A recent manual action provides a great view of how scaling via AI-generated content can yield a huge drop in Google’s 10-blue links, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. But as you’ll see below, ChatGPT citations can drop heavily as well.
Well, it seems another example of “Mt. AI” came crashing down recently. I actually noticed the site while researching the March 2026 broad core update due to its massive surge and wondered how long it would take for Google to kill it. It ends up Futurism wrote an article about the AI-generated local news section that the site had added, and then boom, the section was nuked from the index quickly. Google clearly applied a manual action to the site for “Scaled content abuse” which led to the entire section getting nuked from the index.
The /us/ directory had over 850K urls indexed and all were 100% AI-generated local news articles… The directory was ranking in news surfaces including Top Stories, Google News, the News tab in Search, and I’m sure Discover.
Here is what trending looks like for the site from a search visibility standpoint. Again, it’s a great example of what I call “Mt. AI”. Visibility comes crashing down once the manual action was applied:
AIOs and AI Mode visibility follow suit:
Beyond Google’s 10-blue links, when a site is removed from Google’s index it will also drop heavily in in Google’s AI overviews and AI Mode. Both leverage Google’s search index and ranking systems when sourcing content for its answers. So if your content isn’t even indexed, it has no shot at ranking across those AI search experiences.
For example, you can clearly see the site dropping in AIOs and AI Mode via trending in Brand Radar. The manual action was just applied but you can already see the drops across AIOs and AI Mode. As time goes on, you will see these continue to drop heavily…
And spot-checking the SERPs for queries where the section used to rank reveals the site is now gone from AI Overviews or AI Mode answers. Again, this makes complete sense.
But what about AI Search platforms like ChatGPT?
Ranking well in Google search can yield strong visibility in AI Search, including ChatGPT. And what you should be doing for SEO should be greatly helping from an AI Search visibility standpoint. You can read my article covering what Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity have explained about that topic.
Anyway, when ChatGPT searches the web to ground answers, it can leverage Google’s index (which has been documented many times). So, if a site gets nuked from Google’s index, you run the risk of also getting nuked from ChatGPT (at least when ChatGPT searches the web to ground its responses). An algorithmic drop or manual action from Google could yield drops across AI Search. Lily Ray wrote a great article about this a few months ago, but there’s nothing like a fresh example.
Well, the manual action for NationalToday.com was a great opportunity to see how this works first hand. I’ll quickly cover that below.
Many citations gone in ChatGPT, although a few remain (for now):
Using Brand Radar from ahrefs, I started testing the prompts where nationaltoday.com/us/ ranked in ChatGPT answers. That’s the directory where National Today was publishing hundreds of thousands of AI-generated local news articles. While testing those prompts across multiple ChatGPT accounts (paid and free), it was clear that receiving a manual action from Google and getting nuked from the index was having a big impact on ChatGPT citations as well. I’ll provide some examples below.
Note, I still want to test more prompts, but for the ones I’ve been testing, nationaltoday.com/us/ is not showing up in the ChatGPT answers anymore (for almost all of the prompts I tested). I did find a random few where it still was cited, but most citations are now gone. And just to clarify, the site still ranks in Google and ChatGPT for its content outside the /us/ directory. The manual action was just applied to that specific folder.
First, here is an example where National Today was cited:
And now it’s gone:
Here’s another example where it was cited:
And now it’s gone:
And here’s another example where it was cited:
And now it’s gone:
In addition to what was captured by Brand Radar, I also tested some fresher articles published there. I did not see NationalToday.com cited in ChatGPT (the /us/ directory where the AI-generated content was published). Again, that’s the section that was nuked by the manual action.
Some Random ChatGPT Citations Remain
And here is an example where the National Today us directory is still cited in ChatGPT. Again, most examples I checked were gone, but this one remained for some reason. ChatGPT could be using Bing or another source when grounding this answer.
And here is the url that’s ranking (100% AI-generated content in the directory that was removed from Google’s index). BTW, what a great UX too. LOL.:
The Risk of Gaming Google Can Spread To AI Search Like ChatGPT: Beware.
This is a great reminder of something I have been saying for a long time. And others like Lily Ray have been saying the same thing. Do not implement risky and spammy tactics just to rank in AI search. If you receive a manual action from Google, or if you are impacted algorithmically by a spam update or broad core update, then you will drop in AIOs, AI Mode, and then downstream in AI search (which includes ChatGPT). I’m not saying that nationaltoday.com implemented their AI local news strategy just for AI Search visibility, but I’m sure that was part of the plan.
So once again, it works until it doesn’t. It’s just another example of “Mt. AI”. Beware.
GG