u/darrenshaw_

ChatGPT’s market share just dropped below 50% for the first time since 2022.

According to Sensor Tower, ChatGPT crossed that line in March 2026.

ChatGPT’s competitors are stealing market share FAST:

Gemini usage has grown to 27.7%, with more than 1 in 4 people now using it.
And Claude’s US share jumped from 4.4% to nearly 14%.

As of May 2026, the AI assistant market looks like this:

ChatGPT: 46.4%
Gemini: 27.7%
Claude: 10.3%

ChatGPT was basically synonymous with generative AI for the last few years.

But now we’re seeing people spread their searches, questions, and recommendations across multiple AI platforms.

For SEOs and marketers, that means optimizing for “ChatGPT visibility” alone isn’t enough.

You need to be thinking about how your business shows up across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and whatever comes next.

AI search is fragmenting, just like traditional search did, and we’re only at the beginning.

Credit to Charly Wargnier for the graphic.

I saw in a LinkedIn post from Anthony Higman that Google is testing Local Services Ads directly inside AI mode answers. Anthony said he hates it, and yeah, this kind of sucks.

But on the other hand, if your business has no AI visibility, at least you could buy your way in now?

This looks like a limited test right now, but if it rolls out, the ads will likely start taking away from organic leads in AI Mode results, just like they do in standard Google results.

Ugh. More ads! Guess it’s time to pivot my company into a Google Ads company…

🚨 Google is testing Local Services Ads directly inside AI Mode answers.

Anthony Higman First Shared This News, And He Absolutely Hates It (typed in Higman-case just for him)

Obviously, this kind of sucks. More ads means less space for organic results, and potentially fewer organic leads for businesses that are already fighting for visibility inside AI Mode.

But on the other hand, if your business has no AI visibility, at least you could buy your way in now.

This looks like a limited test at the moment.

But if it rolls out, then the ads will likely start taking away from organic leads in AI Mode results, just like they have in the standard Google results.

I’m curious to hear what others think about this. Do you absolutely “abhor” this update like Anthony, or do you think it will be helpful?

My GenZ marketing team wrote me this script for a Google Business Profile audit 😬

Can AI agents actually understand and use your website? Most businesses have no idea.

There’s a free tool from Mersudin Forbes that will check it for you:

1. Go to agentchecker*ai
2. Click “Audit your site”
3. Paste in your website URL
4. And click “Run A Free Quick Check”

The free version of the tool checks how easy your website is for AI agents to find, understand, navigate, and complete actions on.

And it gives you an AI-readiness score and shows you exactly what needs fixing.

There is also a paid “full audit” you can run, which does a deep dive and provides a much more detailed analysis and a list of top-recommended fixes.

🚨 Huge Google Maps update: Google is turning Maps into an AI agent that can do things for you.

With the new Ask Maps experience, you’ll be able to say something like:

“Order spicy seafood noodles for me to pick up on my way home”

Ask Maps can then find restaurants along your route, check what’s open, factor in your preferences, and even add the order to your cart. All you have to do is review the order and pay.

There are two BIG takeaways for local businesses:

1. Saved places on Google Maps matter more:

Ask Maps will prioritize businesses you’ve already saved, which gives you another reason to encourage customers to save your business in Maps.

2. Users can give Google “insider tips”:

You could tell the agent,“ This restaurant specializes in lobster rolls”, and then AskMaps would be more likely to recommend that business when people are looking for “lobster rolls”. New local search hack, anyone?

This is only the beginning of agentic Google Maps.

Local search is moving from “show me businesses” to “do this for me”. And that’s going to change how businesses get discovered.

This AI tool was so dangerous, Google removed it in less than 24 hours.

The feature used Nano Banana 2 to let users edit real satellite and 3D imagery in Google Earth with a simple text prompt, which Google originally showed off for things like recreating ancient cities or visualizing new developments.

But users started generating fake floods, bomb craters, refugee camps, and military sites on top of real locations.

Google says the images were watermarked and never appeared publicly in the main Google Earth experience, but screenshots could still be shared online and mistaken for real satellite imagery.

Google has now removed the feature is working on stronger safeguards, and I doubt this will be the last time we see this problem as AI gets built into more products people already trust.

Just published: New research on Google reviews.

We analyzed 765 Google Business Profiles to study the extra questions Google asks when you leave a review, like:

- How much did it cost?
- Did they have vegetarian options?
- How is the parking here?

