Two searches for the same thing, and your listing sits in position one both times. One of them earns you three times the clicks of the other. The only difference is whether Google put an AI answer box above your result. New quarterly figures put a number on that gap, and it has widened again.
SEO and search
Two identical searches, and one of them earns three times the clicks
Advanced Web Ranking published its click-through data for the second quarter of 2026 and the split is stark. On American desktop searches with no AI Overview, positions one and two together took 29.05 percent of clicks. On searches that carried an AI Overview, the same two positions took 10.04 percent. That gap of just over 19 percentage points grew by 6.03 points in a single quarter.
The device story sits underneath it. Desktop clicks for the top two positions fell 5.27 percentage points across the quarter while mobile clicks for the same positions rose 6.59. That reverses the first quarter, when desktop gained and mobile lost. One caveat matters. The comparison straddles a Search Console logging error that ran from May 2025 to April 2026, so the first quarter sits inside that window and most of the second quarter sits outside it.
Why this matters for your business: Stop reporting a single average click-through rate. Split your Search Console data by device, then check which of your money queries return an AI Overview. If your best page sits behind an answer box, ranking higher will not fix it. Getting cited inside the box will, and so will moving that demand onto a channel you own.
Microsoft Clarity will let you correct what counts as your brand
Microsoft opened up the brand matching list inside Clarity’s AI Visibility dashboard on Monday. Until now Clarity guessed which search terms counted as branded, and you lived with the guess. You can edit the list yourself under Settings and AI Visibility. Add abbreviations, alternate spellings and the typos people actually make. Clarity stays free with no traffic limit. Microsoft has not said whether matching is exact or fuzzy, or whether edits reclassify old data.
Why this matters for your business: Most South African businesses get searched under two or three names they never registered anywhere. The trading name, the shortened version, the one everybody spells wrong. Left uncorrected, all of that lands in your non-branded bucket and flatters your discovery numbers. Spend fifteen minutes adding every variant you can think of, missing letters included, and your branded share becomes a figure you can plan against.
Google also added a misuse of support channels rule to its Business Profile policies this week. False or misleading reports, and reports made in bad faith, are now named offences, and repeated unfounded submissions can result in rejection of all further complaints without assessment. If you report competitor listings for spam, evidence every one, because the penalty lands on your account rather than theirs.
Social
TikTok has split its agency partners into two badges
TikTok restructured its Agency Partner programme this week into two certification levels. The first is Agency Partner, awarded on performance, operational capability and certified team expertise. Above it sits Premier Agency Partner, reserved for top performers globally and described as recognising proven business results and deep platform expertise. The programme covers more than 600 approved partners worldwide. It launched in 2020 as a single flat list, so this is the first time TikTok has publicly ranked the agencies it works with.
Why this matters for your business: If you pay anyone to run TikTok for you, ask which badge they hold and check it. A badge does not guarantee good work, but an agency that cannot answer the question is telling you something. It works the other way too. If you run the account in house and spend real money on it, the certification path is free to pursue and it gives your team a syllabus.
Content and AI
ChatGPT adverts passed a billion dollars, and English speaking markets click least
Graphite published The State of ChatGPT Ads on Monday, built on Similarweb panel data covering more than 98,000 adverts and 8,000 landing pages. The platform runs at a one billion dollar annualised revenue rate, 43 percent of ad eligible American users have seen an advert inside six months, and click-through rates have doubled since launch. Four markets clear one percent click-through. Brazil leads at 1.91 percent, then Mexico, Japan and South Korea. The United States sits at 0.73 percent, the United Kingdom at 0.74, Australia at 0.67 and New Zealand at 0.60.
Why this matters for your business: South Africa is not in the sample, but every English speaking market in it clicks below one percent. Treat ChatGPT adverts as a test line rather than a channel. Top advertisers build 98 percent new copy for the platform rather than recycling their Google text, and they point it at feature, pricing and product pages they already have.
Cloudflare also moved EmDash out of beta this week. It is an open source content management system built on Astro, pitched as a successor to WordPress with an AI website builder baked in. The catch is that its best parts run on Cloudflare infrastructure, including the plugin registry, which Cloudflare moderates. Host it on your own server and you give up most of what makes it interesting. Worth watching, not worth moving to.
Automotive
Your cheapest source of used stock is your own service drive
Derek Hansen, who runs dealer, lender and inventory solutions at Cox Automotive, set out what is driving used demand into the fourth quarter. The average new vehicle there now costs more than 50,000 dollars, which pushes buyers into late model used stock, and supply in that band is thin because manufacturers built fewer cars between 2021 and 2023. His point for dealers is that what you stock matters more than how much, and the fastest moving price bands are the hardest to buy at auction. He puts the advantage of sourcing through your own service department and customer database at roughly 2,000 dollars of gross per vehicle.
Why this matters for your dealership: The American price points do not transfer, but the mechanic does. Every car that comes in for a service is a trade lead with a full history attached, and most dealer websites give service customers no route to a valuation. Put a trade-in valuation prompt on your service booking confirmation and on the invoice email. Then merchandise your slow movers around affordability, with the monthly figure and the total cost on the vehicle page rather than buried inside a calculator.
What to do this week
- Split your Search Console click data by device, then flag which top queries return an AI Overview.
- Open Clarity, go to Settings and AI Visibility, and add every version of your business name people type.
- Ask whoever runs your TikTok which partner badge they hold.
- Evidence your Google Business Profile reports before you file another one.
- Dealers, add a trade-in valuation prompt to your service booking confirmation and invoice email.
Want a second pair of eyes on any of this? Get in touch.
Sources
- Search Engine Journal on the Advanced Web Ranking second quarter click-through data
- PPC Land on editable brand terms in Microsoft Clarity
- Search Engine Roundtable on the Google Business Profile support channel policy
- Social Media Today on TikTok agency partner certification tiers
- Search Engine Journal on ChatGPT advert click-through by market
- Search Engine Land on the State of ChatGPT Ads report
- Search Engine Journal on EmDash 1.0 and its Cloudflare dependency
- CBT News on Cox Automotive and shifting used car demand