Technical SEO
Google Search Console is missing crawl data for 15 September
September 20, 2026 · 1 min read
The crawl stats report inside Google Search Console has lost a whole day of data. The missing day is 15 September, and it can show up as the day before or after depending on your time zone.
On the chart it looks alarming: the crawl requests line drops to zero for that one day, with normal days on either side. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable is clear that this is a reporting problem on Google's end. Nothing changed about how Google visited your website on 15 September.
This has happened before. Schwartz lists earlier gaps in August 2026, November 2021, February 2022, May 2022 and October 2025, and says Google "tends to always restore the data." Google has not announced a fix or a date.
Google has issued no statement and posted nothing on its Search Status Dashboard about this, so there is no official confirmation or restore date — the report comes from one site owner's screenshots, which Schwartz then checked across several accounts.
What it means for your business: If you or your marketing team are pulling September numbers right now, write a note next to that zero-crawl day before anyone screenshots the chart for a report. It is a gap in Google's reporting, not a sign that your site went offline or got penalised, so do not let anyone sell you a technical "fix" for it. More broadly, check the dates before you draw a conclusion from any single-day dip in a marketing chart.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable — Barry Schwartz, September 20, 2026
AI Search
A free test to check whether AI assistants can find a page on your website
September 18, 2026 · 2 min read
Chris Green of Torque Partnership has shared a quick way to check whether AI assistants can find a specific page. Copy a distinctive 20–30-word passage from the page, ask the assistant to search for it, and tell it to return only results that contain that exact text. His example ran in ChatGPT while signed out.
If your page comes back, the search source the assistant used has your content and credits it to that URL. If it doesn't, Green suggests a checklist: can the page be found through internal links and your sitemap, is a firewall, bot protection or robots.txt blocking it, does the text load, and is the page marked noindex (telling search engines to skip it) or pointing its canonical tag to another page? The passage must also be distinctive enough that only that page should match.
He runs the test four or five times with different passages, because assistants pull from different search sources, and says it doesn't replace Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools. He has also built a Chrome extension, Exactly Matchy, that opens exact-match prompts in ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. For now it installs only in developer mode, and he advises reading its code first.
This is one practitioner's method, not an official tool from any AI company, and he warns that chatbot answers aren't "truth".
What it means for your business: If AI assistants never mention one of your pages, this test tells you which kind of problem you have. If the assistant can't find the page, the fix is technical, such as a blocked crawler, a missing link or a noindex tag. If it can find the page and still doesn't cite it, the page's content or your business's reputation elsewhere on the web needs work. Try it on your key service pages before you pay for a rewrite, and repeat it several times before you decide a page is missing.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Chris Green, September 18, 2026
AI Crawlers
Cloudflare will write AI-crawler rules into your robots.txt, but only by category
September 18, 2026 · 2 min read
On 21 August, Cloudflare announced Bot Preference Sync. It takes the AI-bot settings you choose in your Cloudflare dashboard and writes them into your robots.txt file, the file that tells crawlers what they may visit. The new rules go at the top, and everything already in the file stays underneath. Cloudflare says it works from the free plan up and will be on by default for new customers.
There are three settings: Search, Agent and Training. Cloudflare's own bot list decides which crawler goes in which group, and you can't make an exception for a single bot. Writer Slobodan Manic points out that his own choices don't fit: he allows some AI companies' crawlers and blocks others, even though all of them train AI models. For that level of control, you have to turn the sync off and edit the file yourself.
One detail matters for Google. Google's crawler documentation says its Google-Extended setting controls both training of future Gemini models and grounding, meaning the search content fed to Gemini when someone asks it a question. Google says the setting doesn't affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search. And robots.txt is only a request: crawlers that ignore it are stopped at Cloudflare's network, not by the file.
This is an opinion piece written before the feature took effect, so it describes the feature as Cloudflare announced it.
What it means for your business: If your website runs through Cloudflare, read your robots.txt once this feature reaches your site and check that it says what you meant. If you want AI assistants to recommend your business, be careful with "Disallow AI Training": it blocks Google-Extended, which also stops the Gemini app from using your site to ground its answers. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode aren't affected, because they are part of Search. Leaving Training on Allow is the safer choice for a business that wants AI recommendations, and "Block" should be avoided because it shuts out search crawlers too.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Slobodan Manic, September 18, 2026
SEO Industry
Traffic fell or stayed flat for 39% of search pros while leads held or improved
September 18, 2026 · 2 min read
Search Engine Journal has released its annual State of Search survey of search professionals. The main finding: 39% saw website traffic fall or stay flat while leads and conversions held or improved. Only 15% lost both. Katie Morton's summary argues that traffic still measures reach, but it no longer measures business value on its own.
AI search is the big unknown. 43% plan to invest in or prioritize optimizing for AI answer engines next year, but only 14% named it as one of their strongest drivers of results, and only 9% feel very confident measuring AI visibility. The report also says content refreshes and technical SEO are sliding down the priority list, even though both were among the activities most often credited with strong results.
Budgets look steady: 81% expect SEO investment to rise or hold. In day-to-day work, 66% use AI for research, outlines or briefs, and 54% name the flood of AI-generated content as a major concern.
