Brands are testing ways to pay their way into AI answers, while AWR’s study finds top desktop organic positions on Google pages that carry an AI Overview drawing far fewer clicks, and publishers went to Washington to lobby for rules on who gets to crawl them.
Paying to Be in the Answer: Ads, Talking Points and Plugin Rankings
Three announcements put money and ranking into AI answers, and each leaves the key details unpublished.
- ChatGPT Ads Reach 43% of Eligible US Users, Graphite Reports Graphite, working with Similarweb panel data, puts US click-through at 0.73 percent, below Brazil, Mexico, Japan and South Korea, which ranged from 1.21 to 1.91 percent. The figures are Graphite’s and cumulative over unequal periods, and Search Engine Journal’s reading defines CTR per ChatGPT reply carrying an ad, not per impression.
- Amazon Will Let Brands Steer Alexa Shopping Answers From 2027 Amazon announced Branded Conversations at unBoxed, letting advertisers add talking points such as how their products differ from rivals, with US availability planned for January 2027. Adweek and Pacvue’s material does not describe how sponsored answers would be labeled.
- OpenAI Says ChatGPT Improved How It Ranks and Surfaces Plugins TechCrunch reported that OpenAI says plugin ranking has improved in its directory and in conversations, but neither TechCrunch nor OpenAI’s recap explains how it works. For brands weighing a plugin, that makes it a test, not a playbook.
Clicks Under Pressure: Same Rank, Fewer Visits
A quarterly study of organic click rates on Google pages with an AI Overview and a citation-layout test both bear on how much traffic AI results leave for publishers.
- AI Overviews Widen the Desktop CTR Gap as Mobile Clicks Rise, AWR Finds In Advanced Web Ranking’s Q2 data, US desktop positions one and two drew 10.04 percent CTR with an AI Overview against 29.05 percent without one, while mobile positions rose. It is AWR’s study, not a Google statement, and a Search Console logging error clouds the quarter comparison.
- Google Tests AI Overview Citation Cards Below the Answer Glenn Gabe spotted a desktop test that stacks citations under the answer behind a show-all control, per Search Engine Roundtable. It is a test, not a launch, but citation trackers should log where links appear.
Who Is Knocking: Publishers Take the Crawler Fight to Washington
Robots.txt only works on bots that announce themselves, and publishers want a law that makes announcing mandatory.
- Publishers Lobby Congress to Make Hidden AI Crawlers Declare Themselves Digiday reported that more than 300 news executives went to Washington to lobby for the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would require crawlers to state who they are and why they collect content. This is lobbying, not a vote, and Digiday reports no hearing date.
Local Signals Shift: Retail Ads, Support Rules and Pins at Sea
Local visibility news came from three directions, an Amazon ad format and two Google Business Profile and Maps items.
- Amazon Ads Puts Yelp Local Pros on Order Confirmation Pages Sponsored Services shows Yelp advertisers such as plumbers and roofers to Amazon shoppers after checkout, live now in the US only. Amazon published no pricing or targeting details, and the placement ties to Yelp, not to a Google Business Profile.
- Google Business Profile Adds a Support-Misuse Policy Search Engine Roundtable reported a new “Misuse of support channels” policy warning that repeated unfounded complaints may see later ones rejected without assessment. The page gives no threshold for repeated, which matters most to agencies filing on behalf of clients.
- Google Maps Bug Drops Service-Area Business Pins in the Ocean Search Engine Roundtable reported that some service-area businesses that hide their address show a profile pin at sea, and Google has not acknowledged the problem. Local teams should screenshot any misplaced pin with a date.
Today’s Quick Hits
- Clarity Lets Sites Edit Which AI Queries Count as Branded Microsoft Clarity’s AI Visibility dashboard now accepts custom Brand Terms, though its post names no AI platforms and gives no accuracy figures for the classification.