Table of Contents
You Can't Buy Your Way Into AI Search
Google Just Called Buying AI Mentions the New Paid Links
The rest of the week, in bite-sized pieces
"Everyone's telling me to 'be a preferred source' and start blogging again so Google's AI mentions us. Do I really have to?"
Epic Web Studios
Epic Insights
Edition 22  ·  Jun 2, 2026

You Can't Buy Your Way Into AI Search

A few clients forwarded us the same cold email last week: "We'll get your brand mentioned across 50 sites so AI starts recommending you." It's a tempting offer. It's also the oldest bad idea on the internet wearing a new outfit, and Google just said so out loud.
The Big Story

Google Just Called Buying AI Mentions the New Paid Links

At Google's Search Central Live event last month, Gary Illyes told a room full of SEOs that buying or manipulating brand mentions to show up in AI answers is the same game as buying links. Google's systems find them, ignore them, and sometimes penalize the site that paid. Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal both wrote it up.

That lands right as a fresh crop of tools is promising to "seed" your brand across the web so ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews start name-dropping you. The pitch sounds cutting-edge. The tactic is fifteen years old.

The part the vendors leave out is the kicker: Illyes also said Google isn't even sure how much authentic, earned mentions help AI answers. So they're selling you a guaranteed bump on something Google itself won't promise works.

We've seen this one before. A cheap trick works for a few weeks, gets detected, gets clawed back, and the business that paid for it eats the loss. Paid links, spun content, fake reviews. Different decade, same ending.

So skip the shortcut. You get into AI answers the same way you earn trust anywhere: real content, a clean and fast site, honest reviews, and being the obvious answer to what your customers are already asking.
What this means for your site
If a vendor promises to get your brand "mentioned" so AI tools recommend you, treat it exactly like someone selling backlinks in 2012. Same risk, just a faster cleanup when it unravels.

Your move: Forward us any "AI mention" or "AI visibility" pitch that hit your inbox this month. We'll tell you in one reply whether there's anything real underneath it.
Quick Hits

The rest of the week, in bite-sized pieces
Another Googlequake, Right on Schedule
Google's May core update threw bigger tantrums the weekend of May 30 than it did in week one, and it wraps around June 4. SEMrush nicknamed these volatility spikes "Googlequakes," which tells you how routine, and how survivable, they've become.
Your move: Don't rearrange the furniture mid-quake. We'll send your before-and-after read once Google calls it done.
A WordPress Analytics Plugin Is Under Active Attack
Burst Statistics, a popular privacy-friendly analytics plugin, has a critical flaw (CVE-2026-8181) that lets attackers create admin accounts with no real password. Reports put over 7,400 attacks in the first 24 hours. The fix is version 3.4.2.
Your move: If your site runs Burst Statistics, update to 3.4.2 today. If Epic hosts your WordPress site, no worries, we got you!
Google's "Preferred Sources" Now Show Up Inside AI Answers
As of May 27, people can tag favorite sites as "preferred," and those get a badge and priority inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. Any site that publishes fresh content regularly is eligible, not just the big publishers.
Your move: Ask your loyal customers and email list to add your site as a preferred source in Google. Two taps for them, ongoing visibility for you.
Your Fresh Content Can Reach AI Answers Faster Now
Google removed the delay between when a page gets indexed for regular search and when it can appear in AI Overviews. New and updated pages can now surface in AI answers about as fast as they hit search.
Your move: If you've been holding a page back, ship it. There's less of a waiting period now before AI can pick it up.
Ask Epic

"Everyone's telling me to 'be a preferred source' and start blogging again so Google's AI mentions us. Do I really have to?"

Not the way you're dreading it. You don't owe Google a blog post every Monday to stay visible.

Preferred Sources rewards the sites people actually choose to follow, and with this week's indexing change, the content you do publish gets picked up faster than before. So volume isn't the goal. Being worth choosing is.

Your favorite coffee shop doesn't earn the loyalty by posting every day. It earns it by doing one thing well enough that you keep coming back. A few genuinely useful pages (your real services, honest answers to the questions customers keep asking, a couple of pieces only you could write) will do more for you than a content treadmill ever will.

If publishing on a schedule isn't realistic for you right now, that's completely fine. We can help you pick the three or four pages worth getting right and skip the busywork that just fills a calendar.
What Epic's doing for you this week
This week the team is watching ranking dashboards across the roster while the core update finishes, and resisting every urge to make reactive changes (we sit on our hands on purpose during these). We're also auditing client sites for the WordPress plugin flaws making the rounds and patching where needed, and sorting which "AI visibility" pitches landing in inboxes are worth a second look versus the ones to delete on sight. If anything touches your account in a way that needs your eyes, you'll hear from us directly.
Your 15-minute self-audit

The "Is This AI Pitch Real?" 3-Question Test

Got a cold email promising AI visibility? Run it through these three questions before you reply.

1. Does it name a specific tactic, or just a "score" and a "package"? Real help names the actual work. Vague pitches sell fear.

2. Will they show you a 6-month traffic trend on sites they've actually worked on? You want live numbers, not screenshots from January.

3. Does the offer involve buying mentions, links, or reviews? If yes, delete it. Google treats all three the same way, and it ends the same way.

Fifteen minutes with these and most pitches sort themselves out.

Thanks for reading! Got questions? Ideas? I'm all ears. Share your thoughts with me and help shape future editions of Epic Insights.

— Kristy Freeman
Epic Web Studios
k.freeman@epicwebstudios.com
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