AI halftime report: H1 2026

AI search grew, token spending surged, software stocks fell, and publishers lost traffic. Here’s what H1 2026 revealed about AI’s impact.

AI search grew, token spending surged, software stocks fell, and publishers lost traffic. Here’s what H1 2026 revealed about AI’s impact.
Treat Europe as one Google market, and you’ll miss Seznam, Ecosia, Zalando, and a regulatory layer that can close a door overnight.
The post European Search Strategy Goes Beyond Google & Bing appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Search Console platform properties are now open to everyone worldwide, and Google has published a guide to reading your social and video search data.
The post Google Opens Search Console Social Reporting To Everyone appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Small, unbilled SEO requests add up fast. Use these seven steps to control scope creep, price extra work, and protect your profitability.
Lead-gen and ecommerce managers: two Google Ads bidding changes landed this summer. Here’s what shifts, what doesn’t, and which campaigns to audit first.
The post Google Ads Bidding Strategies: Where To Spend Your Time In 2026 appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Around 40% of AI citations leave the source brand unnamed, exposing a blind spot in how companies measure visibility in AI search.

See how a 14-step workflow diagnoses content decay, protects rankings, and drives measurable traffic and revenue gains.
Perplexity never skips the web, so every query is winnable. Here’s what its live answer stream reveals about citations, video, and local.
The post How Perplexity Actually Picks Sources (I Read The Stream, Not The Answers) appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Prompt injection attacks put your customers, AI agents, LLM referral share, and vendor stack at risk. Here’s where the threats are emerging.