As search traffic thins, everyone is resetting their doors and their counters

Last week I wrote that default settings are making decisions for you. This week a bigger shift underneath became visible. Traffic from search is thinning, and everyone is responding by resetting two things: their door and their counter. Reddit is putting more of itself behind a login. Google is moving the money into AI Mode while offering publishers a shared switch for AI training. On measurement, one platform’s tracking quietly disappeared while Meta gets ready to count more conversions than before.

Reddit pulls back behind the login

TechCrunch reported on October 29 that Reddit used its third-quarter earnings call to announce a move to a primarily “logged-in experience.” The numbers behind it are stark. Search referrals fell by more than 1 million a week on average in October. US daily active users dropped from 53.2 million in the second quarter to 50.7 million in the third, while the global figure held flat at 130.3 million. Reddit warned that if the trend continues, daily actives could fall by a low-double-digit percentage next quarter.

The business itself is doing fine. Revenue rose 53% year over year to $895 million. According to TechCrunch, the move is meant to protect Reddit’s data from AI scraping and support licensing deals, and logged-in users are typically worth more to advertisers. The first tests will run in select markets outside the US in the fourth quarter. Which markets, Reddit hasn’t said.

CEO Steve Huffman wrote that it is “a big change for me.” To me that is the most honest line of the week. One of the sites that fed most heavily on search is admitting those visitors won’t come back the way they used to. If you grow your audience through Reddit visibility, start planning for a world with fewer logged-out readers.

Google moves ads into AI Mode as search growth slows

On October 29, Google said it is scaling ads in AI Mode in Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore. More locales, including Brazil, Mexico and the United Kingdom, are planned for the fourth quarter. In the US, Google is launching multiturn ads, which can appear in follow-up questions. Google says AI Mode queries are on average three times longer than traditional searches, and that click-through rates on sponsored and organic product listings there are already similar.

TechCrunch’s October 31 analysis showed the other side. Growth in Google’s search advertising, roughly half the company’s revenue, slowed to 12%, its weakest pace in five quarters. TechCrunch ties this to AI Mode eating into the company’s money-maker, which leaves Google spending billions on AI technology that could undermine the search business that pays it.

My reading: as Google pushes conversational search, it has to move the money there too. For advertisers, that means product information that answers long, specific questions rather than matching short keywords. If you sell in one of the listed markets, reread your product descriptions with that in mind.

One switch to opt out of AI training

Google Search Central announced on October 30 that it plans to support a shared AI training control in robots.txt, the file sites use to give instructions to crawlers. The idea comes from the AIPREF working group at the Internet Engineering Task Force. Instead of writing separate rules for each AI developer, a site owner could use a shared “policy token” to opt out of training. If a site uses it and doesn’t separately specify Google-Extended, Google’s existing training control, Google plans to treat that as if Google-Extended were disallowed. Company-specific controls keep working. Google aims to support this alongside other AI providers in 2027. It is a draft proposal, and it names no other participating company.

One sentence in the post stood out. Sites that explicitly allow Google-Extended are eligible to appear in Gemini Apps responses and receive clicks. I think that is where the price of the switch is written. Opting out gets easier, but the bargain over visibility stays on the table. If you publish content, know what your robots.txt says today. It is now a commercial decision.

The trail of the click is fading

Search Engine Roundtable ran two measurement stories on October 30. The first covered what Cyrus Shepard called a “small case study” on LinkedIn. He opted a site out of Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, then compared the numbers. By his estimate, AI impressions had a click-through rate of about 0.9%, and they made up about 8% of total impressions. The surprise: when the site left the AI features, its regular organic clicks dropped too. The sample is small, and AI Overviews kept appearing on the page throughout, so this doesn’t compare results with and without them.

The second story: Gemini began adding utm_source=gemini to cited links in early September, then stopped around September 28. According to Natzir, who tracked it, the web version still passes referrer data, but the iOS app sends none, so those visits land as Direct traffic in GA4. The only trace is a GeminiiOS user agent in server logs.

Put together, AI does send value, but it is getting harder to see where it comes from. My suggestion: watch for unexplained growth in Direct traffic in GA4, and keep your server logs.

Meta’s Pixel will count more from November 12

PPC Land reported on October 27 that from November 12, 2026, Meta will start measuring some website purchases on the shopper’s own device. The Events Manager setting “Measure conversions on customer devices” is already on for advertisers who do nothing. Meta’s wording says measurement will happen there “instead of exclusively on Meta servers,” so the device adds a path rather than replacing one. You can turn it off per dataset. Citing Meta help pages, MetricMaven reports the feature isn’t active in the EU or the UK, and that the site must require login with an email or phone number. I could not confirm whether it applies in Turkey, where I work.

Meta hasn’t said whether recovered conversions feed bidding and delivery or only reporting. As PPC Land points out, more counted conversions are not more sales. November 12 falls 15 days before Black Friday on November 27. My suggestion: starting now, line up Meta-attributed purchases against your own order records, day by day. If the ratio shifts, you’ll know why.

An update on the terms I’ve been following. Per the same report, Meta’s revised commercial terms now take effect on November 20 instead of October 30, after publishers and advertisers complained to EU and UK competition authorities.

Turkey: Siri will speak Turkish before the year ends

Turkish tech publication Digital Age reported on October 28 that Apple announced Turkish support for the new Siri AI by the end of the year, with no exact date. Traditional Chinese, Norwegian and Vietnamese are coming too. Siri AI can find things in your messages, emails and photos, and answer questions or take action based on what’s on screen.

To me this is the same story as the rest of the week, arriving in my own market. A layer that gives the answer itself is settling between Turkish users and your site, this time inside the phone. From year’s end, writing Turkish content clearly enough for an assistant to read and relay will matter more.

What the week leaves behind

Reddit is moving its door behind a login. Google is moving its money into conversational search. Gemini’s trail is fading while Meta prepares to count more. Where I land is this: you can no longer expect search visitors the way you used to, or count them the way you used to. That is why your own order records and your own channels are worth more than ever.

What I’ll be watching:

• How Meta’s on-device measurement affects reporting and bidding after November 12.
• The final text of Meta’s commercial terms when they take effect on November 20.
• Which markets Reddit picks for its logged-in tests.
• The release date for Siri AI in Turkish.