THRIVE: eCom News - 10 July 2026
This week: ChatGPT Ads add audience targeting, GSC now shows how your social and video posts perform in Search and should you be building separate "files for AI"?
Happy Friday!
Here's what you need to know this week across organic and paid that matters for your ecom store:
01 · Google Search Console now shows how your social and video posts perform in Search
What it means for you: Google's new "platform properties" let you verify your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube profiles inside Search Console and see the exact queries pulling people to that content, essentially meaning that your social posts just became measurable search real estate, not a black box. Verify your profiles and start treating social as a discovery channel you can actually report on, because for the first time you can prove (or disprove) that your TikTok content is doing real search work.
02 · Google's John Mueller: stop building separate "files for AI" - the crawlers ignore them
What it means for you: llms.txt, llms-author.txt, Cloudflare's Content-Signal header and mirrored markdown pages have been further confirmed by Mueller that Google and the major crawlers won’t prioritise if a site has it. What actually gets you into LLMs hasn't changed: being genuinely cited/spoken about across authoritative sites and building a really strong store are the core priorities.
03 · ChatGPT Ads add audience targeting, so the answer engine is now a real ad platform
What it means for you: OpenAI is rolling out audience uploads (hashed emails and phone numbers) inside ChatGPT Ads, on top of AI-generated ad creative, meaning discovery on ChatGPT specifically is splitting into earned (get recommended in the answer) and paid (buy your way in), exactly like Google did fifteen years ago. This is being rolled out one by one alongside Creative & Tracking. Get your first-party data house in order now because it may mean running the same dual play you run on Google - be the organic answer and own the paid slot above it.
To read more:
Search Console now reports social & video performance for Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube — Google Search Central Blog
Google on using markdown (and other “for AI” files) for AI SEO — Search Engine Journal
ChatGPT Ads gain new audiences targeting — Search Engine Roundtable
From NOVOS
If you haven’t yet, we’d love it if you signed up to our next THRIVE Webinar. Benoit, our Paid Media Director, and John Brolly from Athos Commerce will discuss why creative is the new targeting and how SEO foundations, PDPs and product data now feed your paid performance as one connected system.
