Jacob Whitmore · Future of search researchWhere search is heading. Called early, scored in public.
How people find things is changing. Answer engines decide whether to credit a source, two people asking the same question get different answers, and publishers decide what machines can read. I measure it on stated dates, publish the raw data, and call where it goes next. Every call has a check date, and misses stay up, in red.
By Jacob Whitmore, SEO for around 12 years
01 · The scoreboard
26 calls on the record.
- Open 26
- Hit 0
- Miss 0
- Void 0
First up · checked 30 Nov 2026
After the follow-up ‘When is that figure from? Give the month or period and the official source.’, at least 95% of AI answers will state a period for the figure.
- Called
- 14 Oct 2026
- Checked
- 30 Nov 2026
- Ledger
- P19 on the board
02 · The research
Data I collected myself.
Monthly series · Latest 2 Oct 2026 · Next 2 Nov 2026
Which UK news sites block GPTBot and other AI crawlers?
Nine of the UK’s ten biggest newsbrands block at least one AI crawler, and they block training bots far more often than the bots that fetch pages for answers.
Checked 9 Oct 2026
Does ChatGPT recommend different brands to different customers?
Three of the four finance-director answers recommended none of the products the no-persona answers named.
CSV ↓Checked 9 Oct 2026
How much is the purple pound worth?
Both AI engines that answered gave £274bn, and neither said it was a 2020 figure.
CSV ↓
03 · What I’m measuring
Four open questions.
Who still gets the click?
When an answer engine uses someone’s work, it can link, name the source, or do neither.
Study registered. Run due December 2026.
What do publishers let machines read?
The robots.txt files of the UK’s ten biggest newsbrands, against 15 AI crawlers, every month.
Latest: 2 October 2026. Next: 2 November 2026.
Does everyone get the same answer?
The same question, asked by a plumber and by a finance director, gets different brands.
Do answers say when their facts were true?
Prices and market figures quoted by answer engines, checked for a date.
04 · Latest writing
Predictions, hacks and commentary.
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Non-league football predictions: one season on
Six non-league football calls from May 2025, checked in October 2026: crowds up, the two-promotion rule unchanged, and one fact I got wrong.
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The ultimate regex guide to steal
Copy-paste regex for Search Console, GA4, log files, redirects and Screaming Frog. Steal it.
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Consumers will let AI fill the cart. They still won’t let it pay.
Four 2025–26 surveys agree: shoppers let AI agents recommend and fill a basket, not pay. What agents check before they recommend you, and what merchants control.
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Does ChatGPT give the same answer twice? Ask before you trust a shortlist
Same prompt, fresh chat, different answer. Run an AI shortlist twice and keep only what appears both times.
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Keep facts in body text, not in schema or meta tags
Four common HTML-to-text tools all kept body text and dropped JSON-LD, meta descriptions, aria-labels, data- attributes and comments.
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Ask an AI answer when its “current” figure is from
Google AI Mode and Gemini left the date off 7 “current” UK figures. Both errors I found were side figures next to the headline number.
05 · How it works
Measure. Publish. Call it. Score it.
Measure
I collect the data myself, on one stated date. No surveys, no borrowed numbers.
Publish
The answer in the first line, one plain table, the full CSV and the method.
Call it
A dated prediction, with what counts as a hit and a miss written down before the result.
Score it
On the check date I rerun the test. Misses stay up, in red. Nothing gets reworded.
Some calls can’t be scored. Here’s one I made in May that I can’t mark, and what it should have said.
06 · Who’s measuring
I’ve worked in SEO for around 12 years, across in-house, agency and freelance roles. This site is where I test my own calls about where search is heading.
More about meFollow the data.
A new crawler snapshot lands on the 2nd of every month, and scores land on each call’s check date. I post both on LinkedIn first.