Your Google business panel may turn into an AI answer
One site found its own firewall was refusing 79% of AI crawler requests while Googlebot sailed through 99% of the time, and nobody set it up that way on purpose. Today is mostly about who and what gets to see your site, from AI bots to the box Google shows when someone looks you up.
Read the whole week in one goThe September traffic crash fully reversed
Why your traffic moved
The Google box about your business may now show an AI summary
The local knowledge panel (the box with your hours, phone number and reviews that shows when someone searches your business) is starting to show an AI Overview inside it. Glenn Gabe says it sometimes happens on mobile and not on desktop. Nobody has published data yet on what it does to clicks or calls.
Google local knowledge panels are turning into AI Overviews
Yep, I've noticed this more and more recently. And it's sometimes just on mobile and not desktop. Keep an eye on this if you focus on local.
Who this affects: Any business with a Google Business Profile, especially local shops and services.
- Keep an eye on this if local search matters to you, as Glenn Gabe suggests.
- Our take: search your own business name on a phone this week and read what the AI text says about you.
- Our take: if the summary gets a fact wrong, fix the source in your Business Profile, such as hours, services or description.
A Cloudflare change shifted which AI bots can reach your site
Cloudflare (a service many sites use for speed and security) changed a default on 15 September. A study of 1,046 websites shared by Aleyda Solis found refusals went up slightly for AI training crawlers, ClaudeBot from 19.9% to 22.8% and GPTBot from 18.9% to 22.0%, but dropped sharply for search crawlers, with OAI-SearchBot going from 16.9% refused to 3.0%. That is the opposite of what Cloudflare said the change was for, since search crawlers were expected to stay flat.
Search moved the most of any category and agent moved the opposite way a tightening default would predict.
Our own site had 79% of AI crawler requests refused by the firewall while Googlebot got through 99% of the time. Nobody chose that config on purpose.
Who this affects: Anyone whose website sits behind Cloudflare or any bot-blocking firewall.
- Our take: if you use Cloudflare, open your bot settings and check which AI crawlers are allowed and which are refused.
- Our take: decide once whether you want AI search bots in and training bots out, then confirm the setting matches.
Do not do this
Sites built with AI can point Google at the wrong web address
One SEO warns that websites built with AI tools often ship with the canonical tag (a line of code that tells Google which address is the real one for a page) still pointing at the staging site instead of the live domain. If that happens, you are telling Google to index a page that visitors never see.
make sure the canonicals are self referencing to your live domain
Who this affects: Anyone who built or rebuilt their site with an AI website builder.
- Open your homepage, view the page source, and search for the word canonical.
- Check the address in that line is your live domain, not a test or staging address.
- If it is wrong, ask your developer or tool support to set canonicals to the live domain.
The short list
Almost nobody buys on an AI recommendation alone
Joy Hawkins points to research saying only 5% of people trust an AI recommendation enough to buy without checking further. The other 95% go look at your Maps listing, your reviews and your site first.
ChatGPT is citing more official pages and fewer list posts
Lily Ray shared conference data showing ChatGPT now cites more commercial pages and documentation, and fewer listicles and social posts. Her guess is that it is doing deeper research before answering.
Google will not be broken up over its ad business
The remedies in the Google ad tech monopoly case are out, and Barry Schwartz reports they are behavioral changes with oversight rather than a breakup. Nothing changes for your site today.