AI halftime report: H1 2026

AI search grew, token spending surged, software stocks fell, and publishers lost traffic. Here’s what H1 2026 revealed about AI’s impact.

Source:
Search Engine Land

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 29, 2026

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google Search Console platform properties is fully live, it is cool…

Source:
Search Engine Roundtable

Google Search Console Platform properties are now globally live

Plus, Google released new help documentation on how to analyze the social and video data.

Source:
Search Engine Land

Google Platform Properties Fully Live With More Help Documentation

Earlier this month, Google announced platform properties, a way to see content that you manage but on third-party platforms, including social platforms and video platforms. So if you have an account on Instagram, TikTok, X and/or YouTube, you can claim access and see how your content on those platforms are performing within Google Search. That feature is now globally live as of today, Google announced.

Source:
Search Engine Roundtable

How prompt injection puts your brand and AI workflows at risk

Prompt injection attacks put your customers, AI agents, LLM referral share, and vendor stack at risk. Here’s where the threats are emerging.

Source:
Search Engine Land

Google Does Not Publish Search’s Precedence For Metadata During Conflicts

Google’s John Mueller confirmed it has not and likely won’t publish publicly Google Search’s defined order of precedence for metadata reconciliation. In other words, if you have conflicting signals you are sending Google, which signal trumps the other. Like a 301 redirect from URL A to URL B but on URL B, you have a canonical tag to URL A, which should Google trust.

Source:
Search Engine Roundtable

The Problem With unavailable_after date after – Google Might Not See Updated Dates

Google supports the unavailable_after meta attribute, which will tell Google not to show this page in search results after the specified date/time. The problem with this, is that if you try to change the unavailable_after date later, Google might not pick up on it because Google may not try to crawl that page before the last given date.

Source:
Search Engine Roundtable

Platform properties roll out globally, plus a new social and video performance guide  |  Google Search Central Blog  |  Google for Developers

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Source:
Google Search Central Blog

What 15.7 million AI Mode citations reveal about getting quoted by Google

A year-long study of 15.7 million AI Mode citations across 148 industries shows exactly which passages Google highlights — and reuses.

Source:
Search Engine Land

Ghost citations: Why AI search cites your content, not your brand

Around 40% of AI citations leave the source brand unnamed, exposing a blind spot in how companies measure visibility in AI search.

Source:
Search Engine Land

How SEO scope creep happens and 7 ways to prevent it

Small, unbilled SEO requests add up fast. Use these seven steps to control scope creep, price extra work, and protect your profitability.

Source:
Search Engine Land

How to scale SEO content updates with Claude Code

See how a 14-step workflow diagnoses content decay, protects rankings, and drives measurable traffic and revenue gains.

Source:
Search Engine Land

Kia takes a Reddit staple for a spin during WNBA All-Star Weekend

The brand’s AMA featured a claw machine of preselected questions answered live on video and generated 61,000 views in 72 hours.

Source:
Social Media Today – Latest News

Microsoft Bing Testing Pricing On Product Images

Microsoft seems to be testing showing pricing on the product images within the Bing Search organic results. Normally, Bing would show review stars on the product images and, below the image, show the price. I should note that I am also seeing two rows of products under a single search result snippet, which I think is new.

Source:
Search Engine Roundtable

Microsoft Bing Ads Revenue Up 10%

Microsoft reported its fourth-quarter 2026 earnings, showing that its search and advertising revenue was up 10%, indicating its ad growth was 2 points lower than the previous quarter. The previous quarter it was up 12%, before that up 10% before that, up 16% and the one before that was 21% and this quarter, it is only up 10%.

Source:
Search Engine Roundtable

Google Ads Budget Panel Added To PMax Campaigns

Google Ads has introduced what it calls "Budget Panel," which should be able to be found (at some point) in Performance Max and Demand Gen campaign review page. Google says the Budget Panel "provides customized budget recommendations to optimize campaign performance and prevent low starts."

Source:
Search Engine Roundtable

Google Ads Lead Journey Mapping Feature

Google Ads posted details about a new feature it calls "Lead Journey Mapping." Lead Journey Mapping is a visual drag-and-drop tool that allows lead generation advertisers to map their end-to-end customer journey within Google Ads.

Source:
Search Engine Roundtable

Google Ads Target CPA & Target ROAS Explicit Bidding Strategy Options

The Google Ads interface now shows Target CPA and Target ROAS as explicit bidding strategy options in the drop-down of bidding options. We knew this was coming, as it is supported in the new version of Google Ads Editor 2.13 and all the other recent communication from Google and now advertisers are seeing it.

Source:
Search Engine Roundtable