NETPROFIT

Web & Online-Marketing Experten. Agentur für besseres Web seit 2001.
#web #tools #tipps #contao #seo #sea #smm

[Google Search Central @googlesearchc]

Today we released the March 2026 spam update. We'll update our ranking release history page when the rollout is complete: https://t.co/CwCjstgv0H

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

Google dropped a 64-page technical guide for building AI agents.

https://t.co/JRZbBOjyda

[Google Analytics @googleanalytics]

Here’s how to measure traffic originating from AI chatbots within a dedicated channel group → https://t.co/lsqI76efw0

[THREAD] 🧵

[Markus Hövener @bloonatic]

What 4 AI search experiments reveal about attribution and buying decisions https://t.co/QWgAhkO49h

[SEO Südwest @SEO_Suedwest]

In den Bing Webmaster Tools sieht man jetzt separate Daten zur Leistung der KI-Performance. Damit ist Microsoft Google einen wichtigen Schritt voraus.
https://t.co/qFAbKuQ2qC

[Alex Groberman @alexgroberman]

Microsoft just released an official “Here Is How To Get Traffic From ChatGPT” guide.

It has gotten surprisingly little attention.

Let’s go over it together.

Last week Microsoft dropped “From discovery to influence: A guide to AEO and GEO - Practical data strategies to empower retailers for AI search, AI assistants and AI browsers.”

Everything here is drawn directly from the document and its diagrams, with some of my personal takes layered on top for clarity and execution value.

I’ll also reference the pages in the PDF in case you want to go read it yourself.

That said, if you don't care and just want someone to get the ChatGPT traffic for you, let SEO Stuff do the heavy lifting:

https://t.co/zvZUfkYWT4

Microsoft’s central message in the doc is that retail competition is shifting from “being found” to “being chosen.”

They argue that traditional SEO was optimized for:

Ranking

Clicks

Page visits

Whereas AI-driven shopping replaces that with:

Answers

Recommendations

Agent-led decisions

They’re arguing that visibility is now earned by how clearly AI systems understand your products, trust your brand and can act on your data.

This is where “AEO” and “GEO” come in.

(I hate both of these acronyms and prefer to just call it all AI search optimization, but this is their doc so I’ll go with their language.)

This is also why we’ve seen brands struggle even with strong traditional SEO, but immediately improve AI visibility once they pair technical SEO with structured, intent-driven content and authoritative signals like those included in SEO Stuff’s Gold Plan.

https://t.co/yEFyM0Ze7W

Microsoft also broke down the difference, to them, between AEO and GEO.

Microsoft makes it a very clean distinction:

Answer / Agentic Engine Optimization (AEO) in their estimation optimizes content and data so AI assistants and agents (Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini) can:

Find it

Understand it

Summarize it

Recommend it

Act on it

This is about clarity and machine-readability.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) optimizes content so generative AI search systems trust it as:

Authoritative

Credible

Citable

This is about credibility, reputation, and justification.

Microsoft is explicit that SEO still matters, but it is now the foundation and not the endpoint.

In practice, this is why execution now requires both properly structured pages and volume at scale, something SEO Stuff intentionally designed the Premium Content Bundle to solve.

https://t.co/wA30K3XNYQ

Microsoft then delved into the AI shopping ecosystem and how discovery actually works now.

One of the most interesting sections is Microsoft’s breakdown of AI browsers, assistants, and agents (pages 5–7).

These are not separate systems and they overlap constantly.

AI BROWSERS

Edge, Chrome, or similar with embedded AI

They can “see” the live page you are on and interpret it in real time.

AI ASSISTANTS

Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini

They answer questions, summarize options, and recommend products.

AI AGENTS

They:

Navigate websites

Add items to carts

Apply promo codes

Calculate shipping

Complete purchases

The key insight:

The question is not “which AI surface am I optimizing for?”

The question is what data can AI access, trust, and use?

This is exactly where most sites break.

The data exists, but it isn’t structured, consistent, or surfaced in a way AI can reliably act on.

Microsoft then went into how AI actually decides what to recommend.

Microsoft outlines a multi-stage reasoning process used by Copilot and Bing AI (pages 7–8).

AI does not rely on one data source, but rather fuses:

CRAWLED WEB DATA

Brand reputation

Category authority

Expert mentions

Historical understanding

PRODUCT FEEDS AND APIS

Price

Availability

Variants

Inventory

Key specs

This is where competitive advantage often comes from, and where most brands are under-optimized.