The article doesn't say how many people answered, the full report is behind a download form, and these are practitioners' opinions rather than measured results.
What it means for your business: Judge your website by calls, bookings and form fills, not by visits alone. AI answers take away the quick-question clicks, and the people who still click are often closer to buying. Keep funding the basics too: respondents credit content refreshes and technical SEO with strong results, yet those are being cut to pay for AI-search projects that almost nobody can measure yet.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Katie Morton, September 18, 2026
Google Discover
Google tests a "Dive deeper" button in Discover that opens an AI topic overview
September 18, 2026 · 1 min read
Google is testing a "Dive deeper" button in Discover. Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, announced it on X: tapping it shows "a short topic overview with prominent links to related stories, community reactions & original reporting." Google is testing it on videos first and says it will "experiment with multiple designs in the weeks ahead".
In Google's example, a KCRA 3 weather video shows a short summary labelled "Generated with AI, which can make mistakes", with the button below it. The next screen has a longer summary and a row of source cards, with kcra.com first. A third screen groups more summaries by sub-topic, each with source links.
Search Console's Discover generative-AI report counts impressions only, with no breakdown by feature, so any impressions from these overviews would be mixed in with other AI features. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable, who first reported the test, expects it to send even less traffic to publishers, because the AI summary gives readers the full context.
This is an early test: Google hasn't said which countries or languages it covers, how many people see it, or whether it runs through Search Labs.
What it means for your business: Discover sends little traffic to most local service websites, so most businesses have nothing to change today. If you rely on Discover for news or video traffic, a tap may now open Google's summary instead of your story. If your business posts YouTube videos, watch your Discover numbers in Search Console over the next few weeks.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Matt G. Southern, September 18, 2026
Technical SEO
Google may be blocking rank-tracking tools, so recent ranking charts could be wrong
September 18, 2026 · 2 min read
Since around 13 September, Google may be doing a better job of blocking the automated tools that collect its search results. That includes AI scrapers, search scrapers and the third-party rank trackers many businesses use to watch their Google positions. Google has not said anything. The evidence comes from the tool companies themselves.
Derek Perkins of the rank tracker Nozzle said most of his tool's attempts to collect Google results are now blocked, roughly an 80% drop in the data it can get. Sistrix said on 16 September that Google "has made further changes to the way search results are delivered" and that its data collection "is currently running at a reduced rate", though its data is still coming in. Bing is tightening up too: some searchers now get a "verify you are human" checkbox before Bing shows results.
Glenn Gabe checked one site that lost almost all its traffic in early September and then fully recovered, and confirmed both in the site's own traffic data. Ahrefs showed the recovery, Semrush showed it late, and Sistrix did not show it at all. So some of what tracking tools have shown since the 13th may be missing data, not rankings that really moved.
Google has not confirmed any change; these reports come from the rank-tracking companies and one check of a single site.
What it means for your business: If a report or tool has shown your business a sudden ranking drop, or no sign of a recovery, since about 13 September, do not act on it yet. A "drop" might just be missing data, and a real recovery might not show up. Check the same search terms in Google Search Console first. Its numbers come from Google itself, so these blocks do not affect them.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable — Barry Schwartz, September 18, 2026
Local SEO
Google is showing some Business Profile panels as an AI Overview summary
September 17, 2026 · 2 min read
When you search a business by name, Google usually shows a panel with that business's profile. In a new version spotted by local SEO Ben Fisher, that panel starts with an "AI Overview" label and a written summary of the business. A "Show more" button expands it into an AI Mode-style chat where the searcher can ask follow-up questions.
Barry Schwartz then saw the same thing on his own company's listing. Most of the summary was right, but one part about his company's services was out of date. He blames his own website, which he says has not been updated either. He added that he would rather describe his business himself than have AI do it.
This is two people reporting what they saw; Google has not announced it, and it is not known how widely it shows or exactly what the summary is built from.
What it means for your business: For anyone who searches your business by name, this AI summary may be the first thing they read. If your website or profile still lists a service you dropped, an old service area or old hours, the summary can repeat it. Search your business name on a phone this week. If an AI Overview appears, read it line by line and fix anything wrong at the source: your website's About and service pages, and your Business Profile description.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable — Barry Schwartz, September 17, 2026
Technical SEO
Google's John Mueller: a brief error page can knock your pages out of search
September 18, 2026 · 2 min read
A site owner posted on Reddit that their pages were dropping out of Google. Google had even picked a casino betting page on a different website as the "main" version of their page, though the two had nothing in common. Another Reddit user had seen the same thing. Their site had sometimes shown a generic error message, and Google seemed to treat pages from different sites showing that same error as copies of each other. For them, it fixed itself after a few weeks.
Google's John Mueller said that explanation was plausible. He listed three things that can happen when Google sees an error instead of your content: it indexes the page with the error message, it treats the page as if it does not exist (a "soft 404"), or it picks another page as the main version. All three end the same way: "your page is not showing in search for normal content."
His advice is to catch errors before changes go live, and to check the site regularly: "fetch the most critical pages 'hourly' (or whatever) and check for issues", yourself or with a third-party tool. Search Engine Journal's Roger Montti added one more warning. If you find a tag on your site pointing Google to a different website, and nobody on your side added it, suspect a hack.
