This week in search and AI, we’re seeing major shifts across the entire discovery ecosystem—from how brands appear in AI-generated answers to how platforms police spam, measure visibility, and assist advertisers with smarter tools.
Conductor released its 2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report, offering new data on how often brands surface inside AI responses across industries.
Google introduced AI-powered advisors for Ads and Analytics, while also facing regulatory scrutiny from the European Commission over its crackdown on parasite SEO.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is pushing forward with an upgraded Copilot experience that integrates full AI-driven search with richer citations.
It’s a quieter news cycle overall, but the changes that landed this week reveal how quickly search is evolving beneath the surface.
The 2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report from Conductor offers one of the first comprehensive looks at brand visibility in the age of AI search, across ten major industries. The research analyzes over 3.3 billion sessions and more than 17 million AI-generated responses (including some 100 million citations) to establish new KPIs for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) alongside traditional SEO metrics.
Key Insights from the Report
Why It Matters for SEOs & Marketers
The Conductor benchmark report signals that the world of search visibility is expanding beyond traditional organic rankings—and entering a new era where being cited, referenced and recommended by AI systems matters as much as ranking in SERPs. For digital teams, this means building strategies that span SEO and AEO/GEO, measuring brand presence across both visible and invisible surfaces, and preparing now for the discovery layer of tomorrow.
Google has launched two new AI-powered assistants—Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor—built on the Gemini model family, set to roll out in English-language accounts during early December. These tools aim to bring “agentic” capabilities into the advertising and analytics workflows, enabling marketers to ask natural-language questions, receive insights, and (in some cases) apply changes directly inside their Google Ads or Analytics accounts.
How They Work
Why This Matters for Marketers & SEOs
Important Considerations
The introduction of Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor signals that AI isn’t just augmenting marketing workflows—it’s embedding intelligence and action directly into them. For brands and agencies, the task now is not only to optimise content and campaigns, but to ensure your systems, data and strategy are set up to feed and benefit from these AI-driven assistants. Keeping your tracking robust, your goals clear, and your workflows ready for AI will be key as the tools evolve.
The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into whether Google’s latest anti-spam efforts — specifically its site reputation abuse / “parasite SEO” policy — are unfairly harming news publishers and may breach the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
At the same time, Google is publicly defending the policy, arguing that it’s essential to protect users from deceptive, low-quality content and that the EU’s move is “misguided” and risks degrading search quality.
This piece breaks down what the dispute is really about, what “parasite SEO” means in practice, and what it could mean for publishers, SEOs, and site owners.
The European Commission is examining whether Google’s site reputation abuse policy — part of its spam rules for Search — unfairly demotes content from news publishers who run sponsored, commercial, or third-party content on their sites.
Regulators say they have received indications that, under this policy, some publisher content is being pushed down in Google’s results, which may:
If Google is found to be in breach of the DMA, the company could face fines of up to 10% or more of its global annual revenue, and in extreme cases, structural remedies such as forcing changes to parts of its business.
The investigation is expected to run for up to 12 months.
Google’s policy targets a specific spam tactic often called “parasite SEO” or site reputation abuse. In simple terms, it works like this:
Google’s blog gives examples such as:
Google says it updated its anti-spam policy in March 2024 to explicitly treat this behavior as site reputation abuse and has since applied manual penalties to some large publishers that allowed this kind of content.
From the Commission’s point of view, the problem isn’t necessarily that Google fights spam — regulators acknowledge that platforms need spam policies. The concern is how far the policy goes and who gets hurt.
According to EU officials and reporting:
In short, Brussels is asking:
Is Google using its dominant position in search to enforce a spam policy that goes too far, unintentionally punishing legitimate publisher business models?
In a blog post titled “Defending Search users from ‘Parasite SEO’ spam”, Google’s Chief Scientist for Search, Pandu Nayak, strongly rejects the EU’s concerns.
Google argues that:
Google also says it:
From Google’s angle, relaxing this policy to address the EU’s concerns would effectively reward spammers and undermine user trust in search results.
For many publishers, sponsored content, brand partnerships, and commercial features have become a major revenue stream as traditional ads and subscriptions come under pressure. The risk they see is that:
For SEOs and site owners, the practical questions are:
Based on Google’s documentation and commentary so far:
The Digital Markets Act isn’t a normal spam or quality guideline; it’s an EU law designed to keep powerful “gatekeepers” from unfairly disadvantaging businesses that rely on them. Under the DMA, regulators can:
That’s why this investigation matters beyond SEO: it tests where the line is between legitimate spam enforcement and platform overreach when a single company controls so much of discovery and traffic.
While the investigation plays out, Google’s policy remains in force, and manual actions or demotions can still apply. Practically speaking:
Even if the EU ultimately forces adjustments to Google’s enforcement in Europe, the wide direction of travel is clear:
The EU’s investigation into Google’s parasite SEO crackdown sits at the intersection of spam fighting, publisher survival, and platform power. Google maintains it’s protecting users from deceptive tactics, while regulators fear legitimate news outlets are paying the price through lost traffic and revenue. As the case moves forward under the DMA, publishers and SEOs should treat this as a signal to re-evaluate third-party content models and ensure they’re built on transparency, relevance, and real value — not just on borrowed authority in the SERPs.
Microsoft announced a significant update to Copilot: a dedicated AI-search experience within Copilot that combines traditional web search with generative intelligence and transparent sourcing. The update emphasizes more prominent, clickable citations, a “show all sources” pane, and a shift toward a search UI that blends speed, depth, and control.
What’s New
Why This Matters for Marketers & SEOs
As Copilot and other AI assistants become mainstream discovery tools, the way users find and trust information is changing:
The update to Copilot underlines a broader shift: search isn’t just about ranking in lists anymore — it’s about being recognized and referenced by intelligent systems. For SEO professionals and content strategists, this means focussing not only on keywords and clicks, but on source integrity, citation visibility, and intelligent routing of answers. As AI search grows, brands and content owners that align with these signals will be the ones users—and assistants—trust first.
As search continues shifting toward an AI-first model, the signals that matter are changing—from rankings and CTR to citations, mentions, and the quality of underlying data powering intelligent systems. This week’s updates highlight a clear trend: platforms are doubling down on transparency, guidance, and quality control, while regulators are becoming more active in questioning how these systems shape visibility. For SEOs, marketers, and content teams, staying ahead means understanding both the technology and the policies shaping it. We’ll continue monitoring the developments that influence how brands are discovered across the new search landscape—see you in next week’s roundup.
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