The SEOFOMO Newsletter​

Sep 6, 2026
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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +46.2K SEOs.
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AI Mode is already running on Google’s newest workhorse model

​Google introduces Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber​

Tulsee Doshi, Raluca Ada Popa

Google introduces Gemini 3.8 Flash, their “most intelligent workhorse model,” priced the same as Gemini 3.7 Flash. The company also rolled out Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, their “most capable cybersecurity model with frontier-level performance in vulnerability detection,” to trusted defenders via the Fairwind Program.

OpenAI says it's "the world’s best computer use model"

​OpenAI introduces GPT-6 Astra​

OpenAI

OpenAI is rolling out GPT-6 Astra, their “most intelligent and aligned model yet”, with state-of-the-art capabilities across computer use, coding, cybersecurity, and science. The model is rolling out to a limited set of organizations and will become available to all ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users in the coming days.

Everybody should have access now

​Google Search Console AI performance reports and Search generative AI control rolling out globally​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land

Google announced that as of August 31, they’ve finished the roll out of the new AI performance reports and Search generative AI controls within Search Console worldwide after a few months of gradual release. The report shows you how well your content and websites are performing in AI responses, AI Mode, and AI Overviews in Google Search.

An easier way to identify search trends in your niche

​Google Trends Explore Page Adds Category Filtering​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable

Google Trends now lets you filter results by category, either with or without a query. This can give you a more refined view of trends for a specific query or zoom out to category-level trends within Google Search.

Context is key when deciding whether to use Google's disavow tool

​Google: The Disavow Tool Does Have Effects​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable

John Mueller said the disavow tool “does have effects,” but “it has its place & time.” This was in response a complaint about a site dropping in the search results after adding links to the disavow link tool.

New research: Comparing ChatGPT & AI Mode

We analyzed 126M+ prompts to get clarity on the key levers and characteristics of ChatGPT and AI Mode, helping you to grow your brand’s AI visibility in each. Discover the differences in the brands being mentioned, the sources being cited, and the competitive sets they create across 22 industries.

Real world impact and site recovery patterns from the latest spam rollout

​Google’s August 2026 Spam Update – Scaled Content Abuse, AI Content, Programmatic Content, Thin Affiliates, And More [Case Studies]​

Glenn Gabe

Glenn goes through detailed case studies analyzing domain performance around Google's August 2026 Spam Update. The cases include "scaled content abuse", AI generated content, thin affiliates, malicious activity, and more.

Quantifying the local ranking weight of titles across 1.4M listings

​Study: How Keywords in Business Names Currently Impact Google Local Pack Rank and AI Search​

Miriam Ellis / Whitespark

Miriam analyzed 1.4 million local business listings to determine whether exact- and partial-match keywords in business titles correlate with visibility in Google’s top 3 local pack results, compared with listings without any keywords in their titles. She found that keywords in the business name definitely correlate with better rankings, except in the real estate industry.

It's time to adapt your affiliate strategies for AI search if you haven't yet

​7 affiliate marketing strategies to succeed in the AI search era​

Kinsta

Kinsta shares seven strategies for affiliate marketers to adapt to zero-click searches: From vertical specialization and showing first-hand evidence to high-trust formats for MOFU and BOFU, and more.

Learn where the 3 budgets collide with the architecture decision matrix

​Attention, Crawl, Render: The 3 Budgets Shaping Every Architecture Decision​

Laura Iancu / Sitebulb

Laura introduces a technical framework for evaluating website performance, balancing crawl efficiency, rendering resources, and attention distribution to optimize technical architecture decisions.

Bridge the gap between entity building and generative optimization

​Entities Are The Foundation of Modern SEO​

Harry Clarkson-Bennett

Harry analyzes the relationship between traditional entity-based SEO and Generative Engine Optimization, offering practical steps on how to map and optimize brand entities for generative retrieval systems.

Balance operational efficiency with editorial quality control

​How We Use AI for Every Article Without Making AI Slop​

Si Quan Ong / Ahrefs

Si explains Ahrefs' internal content workflows, showing how they integrate AI tools for execution while maintaining human oversight, expert insights, and original research to prevent generic content generation.

Stop treating Bing rankings as a ChatGPT proxy

​ChatGPT built its own search index​

Tomek Rudzki / Peec AI

Tomek argues that the assumption that ChatGPT retrieves only through Bing and Google and doesn’t have its own index is wrong. He highlights that ChatGPT has its own retrieval store, index family, ranking stack, and caching layer.

If agents can't complete a task on your site, you have an interface problem

​Can AI Agents Complete Tasks on Your Site? My Agentic Search Readiness Audit Framework [Free Skill Included]​

Orit Mutznik

Orit goes through how to run an agentic search readiness audit in 6 stages: lighthouse baseline, accessibility tree, blocker sweep, real agent task runs, WebMCP decision, and scoring.

Where did citation share go and did the shift look the same across industries?

​More insights into ChatGPT’s August citation shifts​

Similarweb, Aleyda Solis

The latest Similarweb data show that citations are no longer dominated by a few UGC sites and moving towards category specific sites.

AI can't recommend a brand it can't resolve.

​The Semantic Data Layer: Building a Brand AI Can Understand ​

Gianluca Fiorelli, Martha van Berkel, Mark van Berkel / Advanced Web Ranking

Gianluca, Martha, and Mark discuss how a semantic data layer helps AI understand your brand, connect entities, and improve visibility across search engines and generative AI platforms.

Moving from basic content production to structured ontology

​Stop Writing for AI. Start Structuring Knowledge: Ontology for the Next Era of GEO [Presentation]​

Yunhee Choi

Yunhee explores why brands need to move beyond producing more AI-friendly content and start designing the knowledge structures that help AI understand, evaluate, compare, and recommend them. She also introduces a practical 5Q Framework for putting that perspective into action.

Gemini is greedy about grounding

​Demystifying Grounding Queries with Real Data​

Dr. Peter J. Meyers

Dr. Pete looks at how Gemini uses grounding queries to fetch current facts beyond the model’s training, then reviews 5,333 examples across 1,000 subtopics: The queries are mostly long-tail, often include a year, and don't look like typical human keyword lists.

• ​GEO Consultant at KKP​
• ​SEO Strategist at OuterBox​
• ​Associate SEO Director at Amsive​
• ​Senior Content Marketer, SEO at Animalz​
• ​Senior SEO & AI Search Lead at Microsoft​
• ​eCommerce Growth Manager at Marco’s Pizza​
• ​SEO & GEO, Senior Account Manager at Seer Interactive ​
• ​Digital PR / earned media freelancer for NFL data studies at Fanspeak​

LA SEO Meetup at #LATechWeek

A special edition of the LA SEO Meetup during #LATechWeek on October 15, 2026 is here, bringing together the community with two SEO and AI Search panels, featuring Celeste Gonzalez, Jordan Koene, Aleyda Solis, Itamar Blauer, Eric Wu, and more! RSVP now.