The cause comes from two site owners' reports on Reddit; Mueller called the explanation plausible but did not confirm it.
What it means for your business: If pages on your website drop out of Google for no clear reason, a short-lived error could be the cause. Sites whose content only appears after code runs in the browser can show Google an empty page or an error during an outage, while a basic uptime check still says the site is fine. Use the live test in Search Console's URL Inspection tool to see what Google actually sees. A better monitor loads your home page and main service pages and confirms your business name and phone number are really on the page.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Roger Montti, September 18, 2026
AI Search
Study: ask an AI search tool the same question twice and its cited page can change
September 17, 2026 · 2 min read
Researchers had an AI search agent answer 130 common questions and saved every search it ran. They then replayed those conversations, changing one thing at a time, to see what makes the AI cite one web page over another. Each pair of pages they compared supported the same fact, so either page could fairly have been cited.
The first of five search results was cited 85.1% of the time and the fifth 42.8%. But search engines usually put better pages first, so that gap mixes position with quality. When the researchers moved the same page above its partner, its chance of being cited rose by 7.9 points, which was not statistically significant. A second test that changed only the order measured no difference (0.0 points).
Rewriting pages with headings and lists gave them slightly more citations, but that credit was taken from the other page. The main measure, whether the page was cited at all, rose 4.5 points, which the authors call inconclusive. The biggest finding was randomness: rerunning 120 answers with exactly the same inputs changed whether the target page was cited in 15% of cases, about one in seven.
This is a preprint that has not been peer-reviewed, and it tested one AI model with one search provider on replayed conversations, not live pages.
What it means for your business: One AI answer proves very little about your business. A screenshot of your business being cited, or not cited, can flip the next time someone asks. If you or anyone you hire tracks how often AI tools mention you, ask each question several times and look at how often you appear. And be careful with advice to rewrite everything as bullet lists: in this test it had only a small, uncertain effect.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Matt G. Southern, September 17, 2026
Google Updates
Google rankings dropped and recovered in September, with no update confirmed by Google
September 15, 2026 · 2 min read
Google search rankings moved twice in ten days, and Google has not confirmed an update either time. On 14 September, Search Engine Roundtable reported Glenn Gabe's finding that a number of large sites fell sharply around 4 September, in Search and in some cases Discover, and then recovered completely on 13 September. Both the drop and the recovery showed up in the sites' own analytics, not only in third-party visibility tools.
The next morning, 15 September, Barry Schwartz reported a big jump in forum chatter, with tracking tools starting to register it too. He said he suspects an update is starting that Google may never confirm. People commenting on Search Engine Roundtable and WebmasterWorld, many of them in the UK, describe different pages ranking for their keywords, spam on page one, and AI Overviews showing irrelevant answers. One shop owner said Google traffic and Google Ads conversions both stopped at the same hour.
Google has said nothing. As of 16 September, the newest ranking entry on Google's Search Status Dashboard is still the August 2026 spam update, which started on 18 August.
Google has not confirmed either shift, and the published examples are all large sites, so nothing yet shows whether small local sites moved.
What it means for your business: If your website's Google clicks dropped around 4 September and came back around 13 September, that fits this pattern, and it probably wasn't caused by anything on your site. Don't start rewriting pages because of a dip in that window. Write down the dates, give it a week, and check Google's Search Status Dashboard before you treat it as a Google update.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable — Barry Schwartz, September 15, 2026
AI Search
Cloudflare's new AI training setting keeps Google crawling, but "Block" now shuts it out
September 15, 2026 · 2 min read
Cloudflare announced a new Training setting on 15 September called Disallow AI Training. It writes a no-training preference into the site's robots.txt file (the file that tells crawlers what they may do) and still lets Googlebot, Applebot and Bingbot crawl the site for search. That reverses what Cloudflare said in July, when the plan was that from 15 September, blocking AI training would block those three crawlers as well.
Existing settings move over automatically. A Training setting of Block, or Block on pages with ads, becomes Disallow AI Training. Sites that used the old Block AI Bots toggle get Allow for Search, Disallow AI Training for Training, and Block on pages with ads for Agent. The Block AI Bots toggle and Managed robots.txt are being retired.
The option named Block is now the risky one. Choosing it stops Googlebot, Applebot and Bingbot completely, including crawling for search. At Google, Disallow AI Training maps to a Disallow rule for Google-Extended, which Google's documentation says doesn't affect Search inclusion or ranking. Bing doesn't read the preference yet.
Cloudflare says Microsoft is aiming for early 2027 to support the preference in Bing; that timeline comes from Cloudflare, not from Microsoft.
What it means for your business: If your website runs through Cloudflare, nothing breaks by itself, because existing choices move to the safe option. The risk comes later, if someone picks "Block" on the Cloudflare dashboard thinking it only stops AI bots, and removes your site from Google as a result. Check that your Training setting reads Disallow AI Training, and tell anyone who manages your site never to choose Block.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Matt G. Southern, September 15, 2026
Site Performance
Chrome now measures how many ads a website shows and how heavy those ads are
September 15, 2026 · 1 min read
Google's Chrome team added four experimental ad measurements to the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), the real-user data behind the field data in PageSpeed Insights. Ad Count is the average number of ads on screen. Ad Density is the average share of the screen covered by ads. Ad Weight (Network) is the bytes ads use, and Ad Weight (CPU) is the milliseconds of processing ads use.
