Ask Google to keep an eye on something and it will now do exactly that, every day, without you asking again. Over the weekend Google switched its AI Mode monitoring feature on for everyone, free and worldwide. Until then it sat behind a paid subscription.
That is a quiet change with loud consequences. Search has stopped being something your customer does once and started being something that runs in the background on their behalf.
SEO and search
Google Search will now keep watch on the web for your customers
Robby Stein, Google’s vice president of product for Search, announced the global rollout on Sunday evening. You tell AI Mode what to look for and Google checks continuously across websites, forums, social posts, its own real time data feeds and a Shopping Graph holding more than 60 billion products. When something matches, you get an alert in the Google app. Google will also offer to set up a watch while you are in the middle of an ordinary search.
Why this matters for your business: Your competitors can now keep a standing watch on your prices and your stock without lifting a finger, and you can do the same to them. Set one up this week on your three closest rivals. More important, a monitored search only alerts on a change it can read. If your prices sit inside an image or your product pages carry no structured data, Google has nothing to watch. Check that your key pages expose price, availability and dates as real text and valid schema markup.
Google quietly deleted the search results API it published by accident
A page appeared on Google’s developer site around 22 August describing a Web Search Service API, a partner only tool that lets approved companies pull Google Search results and display them in their own products. By 20 September it was gone. No deprecation notice, no redirect, just a hard 404. Manas Panda spotted it and flagged it on LinkedIn.
Why this matters for your business: It fits the rank tracking wobble of the last fortnight. Google is tightening control over who gets its results. If your reporting leans on third party rank data, expect the numbers to stay patchy, and build your reporting around Search Console impressions and clicks instead.
Social media
Reels now take up more than half the time people spend on Instagram
Instagram published an updated creation guide on Monday and buried the real headline inside it. Reels consumption now accounts for more than half of all time users spend in the app. The guide sets out three length bands. Three to fifteen seconds for quick transitions and one liners. Fifteen to sixty seconds, which Instagram calls the sweet spot, for tutorials and most creative formats. Sixty seconds to three minutes for longer walkthroughs.
Why this matters for your business: If more than half the attention on the platform sits in one format, a feed of static posts is fishing in the shallow end. Pick one Reel a week and keep it in the fifteen to sixty second band. Add an overlay hook in the first two seconds and full captions, because most people watch on mute and the two do different jobs.
LinkedIn is building a proper way to find creators for your brand
LinkedIn has started testing an advanced creator discovery tool inside its Creator Marketplace, with filters for content type, creator industry and job function, audience demographics and Top Voices status. General availability is expected early in 2027. The numbers LinkedIn published alongside it are the interesting part. It says 63 percent of business buyers now lean on creators for research early in the buying process, and that Thought Leader Ads drive 252 percent higher click-through rates than standard single image ads.
Why this matters for your business: You do not need to wait for the tool. The finding behind it is yours today. An advert that runs from a named person’s profile beats the same advert from a company page by a wide margin. If you sell to other businesses, get your founder or your most credible specialist posting under their own name, then put budget behind their best post rather than a fresh company page creative.
Content and AI
Meta launched its Muse assistant on 8 September and Sensor Tower counted 3.4 million downloads by Monday, growing 55 percent day on day across the first ten days against 24 percent for ChatGPT at the same point. Meta has now opened early access to a digital avatar, computer control on Mac and a dedicated email address for the assistant. Muse is United States and Canada only, so there is nothing to action here yet.
Why this matters for your business: An assistant with its own email address that can operate a computer will eventually fill in forms and book appointments for a customer. Every enquiry form on your site should already work without a mouse, load fast and label its fields properly. That is the same work that makes a form accessible, so it pays twice.
Automotive
California dealers have two days to put the total price on every advert
California’s Combating Auto Retail Scams Act, Senate Bill 766, takes effect on Thursday 1 October. Any advertisement naming a specific vehicle must carry that vehicle’s total price, and so must the dealer’s first written reply to an enquiry. Total price covers dealer adjustments and fitted extras, and excludes tax, government fees and rebates. Add-ons must be labelled optional and disclosed in writing. Buyers of used vehicles at 50,000 dollars or less get three days to cancel, provided the car has not covered 400 miles. Dealers must keep adverts and agreements for two years.
Why this matters for your dealership: This is American law and it does not bind you. Read it as a preview, because the same pressure is building here. Two parts are worth copying. The rule reaches your automated enquiry reply, not just your adverts, so check what your lead auto-responder quotes and whether it matches your vehicle detail page. And if fitted extras are already on the car, put them in the advertised price rather than adding them at the desk. Affordability is driving the decision in our market, and a price that grows between the listing and the showroom costs you the deal.
What to do this week
- Set a Google AI Mode watch on your three closest competitors, then check whether Google could run the same watch on you.
- Confirm your price, availability and date information sits in readable text and valid schema, not inside images.
- Move your rank reporting onto Search Console while third party tracking stays unreliable.
- Plan one Instagram Reel in the fifteen to sixty second band, with an overlay hook and full captions.
- If you sell to other businesses, put your next advert budget behind a named person’s post rather than a company page creative.
- Dealers, read your lead auto-responder and check the price it quotes matches your vehicle page.
Not sure where to start? We help South African businesses turn changes like these into a plan they can run. Get in touch.
Sources
- Search Engine Roundtable on the global AI Mode monitoring rollout
- Search Engine Roundtable on the removed Web Search Service API documentation
- Social Media Today on the Instagram Reels creation guide
- Social Media Today on LinkedIn creator discovery
- The AI Insider on Meta Muse downloads and early access
- CBT News on the California CARS Act taking effect