Host: Sean Barber — https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanrbarber/ — He/Him

Welcome to Search With Sean: Weekly Digital Marketing News – your weekly breakdown of the latest developments across SEO, AI, paid media, digital marketing and search.

Co-Hosts

David Carrasco – https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-carrasco-pamies/

Steve O'Brien – https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveob/

Dan Taylor – https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielrwtaylor/

Stanislav Farkas – https://www.linkedin.com/in/stanislav-farkas-fastraveller/

This episode looks at Google calling its EU search results the worst in its history after the DMA redesign, the rival models taking shape for how AI pays publishers, and a new wave of cheaper AI models — OpenAI's GPT-6 and a leaner Claude Opus 5.5.

We also discuss multimodal arriving in Search Console, warnings of an AI "silicon species", OpenAI and an Australian government hack, the Tilly Norwood AI actress, another Google spam update and the latest AI-citation ranking factors.

Key Topics Covered

- Google calling its EU results its "worst ever" after the DMA redesign

- How AI might pay publishers — Cloudflare, Google and Microsoft's rival models

- What actually counts as "content" worth paying for

- Cheaper AI models: OpenAI's GPT-6 (Sol & Luna) and Claude Opus 5.5

- Why OpenAI keeps cutting prices and chasing volume over profit

- Multimodal reporting arriving in Search Console (still no AI Mode data)

- Why Google keeps "half-baking" Search Console tools

- Microsoft AI's "silicon species" warning and AI agents seeking work

- OpenAI and the Australian Medicare incident — the first government "hack"?

- Who's accountable when an AI agent goes rogue (Jensen Huang's view)

- Tilly Norwood, AI actors, the Coca-Cola AI advert and AI-disclosure rules

- NYT v OpenAI: "users won't click" and AI as a search "substitute"

- Another Google spam update — why so frequent?

- AI making phishing and spam far harder to spot

- Invented keywords and fake "ranking hacks"

- Cyrus Shepard's AI-citation factors: accessibility, search rank and fan-out rank

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