According to Search Engine Land, Chrome samples the visible screen once a second, and CrUX reports the 75th percentile for ad density. The metrics are available now through the CrUX API, the CrUX History API and an Ad panel in Chrome DevTools, and Search Engine Journal reports they will reach BigQuery later.
Chrome's post says Google expects the metrics to be "particularly useful for web advertisers and the services they use to place ads." Google said nothing about search rankings.
The metrics are marked experimental, and Google has not said they affect search rankings.
What it means for your business: These numbers are for advertisers deciding where to buy ads. If your website doesn't show display ads, there is nothing here to measure. If your site earns money from AdSense or another ad network, look your domain up in the CrUX API or CrUX Vis to see what ad buyers can now see about your pages.
Source: Chrome for Developers blog — Alex Cone, September 15, 2026
Local SEO
Google Business Profile now shows what its automated calls learned about your business
September 14, 2026 · 1 min read
Google sometimes contacts businesses with automated calls, texts or WhatsApp messages to the verified phone number, and the answers can be used to update the Business Profile. After testing it for several months, Google announced on X that owners can now see that data inside the profile dashboard, in a new tab called Collected info.
You find it under Business Profile, then Edit profile, then Collected info. It shows each detail Google collected, where it came from and the date, in whatever language it was given. The tab says the information "is used to match your business with customers looking for services like yours."
You can delete details that are wrong. Deleting removes the detail from Google's records but "does not change other details already on your Business Profile," so a wrong detail on your visible profile has to be fixed separately. For now, the tab is only available in select regions, languages and business categories.
What it means for your business: You or your staff may have answered one of these automated calls without knowing what the answers were for. A wrong answer about your services, hours or service area can shape which searches your profile gets matched to. Checking the tab takes about two minutes: delete anything wrong, then fix the same detail on your visible profile, because deleting alone doesn't change it.
Source: Search Engine Land — Barry Schwartz, September 14, 2026
AI Search
Google is testing payments to publishers whose content shapes its AI answers
September 14, 2026 · 2 min read
Google confirmed to Digiday that it is running an early-stage test called the "AI contribution pilot." It pays some publishers when their content "contributes significantly" to answers in AI Overviews, AI Mode and the Gemini app, and the offer appears inside Search Console. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land writes that he spotted the Search Console screen in April, when Google wouldn't say what it was.
According to help text in Digiday's screenshots, content counts only if it shapes an answer while the answer is being written. Content that only confirms facts, or is linked after the answer exists, doesn't count. After accepting the terms, participants see a panel with monthly earnings and some history, but nothing about how the amount was worked out.
Digiday says at least dozens of publishers have been invited, and invitations go well beyond news sites. The pilot has appealed more to small and mid-sized publishers than to large ones. One executive called it "quite black box," another source said early payouts were "peanuts" next to ad revenue, and one publishing executive warned that accepting could weaken a publisher's position when pushing Google for better terms.
This is an early-stage test, Google hasn't explained how payments are worked out, and most details come from Digiday's screenshots and unnamed sources.
What it means for your business: Most small businesses are unlikely to get this offer soon. Still, it is the first sign that Google will pay for content that grounds its AI answers, and the offer arrives through Search Console. If an invitation ever shows up in your Search Console, read the terms carefully before you accept.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Matt G. Southern, September 14, 2026
Local SEO
Google says Business Profile API applications are delayed and asks you to apply only once
September 15, 2026 · 1 min read
Victoria Kroll from Google posted in the Business Profile support forum that "due to an unusually high volume of API applications, processing times are currently extended." Google "cannot provide a specific response timeframe for pending applications" and asks people to "not submit additional applications while your initial application is pending." Local SEO Krystal Taing added on LinkedIn that anyone who applied and still sees 0 quota is in the same backlog.
According to Google's developer documentation, you apply through the Business Profile API contact form and choose "Application for Basic API Access". You need to manage a profile that has been verified and active for at least 60 days, with a website for that business. A Google Cloud project that shows 0 queries per minute hasn't been approved yet; one that shows 300 has.
What it means for your business: If you or a developer plan to pull calls, direction requests or website clicks from your Business Profile through Google's API, apply once, now, before anything is built. Nobody knows how long the queue is, and applying a second time doesn't help.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable — Barry Schwartz, September 15, 2026
AI Search
Google explains what Search Console's AI Overview numbers really count
September 13, 2026 · 2 min read
Google Search Console has a generative AI performance report. It shows how your site appears in AI Overviews, the AI-written answers at the top of some Google results. Google announced the report in June 2026, and it has been available to every site since 31 August.
On Reddit, a user explained how the report counts its numbers, and Google's John Mueller replied that the explanation is right. If an AI Overview shows on the page and your link is in it, that counts as an impression, even if the searcher never scrolled far enough to see it. Links hidden behind the "Show more" button are not counted until someone clicks it. Every link inside an AI Overview gets the position of the Overview block itself, not its own place in the list of sources.
