The Rebuilt Siri Went Live Yesterday, in Beta, and It Answers “Who’s Good Around Here” From the Open Web

Four stories, one rumor, and the new Siri went live on your customers’ phones yesterday afternoon.

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In this episode

  • Update: Apple Shipped iOS 27 on September 14 and the Rebuilt Siri AI Is Live in Beta, Opt-In and Waitlisted, Answering Local Questions From Across the Open Web.
  • OpenAI Has Published a Custom GPT Retirement Timeline, With Creation of New Ones Planned to End September 25 and Retirement Scheduled for December 11, and Custom Actions Do Not Transfer.
  • Two Hand-Tracked GEO Experiments Logging 775 Citations Found Other People’s Pages Produced 85.8 Percent of AI Source Mentions While the Brand’s Own Page Produced 14 Percent.
  • Google Ads Performance Max Is Showing a Setting That Sends Ad Clicks to a Google-Hosted Business Profile Page Instead of a Website, Spotted in Accounts With No Google Announcement.
Read the full transcript

Welcome to the AI Industry Report, daily AI news for small business, built by AI, about AI, from the Agentic Marketing Academy. It’s Tuesday, September 15th. Four stories, one rumor, and the new Siri went live on your customers’ phones yesterday afternoon. Let’s go.

Start with the one already in your customer’s pocket. Apple shipped iOS 27 yesterday, and the rebuilt Siri came with it. We’ve been saying since July this was coming. It’s here. Temper it, though, because Apple does. It’s a beta, you switch it on in Settings, there’s a waitlist, and it’s English only until next month. But look at the example Apple picked in its own announcement: finding the best local coffee spot in a new city. That’s the whole story. The assistant that comes free on the phone now answers who’s good around here by reading the open web. And we know what it’s reading. Apple added four thousand six hundred crawler addresses in August, and Yelp’s CEO said last week that Apple is one of the places Yelp ships its data. So, two free minutes today. Ask Siri what your customer would ask. Best whatever-you-do near me. Listen to the names it says back. Source: Apple’s own newsroom announcement, September 14th.

Next up, and this one has a date on it, so if you ever built a custom GPT, stay with me. OpenAI is retiring them. That’s not chatter, it’s in OpenAI’s own help center, in the custom GPT retirement and migration FAQ. September 25th, a week from Friday, is the planned end of making new ones. December 11th is the scheduled retirement, when the old ones stop running. Fine print: those dates describe the Enterprise rollout, and OpenAI says the transition affects all plans and that all of it is subject to change. Plugins replace them. Your instructions carry over, your connected apps carry over. Custom actions do not. Neither does the model you picked, and your old chats may not either. So, ten minutes today. Open the GPTs you actually use and copy the instructions into a plain document, somewhere that isn’t ChatGPT. That’s the piece no migration button rebuilds for you. Source: OpenAI’s custom GPT retirement and migration FAQ, published September 11th.

Now, this next one broke a piece of advice I’ve repeated on this show. Zeeshan Yaseen ran two experiments and counted 775 citations by hand, published at Search Engine Land yesterday. The useful one is the cold start: a brand invisible to AI, thirty days, six assistants, fifteen buying questions. Zero to 298 appearances. Here’s the split. Other people’s pages produced eighty-six percent of the mentions. His own page produced fourteen, and it was the slowest thing he published to get picked up. So he rewrote it to include his competitors instead of just himself, and mentions of it went from four to forty-nine. Comparing honestly beat bragging, by a lot. One practitioner, two brands, counted by hand, so treat it as a signal, not a law. But the homework is free. Run your three money questions through ChatGPT and Gemini tonight and write down every page they cite. That’s your fall marketing plan. Source: Search Engine Land, September 14th.

One more, for anybody whose website is the thing they keep meaning to finish. A new setting turned up in Google Ads Performance Max. It asks where people should go after clicking your ad, and gives two answers. Your website. Or your Google Business Profile, on a Google-hosted page with conversion tracking built in. Read that twice if you run your business out of a truck or a spare bedroom. Now, this is a sighting, not an announcement. Natasha Kaurra found it in her own account and says it looks less like something new and more like Google quietly widening who gets it. Google hasn’t said anything publicly. So go look in your own campaign settings. Source: Search Engine Roundtable, September 15th, reporting Natasha Kaurra.

One rumor before we go, same guy as yesterday, louder. Barry Schwartz says chatter spiked hard this morning and the tracking tools are moving with it. He thinks an update may have started. Google hasn’t announced one. So, same advice as always. Don’t touch anything this week. Write down today’s date and let it settle.

So here’s your one thing for today. Ask Siri for the best business in your category near you, and listen to the name it says. Whoever that is, that’s your competition now.

That’s today’s report. Transcript and every source linked at A I industry report dot com.

If you want your business to be the one AI recommends, the free checklist at the leveling window dot com is where everybody starts.

And full transparency, because we practice what we teach: this show is researched, written, and voiced by AI, built by our founder. We teach businesses what AI can do. This show is the proof. Hit follow, and tomorrow’s report finds you on its own.

Sources

Want your business to be the one AI recommends? The free Agentic Readiness Checklist walks you through the 15 signals AI agents check, in plain English. Get it at thelevelingwindow.com.

The AI Industry Report is researched, written, and voiced by AI, built by the founder of the Agentic Marketing Academy. We teach businesses what AI can do. This show is the proof.