Digital news to watch: Cloudflare lets sites disallow AI training

5 min read
Digital news to watch: Cloudflare lets sites disallow AI training

In this week’s digital news, Cloudflare’s Disallow AI Training keeps mixed-use crawlers available for search. Google and Apple honor training opt-outs; Bing robots.txt support is pending. Google published new documentation for adding a Search profile badge as Search becomes a destination for following creators and publishers.

Merchants can now automate product review uploads and management through Google’s Merchant API. Google ads now allows select advertisers to localize video campaigns across 33 languages and locales without costly reshoots.

Cloudflare lets sites disallow AI training without blocking Googlebot

Cloudflare has introduced a new “Disallow AI Training” setting, giving website owners the ability to block their content from being harvested for AI model training while explicitly keeping mixed-use crawlers, like Googlebot, Applebot, and Bingbot, active for traditional search indexing. This move reverses Cloudflare’s earlier contentious plan that would have automatically cut off search crawlers for sites opting out of AI scrapers, offering a much-needed compromise to protect organic discoverability.
For search visibility, this update removes the high-stakes trade-off that previously forced site owners to choose between protecting their intellectual property from generative models and maintaining search traffic. By leveraging specific robots.txt directives (such as Google-Extended), site owners can now cleanly separate AI training ingestion from search indexing, ensuring their content remains visible in search results and AI overviews without inadvertently feeding proprietary language models.
Read more here.

Google Search Profile badges expose the publisher in a traffic crisis

Google’s recently published guidance for embedding Search Profile badges has brought the ongoing publisher traffic crisis into sharp focus, highlighting a strategic shift toward on-platform user retention. By encouraging sites to integrate badges that link directly to centralised Google Search Profiles, the feature aggregates a brand’s content, social channels, and updates into a single on-SERP hub. Industry experts note that while this offers an alternative way to build a following, it fundamentally reflects the reality of shrinking outbound referral traffic as users consume more content directly within Google’s ecosystem.
The visibility implications are profound for digital publishers whose business models rely heavily on traditional click-through sessions and ad impressions. As Google increasingly pivots search from a simple gateway to websites into a destination for ongoing brand engagement, publishers must adapt by leveraging these centralised profiles to capture audience attention. Failing to optimise for these on-SERP identity tools risks losing direct audience connection as generative features continue to suppress standard organic traffic.
Read more here.

Google Merchant Center adds API support for product reviews

Google added Merchant API support for product reviews, giving merchants another way to automatically upload and manage review data in Merchant Center. Google’s updated Product Reviews help documentation now lists “Add product reviews using API” as an available submission method and directs merchants to the Merchant API for Product Reviews. Previously, the documentation explicitly stated that API submissions weren’t supported.

The API addition is part of a broader refresh to Google’s documentation and Product Ratings workflow. Google has also updated the instructions to reflect the newer Merchant Center navigation. Merchants are now directed to Products & store > Reviews > Product reviews > Manage product review sources when adding or managing review data.

Read more here.

Google Ads rolls out AI video dubbing in Asset Studio

Google Ads is rolling out Video Ads Dubbing, an AI-powered feature in Asset Studio that can dub advertisers’ videos into 33 languages and locales. Video Ads Dubbing uses AI to translate and dub existing video creative, giving advertisers a way to localise campaigns directly within Google Ads’ Asset Studio. The feature is free for select users, although availability appears limited for now.

Read more here.

Instagram collab posts drive higher organic engagement across brand sizes

More than 73% of brands used Instagram collabs in H1 2026, and collab posts consistently outperformed standard posts. Creator-led collaborations delivered the strongest results, with smaller brands seeing 5X more interactions than non-collab posts. In ecommerce and retail, accepted collabs generated more than 5X the shares and reposts of standard posts. Reels saw the biggest engagement gains.

Read more here.

Do ChatGPT & Google AI get your business details right?

AI search often gives inaccurate business information, especially when a company leaves key details vague or unpublished. In a study of 600 businesses, 27% of Google AI Overview answers and 20% of ChatGPT answers included details the business did not publish. Google AI Overviews got 84% of answers right when businesses published clearly, compared with 63% when information was vague or missing. AI systems often fill gaps from third-party directories, so you should audit those listings and keep website copy, Google Business Profiles, and structured data consistent. Agencies can turn this into a quick audit by checking how Google and ChatGPT describe each client and correcting the sources behind inaccurate answers.

Read more here.

If you’d like more information on any of the stories we’ve mentioned, or support with your digital marketing, get in touch with our expert team by booking a call.

Author

Stay in the loop
Share post

hi

Other posts you might like

Google Ads not working? It’s because your tracking is broken

Google Ads not working? It’s because your tracking is broken

TLDR: Google Ads work when the fundamentals are right before the campaign build even starts: accurate conversion tracking, business goals
Digital news to watch: Google admits AI Search reports can be misleading

Digital news to watch: Google admits AI Search reports can be misleading

In this week’s digital news to watch, Google’s EU search layout overhaul reshapes visibility for European marketers, while a separate

Popular topics

[other_categories]