Ads in Google AI Mode, a ranking shake and Cloudflare’s Vite fund

Google rankings shake again, and Search Console reports act up

SEO tracking tools and site owners report new Google ranking swings over 8 and 9 November, after about a week of calm. Google has not confirmed an update. Separately, the Search Console performance report is not working right for many people, and Google has not commented.

Barry Schwartz says he doubts some tools, because Google now blocks many of them. One site owner said it was their worst weekend for traffic in six years, with News and Discover traffic almost gone.

Why it matters If your traffic dropped this weekend, you are not alone. Don’t rush big changes. Compare your own analytics over the next few days first.

I would wait a week before you judge any drop. Tool data looks shaky right now, so trust your own numbers first.

Read the full story on Search Engine Roundtable

Google may be adding “Book online” links to Business Profiles

Some Google Business Profiles now show a booking link that the owner did not add. Barry Schwartz found one on his own company’s profile, and other local SEO experts reported more on Friday. Google has not confirmed it.

Joy Hawkins says some of these links go to Google’s own booking flow and show a 500 error. In Schwartz’s test, the link opened the business’s contact page. Before this, home service businesses only got booking links through Reserve with Google partners.

Why it matters A broken booking button can lose you a customer. Open your Business Profile today, check for a booking link, and make sure it works.

My tip: if you don’t take online bookings, point the link to your contact page so nobody hits an error.

Read the full story on Search Engine Roundtable

Cloudflare says OpenAI pays to know when your pages change

On Cloudflare’s earnings call, CEO Matthew Prince said OpenAI pays Cloudflare for signals about page changes. That lets OpenAI’s crawler skip pages that have not changed. Prince gave no amount, and he expects other AI companies to pay too.

Cloudflare first announced the OpenAI pilot on 8 July. Prince also said bot traffic could reach 1,000 times human traffic within five years. Search Engine Journal sums up his view as “AI agent optimization” being the new SEO.

Why it matters AI crawlers are now a paid market, not only a cost for your server. If your site sits behind Cloudflare, you already get some say in who reads it.

My guide on how AI search finds your website explains the crawlers and how to control them.

Read the full story on Search Engine Journal

Cloudflare pays $301,300 to 44 Vite ecosystem projects

Cloudflare has made the first payments from its Vite ecosystem fund. The first round gives $301,300 (US) to 44 projects and maintainers, including ESLint, Prettier, Rollup, pnpm and Babel. It comes from the $1 million Cloudflare promised when VoidZero joined Cloudflare.

Core maintainers can get up to $4,000 a month, paid through Open Collective. A panel from the Vite, Vitest, Rolldown and Oxc teams picked the winners. There is no application form, and Cloudflare plans to pay every quarter.

Why it matters Most modern websites are built with these tools. Paid maintainers mean faster fixes and fewer abandoned packages.

Cloudflare’s reason is blunt: “AI changed the social contract of open source.”

Read the full story on Cloudflare

Matt Mullenweg wants WordPress to trust user input less

On Make WordPress Core, Matt Mullenweg has proposed stricter rules for new usernames and less spam-friendly emails. It began with a report that the strict username check only runs on multisite, not on normal single sites.

One idea is to leave the comment text out of comment notification emails and link to the moderation page instead. This is only a proposal. There is no version, code or date yet, and nothing changes on your site today.

Why it matters Spammers use WordPress forms and emails to send junk in your name. Tighter rules in core would help every site without a plugin.

His summary is short: “We should assume every CRUD attempt is hostile.”

Read the full story on Make WordPress

AI coding agents fully finish only about 1 in 4 real web app changes

A new test called Co-Design Bench asked AI agents to change real, working web apps. It has 273 tasks on layout, design, interaction and content, checked against 2,331 expert rules. The best result, from GPT-6 Astra, was fully correct in only 26.4% of tasks.

The best agents still met about 70% of the rules on average. Grok 4.6 came last. GLM-5.2 used almost six times the tokens of GPT-6 Astra and still scored much lower. The test comes from Alibaba researchers and several Asian universities.

Why it matters AI gets you most of the way on site changes, but rarely all of it. Always check the result in a browser before it goes live.

This matches my advice. Let AI agents draft, then test every change yourself on a phone and a desktop.

Read the full story on The Decoder

Andrej Karpathy built a video site in a weekend with Claude Code

Andrej Karpathy has launched HackerTube, a site with 6,454 videos that Hacker News readers keep recommending. Claude Opus 5.5 sorted through 43 million comments from 20 years of Hacker News. Claude Code did nearly all the rest, from the data work to the server setup.

Karpathy only made an API key, rented a server and bought the domain himself. The site has no login and keeps your settings in your browser.

Why it matters A small, useful site from your own data is now a weekend project. If you have years of content, there may be a new product hiding in it.

Read the full story on The Decoder

Asahi Linux moves from MIT to GPL, blaming AI “code laundering”

Asahi Linux, the project that runs Linux on Apple silicon Macs, is moving all its code from the MIT licence to GPLv2 or later. People took unreleased code from contributors’ forks, published it without credit, and rewrote it to hide where it came from. AI made that much faster and cheaper.

Asahi says the MIT licence “explicitly allows this”. The project already bans AI-written contributions.

Why it matters Licences matter more now that AI can copy and rewrite code in minutes. Check the licence before you build on an open source project.

Read the full story on It’s FOSS

macOS may make it harder for AI agents to get Full Disk Access

Apple said in October that it would tighten Mac privacy controls after AI agents kept getting Full Disk Access. 9to5Mac now reports the change could come as early as macOS 27.3. Apps that ask for files outside their area would no longer appear in Settings as a switch you can turn on.

The finding comes from code, and the feature is still in development. Users could still drag an app into the Settings panel by hand.

Why it matters If your Mac app or AI tool needs Full Disk Access, plan clear setup steps for users now.

Read the full story on 9to5Mac

Apple HomeView and the new Apple TV 4K go on sale this Friday

Apple’s HomeView and the new Apple TV 4K both launch on Friday, 13 November. MacRumors lists both at $299 (US). Pre-orders have been open since mid-October.

HomeView comes as a tabletop or wall model and knows up to six people by face. The Apple TV 4K gets Siri AI, an A19 chip and 128GB of storage. HomeView won’t be sold in the EU, because Siri AI is not available there.

Why it matters Siri AI is now in the living room. Apps with good App Intents will be easier to use by voice on these devices.

Read the full story on MacRumors