By Tom Whitfield

Google may be deliberately feeding bad data to AI scraper bots that rely on its search results, according to Search Engine Roundtable. The reported tactic turns bot detection into an offensive weapon, and it could corrupt the SEO tools brands use to track their search visibility.

In recent weeks, Google has improved its ability to distinguish human users from AI scraper bots, Search Engine Roundtable reports. When Google is confident a bot is running a search, it may do more than block it. According to the report, Google has begun "injecting bad data" into results, poisoning the well for rival AI bots that scrape and resell Google responses.

The primary target appears to be SerpApi, which scrapes Google results and sells access to them. Google sued SerpApi, but a court dismissed the case in August. Google has since refiled with a new legal angle. The message is blunt: scraping Google is now a contested, high-stakes activity.

Why does this matter for brands?

SEO and AEO tools also depend on Google Search to answer questions like: "When people search for long-distance running shoes, how often does my brand appear, and how is it described?" If Google feeds scrapers bad data, those tools may no longer give brands a reliable picture of how they show up in search.

There was a separate wrinkle. Search Engine Roundtable also reported that Google's Search Console Performance report was unavailable for several days late last week and over the weekend, an unusually long outage for a system that tends to be more reliable than Google's other consoles.

Is YouTube trying to replace TV?

No, according to YouTube VP Pedro Pina, who spoke Monday at MIPCOM, the annual telecom trade show in Cannes, France.

"We as a platform are not invested in producing content," Pina said in conversation with RTL Deutschland CEO Stephan Schmitter.

The track record backs him up. In 2016, YouTube launched a slate of exclusive titles for YouTube Red. By 2020, most of those shows were sold off or canceled — "Cobra Kai" went to Netflix — and the YouTube Originals banner shut down in 2022.

YouTube has marketed its ad-free subscription, YouTube Premium, more heavily in recent months, but Google still makes the majority of its revenue from ads. Pina said YouTube shares more than half of its ad revenue with partners, who "make nothing" if their content doesn't perform. That positions YouTube less as a studio and more as a distribution platform, closer to cable or a TV operating system with a substantial advertising business attached.

Are publishers ready for agentic media buying?

Not yet. Many publishers hold back because it feels too soon to know "whether or not [they're] going to be of value," Jamie Jouning, global head of advertising at The Economist, told Digiday.

Executives from Newsweek and The New York Times also said they were evaluating agent-led buying but had not committed, citing open questions about measuring ROI. Amit Grover, CEO of sell-side programmatic sales firm KPI Village, said that with traffic-dependent ad revenue declining, publishers understandably prioritize investments with a clearer path to near-term revenue. Some are instead hiring vertical-specialist sellers and building new sponsorship opportunities.

In brief

• A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its taxpayer-funded TV ads over the weekend. [Axios]
• Political ad buyer Cross Screen Media refunded a Republican Super PAC after running $25,000 worth of ads for Maine Senator Susan Collins in Portland, Oregon, rather than Portland, Maine. [NBC News]
• Google is testing ads for prescription drugs in its AI Overviews. [Adweek]
• Bot traffic from Russian ISP Yandex dropped Sunday after Ukrainian drones struck one of the company's biggest data centers. [Tom's Hardware]

StackAdapt named Pinar Ozyetis chief legal officer and Anna Grodecka-Grad chief client officer. [Exchange Wire]

If Google is confirmed to be poisoning scraper results at scale, brands will need to question every third-party report on their search performance — and the SEO tooling market may face a reckoning over where its data actually comes from.