Those questions reflect exactly what customers want to know before they convert, and Google asks them to get as much first-hand information about your business as possible, so that their AI knows when to recommend you.

Turns out, Google may ask your reviewers up to 14 different questions (out of a total of 40) about your business. So, you should either:

1. Ask your customers to fill out those extra questions when they leave you a review, or

2. Ask them to mention one or two details about your business inspired by the questions for your category, and change your review requests from time to time to cover all the details you want.

For example:

- review request 1 asks about the atmosphere and service
- request 2 asks about the vegetarian dishes and the parking
- etc.

This way, when someone asks Google’s AI for the 'best quiet restaurant with vegetarian options near me,' your business will show up because your reviews mention these details.

If you want to see the specific questions for your business category, as well as the 90 service options Google provides for the “What services did you get?” question, and learn how to use them to your advantage, read the full study by Miriam Ellis on the Whitespark blog!

🚨 ChatGPT just got access to Yelp’s 330 million local business reviews: Yelp is licensing its reviews, ratings, photos, and business information to OpenAI, giving ChatGPT real-time data for local recommendations.

Yelp branding and links will appear directly in the answers when its content is used. And soon, users may even be able to request a quote from a local service provider without leaving ChatGPT.

Someone could ask ChatGPT for a plumber, lawyer, dentist, or restaurant, see recommendations based on Yelp data, read reviews, view photos, and potentially contact the business, all without opening Google or Yelp.

For local businesses, the takeaway is pretty simple:

Your Yelp profile and reviews just became much more important for showing up in AI search.

🚨 Huge Search Console update: Businesses worldwide can now track how their Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X content performs across Google Search, Discover, and Google News.

Your posts may have flopped on social, but are going absolutely viral on Google, and this new feature will finally let you see that data.

Once you connect your social account, Search Console will show you:

• The searches people use to find your content
• Clicks and impressions for each post
• Your top-performing posts
• Which countries your audience comes from

One important note: This only tracks visibility on Google. It won’t show likes, comments, or engagement from the social platforms themselves.

To connect your account:

1. Open Search Console
2. Click the property selector
3. Select “Add property”
4. Choose your social platform
5. Follow the verification steps

Once the platform is successfully connected, Google Search Console should begin collecting performance data and generate your report within 48 hours.

Google also published a guide explaining how to use the data to spot trends, revive older content, and plan what to create next.

I’m connecting my channels now, and I’ll share anything interesting I find.

ChatGPT has a hidden field that tells you WHERE it searches for data before returning an answer.

Mark Williams-Cook dug into what happens behind the scenes when ChatGPT searches the web, and he found this hidden label called "result_source."

It can be one of three things:

1. "serp" which is normal web search results.
2. "labrador" which is trusted or licensed sources such as Reuters, Wikipedia, product review sites.
3. and "bright" which might be structured data from a company called Bright Data.

When you run a prompt in ChatGPT, it seems to pull the data for its response from one, multiple, or sometimes none of these sources.

So your takeaway is that it’s not enough to just have good content worth being cited.

You need to know where ChatGPT is pulling from to answer specific questions, and ensure that your content is present there.

How Reddit convinced AI that JD Vance died of rabies (he didn’t actually die of rabies):

Reddit users flooded the subreddit r/poisonai with posts and comments repeating the same fake story. Then, other websites picked it up.

When AI searched the web, it found the claim mentioned across multiple sources and treated that repetition like confirmation.

This is especially concerning because it shows how easy it is to manipulate AI results.

AI search tools are increasingly being used to research people, products, and businesses. But if the answers can be manipulated by repeating the same false information across enough websites, reputation management is about to get much more complicated.

If this can happen with an obviously ridiculous political story, imagine what it could do to a local business:

- Fake complaints
- False accusations
- Made-up service issues
- Negative stories repeated across multiple platforms

You need to start paying attention to what AI tools are saying about your business, not just what appears in traditional Google search results.

Your Google Business Profile categories are helping Google’s AI understand what your business actually does.

And as AI queries become more specific, your categories matter more than ever.

Here’s what to do:

1. Choose the right Primary Category:

Pick the category that best describes your main service.

Your Primary Category is still one of the most important fields on your Google Business Profile, so don’t just choose something that is vaguely related.

2. Add every relevant Additional Category:

You can add up to 9 additional categories.

Use them to cover the other legitimate services your business offers, but don’t add categories for services you don’t actually provide.

The more accurately you categorize your business, the easier it is for Google and AI to understand what you do and recommend you to the right people.