Mark Williams‑Cook reveals $13,337 Google bug bounty from network‑tab analysis
The author explains how inspecting the Network tab in Chrome DevTools can expose internal parameters of Google Search and ChatGPT. By copying a request, removing the "fmt=prog" flag, Google returned site‑quality scores, epoch timestamps, server IPs and other data that earned a $13,337 bug bounty from Google’s Vulnerability Reward Program.
What you can do with it
AI at Work →Find ChatGPT source queries and freshness windows, free in Chrome
What you get You can see exactly which backend sources ChatGPT consulted and how recent the data is.
Shows fan-out queries, source types, and freshness windows for each prompt.
- Who for
- marketers
- Cost
- free
- Effort
- minutes
Use it for
- Audit content relevance
- Plan freshness updates
- Detect retrieval vs memory
Watch out Only works
Key points from the news
- A Google bug bounty of $13,337 was awarded after exposing sitequalityscore and rqsemanticclass via the Network tab.
- Fine‑tuning DistilBERT on 4.8 M queries produced the free QueryClassifier.com tool for predicting Google’s query class.
- FanoutFox Chrome extension reveals ChatGPT’s source sets, freshness windows (2‑365 days) and whether a response came from retrieval.
Using the harvested data, the author fine‑tuned DistilBERT on a 4.8 M‑query sample, creating the free QueryClassifier.com service that predicts Google’s eight semantic query classes. The piece also describes how the FanoutFox Chrome extension, built by Suganthan Mohanadasan, shows ChatGPT’s source sets (serp, labrador, bright), freshness windows ranging from 2 days to 365 days, and whether an answer came from live retrieval or the model’s training memory. These tactics let SEO professionals gauge content freshness needs, verify if Reddit is still read by the model, and decide where to invest optimization effort.
Wiretapping The SERP: Reverse Engineering Network Data
Search Engine Journal · 21 October 2026
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This text was published by Search Engine Journal and written by Mark Williams-Cook. It is reproduced here with attribution so you can read it in full; the rights remain with the publisher. Read it at the source ↗
The headline, key points and digest above were generated by Digest AI's editorial model from the linked sources. Automated summaries can contain errors: the sources are the record. Spotted a mistake? Tell us. Published by Martin K., who runs Digest AI and handles corrections.
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