LIVE WEBSITE DATA

Real-time pricing

Promotions

Reviews

Media

Checkout functionality

If your live site fails, the agent fails, even if feeds were perfect.

An example Microsoft gives is “rain jacket under $200.”

AI reasoning includes:

“Patagonia and North Face make quality jackets” (general knowledge)

“Hiking jackets need to be lightweight and waterproof” (category understanding)

“Brand X is known for hiking equipment” (brand positioning)

“Your model is $179 and in stock” (feeds)

“Competitor is $199 and backordered” (feeds)

Your product makes the top recommendations because feeds, availability, price, and context align.

This is why content that simply “ranks” but doesn’t explain, compare, or justify rarely shows up in AI answers without additional supporting assets.

Microsoft then really breaks down the journey from SEO to AEO to GEO.

They summarize the transition pretty clearly (page 6):

SEO = matching keywords

“Waterproof rain jacket”

AEO = descriptive clarity

“Lightweight, packable waterproof rain jacket with ventilation and reflective piping”

GEO = justification and trust

“Best-rated by Outdoor Magazine, 4.8 stars, 180-day returns, 3-year warranty”

So basically, AEO drives understanding and GEO drives confidence, and you need both to be recommended.

This is why brands pairing long-form, intent-driven content with authoritative backlinks and mentions often outperform those relying on SEO alone.

Then Microsoft talks about three data layers you must control.

They stress that retailers must show up in three distinct data planes (page 10):

CRAWLED DATA

What AI learned during training

What it finds via real-time web search

This shapes baseline brand perception.

SEO still matters here.

PRODUCT FEEDS AND APIS

Structured data you actively provide

This is where precision and control live.

Feeds drive:

Comparisons

Rankings

Recommendations

This is where many retailers under-invest.

LIVE WEBSITE DATA

What AI agents see when they actually visit

Includes:

Reviews

Media

Dynamic pricing

Checkout capability

If agents cannot transact, influence stops at recommendation.

Here are the three action pillars Microsoft prescribes.

This is the most legit part of the document (pages 11–14).

Pillar 1: Technical foundations and structured data

AI requires structure and consistency, not creativity.

Microsoft explicitly calls for:

MACHINE-READABLE CATALOGS

DYNAMIC FIELDS:

Price

Availability

Size

Color

SKU

GTIN

dateModified

ITEMLIST MARKUP FOR CATEGORIES

LOCALIZED PRICING AND LANGUAGE VIA:

inLanguage

priceCurrency

REQUIRED SCHEMA TYPES:

Product

Offer

AggregateRating

Review

Brand

ItemList

FAQ

They also highlight this:

“Never serve different HTML to bots than to users.”

Pillar 2: Intent-driven content enrichment

AI interprets intent over keywords.

MICROSOFT RECOMMENDS:

Front-loading descriptions with:

Who it is for

What problem it solves

Why it is better

Use-case framing:

“Best for day hikes above 40 degrees”

Headings that mirror real questions

Modular, citable content blocks

THEY EXPLICTELY ENCOURAGE:

Q&A sections

Comparison content

Feature lists

“Goes well with” product relationships

Video transcripts

Detailed image alt text with ImageObject schema

This is content designed for extraction as opposed to reading.

This is also why scale matters.

One or two pages won’t move the needle.

Systems that produce dozens of structured, intent-mapped articles tend to win, which is exactly what the Premium Content Bundle is built around.

https://t.co/wA30K3XNYQ

Pillar 3: Trust and credibility signals (GEO)

AI systems prioritize verifiable truth.

Microsoft highlights:

VERIFIED SOCIAL PROOF

Verified reviews

Review volume

Sentiment extraction (“highly rated for comfort and fit”)

Review and AggregateRating schema

AUTHORITATIVE BRAND IDENTITY

Expert reviews

Press mentions

Certifications

Sustainability badges

Official brand links

CONTENT INTEGRITY

Avoid exaggerated claims

Maintain consistent brand voice

Provide structured FAQs and help content

This also stood out:

“AI penalizes low-trust language.”

Interesting, but obviously open to interpretation.

Microsoft then closed with a fairly straightforward message.

Retailers already have most of the signals AI uses to rank and recommend.

The winners in AI commerce will be the brands that:

Treat data as a product

Treat feeds as strategic assets

Treat content as machine-readable infrastructure

Treat trust as a measurable ranking factor

This is what Microsoft calls “AI ranking readiness.”

If I had to reduce this entire PDF to one core idea:

If AI cannot clearly understand your products, justify recommending them, and act on your data in real time, you will not be a legit presence in AI-driven commerce.

