Open a new tab and search your own company name. Look at what sits above your website. Through September, Google put an AI Overview on branded searches between 26 percent and 90 percent of the time, settling near 80 percent by month end. The one search you used to own outright now has a machine answering first.
Search and SEO
Google now answers for your own brand name eight times out of ten
DemandSphere tracked branded keywords daily across markets and devices through September. Early in the month an AI Overview showed on roughly 26 percent of those searches. On 26 September that jumped to 69.21 percent. On 27 September it peaked at 90.48 percent, then held between 80 and 82 percent for the rest of the month. Separate testing by Chris Long at Nectiv found an AI Overview on branded searches for 93 of 100 enterprise brands.
The count includes any AI Overview on a branded search, whether or not it cites the brand itself. That distinction matters. Someone searching your name now reads a summary assembled from whatever Google found, which may include competitor comparisons and review sites you have never looked at.
Why this matters for your business: Search your brand name, your product names and your directors’ names this week, and write down what the AI answer says. If it is wrong or thin, the fix is the one it has always been. Publish clear factual pages about who you are, what you sell and what you charge, and keep your Google Business Profile and your About page saying the same thing. Google builds that answer from sources it trusts, so make the accurate version easy to find.
Those tracking tags on Google results were never Google
Last week search specialists spotted what looked like new tracking parameters on links inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. The tag read st_source=ai_overview, and it appeared to solve the measurement problem everyone has complained about all year. Tom Pool, who first shared it, went back and checked. Google was not doing it. A browser extension in his own Chrome was rewriting the links, and his reading is that the data was being sold to brokers.
Why this matters for your business: Audit the browser extensions on every machine in your business, not only your marketing team’s. An extension allowed to read and change data on the sites you visit can rewrite links and corrupt your own analytics before a click reaches your site. Remove anything nobody deliberately installed. Treat the measurement problem as still open, because Google gives you no reliable way to separate AI Overview traffic from ordinary organic traffic.
Social media
Instagram is testing a read-only mode for paying subscribers
App researcher Alessandro Paluzzi found the feature on 4 October. A subscriber on Instagram’s paid tier could open a profile in a mode that disables liking, commenting, messaging, following and Stories. It looks aimed at people who want to browse without leaving a trace.
Why this matters for your business: If this ships, a slice of your audience will view your content while registering no engagement at all. Reach and impressions will keep telling you the truth while likes and comments understate it. Treat saves, shares, profile visits and direct enquiries as your real measures, because engagement rate is about to get less honest.
Meta’s Muse built a profile page for everyone in your life
Muse passed 5 million downloads last week. On 4 October Wired reported that security researchers found the app builds a page for every person in a user’s life, holding where they live, what they do, recurring themes, birthdays, anniversaries and relationship history. Meta takes 97 percent of its revenue from advertising.
Why this matters for your business: If your staff run Muse on phones holding client contacts, you have a POPIA question about personal information leaving your control, and you want to answer it before a client asks. This is also the sort of data that eventually shapes ad targeting, so expect Meta’s audience tools to sharpen.
Paid search
Google Ads starts writing your promotions for you on 12 October
From 12 October Google Ads will scan your website for valid promotions and build promotion assets from the offers it finds. It applies to Search and Performance Max campaigns that have location assets linked and no promotion assets of their own, and it is on by default. You switch it off under automated asset settings at account level.
Google added A/B testing to Performance Max asset groups the same week. You can test headlines, descriptions, images and video against your existing creative rather than replacing it. One catch. You cannot edit the asset group while a test runs.
Why this matters for your business: Before 12 October, walk your own site the way a scraper would. Old sale banners, expired seasonal offers, a stale pricing page, a finance deal that lapsed in August. Anything live is a candidate. Either take the dead offers down or switch automated promotions off, because an ad promising a price you no longer honour is a complaint waiting to happen. The Performance Max testing is a real gain and worth using, as long as you pick a test window that does not lock you out of edits during a busy fortnight.
Automotive
What automated promotions mean for your dealership
No fresh automotive news broke overnight worth your time, so this is the day’s biggest paid change applied to a dealer floor rather than a story of its own. Google scraping your site for offers from 12 October carries more risk for a dealership than for most businesses, because dealer sites hold more live pricing than almost anyone.
Why this matters for your dealership: Your site probably still carries last month’s OEM campaign banner, a finance offer built on the old prime rate, and vehicle detail pages showing a was price beside a now price. Google can turn any of those into an ad asset without asking. Three problems follow. Finance offers here carry National Credit Act disclosure requirements, and a promotion asset Google writes itself will not carry your disclosure wording. OEM co-op rules dictate exactly how a brand offer may be worded, so a scraped version puts your co-op claim at risk. And a stale price on a unit you sold three weeks ago creates showroom arguments you do not need. Audit every live offer before 12 October, then decide deliberately whether the setting stays on. Search your own dealership name while you are there, because the AI Overview change above lands hardest on dealer brand searches.
What to do this week
- Search your brand name, your main product names and your directors’ names, and record what the AI answer says
- Audit the browser extensions on every machine that touches your marketing accounts
- Walk your site for expired offers and stale prices before 12 October
- Decide whether automated promotions stays on, then write the decision down so nobody quietly switches it back
- If you sell vehicles, check every finance offer and OEM banner for disclosure and co-op compliance
Want a second pair of eyes on this? Talk to us.
Sources
- Google AI Overviews jump from 26% to 80% of branded queries, Search Engine Land
- Google Tests URL Tracking Parameters To AI Overviews & AI Mode, Search Engine Roundtable
- Instagram tests read-only mode, Social Media Today
- Meta’s Muse AI collects private user data, Social Media Today
- Google Ads will automatically pull promotions from advertisers’ websites, Search Engine Land
- Google Ads brings A/B testing to Performance Max asset groups, Search Engine Land