Small Publishers, DMCA Abuse & AI Search Tactics | HighDegree* Marketing – Issue 27

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AI personalization for publishers, Cloudflare’s Googlebot risk, DMCA abuse, the fan-out SEO framework, and 27 companies using AI to grow traffic: all this week.

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Hi Marketers,

Welcome to the new issue of HighDegree*: Cutting Through the Noise in SEO & Digital Marketing

Search is changing faster than most publishers can keep up with. Google’s own Head of Search is now making the case that AI personalization could actually help small sites, not hurt them, but that’s hard to square with the DMCA chaos currently knocking legitimate content out of the index. On the technical side, Cloudflare’s new crawler rules have a real sting in the tail: blocking AI training bots could accidentally block Googlebot, and if you’re trying to show up in AI answers, there’s a proper framework for that now too. Plus, a look at 27 companies that have already put AI to work in meaningful ways.

Let’s jump in.

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➞ Digital Marketing This Week

• Google’s Liz Reid: Personalization Can Help Small Publishers
• Cloudflare’s AI Crawler Rules Can Block Googlebot
• Why Google’s DMCA Crisis Is Bad And Will Only Get Worse
• Fan-out Framework: 5 Steps to Improve SEO and AI Visibility
• How Startups and Digital Goliaths Deploy AI to Grow Traffic & Revenue

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➞ Google Says Personalization Is Good for Small Publishers (Here’s Why You Should Verify That Yourself)

Google’s VP of Search, Liz Reid, went on the AI Inside podcast and made a case that AI personalization could actually benefit small and niche publishers, not squeeze them out. Her logic: when search is generic, everyone gets the same results. But when it draws on signals like your Maps history, email, or calendar, it can surface specialist sites that would otherwise get buried. She pointed to the “preferred sources” feature as one way for trusted publishers to show up more prominently. She also pushed back hard on the filter bubble concern, arguing that a lack of personalization is actually what traps people inside echo chambers.

That said, Reid offered no supporting data, and third-party numbers tell a different story. According to Chartbeat, small publishers lost 60% of search traffic over two years, while AI chatbot referrals remain below 1% of total page views. Google has added AI impressions to Search Console, but click data from those impressions isn’t available yet. Reid’s advice to publishers: instrument on your own side and treat “bounce clicks” as a signal of quality, not just volume.

The takeaway is simple: don’t take the argument on faith. Check your own analytics.

Read the full report from searchenginejournal.com ➞

Cloudflare just made a technical change that could quietly affect your search visibility, and it’s worth knowing about before September.

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➞ Cloudflare’s New AI Crawler Rules Could Accidentally Block Googlebot

Cloudflare has rolled out a new system that sorts AI bots into three categories: Search (indexing your site to answer questions), Agent (real-time bots acting on behalf of a user), and Training (crawling your content to build or fine-tune AI models). The change is live now for all accounts, including free plans. The big catch comes on September 15, when Cloudflare applies a strictest-rule logic to multi-purpose crawlers. Googlebot, Applebot, and Bingbot all crawl for both search and AI training. So if your site has “Block AI bots” enabled, these crawlers will be blocked too, at the network level, which is harder to override than a robots.txt instruction.

For publishers who turned on that setting to keep their content out of AI training datasets, this is an important conflict to be aware of. Losing Googlebot access means your pages get crawled less reliably, and that eventually affects your search visibility. In the meantime, review your dashboard now, decide which crawler categories you want to allow, and make sure Search stays enabled if you want your site indexed. The choice between protecting your content from AI training and staying visible in Google is a real one, and the clock is running.

Read the full report from searchenginejournal.com ➞

The Cloudflare situation is a technical headache, but the DMCA problem is more alarming, and it’s happening right now to publishers like you.

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➞ Fake DMCA Notices Are Knocking Legitimate Content Out of Google (And Google Can’t Stop It)

A pattern that’s been building for months just got much harder to ignore: bad actors are filing fraudulent DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices with Google, and Google is required by law to remove the flagged content almost immediately. No identity verification. No proof of copyright ownership. Just a form and a fake email address. Once content is removed, getting it back takes a minimum of 10 to 14 business days, often longer. The people filing these notices face no equivalent obligation to disclose who they are.

