Tuesday was a quiet news day, four stories, no algorithm update, no platform outage. But the quietest one may be the most telling: weeks after publisher CEOs said blocking Googlebot was on the table, many are signing confidential AI licensing deals with Google instead, even as Google’s own UK traffic and ad revenue numbers keep climbing. A similar gap shows up in paid search, where a headline growth slowdown hides a cost per click line that says demand never actually left.
The Loud Story and the Line Item Don’t Match
Publishers say they might block Google, then quietly sign deals with it under NDA. Paid search spend looks like it is decelerating, but the cost per click line says demand didn’t slow, the comparison just got harder.
- Publishers Threatened to Block Google. Many Signed Instead Weeks after publisher CEOs said blocking Googlebot was on the table, Press Gazette reports many UK publishers are quietly signing confidential two year Google AI licensing deals under NDA, trading referral traffic for cash and rights to train, ground, and surface their content in AI Mode. Google’s platforms logged 36 billion UK page views in April, up 31 percent year over year, while publishers’ combined ad revenue share fell roughly 5 percent, according to Press Gazette’s analysis; one unnamed adviser called the dynamic a prisoner’s dilemma, a characterization attributed to that single source, not a confirmed account of Google’s intent.
- Paid Search Growth Is Volume, Not Price. CPC Rose Just 1% Google search ad spend grew 14 percent year over year in Q2, but average cost per click rose only about 1 percent, meaning advertisers bought more clicks rather than paying more per click, per Tinuiti’s Q2 2026 Digital Ads Benchmark Report. The figures reflect one agency’s managed client spend rather than the whole market, and Tinuiti attributes the slower headline growth rate largely to tougher year ago comparisons, not weakening demand.
Today’s Quick Hits
- Cloudflare AI Bot Toggle May Be Blocking Googlebot, Unconfirmed A single Reddit report says flipping Cloudflare’s Block AI Training toggle sent both Googlebot and Bingbot HTTP 403 errors when fetching a site’s sitemap. Google has not confirmed a bug and Cloudflare has not commented, but the report lands weeks ahead of Cloudflare’s own September 15 deadline for blocking crawlers classified as both search and AI training, worth an audit either way.
- Google Beta Tests Handle Swapping On Search Profiles Google is beta testing Handle Swapping inside Search Profiles, letting a small group of volunteer creators replace their public handle with a verified handle from another linked platform. Google told testers a wider launch is coming very soon, per one participant, though the company has not confirmed a timeline itself.