SEO and AI News Roundup: Google’s /goto Redirects, GSC AI Reports, PAA Goes AI & Publisher Payment Pilot Program

About this episode

Recorded the day after the first SearchNorwichXL, this episode recaps the last four weeks of SEO news from the Core Updates newsletter: Google rolling out google.com/goto pass-through URLs to deter scraping amid the SERP API lawsuit (with rank-tracking tools finding workarounds); Google Search Console’s generative AI performance reporting rolling out globally, showing impressions for AI Overviews/AI Mode, alongside a toggle to opt sites out of generative AI features without affecting organic rankings; data suggesting nearly all People Also Ask results are AI-generated; and a Google AI Contribution pilot in Search Console that tests paying publishers when their content significantly contributes to AI-generated responses in Gemini, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. News stories • https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-goto-tracking-41957.html • https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-ai-performance-reports-and-search-generative-ai-control-rolling-out-globally-486269 • https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7503164423075725313/ • https://9to5google.com/2026/09/17/google-ai-contribution-pilot-tests-paying-websites-when-theyre-used-in-ai-results/ Chapters 00:00