The law puts the burden on platforms to act fast and on publishers to prove their innocence afterward. Search Engine Land and Press Gazette both had legitimate investigative articles removed through fraudulent complaints earlier this year. Ex-Googler Pedro Dias has documented the problem publicly for months. SEO consultant Charles Floate reported that a Google engineer confirmed the company knows about it but can’t stop it, and noted that Search Console misses roughly 80% of DMCA notices filed against a domain. Passive monitoring alone isn’t enough. Set up active tracking across your URLs and respond to counter-notice windows as fast as possible.

Read the full report from searchenginejournal.com ➞

While the DMCA issue is largely outside your control, the next tactic is something you can act on right now to improve how AI engines find and cite your content.

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➞ The Fan-out Framework: A 5-Step Process to Show Up in AI Answers

When an AI engine receives a search query, it doesn’t just look at the page ranking for that keyword. It generates a set of sub-queries in the background, called fan-out queries, and pulls from multiple sources before assembling a final answer. The more of those sub-queries you show up in, the better your chances of being cited.

SEO consultant Cyrus Shepard laid out a five-step framework: start with a keyword you already rank for in Google, then use tools like QueryFan or Qforia to generate a list of possible fan-out queries. Filter that list to your most meaningful clusters, find the gaps in your current coverage, and update existing pages or create new ones with the query as a heading and a direct answer below.

Research backs the core premise: one study found that 38% of Google AI Overview citations come from pages in the top 10 of regular search results. Traditional SEO still matters here. Track progress in Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance Report or Google Search Console’s AI features report. Fan-out optimization won’t replace solid rankings, but it gives you a real lever to pull, and the results tend to show up faster than traditional SEO changes.

Read the full report from signal.zyppy.com ➞

Knowing the theory is one thing. Seeing how real companies put AI to work, and what the numbers actually look like, is another.

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➞ Real AI Deployments, Real Numbers: What 27 Companies Have Done That You Can Learn From

Glen Allsopp at Detailed spent significant time researching how companies across the spectrum, from startups to major publishers, are actually using AI to grow traffic and revenue. The report is full of concrete numbers. The Arena Group’s AI-powered content recommendations pushed average pageviews per visitor from 1.1 to 1.2, which at their scale translates to several million dollars in additional revenue. CarGurus’ AI search assistant drove a 3.5x increase in traffic and 10x growth in leads, with users spending 4.4x longer on the site. The Financial Times ran a personalized paywall test and saw conversion rates jump 290%. Duolingo used AI to go from 60 published courses per quarter to 20,500 in a single quarter.

Not all the examples require enterprise resources. Beehiiv’s CEO reduced his newsletter production from four hours to a few minutes per week using a five-step AI workflow built around Claude. A B2B SEO agency uses skill files and an MCP server to make sure client feedback actually sticks across multiple account managers. The pattern across all 27 cases is that AI works best when applied to a specific, repeatable problem with measurable output. Most of the examples are adaptable regardless of team size.

Read the full report from detailed.com ➞

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➞ From Google

Everything from Google search this week —

→ If you use Google, you’re training its AI. Here’s how to opt out. (techcrunch.com)

→ Google Search Console gains reporting on social and video platforms (searchengineland.com)

→ Further Exploration Found In The Wild Within Google AI Overviews (seroundtable.com)

→ Google On Using Markdown For AI SEO (searchenginejournal.com)

→ Google Answers Question About LLMs-Author.txt For SEO (searchenginejournal.com)

→ Google: Cloudflare Content Signals Robots.txt Directive Has No Effects (seroundtable.com)

→ Google merchant listings support sale duration and product category (searchengineland.com)

→ Google AI Overviews Study Finds Lost Clicks Weren’t Lower Quality (searchenginejournal.com)

→ Google Page Indexing Report Has Been Fixed & Updated (seroundtable.com)

→ Google Trends Adds Comparison Over Time Data & Chart (seroundtable.com)

→ Google Local Reviews Go Missing For Many Businesses (seroundtable.com)

→ Fraudulent DMCA Takedowns Wreak Havoc In Google Search (seroundtable.com)

→ Google Search now sends searchers directly to publisher-hosted AMP pages (searchengineland.com)

→ Google Ads Tests AI Generated Summaries Under Descriptions (seroundtable.com)

→ Google Business Profiles Appeals Adds Evidence Uploads In Workflow (seroundtable.com)

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➞ AI + Social

Find out what’s happening in the social media and artificial intelligence world —

→ Microsoft Replaces OpenAI, Anthropic With Own AI in Some Apps (bloomberg.com) – Microsoft is swapping out third-party AI models for its own in select apps, signaling a major push toward AI independence.