The AI report is also a filtered view of data that is already in the normal Web search report, so the two should not be added together. Mueller said position for these results is "hard to do in a way that makes it useful," and that Google is tracking it as a block for now. He said he would "love to hear" better ideas, but Google has not promised a fix.
What it means for your business: If Search Console shows one of your pages at a top position but very few people click, do not rush to rewrite the page. For searches that show an AI Overview, that position may belong to the Overview block, and the impression may come from a spot nobody scrolled to. Search the query on Google yourself first to see what the page really looks like. And if you track your numbers in a report, keep the AI figures separate from your Web totals so you do not count the same data twice.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Roger Montti, September 13, 2026
Search Behaviour
Short searches are fading: 1-2 word queries fell from 42% to 24% of impressions
September 11, 2026 · 2 min read
An analyst re-ran a study of Google Ads search-term data, this time through August 2026. One- and two-word searches made up 42% of impressions in January 2025. By August 2026 they made up 24%. That is an 18-point fall in nineteen months.
The drop happened while AI Mode rolled out and while people started using conversational assistants every day. The author calls it a change in how people ask, not a reporting glitch. Short keywords are giving way to full sentences.
He frames it bluntly: the keyword you bid on, the unit that organised a whole generation of search marketing, is being replaced by natural language.
This is paid-search impression data from one practitioner's own set of accounts, not a Google disclosure and not organic search data.
What it means for your business: People are typing questions, not keywords. A page built only around a short phrase, such as your trade plus your town, is built for a kind of search that is shrinking. Write the full question your customer would ask, then answer it plainly on the page. An assistant can then lift the answer straight from your site.
Source: Search Engine Land — Jason Tabeling, September 11, 2026
Technical SEO
Google Search Console lost several days of June indexing data for good
September 11, 2026 · 1 min read
Page indexing reports in Google Search Console show a gap of several days in June 2026. It affects every property, not just one site, and it is not a crawling problem.
Google's John Mueller answered the complaints directly. He said the data was delayed at that time in June, there simply is no data for that period, the page indexing report was not updated, and Google does not back-fill indexing data. He added that he would check with the team when they return from holidays.
So the missing days are gone, not late. They will not appear later.
What it means for your business: If you compare your indexing numbers month over month and the range includes June 2026, you may see a sudden cliff that never really happened. Check the dates before you worry. Ask whoever reports on your site to mark June 2026 as incomplete, so a hole in the data is not read as a drop in your site's health.
Source: Search Engine Land — Barry Schwartz, September 11, 2026
AI Search
Google quietly documented a partner-only API for full web search results
September 11, 2026 · 2 min read
On September 9 Google refreshed the developer documentation for its Web Search Service API. The API has one main method, Search, which the reference page describes as a full web search. It returns results as JSON over REST or gRPC, up to 20 results per request and 10 by default, with filters for language, country, date range and SafeSearch.
Access is the catch. Every request needs a partner client ID tied to a signed partner agreement, plus a Cloud project and an API key. Google calls these users programmatic partners. The documentation does not say how a company becomes one, what it costs, or what the query limits are.
Meanwhile the older Custom Search JSON API shuts down on 1 January 2027 and is already closed to new customers. As of September 11, the shutdown announcement and the new pages do not reference each other, so current full-web users have no documented way to move over.
Google has not published pricing, query limits, or how a company qualifies as a partner.
What it means for your business: Most rank-tracking tools depend on some way of reading Google's results. Google is turning that access into something a company must sign an agreement for. If you pay for a tool that reports your rankings, it is fair to ask the vendor where their data comes from and what happens to your reports if that access changes.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Matt G. Southern, September 11, 2026
Content Strategy
15% of Google searches are brand new, and that has not moved in seven years
September 11, 2026 · 2 min read
An industry veteran argues that query fan-out, where one question turns into many hidden sub-questions, is not new. It only has a new name. His example is a dataset study published in August: 189 branded prompts run through ChatGPT produced 1,797 sub-queries nobody typed.
His own version of the idea dates to 2003 and he calls it Russian nesting dolls. Find a four-word phrase with a three-word phrase nested inside it, such as "cheap airfare to Philadelphia" containing "airfare to Philadelphia", then build the page around the longer one. The longer phrase catches both searches. The shorter one is invisible to anyone who types the extra word.
The anchor number comes from Google. In its 2019 BERT announcement Google put 15% on never-before-seen queries. John Mueller revisited it at Search Central Live NYC in March 2025 and said that every time the metric is recalculated it is still around 15%. He had expected AI tools to push it higher. They did not.
The 1,797 sub-query figure comes from a single August study of 189 prompts run through one AI assistant.
What it means for your business: Put the longer, more specific wording on your page, not the short one. A page about "emergency furnace repair in Ogden" will also pick up "furnace repair Ogden". It does not work the other way round. This is a change you can make today in your page titles and headings, without rewriting your whole site.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Greg Jarboe, September 11, 2026
Analytics
Google Analytics adds drag-and-drop Dashboards with six chart types
September 11, 2026 · 1 min read
Google Analytics is rolling out Dashboards. You drag the dimensions and metrics you care about straight onto a grid, position and resize the charts, then publish the page into the Reports menu on the left. You do not have to go through the library.
