Google switched adverts on inside its AI answers in ten more countries this week. Kenya and Nigeria are on that list. South Africa is not. Then Google told investors those adverts earn less than the ordinary ones. The first half tells you what is coming here. The second tells you roughly how long you have.
Search and SEO
Google takes adverts inside AI answers to ten more countries, then says they earn less
Adverts in AI Mode went live this week in Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore. Brazil, Mexico and the United Kingdom follow before the end of the quarter. American users also get multiturn adverts, which run on the answers to later questions in the same conversation.
On the Alphabet results call the day before, chief business officer Philipp Schindler put part of the quarter’s slowdown down to the “lower monetization we were seeing in AI Mode”. Advertising revenue landed near 82 billion dollars, up 10.5 percent, with search adverts at 63.4 billion and growth easing from 17 percent in the previous quarter to 12 percent. Currency moves and Asian retailers spending less took some blame too.
Why this matters for your business: South Africa is not on the list yet, but two African markets are, so we are in the queue rather than out of it. Use the gap. Find out which of your commercial searches already return an AI answer, and check whether your pages are what Google quotes inside it. Right now being the cited source costs nothing. That will not last.
Restaurants can finally switch off the ordering links on their Google listing
Google now lets a restaurant turn ordering providers on or off from the Business Profile dashboard. Uber Eats, DoorDash, Instacart and the rest can be switched off entirely or limited to pickup or delivery. Lisa Landsman of Google announced it on LinkedIn, saying operators had asked for years for “more control over their ordering links”. Until now the only route was a separate request to each delivery platform.
Why this matters for your business: If you run a restaurant, open your Business Profile and look at which ordering buttons Google shows. Every order routed through an aggregator costs you a commission you would keep on your own site. The wider point holds for everyone. Any listing Google builds for you can carry links you never chose, so check yours before a customer does.
Social media
Threads is testing a custom like button, and the test markets say more than the feature
Threads is testing a setting that lets you attach your own image, sticker or animation to your profile, so anyone who likes your posts sees your graphic instead of the standard heart. Threads chief Connor Hayes says the test covers selected users in South Korea, Brazil and Indonesia. No figures, no release date.
Why this matters for your business: The feature is small. The choice of countries is not. Meta tests in emerging markets first, Google took AI adverts to Kenya and Nigeria this week, and Instagram ran its long video test in Brazil before the United States. South Africa sits in that same tier, so features reach here sooner than most local marketers assume.
Content marketing and AI
Organic traffic is falling, and AI is only part of the reason
Kevin Indig has published an analysis of Similarweb data covering roughly 17,800 domains in the United States and France. American organic search visits fell 13.2 percent over two years and French visits fell 24.4 percent. The losses are concentrated rather than general. Publishers dropped about 41.5 percent, and take publishers out and the American decline is 7.8 percent. Median small sites were roughly flat. AI referrals are about 2.85 percent of search traffic, near one visit in 200. Indig puts much of the drop down to bigger advert blocks pushing organic results below the fold, and to algorithm updates, rather than AI answers alone.
Why this matters for your business: Stop benchmarking your traffic against national averages. A small South African services site has almost nothing in common with an American publisher, and the headline decline is mostly publishers. Pull your own two year organic trend, split it by page type, and compare it to competitors your size. Check a frightening statistic applies to you before you move budget on it.
Your website
WordPress patched 22 security holes, one of them in the updater itself
WordPress 7.1.4 landed on 28 October and fixes 22 vulnerabilities across 17 advisories. The previous release, three weeks earlier, carried seven. The one worth knowing about needs no account and no user interaction. While an update runs, WordPress unpacks files into a predictable folder and deletes the file that stops that folder being browsed, so for a few seconds a full install can sit at a guessable, readable web address. Patchstack rates it hard to exploit, but the window opens on every update. Backports went out for older branches down to 4.7.
Why this matters for your business: Check your version today rather than assuming automatic updates caught it. Then do the two things the patch does not do for you. Make sure the upgrade folder cannot be browsed from the web, a server setting your host can apply, and review who holds contributor access or higher, because most of the other 21 flaws need an account. Old editor logins nobody has touched since 2023 are the usual culprits.
Automotive
Cox Automotive confirms a security incident at VinSolutions
Cox Automotive has confirmed it is investigating suspicious activity on VinSolutions, the dealer CRM used across thousands of franchise stores. A Cox spokesperson said the activity “was quickly contained, did not involve any encrypting malware” and caused no disruption. Reports began circulating on 23 October after a ransomware group claimed it had taken data. Cox says VinSolutions is the only platform affected and that a limited subset of dealers was involved. Outside monitors have published account numbers, but none are confirmed and Cox is still establishing the scope.
Why this matters for your dealership: Your CRM holds every enquiry, every test drive booking and every finance conversation you have ever had. Whether or not you use this system, treat the week as a prompt. Force a password reset, turn on two factor authentication for every user, and pull the user list to remove salespeople who left months ago. Then ask your vendor in writing how and how quickly they would tell you if your customer data were taken. Under POPIA that notification duty lands on you as the responsible party, not only on the software company.
What to do this week
- Check your WordPress version is 7.1.4 and remove stale contributor accounts.
- Run your top ten commercial search terms and note which return an AI answer and who gets quoted.
- Force a CRM password reset and switch on two factor authentication for every user.
- If you take orders, check which ordering links Google shows on your Business Profile.
- Pull your own two year organic trend before believing anyone else’s decline figure.
If you would rather someone watched all of this for you, that is the job. Talk to us.
Sources
- PPC Land on Alphabet Q3 and the AI Mode advert expansion
- Search Engine Roundtable on AI Mode advert monetisation
- Search Engine Roundtable on Business Profile ordering controls
- Social Media Today on the Threads custom like test
- Growth Memo on the organic traffic decline
- Patchstack on the WordPress 7.1.4 security release
- Car Dealership Guy on the VinSolutions incident
- TechCrunch on the Connected Apps Platform preview