→ ChatGPT Ads rolling out audience lists (searchengineland.com) – ChatGPT’s ad platform is now letting advertisers target specific audience segments, bringing it closer to traditional ad network capabilities.

→ Cloudflare’s new policy pushes AI companies to pay for publishers’ content (techcrunch.com) – Cloudflare is creating a formal mechanism for AI companies to compensate publishers whose content trains their models.

→ OpenAI floats giving Trump administration 5 percent cut of AI boom (theverge.com) – OpenAI is reportedly in discussions to give the US government a financial stake in its growth in exchange for regulatory goodwill.

→ ChatGPT Thinking mode changes which brands get cited (searchengineland.com) – When ChatGPT uses extended reasoning, it draws from different sources than its default mode, shifting which brands get visibility.

→ Reddit is using LLMs to solve a problem LLMs largely created (techcrunch.com) – Reddit is deploying large language models to combat the spam and low-quality content that AI tools have flooded the platform with.

→ Meta improves AI image generation tools for advertisers (socialmediatoday.com) – Meta’s updated AI image tools for advertisers offer more control and better output quality for ad creatives across its platforms.

→ LinkedIn rolls out new AI-powered promotional tools (socialmediatoday.com) – LinkedIn is giving businesses new AI tools to promote content and target professional audiences more precisely.

→ YouTube launches desktop version of Ask YouTube (socialmediatoday.com) – YouTube’s AI-powered Q&A feature, previously mobile-only, is now available on desktop for all users.

→ SpaceX rebrands as SpaceXAI (socialmediatoday.com) – SpaceX has officially added AI to its brand identity, reflecting the growing role of artificial intelligence in its operations.

→ Reddit rolls out split testing to all advertisers (socialmediatoday.com) – Reddit’s A/B testing tool is now available to all advertisers, making it easier to compare ad variations and optimize performance.

→ X rolls out updated video editor, including green screen recording (socialmediatoday.com) – X has upgraded its in-app video editor with new features including a green screen mode for creators producing original content.

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➞ Worth Reading

These are the articles that will help you refine your marketing knowledge —

→ AI Visibility Index 2026 (semrush.com)

→ Why Internal Links Quietly Decay & How To Reclaim The Equity You’re Losing (searchenginejournal.com)

→ How to Use Reddit for SEO (The Right Way) (ahrefs.com)

→ Stop Saying “Best Practice” And Start Bringing Proof (seoforlunch.com)

→ Digital PR Done Right: Earned Media Strategies and Human-First Pitching (advancedwebranking.com)

→ While some still debate what AI search optimization should be called, companies have already answered the question that actually matters (linkedin.com)

→ Which AI systems actually read the live web, and why it decides your GEO (searchengineworld.com)

→ The Rosalía Effect: Composing Travel Content for AI Search (advancedwebranking.com)

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➞ What This All Means for Your Strategy

The topic for us this week is visibility: who gets seen, who gets cut, and who’s doing something about it.

Google’s personalization argument is worth tracking, not acting on blindly. The publishers coming out ahead are checking their own analytics, monitoring DMCA filings actively, and treating crawler settings as deliberate choices.

The fan-out framework and the Deployed report point to the same thing: AI rewards specificity. Sites that answer precise sub-questions, companies that apply AI to one repeatable problem, are the ones showing up and growing. Broad, generic coverage is harder to defend than it’s ever been.

Pick one thing from this issue and do it this week.

Until next week,

Nishat from HighDegree* Marketing

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P.S. Have a question about implementing these strategies? Hit reply – we read every email and often feature reader questions in future issues.

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