Six chart types are available at launch: scorecards, tables, line charts by day, week or month, bar charts, donut charts and funnel charts. Scorecards show a percentage change when you apply a date comparison.
The limits matter. Standard properties allow 15 cards per dashboard and premium allows 30. You need an Editor or Administrator role to create and publish one. Once published, anyone with access to the property sees it. There is no API support, no segments, and no card-level comparisons.
What it means for your business: If you only want to see four or five numbers about your website, this is a free way to put them on one screen in a tool you already have. Ask whoever manages your analytics to build one dashboard with the numbers that matter to you. Remember that it is shared with everyone on the property and cannot be automated, so it is built once by hand.
Source: Search Engine Land — Anu Adegbola, September 11, 2026
Search Results
Google redesigned commercial results in Europe and says quality is now worse
September 8, 2026 · 2 min read
Google has rolled out a new layout for commercial Search results across the European Economic Area to comply with the Digital Markets Act. Google's own Search Central documentation described the two new units on September 8.
The aggregator unit covers hotel, flight, long-distance train or bus, and product queries. It is open to approved vertical search services, such as online travel agencies, comparison shopping services, metasearch engines and directories. The top-ranked aggregator is expanded by default with photos, prices or ratings, and clicks go to that aggregator's own site. Only one aggregator unit shows at a time, and aggregators must be approved and supply data through feeds or real-time APIs. The supplier unit gives individual hotels and airlines a placement, needs no data work beyond crawling, and appears only when the aggregator unit does.
Reuters reported the rollout the same day and carried Google's own statement that the changes lower Search quality for people in Europe.
The story is four days old and the change applies only to the European Economic Area.
What it means for your business: If your business does not serve Europe, nothing changes for you today. It still matters for one practical reason: a rank check run from a European location now shows a different page than the same search in the United States. If a report shows a European decline, check whether it is a layout change before you treat it as lost traffic.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Matt G. Southern, September 8, 2026
Local SEO
Google Business Profile posts show view counts again, with 18 months of history
September 10, 2026 · 2 min read
Google has brought back view counts on Google Business Profile posts. Google removed per-post views and clicks on 20 February 2023 and offered no replacement at the time. The feature is back under the name Google Posts Reporting, which Google calls "one of our most requested features yet."
A view number now appears on every post card in the Posts section of the Business Profile dashboard. It covers posts from the past 18 months on a rolling basis, for every post type (updates, offers and events), and combines views from Search and Maps into one number.
There are limits. The numbers are in the dashboard only and not in the API. Only views are shown, not clicks. Google has not said whether a "view" counts unique people or every appearance. A screenshot seen in August on one account was a limited test; this is the confirmed global rollout.
Google has not defined what one "view" means, so the counts are not directly comparable with other profile metrics.
What it means for your business: If your business posts updates, offers or events to its Google Business Profile, you can now see whether anyone is looking at them. Open the Posts section of your dashboard and check the view numbers on your recent posts. Use them to learn which post types and topics get seen, and drop the ones that do not.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Matt G. Southern, September 10, 2026
Content Marketing
Only 14% of marketers say blogging brings strong results, a 12-year low
September 10, 2026 · 2 min read
Orbit Media's 2026 Blogging Statistics survey of 1,042 content marketers found that the share reporting "strong results" from their blog fell six points to 14%. That is the lowest figure in the survey's twelve-year history.
Over the same period, AI tool use reached 92.4% of marketers. The average blog post now takes 3 hours 20 minutes to produce, down from over four hours in 2022. Collaboration with influencers slid from 25% in 2017 to 7%.
Orbit's reading is that AI itself is not the cause. Instead, marketers are dropping the tactics that used to work: keyword research, original research, expert collaboration, paid promotion, formal editing and analytics are all in decline. One number goes the other way. Marketers who collaborate with experts are 2.6× more likely to report strong results. Ann Handley of MarketingProfs called the findings "a wake-up call."
The figures are self-reported by 1,042 surveyed marketers and describe their own view of results, not measured traffic or sales.
What it means for your business: Faster, AI-assisted writing is not the problem on its own. The problem is cutting the parts that made content work. If your business publishes articles, make sure each one includes something only you could say: a real example from a job, a number from your own records, or a quote from the person who does the work. That expert input is the factor most tied to strong results.
Source: Search Engine Land — Danny Goodwin, September 10, 2026
AI Search
Study: AI Overviews cut search referrals to English Wikipedia by about 5%
September 11, 2026 · 2 min read
A University of Washington working paper by Mehrzad Khosravi and Hema Yoganarasimhan measured how Google's AI Overviews affected search traffic to Wikipedia. Google made AI Overviews the default in the US in May 2024 but not in Germany or France. The authors compared referrals to the same articles across English, German and French Wikipedia, using 499,927 English-German pairs and 530,873 English-French pairs from December 2023 to December 2024.
Monthly external-search referrals to English Wikipedia fell 5.45% relative to German and 4.82% relative to French. That is roughly 100 million fewer referrals a month. Earlier versions of the paper, which used daily pageviews, claimed a drop of about 15%. The revised monthly method with proper controls landed at about 5%.
