Privacy Policy

What We Collect

Reading AI Search Brief requires no account. If you only browse the site, we don't collect any personal information from you. We don't use advertising cookies, sell data, or build behavioral profiles.

You can optionally sign in with Google, which does involve personal information — see Signing In and Your Account below. Signing in is entirely voluntary, and nothing on the site is hidden behind it.

We do use Google Analytics to understand how many people visit and which pages they read — but only if you accept. Nothing loads until you do: decline, and no analytics script is requested and no analytics cookie is set at all.

Signing In and Your Account

You can sign in with a Google account to save articles and come back to them later. This is optional. Every article, summary, rating and daily brief is readable without signing in, and we have no plans to put content behind an account.

What we store: your email address, your display name, and the account identifier Google issues for you (a number that identifies your Google account to us, and only to us). We also record when the account was created, and which articles you have saved and when you saved them.

What we don't store: your Google password, which we never see, and your profile picture, which is displayed straight from Google and never copied into our database. We don't request access to your Gmail, Drive, contacts, or anything else in your Google account — only your name, email address and profile picture.

What it's used for: operating your account and your saved articles, and nothing else. We don't email you, we don't use your account to profile your reading, and we don't share or sell it.

This is separate from the analytics choice above. The cookie banner governs Google Analytics only. Account information isn't analytics: it exists because you chose to sign in, and it is kept whether you accepted or declined analytics cookies. Equally, accepting analytics cookies does not create an account or share anything about your account with Google Analytics — the two are unconnected, and declining one has no effect on the other.

Removing a saved article: you can do this yourself at any time — either with the save button on the article itself, or from your saved list. Removing a save deletes our record of it.

Deleting your whole account: there is no self-serve control for this yet. Email aisearchbrief@gmail.com from the address you signed in with and we will delete your account record and everything you saved, and confirm once it is done. Signing out on its own only ends the session — it leaves your account and your saved articles in place for next time.

Cookies and Your Choice

When you first visit, a banner asks whether to allow analytics cookies. Your answer is stored in your browser's local storage so we don't ask again — that entry is strictly necessary to remember your choice and is not used for tracking.

If you accept, Google Analytics sets its own cookies (typically_gaand similar) to count visits and distinguish returning readers. They are used only for aggregate traffic measurement.

If you sign in, a session cookie is also set (named__Secure-authjs.session-token, alongside short-lived cookies used to complete the sign-in securely). These are strictly necessary — they are what keeps you signed in, so they are set regardless of your analytics choice, and only ever if you sign in. They are not used for tracking or analytics. Signing out clears them.

The analytics choice below is separate and takes effect immediately. You can change it at any time:

Content Processing & Attribution

AI Search Brief aggregates publicly available news from reputable SEO and search industry sources.

What we access: We read publicly available RSS feeds from our source list (currently including Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Google Search Central, and others). Article content is temporarily accessed for AI summarization purposes only.

What we store: Article metadata (title, publication date, source URL — all publicly available), AI-generated summaries and key takeaways, AI-generated importance ratings, and thumbnail image URLs (not the images themselves).

What we don't store: Full article text or body content, complete copyrighted articles, or image/media files.

Attribution: Every article links directly to its original source. Our summaries are designed to complement the original reporting, not replace it. If any content owner wishes to have their material removed from our service, we will do so promptly upon request — contact us at aisearchbrief@gmail.com.

Data Storage

The site is hosted on Vercel (frontend and serverless functions) with a PostgreSQL database hosted on Neon. Both providers process standard technical logs (such as IP address and request timestamps) as part of operating the service. The Neon database holds the article data described above and, if you sign in, your account record and saved articles.

Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate AI Search Brief:

• Anthropic (Claude API). We use Claude to generate article summaries and importance ratings. Article content sent to Claude is processed according to Anthropic's privacy policy. No visitor or user data is sent to Anthropic — only publicly available article content.
• Google (sign-in). If you choose to sign in, Google authenticates you and tells us your name, email address, profile picture, and the identifier for your Google account, according to Google's privacy policy. This is a different service from Google Analytics below, with a different purpose, and it runs only when you sign in. You can revoke our access at any time from your Google account's third-party access settings — note that revoking stops future sign-ins but does not by itself delete what we already hold, so email us as well if you want the account removed.
• Google Analytics. Loaded only after you accept analytics cookies. It records aggregate traffic — page views, approximate location, referrer, and device type — according to Google's privacy policy. If you decline, or simply never answer the banner, it is never loaded.
• Vercel. Our site is hosted on Vercel, which may collect server logs and performance metrics according to their privacy policy.
• Neon. Our database is hosted on Neon, which stores the article data described above, according to their privacy policy.
• External links. Our service links to external websites (our source publications). When you click these links, you're subject to the privacy policies of those sites.

Content Removal Requests

If you're a content creator or publisher and wish to have your content's summary removed from our service, contact us at aisearchbrief@gmail.com. We will promptly remove all summaries and metadata related to your content and stop pulling from your feed going forward.

Children's Privacy

AI Search Brief is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. That includes accounts: nobody under 13 should sign in, and if we learn we hold an account belonging to a child under 13 we will delete it.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted here with an updated “Last updated” date.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this policy or wish to request content removal, contact us at aisearchbrief@gmail.com.