Key SEO and AI News for July 2026 + Digger Plan Giveaway
Summer is in full swing, but the world of search and AI definitely isn't taking a break. In today’s roundup, we’ve packed a solid dose of updates to help you dominate both traditional SERPs and AI assistant recommendations.
You can now connect Marketing Miner directly to your AI assistant, we’ve launched the new AI Visibility & SEO add-on for Shoptet e-shops, Google rolls out another spam update, and Bing upgrades its AI visibility reporting within Webmaster Tools. Plus, we have a giveaway for our crowd-favorite Digger plan (3 months free!).
Grab a seat, let's dive in!
1) Marketing Miner Delivers Real Search Data to Your ChatGPT or Claude
Keyword research, topic ideation, or content strategy development have never been faster or more convenient. You can now connect your AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, or Claude Code) directly to Marketing Miner’s database, which is packed with up-to-date and historical search data.
What does this mean in practice? You connect your AI assistant to Marketing Miner via MCP (Model Context Protocol). Then, just use natural language prompts, and the AI will automatically pull the necessary data on keywords, search volumes, or competitor domains. All the data is right at your fingertips, exactly where you need it.
Here’s a sneak peek of what your chat can look like after setting up our MCP:
AI specialist and marketer Jindra Fáborský thoroughly tested this integration and deep dived into everything your AI assistant can now do in his latest article. Want to try it out for yourself? You can set everything up in just a few clicks.
Learn more about Marketing Miner MCP →
2) Drive More Orders From Traditional and AI Search With the New Shoptet Add-on
Running an e-shop on the Shoptet platform? Then we have great news for you. We have officially launched our new AI Visibility & SEO add-on, designed to help you drive more orders and ensure you stay visible to customers in both traditional and AI search.
We engineered this tool to do the heavy lifting for you. It clearly displays your revenue and traffic originating from both traditional and AI search. It regularly audits your e-shop for technical and content issues, ranking them by priority - so you know exactly which optimizations to tackle first to stop losing money. The add-on also assists with competitor analysis and keyword research for your content and overall strategy.
Everything is straightforward, requires zero technical background, and works in a single click. Activate the add-on in the Shoptet Add-on Store and get actionable data within a minute to start growth-hacking your store immediately.
3) Win Marketing Miner's Digger Plan Free for 3 Months
At Marketing Miner, we want to ensure you always have the most powerful and useful features at your fingertips. To keep pushing the tool in the direction that helps your daily workflow the most, we need your help. That's why we’ve put together a short survey about AI visibility and future features in Marketing Miner.
It will only take a few minutes of your time, but your feedback will be absolutely vital for our product team.
Why participate?
- Awesome prize: As a thank you for your time, we'll pick 3 winners to get our Digger plan (worth $59/month) completely free for 3 months.
- Shape the product roadmap: Don’t miss the chance to influence your favorite tool. Help us decide which features we should prioritize for development.
The survey is available in both languages. If you are a Czech speaker (even if your device or location is set to US/GB), we’d highly appreciate it if you could fill out the Czech version.
4) Google Rolls Out June 2026 Spam Update
Google continues its relentless push for higher quality and relevance in search results. As confirmed by the official Google Search Status Dashboard, the June 2026 Spam Update kicked off on Wednesday, June 24. This time, the execution was lightning-fast - the entire rollout took just two days, wrapping up on Friday, June 26.
Google was quite brief regarding the details, merely stating that it was a standard, global spam update with no specific niche target, affecting all languages and regions. However, as documented by Search Engine Roundtable, despite the swift two-day rollout, the impact felt much more severe than typical spam updates. In SEO forums, webmasters reported sharp organic traffic drops of 15% to 20%, and in extreme cases, up to 80%. Paradoxically, many users complained about the exact opposite of the intended effect - SERPs suddenly became flooded with irrelevant content and sketchy websites.
Marketing Miner TIP: If you noticed a drop in organic traffic during this period, audit your site for duplicate or thin content. We highly recommend regularly tracking your keyword rankings and correlating any volatility with the update's rollout date. Marketing Miner automatically logs all major updates as annotations directly within your traffic charts.
5) Track Your Citation Share Directly in Webmaster Tools - Bing Introduces "AI Citation Share"
While Google Search Console seems to be dragging its feet on comprehensive AI visibility reporting, Microsoft is going all in. Within Bing Webmaster Tools, they are rolling out a global beta of four new features inside the AI Performance dashboard . The biggest highlight is the Citation Share metric, accompanied by Intents, Topics, and Compare features.
Since these updates are rolling out progressively, many users might not see them just yet. But what does it mean for those who already have access? Search Engine Journal published a detailed breakdown of the entire update.
Citation Share is the first-ever official metric from a major search engine showing your relative Share of Voice in AI responses (for Copilot and Bing). Until now, data only revealed that you were cited and for which queries. Now, Bing gives you a percentage - if the AI generates 10 source citations for a specific prompt and 3 are from your site, your Citation Share is 30%.
The other new features help contextualize data by automatically grouping queries into themes and by search intent (Intents & Topics) or allowing easy period-over-period performance tracking (Compare). The SEO community is thrilled. International SEO consultant Gianluca Fiorelli perfectly captured the sentiment on LinkedIn:
"Bing Webmaster! The Google Search Console we would like to have."
Marketing Miner TIP: Bing's new metrics are a massive step forward, but they only reflect Microsoft's ecosystem (Bing and Copilot). If you want a complete overview of how your brand ranks across the world's most popular models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews, leverage our regular and one-off AI visibility tracking features in Marketing Miner to get the full picture.
6) Added Brand Aliases to Marketing Miner's One-Off AI Visibility Reports
We’re always listening to your feedback and fine-tuning the details. That's why we’ve added the option to input alternative names (brand aliases) into our one-off AI visibility reports.
If your brand or e-shop goes by multiple names, you can now define these aliases during setup. When parsing AI assistant responses, Marketing Miner will accurately match and credit your brand mentions - even if the AI doesn't use your exact official brand name. This makes your AI visibility reporting significantly more precise.
Do you know how to optimize your online content to build strong topical authority that AI engines won't ignore? Slovak agency Visibility provided a comprehensive breakdown and a practical approach in their article on online content distribution strategies for 2026. Once you successfully get your content out there, don't forget to verify how it performs across various AI models.
