What are people really using ChatGPT for? If you thought ChatGPT was mostly for work - emails, code, reports - think again. The largest study of its kind, from OpenAI and Harvard economists, analysed 1.5 million conversations and found something very different: nearly three-quarters of all usage is now non-work. This shift has big implications. People are turning to AI not just as a productivity tool, but as a life advisor. The data shows three categories dominate: Practical Guidance, Seeking...
19 days ago • 4 min read
Is AI high enough on your agenda? Yesterday, I ran an AI Agent strategy workshop with the senior leadership team of a travel business. Two things stood out. 💡 The potential: They watched an AI Agent log into their custom CMS and complete a task that only three of the twelve people in the room knew how to do. An absolute lightbulb moment. When the agent was asked to repeat the task, it had learned from the first attempt - and finished in a quarter of the time. Suddenly, the room could see how...
26 days ago • 3 min read
Google survives antitrust trial… but has anything actually changed? The biggest tech monopoly trial in decades has just wrapped up. A U.S. court ruled last year that Google had violated antitrust law by illegally maintaining its dominance in search. Yesterday, the judge finally handed down the remedies. And the question is: Google survives the trial… but has anything actually changed?On paper, yes. Google is banned from making billion-dollar exclusive search deals - like paying Apple to be...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
If AI is killing search, why is ChatGPT using Google? We don’t actually buy the headlines that flood our feeds about “AI killing search.”What we learned this week about ChatGPT - AI’s poster child - only reinforces that. Behind the scenes, it’s been sourcing results via SerpApi, running on Google Cloud, to power real-time answers. One ex-Google engineer even planted test pages to prove it.Sam Altman says he doesn’t use Google. But his product clearly does. That undermines OpenAI’s public...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Don’t fight the bots. Lure them in. We are standing at the threshold of a global shift. Not a crash. Not another pandemic. It's a transformation in the very fabric of the internet. As big a shift as mobile and social were - and just as inevitable.The Agentic Web means you no longer sell only to people. You sell to the AI assistants - agents that take action: they search, compare, book, and buy on behalf of your customers. These aren’t chatbots. They’re decision-makers. Trusted proxies. And...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
14th March 2025 / goodsignals.com Good morning from a cold and cloudy London,Just a quick update - last night, Google started rolling out a core algorithm update. It’s the first of 2025 and is expected to take about two weeks to complete. These updates target content globally, rewarding genuinely useful and engaging material while deprioritising content created solely for search performance.You may notice ranking and traffic fluctuations during this period, but it’s best to hold off on making...
7 months ago • 2 min read
Just as I hit send on that email, Google announced the December 2024 Spam Update. This update is rolling out globally and applies to all languages. It targets websites that breach Google’s spam policies, and the rollout is expected to take up to a week to complete.It seemed important to flag this before you wind down for the holidays.Thanks, Mike 19th December 2024 / goodsignals.com SEO Trivia: What is the most searched-for Christmas film? Answer. Last night, just six days after it began,...
10 months ago • 3 min read
19th December 2024 / goodsignals.com SEO Trivia: What is the most searched-for Christmas film? Answer. Last night, just six days after it began, Google's December 2024 Core Update completed its rollout! Short but impactful, this update caused quite a stir, with significant surges and notable drops in rankings, and even some reversals of changes made during November's core update. While it’s tough news for sites that dropped after recent gains, it’s great for those that rebounded after earlier...
10 months ago • 3 min read
12th December 2024 / goodsignals.com SEO Trivia: Just one week after completing the last core update, did Google roll out another one? It’s true! Just one week after the Google November Core Update finished rolling out, Google has launched the December 2024 Core Update. This update is expected to wrap up in about two weeks -around Christmas Day.For us, there’s never been a more exciting time to work in SEO and web search. However, if SEO is just one of the many things you’re juggling and the...
10 months ago • 3 min read