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
31 calls on the record.
- Open 31
- Hit 0
- Miss 0
- Void 0
Nothing has been scored yet, so there is no hit rate to show. The first results go up on 30 Nov 2026.
Due next
- P19After 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.Checked 30 Nov 2026
- P20At least one period an engine gives on request doesn’t match the official period.Checked 30 Nov 2026
- P17GPTBot is blocked by 16 or fewer of the 24 Russell Group universities.Checked 2 Dec 2026
- P18Russell Group universities block training crawlers at least 10 points more often than retrieval crawlers.Checked 2 Dec 2026
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 29 Oct 2026
AI search statistics, traced to the source
None of the 32 statistics repeated most across roundups passes all five basic checks, and none is about the UK.
CSV ↓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.
03 · Guides & tools
Things you can do today.
- Hack
Block AI training crawlers but still let ChatGPT-User in
The robots.txt split most of the UK’s biggest news sites use.
- Hack
Put the date in the same sentence as the figure
7 of 40 AI answers to “current” UK figure questions gave no date.
- Guide
The ultimate regex guide to steal
Copy-paste regex for Search Console, GA4, log files, redirects and Screaming Frog.
- Tool
How to use the EntityMap validator
It checks a file’s shape, not whether it’s true or whether anything reads it.
- Kit
What I use
The software behind the site and the research. Affiliate links are labelled.
04 · 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.
05 · Latest writing
Predictions, hacks and commentary.
Gartner said search volume would drop 25% by 2026. Can it be scored?
Gartner’s 2024 call that search volume would fall 25% by 2026, checked in October 2026. It can’t be scored as written. On the closest public data, it looks like a miss.
Do backlinks get you cited in AI answers? What 16 studies actually measured
Checked 30 October 2026. 16 studies on links, authority and rankings vs AI citations. All correlational, none with raw data, one naming a country. Brand mentions beat links.
Search Console’s AI report shows impressions, not clicks. What it can and can’t tell you
Checked 30 October 2026. Search Console’s AI report counts impressions only: no clicks, no queries. What it can answer, what it can’t, and how to report AI visibility anyway.
Google is lying to your rank tracker on purpose
Google is deliberately serving fake results pages to suspected scrapers. It isn’t blocking them. It answers them, with complete, normal-looking pages whose organic results have been swapped out. Nothing on the page gives it away. That’s the finding of Nozzle’s…
Meta’s Muse AI: what it means for SEO, Google and the future of search
Muse is Meta’s agent, not Facebook search. What Meta announced, how AI Mode differs, the UK position, and a six-layer stack for AI discovery. Dated.
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.
06 · 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.
- The methodThe sample, the snapshot date, what counts as blocked, and the method change log.
- What I will not claimFour claims this site won’t make, and why the data can’t support them.
- How a call is writtenThe four things a claim needs before it can be checked.
- Correction logEvery change to the board, dated, at the foot of the ledger.
Some calls can’t be scored. Here’s one I made in May that I can’t mark, and what it should have said.
07 · 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.