SEO

Week 40/2026: human checks for AI content, Google Ads bidding changes and UTM tags from Gemini

Google has updated its guidelines: AI content, including titles and descriptions, must be checked by a person before it goes live. On searches for a brand name, the AI answer increasingly sits above the brand's own website.

Bartosz Bielawski

Bartosz Bielawski

· 4 min read
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Week 40/2026: human checks for AI content, Google Ads bidding changes and UTM tags from Gemini

The week in three sentences

Google tightened its guidelines for AI content and now wants a person to check it before publication. In advertising, a change to target-based bidding took effect, and AI answers in search results are pushing some ads off the page. Gemini started tagging its links, and Merchant Center announced stricter rules for product images.

Google wants a human to check AI content before it goes live

Signal: 2 independent sources this week, 9 in 30 days; tracked since 2024-07-24.

Google added a requirement to its AI content guidelines: facts must be checked manually before publication. This covers not just the text but also titles, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text.

Until now, the focus was mostly on the quality of the article itself. Now Google is saying plainly that auto-generated metadata counts too.

What to do: add a title and description check to your publishing checklist, even when the text has already been edited.

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On brand searches, AI now ranks above the brand's own site

Signal: 2 independent sources this week, 7 in 30 days; tracked since 2025-11-17.

An AI summary now appears for most searches that include a brand name, and it usually takes the top spot. In July, this applied to about 60 percent of such searches; by September, it was almost three quarters (Ahrefs).

The bigger problem is where AI gets its brand information. It mostly cites Wikipedia, YouTube and LinkedIn, not the company's own website.

What to do: search Google for your company name and check what the AI summary says about you and which sources it relies on.

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Google changes bidding for target CPA and ROAS campaigns

Signal: 3 independent sources this week, 4 in 30 days; tracked since 2026-07-21.

Google is updating its bidding system for Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns. The change affects target-based strategies, meaning those with a target cost per conversion (CPA) or a target return on ad spend (ROAS).

Budget-limited campaigns that beat their targets will feel it most. Optmyzr data shows that target-based strategies stayed stable, while Maximize Conversions saw the biggest jump in cost per click.

What to do: review your budget-limited campaigns and check whether the target is set too loosely.

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AI answers are pushing ads out of Google results

Signal: 2 independent sources this week, 4 in 30 days; tracked since 2026-04-14.

AI Overviews displace roughly one in four ads in search results (Adthena). Ads inside the AI summaries themselves are still extremely rare.

In ad accounts, this shows up as an odd mix: fewer impressions and a lower conversion rate, but a higher CTR. That higher CTR doesn't necessarily mean better ads. It can simply mean less space on the page and less competition for attention.

What to do: before you praise a campaign for a better CTR, compare it year over year together with impressions and conversions.

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New signal: one source so far.

Links that Gemini shows in its answers now carry UTM parameters, the bits added to a URL that tell your analytics where a visitor came from. The change was spotted just a day before it was reported.

That's good news for anyone trying to measure AI traffic. However, Google hasn't explained when or how the tags are added, so there's no guarantee every visit will be tagged.

What to do: open the traffic sources in your analytics and check whether you already see visits tagged as Gemini.

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Merchant Center raises the bar for product images

New signal: one source so far.

From 31 January 2027, every product image on Google must be at least 500 by 500 pixels. However, Google recommends much larger images so they look sharp on high-resolution screens.

The image URL must be stable and reachable by Googlebot, which means it can't be blocked in robots.txt. Images created or edited with AI can carry an AI label without breaking the rules on text overlays.

What to do: find the undersized images in your feed now rather than in January.

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An ad in ChatGPT can turn into a conversation with a company

Signal: 2 independent sources this week, 3 in 30 days; tracked since 2026-07-08.

OpenAI is testing a new ad format in ChatGPT. After clicking, the user starts a conversation with an AI that represents a specific company.

Ads are shown only to adult users on free accounts, not to people on paid plans. That's still a big group, since business decision-makers often use free ChatGPT too. OpenAI says ads don't affect the content of the answers.

What to do: if you're considering this channel, think about which questions about your offer such a conversation would need to handle.

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Marketers write with AI but don't trust it

Signal: 3 independent sources this week, 6 in 30 days; tracked since 2026-07-21.

More than 90 percent of marketers already use AI to create content (Ahrefs). Only a handful publish that text without any human review.

Most say AI helps them work faster. Yet more than half of AI users think human-written text is better than what they generate themselves.

What to do: treat AI as a fast first draft and spend the time you save on editing and adding your own examples.

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