This document is Microsoft formally telling retailers that:

SEO alone is good, but not fully enough

Feeds are now a competitive moat

Trust is algorithmic

AI assistants are the new gatekeepers of demand

Luckily, SEO Stuff solves for all of this.

Want to increase your traffic and sales from traditional search and AI search?

Just RT this and reply with “ChatGPT Guide” and I’ll DM you some “unconfirmed” tricks we’ve been using to get traffic from ChatGPT in as quickly as 30 days.

(Must be following me to get the DM.)

[James McDonald @jamesm]

When you toggle the lights, the entire page dims to create a more immersive sense of the lighting

Such a great design detail 💡

[NETPROFIT @netprofit]

Danke für das Buch Recht für Online-Marketing und KI, das Wochenende ist gerettet. Das nächste auch. ☺️
Nach der Tasse Kaffee hab ich immerhin das Inhaltsverzeichnis durch.

[Nelly; @nrqa__]

Someone on Reddit just dropped the perfect ChatGPT prompt for clear, accurate and straight answers:

[Brodie Clark @brodieseo]

SEO News: Google is now testing out a new type of AI-generated description for some pages. Is this the end of the meta description?

Instead of using a snippet of text from the page to generate the description, Google is generating the description itself based on the indexable content found on the page.

The description (which included the 'More >' link) takes users directly to the thread, which is different to a normal description that only has the title for the snippet as the link.

This experiment was also spotted by @fighto, with it looking like the experiment is contained to just Reddit at this stage. Will it expand to other types of websites? I wouldn't be surprised, given Google's emphasis on AI features in recent times.

Writing meta descriptions manually is a low-value task for SEO, which shouldn't take up too much time, with Google often replacing it with other text from the page with relevant content to the query.

With AI descriptions, this could potentially remove the need to write meta descriptions in the first place, if the Reddit experiment is anything to go off.

Make sure to subscribe to my newsletter in the comments for a full rundown of SERP feature changes from this past month (it goes out next week).

[Chris Long @chris_nectiv]

Must-read SEO article: OpenAI released a 10,000+ word research paper titled "How People Use ChatGPT".

The study gives TONS of data on conversation intent, topics + more:

[Barry Schwartz @rustybrick]

Google admits in a court doc filed Friday afternoon that the "open web is already in rapid decline" after Google execs for months have been saying the "web is thriving" https://t.co/edtgjUdEC2 via @jason_kint

[Markus Hövener @bloonatic]

Google: AI Mode soll bald Standard sein https://t.co/EXOfOzFnqo

[Google Search Central @googlesearchc]

Today we released the August 2025 spam update.

It may take a few weeks to complete, and we'll post on the Google Search Status Dashboard when the rollout is done:
https://t.co/VyY24LVujq

[SEO Südwest @SEO_Suedwest]

Shared hosting: IONOS is blocking requests to websites from some AI bots from OpenAI / ChatGPT and Anthropic / Claude:

https://t.co/hJOCs9iri1

#ai #chatgpt #geo #hosting #seo

[NETPROFIT @netprofit]

GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, ist (nur) SEO für KI:
👉🏼 wie in KI-Übersichten von Google und Antworten von ChatGPT sichtbarer werden?
Fünf konkrete Maßnahmen und Tipps für Fortgeschrittene im Blog https://t.co/T2hafe0bOv.
#geo #kiseo

[Google Analytics @googleanalytics]

You’ve been asking: How do I track referral traffic from AI chatbots?

We’ve laid out the steps for you here: https://t.co/cNjTtxTW91

[Barry Schwartz @rustybrick]

Google homepage search box rolling out AI Mode button https://t.co/x1uTSmhRuP

[Gagan Ghotra @gaganghotra_]

Note this down SEO Industry -> this is the start of Google taking away queries data from search console and just show trends at page level. We will not have impressions/clicks in data search console for queries rather it will be just trends for pages & yep for that Google will give us filters to see trends of how pages are performing across usual search results, AI Overviews and AI Mode. BUCKLE UP!! We will not have much of info from Google about what queries the pages are showing up and where?

[Aleyda Solis 🕊️ @aleyda]

🚨 Head up: I don't see the "noreferrer" in Google's AI Mode links anymore 👇 I've just searched for a few queries in AI Mode and have confirmed what Iky Tai over LI just saw too (thanks for the heads up). Double check to see if you see it too, and annotate again in your analytics platform to monitor the evolution of your organic search vs direct traffic from today.

cc @rustybrick