The SEOFOMO Newsletter​

January 18, 2026
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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +40,500 SEOs.
Today's sponsor is Semrush Enterprise. Want to advertise? Ask here.​

Who would have seen this coming? 😉

​OpenAI will start to test ads in the US for the Free and Go tiers​

Fidji Simo / OpenAI

It’s official: ChatGPT will start to test ads in the US for the free and Go tiers users in the coming weeks and has shared their ads principles, among others:

• Answer independence: Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you. Answers are optimized based on what's most helpful to you. Ads are always separate and clearly labeled.
• Conversation privacy: We keep your conversations with ChatGPT private from advertisers, and we never sell your data to advertisers.
• Choice and control: You control how your data is used. You can turn off personalization, and you can clear the data used for ads at any time.
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  ​Read more​

In case you had any doubts Google would win the AI race

​Apple is finally upgrading Siri, and Google Gemini will power it​

Danny Goodwin / Search Engine Land

Apple is teaming up with Google to power its next generation of AI features, including a long-awaited Siri upgrade: "With Gemini powering Siri, Apple’s assistant should become a true AI answer engine."

Sadly, is not Gemini search data within Google Trends

​Google Trends Explore page now uses Gemini to delve into Search trends​

Nir Kalush / Google

Google is rolling out an updated Trends Explore page that has a new side panel, which uses Gemini capabilities to automatically identify and compare relevant trends for your area of interest. You’ll also see a list of suggested Gemini prompts to help you explore further.

A must-read for ecommerce sites

​Microsoft Advertising releases a Guide to AEO and GEO for Retailers [PDF]​

Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft has released a comprehensive and actionable guide sharing how AI-driven shopping is transforming discovery and purchase journeys and how we ensure our products are truly understood by AI.

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The Search Platform for Ambitious Brands

Semrush Enterprise empowers teams to dominate both search engines and AI.

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Get performance tracking, live content scoring, and real-time optimization guidance for both SEO and AI search visibility in one place.

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The new AI vs SEO Comparison even puts this performance into a comprehensive dashboard.

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The best part? Manual tasks like link building can be swapped for strategy that moves the needle. Let advanced automations take care of it for you.

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Top performing categories are eCommerce driven

​Google’s December 2025 Core Update: Winners, Losers & Analysis​

Lily Ray / Amsive

Dig into Lily Ray's analysis of Google’s December 2025 Core Update. See what changed, who gained, and what it means for SEO in 2026.

The state of the Web optimization is here

​The SEO Chapter from The 2025 Web Almanac​

Amaka Chulwuma, Chris Green, Sophie Brannon / HTTP Archive

Crawlability and indexability remain strong: most sites serve valid robots.txt files and canonical tags, and markup hygiene continues to improve year over year. Learn more about the state of search optimization across the web in the SEO chapter of the 2025 Web Almanac.

Learn about the state and the future of news SEO

​What Comes Next for News SEO and Publishers​

Gianluca Fiorelli, John Shehata / Advanced Web Ranking

John shares about why AI Overviews represent the real threat to publishers, how Google Discover became a major traffic driver, how to adopt a multi-format content strategy, and much more in this insightful interview with Gianluca.

Learn how caching works

​Making Sense of Next.js Caching for Developers and SEOs​

Will Kennard

Will breaks down the core concepts of caching in Next.js from the perspective of a technical SEO: the two types of pages, dynamic routes, suspense, hydration, and key considerations for SEOs.

• Related: Optimising Vibe-Coded Next.js Applications for Performance, Crawlability & Search Success by Will Kennard​

Cosine similarity remains the best general purpose choice

​Beyond Cosine Similarity: Testing Advanced Algorithms for SEO Content Analysis​

Mikael Araújo / Sitebulb

Mikael tests which similarity measures work best for SEO content analysis beyond the popular cosine similarity.

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Merchant Center remains foundational, now with expanded attributes

​What UCP Means for Ecommerce SEO: Preparing for Agentic Commerce​

Aleyda Solis

UCP changes ecommerce SEO by expanding its scope. Here's an initial view of what UCP means for ecommerce SEO, based on what has been disclosed in the announcement as well as official implementation documentation.

• Related: Agentic Commerce: What SEOs Need To Consider (ACP & UCP) by Alex Moss​

Is AI Mode data really in Google Search Console? Read this

​Clicks, Impressions, and Positions from AI Mode in Google Search Console​

Jean-christophe Chouinard

Google has confirmed that Google AI Mode traffic data is in Google Search Console, but that there are no AI mode specific report. Jean-Christophe goes through how the clicks are tracked, what gets counted as a position, and what gets impressions.

Attribution alternatives for AI Search

​How are we going to handle attribution as clicks disappear?​

Chris Green

Chris goes through the attribution alternatives for AI search/: Educate stakeholders that clicks matter less, adopt proxy metrics for traffic and exposure, and correlate exposure with revenue.

• Related: News publishers expect search traffic to drop 43% by 2029: Report by Danny Goodwin​

Difficulty measuring impact/ROI is among top challenges

​The State of AEO / GEO in 2026: CMO Investment Report​

Conor Baker / Conductor

Conductor surveyed over 250 top digital leaders on how they're approaching AEO in 2026: "56% of CMOs and digital leaders made a significant or high investment in AEO / GEO in 2025."

The Shift: Beyond Retrieval to Recursive Memory

​The Sentient Store Evolves: Scaling Agentic SEO through the Context Graph​

Gianluca Fiorelli

Learn about context graphs to build a reasoning moat. Move from data-at-rest to agentic authority with bitemporal modeling and decision traces.

What works & what doesn’t?

​AI Search Unpacked: AMA with Emina Demiri-Watson​

Emina Demiri-Watson

Emina shares practical insights on AI search, brand visibility, and how SEO teams should adapt without chasing hype.

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• ​SEO Specialist at Verndale​
• ​SEO Specialist at Sportradar​
• ​SEO Marketing Coordinator at CharterUP​
• ​Senior SEO Specialist at RevolutionParts​
• ​Content Marketing Manager at Spoiler Alert ​
• ​SEO, GEO & Content Strategist at Stratabeat ​
• ​Digital Marketing Manager- SEO/GEO at Ensora Health​
• ​Organic Growth Manager (Generative Search) at Revolut​

Join the next free SEOFOMO x SEO Collective Meetup in Sydney Sponsored by Ahrefs & Prosperity Media in Sydney with panels going through SEO trends and AI Search, giveaways, free drinks, food, and networking on March 18, 2026 from 6pm to 10pm.

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The panels will feature experienced specialists: Nik Ranger, Jes Scholz, Despina Gavoyannis, Ana Luna, Jeremy Cabral, Regan McGregor, Kai Forsyth, Matt Corke, Lachlan Hutchinson, Rahul Sengupta and more!

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The event will be co-hosted by Aleyda Solis from SEOFOMO and Aaron Taylor from the SEO Collective Sydney. Don't miss out.

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