress, Webflow, and Ghost all shipped native /llms.txt generators in the past two weeks — the standard is going mainstream.
llms.txtStandardsCMS