The SEOFOMO Newsletter​

February 15, 2026
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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +42,000 SEOs.
Today's sponsors are Semrush Enterprise and Ahrefs. Ask to advertise here.​

The first AI Platform to Offer An Official Report

​Microsoft is introducing an AI Performance Report in Bing Webmaster Tools​

Krishna Madhavan, Meenaz Merchant, Fabrice Canel, Saral Nigam

The new AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools shows how sites content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations.

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This is the first official AI search visibility dashboard directly provided by platforms and includes: Total Citations, Average Cited Pages, Grounding queries, Page-level citation activity, Visibility trends over time.

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There's room to improve and expand of course (in fact, Fabrice from Microsoft has asked feedback in X), but I'm thankful for this first step from Microsoft. Hopefully more platforms like Google and ChatGPT/OpenAI take note.

The ecommerce agentic shift is now starting in Google...

​Google AI Mode rolls out UCP-powered Checkout​

Vidhya Srinivasan / Google

Google launches UCP-powered checkout, letting US shoppers buy items from Etsy and Wayfair, right in AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app (with Shopify, Target, and Walmart coming soon):

"UCP’s potential extends far beyond retail. It’s helping to lay the foundation for a future where all commercial experiences can be seamless and agentic."

Let's see whether ad standards are followed

​OpenAI is testing ads in ChatGPT​

OpenAI

OpenAI is beginning to test ads in ChatGPT in the U.S. The test will be for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers. They have again clarified that:

“Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you. Answers are optimized based on what’s most helpful to you. When you see an ad, they are always clearly labeled as sponsored and visually separated from the organic answer.”.

Convert HTML to markdown, automatically

​Cloudflare introduces Markdown for Agents​

Celso Martinho, Will Allen / Cloudflare

Cloudflare introduces markdown for AI agents, while explaining that feeding raw HTML to an AI is like paying by the word to read packaging instead of the letter inside:

“Our network will automatically and efficiently convert the HTML to markdown, when possible, on the fly”.

This feature is available today in Beta at no cost for Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans, as well as SSL for SaaS customers.

• Related: Markdown-only pages for AI crawlers are a waste of time. Here’s why - by Dan Taylor​

Structured interactions for the agentic web

​Google previews WebMCP, a new protocol for AI agent interactions​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land

Google announced an early preview of WebMCP, a new protocol that lets AI agents execute structured actions on websites via browser APIs.

• Related: WebMCP — the Biggest Shift in Technical SEO by Dan Petrovic​

Is the web really dead?

​Do You Still Need a Website in 2026? [Video]​

Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes / Search Off the Record Podcast

Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes talk about how the web has evolved through the rise of apps, AI chatbots, and social platforms… and, when asked “Do you still need a website in 2026?”, the answer is the usual: “It depends.”

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Be first everywhere customers search

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Visibility means more than rankings for global brands, and Semrush Enterprise empowers them to own every layer of search.

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By unifying SEO and AI search into one platform, you get access to trillions of datapoints, comprehensive performance tracking, and holistic content optimization.

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Swap busywork for impactful strategy with advanced automations that are backed by the market’s leading search database.

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It’s how search leaders stay dominant.

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Stop treating organic search decline as just an “AIO problem”

​Search Isn’t Just Turning to AI, it’s being Re-Monetized: Text Ads Are Taking a Bigger Share of Google SERP Clicks (Data)​

Aleyda Solis

Organic clicks aren’t just being “stolen by AI Overviews”. They’re being reallocated across the SERP, and a big chunk is going to ads.

I dug into Similarweb’s SERP composition + click share data across a few verticals and found that classic organic click share dropped in every single one… and the most consistent “winner” wasn’t AI. It was Text Ads (and PLAs in product categories).

It's time to reframe SEO KPIs around real business value

​Why Your SEO KPIs Are Failing Your Business (And How To Fix Them)​

Bengü Sarıca Dinçer / Search Engine Journal

Rankings and traffic aren’t enough anymore, yet replacing them feels risky. Bengü shares a practical look at how SEO KPIs need to evolve: Operational Signals, Engagement Signals and Business Outcomes.

Why AI Visibility Creates Demand, Not Just Traffic

​From Performance SEO To Demand SEO​

Dan Taylor / Search Engine Journal

AI forces SEO to move beyond rankings toward entity clarity, trust signals, and influence inside decision systems. Dan goes through how this changes the role of SEO.

Download a Free EEAT Checklist

​E-E-A-T Audit: 220+ Markers That Measure Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust​

Despina Gavoyannis / Ahrefs

With all the talk about brand authority shaping performance in Google, especially its AI search features, many people are wondering how to actually measure it: The answer is an EEAT audit. Despina goes through how to run one in this comprehensive guide.

Yes, you should

​Should I Optimize My Content Differently For Each Platform?​

Adam Riemer / Search Engine Journal

See how optimizing content differently for LinkedIn, Reddit, and search engines improves reach, relevance, and user experience across platforms.

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ChatGPT’s CTR is 96% lower than Google’s CTR.

​ChatGPT Has 12% of Google’s Search Volume but Google Sends 190x More Traffic to Websites​

Patrick Stox / Ahrefs

Patrick compares searches and traffic referred from ChatGPT vs Google and explains why if AI search is the future of search, website traffic is in trouble: "Google connects people to websites, ChatGPT keeps them in conversation."

It's an intelligent orchestrator

​ChatGPT is NOT a search engine​

Resoneo

The Resoneo team has dissected ChatGPT Search's internal architecture to provide a deep technical understanding of its mechanisms: from the Sonic classifier to the RRF fusion system, through image pipelines and the Mercury shopping module. A must read and bookmark.

Nearly half of all previously cited domains disappeared from AIOs

​Gemini 3 and a Google bug left 1 in 10 AI Overviews without any sources​

Yevheniia Khromova / SE Ranking

Gemini 3 launched with a bug. Yevheniia analyzed what happened: 46% of domains lost citations, sourceless answers jumped to 10.63%, and appearance rates fell.

Learn about the mechanics of AI multilingual retrieval

​International AI Search Optimization​

Gianluca Fiorelli / Advanced Web Ranking

Gianluca goes through why international SEO breaks in AI search: semantic collapse, geo-drift, hreflang limits, and a framework to fix multilingual, multi-market visibility.

AI search influence shows in sales calls, not traditional SEO reports

​What 4 AI search experiments reveal about attribution and buying decisions​

Lawrence Hitches / Search Engine Land

AI search rarely appears in analytics, yet it shapes trust, shortlists, and sales velocity. These experiments show where measurement breaks.

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Track Brand Mentions Beyond Google

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Ahrefs Brand Radar helps you track brand mentions where people actually discover products today — in YouTube videos (titles, descriptions, and transcripts), TikTok content, and Reddit discussions that appear in search results.

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See how often your brand is mentioned, which competitors dominate attention, and how visibility changes over time.

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Brand Radar combines search demand, mentions, and share of voice into one clear view, so marketing and SEO teams can understand real brand exposure — not just rankings.

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If your brand lives in search, video, and communities, Brand Radar makes it measurable.

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• ​SEO Specialist at Promaxis​
• ​SEO/GEO/AEO Digital Marketing Manager at Appfolio​
• ​Senior SEO Manager at TurboTenant​
• ​SEO Strategist at Geeky Tech​
• ​SEO Manager at Sporty Group​
• ​SEO Manager at Green Line Digital​
• ​SEO Analyst at Coalition Technologies​
• ​Technical SEO Manager at Seer Interactive​