Weekly SEO and Marketing Recap: Jan 30, 2026

Hey Ninjas! 👋

Friday's here, which means you've survived another week of algorithm updates, platform drama, and probably at least one "urgent" client message at 11 PM.

You know the drill by now—I've spent the week buried in industry news, testing tools, and separating signal from noise so you don't have to.

SO, LET’S GET STARTED →

This Week in AI Tools — Genspark AI

Build 24/7 Affiliate Agents With One Prompt (No Code Required)

Genspark's Super Agent system lets you create custom AI agents for product research, content creation, and campaign optimization—all through natural language prompts.

Why affiliates are switching:

• 80+ built-in tools for research, slides, video, and websites

• One-prompt setup builds complete agents in minutes

• Agent Store marketplace offers pre-built solutions

Claim 20% off annual plans →

One-Third of Publishers Ready to Block Google AI From Their Content

Poll reveals 33% would opt out of AI Overviews and AI Mode, while 25% remain undecided on Google's AI features

Google Searches Per U.S. User Crashed 20% in One Year

AI-powered answers kill repeat searches while zero-click results plateau in low-20% range

AI Tools Return Same Brand List Less Than 1% of the Time

ChatGPT and Claude generate wildly different recommendations with identical prompts, making rank tracking meaningless

Google Plans Opt-Out Controls for AI Overviews and AI Mode

UK regulatory pressure forces Google to explore publisher controls that won't "break Search"

ChatGPT Free and Go Users Will See Ads Starting Next Month

OpenAI plans $8/month ChatGPT Go tier for U.S. users while testing ads at bottom of AI responses

TikTok USDS Joint Venture Goes Live with Majority American Ownership

Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX each hold 15% while ByteDance keeps 19.9% of new entity

Meta's AI Ad Tools Hit $10 Billion Revenue Run-Rate

Video generation features and incremental attribution model drive 24% conversion lift in Q4 2025

TikTok's Data Center Outage Spiked Meta CPMs by 15%

Internal email confirms technical issues left advertisers with missing features and campaigns ending early

Why 80% of Affiliate Programs Fail at International Expansion

Multi-currency reconciliation errors and compliance violations kill global launches within 90 days

Companies Don't Need Storytellers—They Need Sense-Making

Fragmented channels and AI-generated content abundance create coherence crisis, not creative deficit

📅 Worth Your Calendar — AFFHUB Affiliate Connect Conf Georgia

AFFHUB's first 2026 event hits Tbilisi on March 27 at ExpoGeorgia—marking the community's expansion into a new powerhouse market for affiliate marketing

What makes this one different:

• First AFFHUB event in Georgia, bringing 5+ years of proven networking format to Tbilisi

• Invite-only mastermind sessions with real case studies not published online

• 2,000+ affiliates, networks, and advertisers from across Europe and beyond

Grab early-bird tickets while they last →

Exclusive Partner Offer — SmartScout

Find Profitable Amazon Brands in Minutes, Not Hours

Stop wasting weeks digging through 40,000 Amazon subcategories manually. SmartScout's brand discovery tool filters partners by estimated revenue, out-of-stock rates, and review counts—exposing profitable opportunities competitors miss.

Smart filters remove Amazon from your competition while surfacing real sales data across the entire marketplace.

Save 25% for 3 months with code BLOGA25 →
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