ChatGPT Index & Google SEO Updates

The SEO landscape continues to change as search engines, AI platforms and data providers adjust how websites are crawled, indexed and measured. Several recent developments could affect how businesses manage their websites and interpret search data.

Cloudflare to Extend AI Blocking to Googlebot

From 15 September 2026, Cloudflare is set to change how its AI crawler controls work. Websites using settings that block AI training crawlers could also end up blocking major search crawlers such as Googlebot and Bingbot.

Cloudflare plans to classify Googlebot and Bingbot as crawlers that can both index websites for search and collect information used for AI-related purposes. This means websites that previously enabled AI training restrictions may need to review their Cloudflare settings before the September deadline.

The change is particularly important for site owners who switched on Cloudflare’s AI bot blocking feature in the past. A setting intended to prevent AI systems from using website content could potentially have a wider impact on search engine access.

Website owners should therefore check their current crawler and AI settings ahead of the change to make sure they are not unintentionally preventing search engines from accessing their pages.

ChatGPT’s Index Includes Smaller Websites

New research has also provided more insight into how ChatGPT’s own search index works.

French SEO consultancy Resoneo examined hundreds of ChatGPT responses and found that websites without an OpenAI content licensing agreement appeared to be served through the company’s internal search index in the same way as licensed publishers.

The research challenges the idea that OpenAI’s internal index is mainly reserved for major publishers with commercial agreements. Both larger publishers and smaller websites were found within the same system.

The investigation also looked at what information the index stores from individual webpages. The findings suggest that it keeps the page title along with roughly 200 characters of content from the beginning of the page.

This could have practical implications for SEO. Elements appearing before the main article content, such as introductory text, headings or other template information, may take up valuable space within the snippet available to ChatGPT’s index.

For website owners hoping to appear in AI-generated search results, this makes the opening section of a page increasingly important.

Google Analytics Introduces Campaign Benchmarking

Google is also bringing more AI-powered analysis into Google Analytics.

Its Ask Analytics Advisor feature is expected to compare campaign performance with anonymised benchmarks from similar businesses. The aim is to help marketers understand whether their results are performing above or below comparable businesses.

Google Analytics already allows properties to be placed into peer groups for benchmarking. These groups are based on factors such as the site’s industry and other signals, although it remains unclear whether Ask Analytics Advisor will rely on the existing peer-group system or use a separate comparison model.

The quality of any benchmark will depend heavily on how accurately similar businesses are grouped together. A comparison with companies operating in a completely different market, for example, could provide little useful information.

The introduction of AI analysis also highlights another important issue: better AI tools cannot compensate for poor tracking data. If conversion tracking, attribution or other analytics data is inaccurate, an AI assistant may simply produce misleading conclusions more quickly.

Google Reopens Its Case Against SerpApi

Another significant development involves Google’s legal dispute with SerpApi, a company that provides access to Google search results for developers and businesses.

Google has amended its legal complaint and has now included terms from its content licensing agreements as part of its case.

The dispute centres on the wider question of whether companies can collect and use Google search results at scale. This could have implications for SEO platforms, rank-tracking software, SERP monitoring tools and AI visibility services that depend on large amounts of search-result data.

A previous ruling dismissed Google’s claims after the court found that Google had not adequately demonstrated that copyright owners had authorised its anti-scraping system. Google has since returned with an amended filing intended to address that issue.

The legal battle is still ongoing, so its eventual impact on the SEO industry remains unclear.

What These Changes Mean for SEO

Although these developments involve different companies and technologies, they point towards a broader shift in how access to online information is controlled.

Crawling, indexing and data access are becoming increasingly important parts of SEO.

Cloudflare is changing how website owners can control crawler access. OpenAI’s research shows that AI search engines can index content from smaller websites without requiring a licensing agreement. Meanwhile, Google’s legal action against SerpApi could influence how third parties collect search-result data.

For SEO professionals, this means that technical visibility is no longer simply about ranking on Google.

Businesses now need to consider whether Google, AI search engines and other data systems can access, understand and use their content correctly.

Traditional tools such as robots.txt remain important, but they are becoming just one part of a much wider ecosystem of crawler controls, AI indexing policies, licensing agreements and data restrictions.

At the same time, Google Analytics is moving in the opposite direction by giving marketers more automated ways to compare and interpret performance.

The overall message for website owners is clear: SEO is becoming less about simply being visible and more about understanding how different systems access, process and evaluate your content.