Hi and welcome back to another edition of The Keyword.

Apple rebuilt Siri with Google's help, and the demos showed it answering the product questions that were traditionally typed into a search engine. Below we break down how the deal works and where it leaves search advertising.

-Kole
Editor, The Keyword
Founder, Wilow

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Google's Gemini models generate the high-quality training signal, and Apple uses it to train its own, smaller models that it fully owns and ships.

So Apple leverages Google's technology and then tries to resolve the user queries itself instead of routing them through Google Search. Apple showed us:

Google is accepting $1 billion per year as part of the deal. But for businesses this will sound like an ad-free 'black box' product/service discovery engine.

Apple has not said how Siri decides which brands to name, but given the collaboration, Google’s advice is likely a good proxy for visibility on Apple too, although there will be differences in who gets recommended.

This is another example of the fragmentation of the search market that all businesses are trying to navigate. Add Siri AI to the list alongside Google, ChatGPT, YouTube and a few social media apps for a more diverse range of ways people now search.

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Publishers can now control how their content is used in Google’s AI-powered search features through a new Search Console toggle. The tool lets sites exclude themselves from AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI Overviews in Discover while still remaining visible in standard Search results. The rollout begins with a small group of UK publishers as the UK Competition and Markets Authority pushes for tighter rules on how search platforms use content in AI results.

The new reports track how websites appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI features in Discover. The report breaks down metrics such as impressions, Pages, Countries, Dates, and Devices. They include data on impressions, pages, countries, devices, and performance over time to show how content is being surfaced in Google’s generative AI features.

Search Profiles bring together a creator’s articles, videos, and social posts into a single page inside Google Search and Discover. The pages allow creators and publishers to edit their bio, links, images, and pin selected content for visibility.

The new feature called “Series” lets creators group related Reels into episodic collections on Instagram and Facebook. Viewers can watch episodes in order, pick up where they left off, and access the entire series from dedicated hubs on creators’ profiles.

Users can now record and share video responses directly from the repost menu using a new “React with Video” option on X. The feature supports green screen, split screen, and picture-in-picture formats that place reactions over the original post while keeping it visible.

The UK rollout marks the first time OpenAI is bringing its ChatGPT ads pilot into a European-regulated market. The launch continues a phased expansion that started in the U.S. and later moved to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, with ads currently shown only to users on free and Go tiers of ChatGPT.

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