The authors list their own caveats. Wikimedia's data lumps all search engines together, 60% of English Wikipedia readers are outside the US, and the design cannot rule out other 2024 events. Google told UOL Tilt that the combined-referrer metric cannot isolate Google. Separately, Wikimedia reported an 8% drop in human pageviews across all languages in 2025, which it attributes to generative AI and social platforms. That is a different measurement and is not additive to the 5%.
This is a working paper (version 6, dated 2 September) that has not been peer reviewed, and the referral data cannot separate Google from other search engines.
What it means for your business: This is the most careful measurement so far of what AI Overviews do to a big informational website, and the answer is a single-digit drop, not the 30-40% figures often quoted. Your business is probably not an encyclopaedia. If people search for you when they need a service now, an AI answer cannot do the job for them. Keep investing in the pages that answer buying questions, and treat headline traffic-loss claims with care.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Matt G. Southern, September 11, 2026
AI Advertising
OpenAI reportedly blocks rival image and audio AI tools from advertising in ChatGPT
September 10, 2026 · 1 min read
According to a report from The Information, OpenAI is no longer letting standalone image-generation and audio-generation products buy ads in ChatGPT. Video-generation products can still advertise. Adobe, which was in the original ad pilot with Acrobat Studio and Firefly, is reported to be cut off for its standalone image and voice tools.
The policy was sent to advertising partners directly rather than announced publicly. OpenAI has made no public statement. Search Engine Land's framing is that OpenAI now owns a major consumer platform and competes with many of the companies that want to reach its users. On the same day, the publication reported that Amazon is piloting ChatGPT Ads through its demand-side platform (DSP, the software advertisers use to buy ad space).
The story is based on a report from The Information and OpenAI has not confirmed it.
What it means for your business: AI chat platforms decide who can appear inside them, can change the rules privately, and offer no appeal. If your business plans to reach customers through AI assistants, treat that channel as something to monitor and adapt to, not a placement you can count on. Keep your own website and your Google listing as the assets you control.
Source: Search Engine Land — Anu Adegbola, September 10, 2026
Voice Search
Apple says Siri handles over 2.5 billion requests every day
September 10, 2026 · 1 min read
At the 9 September Apple Event, Lilian Rincon, Apple's VP of Product Management and Product Marketing for AI, said on stage: "Our users make over 2.5 billion requests every single day. And our new version of Siri goes further than ever before."
Apple does not usually publish this figure, so it is a rare hard number for how much people use a voice assistant. Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz notes that Google Assistant almost certainly handles more, but Apple's number stands on its own as a data point.
What it means for your business: Billions of daily requests means many people ask Siri to find nearby businesses. When they do, Siri uses Apple Maps, and Apple Maps reads your Apple Business Connect listing, not your Google Business Profile. Check that your business is claimed on Apple Business Connect and that the hours, address and phone number are current. It takes about fifteen minutes.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable — Barry Schwartz, September 10, 2026
YouTube
YouTube's new "Get Feedback" button reviews a Short before you publish it
September 10, 2026 · 1 min read
YouTube is rolling out a "Get Feedback" button to all US adult creators on mobile. It sits on the Add Details screen in the Shorts upload flow. Tap it and YouTube returns suggestions on the video's hook, pacing and visuals, such as a stronger opening or added cutaway shots. It changes nothing on its own.
The feature was shown in a Creator Insider video on 9 September featuring Rene Ritchie, YouTube's creator liaison. CEO Neal Mohan had previewed it on X on 24 August. YouTube also has a related Labs experiment called VibeCheck. The sources do not say whether the two share a model, and nothing in the announcement claims the suggestions predict views.
YouTube has not said the suggestions predict how a Short will perform.
What it means for your business: If your business posts short videos to YouTube Shorts, run each one through Get Feedback before you publish. It is free and takes seconds. Note what it flags over a few weeks. That gives you a picture of what YouTube's own system considers a weak opening, which you can use when planning the next video.
Source: Search Engine Journal, September 10, 2026
Local SEO
Scammers put fake phone numbers on Google Business Profiles using photos
September 10, 2026 · 1 min read
Anyone can add a photo to a Google Business Profile. Scammers are using that. They upload an AI-made image that shows the real business name, but a phone number that is not the business's number.
Google then shows that photo on the profile. It often sits high enough that a customer reads the number off the picture instead of the real number on the listing. The customer thinks they called the business. They called a stranger.
Two things make this worse than normal listing spam. It is happening on dozens, possibly hundreds, of profiles. And business owners report that telling Google about the photos is doing nothing.
The scale is reported by the people affected and has not been confirmed by Google.
What it means for your business: Open your Google Business Profile today and look at every photo, including ones you did not upload. If a photo shows a phone number that is not yours, remove it and report it. Check again on a schedule, because a hijacked number looks to you like the phone simply stopped ringing.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, September 10, 2026
AI Search
Almost every People Also Ask answer on Google is now written by AI
September 9, 2026 · 1 min read
Two separate research groups measured the same thing and got the same answer. Allintitle reports that People Also Ask answers went 100% AI-generated from August 2026.
AlsoAsked checked a sample of 19.2 million English-language questions. It put the first week of September at 97%, up from 86% in August. Fourteen months ago the same measure was about 12%.
