Public reports from Google’s NotebookLM, now branded Gemini Notebook, are being used for parasite SEO. An SEO practitioner described an experiment on September 19 in which a page he published became an AI Overview source within 24 hours, according to his account.
Another SEO practitioner highlighted the broader practice on September 21, sharing search results containing public notebooks about coupons, crypto refunds and backlink tools. His warning prompted the discussion about whether Google would restrict indexing.
Search Engine Watch checked Google while signed out on September 21, using the same site:https://notebook.google.com/notebook/ query shown in the practitioner’s screenshot. The results included coupon pages for e-bikes and peptides, alongside pages promising Instagram likes and private-profile viewing.
The AI Overview example
The first practitioner’s screenshot shows an AI Overview for “best ai seo communities”, with his AI SEO Rainmakers community listed first and a Google Notebook report displayed as a cited source. He said Gemini wrote the content and attributed the result to Google favoring its own domain.
SEW opened a public report matching the title shown in that screenshot. It recommends Rainmakers, compares it with other training resources and ends with a link inviting readers to join. The page identifies its content as AI-generated from user-provided sources and instructions.
SEW has not independently reproduced the AI Overview or verified the claimed turnaround time. The screenshot alone does not establish why Google selected the page or whether the citation persisted.
A coupon report with its own keyword list
One Polish-language report about ENGWE e-bike discounts opened without signing in. It repeatedly promoted a coupon code and linked to the retailer using a referral identifier. A table listed variations of the brand’s coupon keywords across several countries and languages.
The page carried Gemini Notebook branding and a notice identifying its content as AI-generated from user-provided sources and instructions. It was a shareable report at an /artifact/ URL. We did not establish who created it or whether the retailer was involved.
Google introduced public notebook sharing in June 2025, describing uses such as study guides and business manuals. The commercial pages now appearing in Search show another use of that publishing capability.
SEW’s site search confirms that those promotional pages are indexed. Google’s site-operator documentation says a query without additional search terms does not rank its results. Our coupon-page check therefore does not measure competitive rankings or traffic.
Parasite SEO aims to benefit from a host’s existing ranking signals. Google’s spam policies expressly cover its own properties, although a public page or referral link alone does not establish a violation.
A robots.txt block would not necessarily remove the pages
A reply to the practitioner’s post noted that NotebookLM’s robots.txt address redirected to Google sign-in. SEW reproduced that behavior with an ordinary unauthenticated request. We did not verify the response served to Googlebot.
The September 21 post predicts that Google will block crawling or add noindex. Those measures work differently. A robots.txt restriction controls crawling and can leave a URL visible in search results. A noindex instruction removes a page once Google crawls and processes it, which requires the crawler to retain access.
Applying noindex across all public notebooks would also remove legitimate shared material as Google processed the change. That would be a broader decision about public discovery, extending beyond the coupon pages that prompted this discussion.
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