This changes what the box is. People Also Ask used to be a place your page could appear and be clicked. It is now a second AI answer box. Being the source the AI quotes is the only way in.
Both figures come from private tracking tools, not from Google.
What it means for your business: If someone sells you a plan to win People Also Ask spots for your FAQ page, that spot no longer exists as a link. Aim instead at being the source the AI answer quotes: give short direct answers to real customer questions, put a named human author on the page, and include numbers only your business has.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, September 9, 2026
AI Search
Google DeepMind paper proposes one AI model to rank search results
September 10, 2026 · 2 min read
Search ranking today uses two steps. A first step turns pages and questions into numbers and pulls a shortlist quickly and cheaply. A second step re-reads that shortlist and puts it in proper order. The second step is more accurate but far too costly to run on the whole web.
A new paper from Google DeepMind, UMass Amherst and UT Austin proposes doing both steps with one AI language model that writes out the ranked list itself. The authors call it Autoregressive Ranking.
Keep this in the right box. It is a research paper, not a product launch, and Google publishes many papers that never ship. The direction is the point: the part of search that finds pages is starting to look like a language model.
This is a research paper only. Nothing has launched and Google has not said it will.
What it means for your business: Nothing for you to do today. But it is a strong hint that ranking in Google and being quoted by an AI answer are becoming the same job. The safe bet stays the same: pages a machine can read and trust, with clear facts about who you are, a named author, and real numbers from your own business.
Source: Search Engine Journal, September 10, 2026
SEO Research
Big survey of SEO experts: relevant content and backlinks still rank top
September 10, 2026 · 1 min read
Zyppy surveyed more than 100 SEO practitioners and collected 13,665 ranking-factor data points. It is the first large survey of its kind in years.
The top group was content relevance at 57.1%, backlinks at 54.8%, and content quality at 47.6%. The middle group was trust and authority at 36.5%, click behaviour at 29.4%, and brand presence at 27.0%. The bottom group, all under 20%, was user satisfaction, technical SEO, topical authority and internal linking.
Read it for what it is. This is what experienced SEOs believe, not what Google confirmed.
This is opinion from over 100 practitioners, not confirmed information from Google.
What it means for your business: Two useful reads for a business owner. First, links from other websites are still rated the second most important thing, so do not let anyone tell you link building is dead. Second, be careful with the low score for technical SEO: it means the room discounts the label, not that a broken, slow or unindexed website will rank. Judge that work by the result you get, not by its name.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, September 10, 2026
Google Ads
Google Ads is cancelling promotional credits after advertisers spend them
September 10, 2026 · 1 min read
A pay-per-click consultant describes a pattern. Google offers a generous signup or spend credit. The advertiser spends against it. More than a month later, the credit is marked Invalidated.
The advertiser is then left having spent real money that they only agreed to spend because the credit was there. He has hit this on two separate accounts and lost $3,200.
There is no known way to appeal an invalidated credit and the money cannot be recovered. Google's Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin, has replied in public saying they are looking into it, so this is acknowledged and not just a forum complaint.
This comes from one consultant's public report on two accounts, not from a wide study.
What it means for your business: If you are running Google Ads on a promotional credit, do not treat that credit as money in the bank. Plan your budget as if the credit does not exist until it has aged past a month without being cancelled. Take a screenshot of the credit terms on the day you accept it.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, September 10, 2026
AI Search
ChatGPT Shopping switched to product feeds and most tracked stores lost out
September 9, 2026 · 2 min read
Profound runs its customers' questions through ChatGPT every day and labels where each recommended product came from. It tracked 1,757,723 prompt runs in July.
On 10 July, the share of products coming from product feeds jumped from 8.26% to 61.54% in a single day. By 3 September, feeds accounted for about 65% of tracked product recommendations.
The damage was uneven. Of 687 tracked stores, 450 lost at least a third of their ChatGPT Shopping visibility when comparing 7-9 July with 10-12 July. 67 gained by the same amount. Profound links the timing to the GPT-5.6 release on 9 July, but OpenAI has not confirmed that and its release notes mention no shopping change.
This is observed data from one vendor's own set of tracked questions, not ChatGPT's full shopping traffic, and OpenAI has not confirmed the cause.
What it means for your business: If you sell products online, your product feed now matters more than your web pages for showing up inside ChatGPT. Make sure your feed is complete and correct. The wider lesson for every business: one quiet AI model update moved most of a sales channel overnight with no announcement, so treat AI visibility as something to watch and adjust, never as a position you own.
Source: Search Engine Journal, September 9, 2026
Reporting
Google says average position is getting hard to make useful for site owners
September 10, 2026 · 1 min read
John Mueller of Google was asked on Reddit how Search Console counts views for AI answer boxes. He pointed at the existing help document, then added a line worth keeping.
He said the old position 1 - 10 is hard to map, or to make useful for site owners.
The reason is simple. A results page now carries AI Overviews with several sources, featured snippets, People Also Ask, and a stack of other boxes. There is no simple position one left to report.
What it means for your business: Stop judging your website by its average position number. Ask your reports for things that still mean something: how many people saw you for the searches that bring you customers, how many clicked, and whether your business shows up inside the AI answer at all. If your position column has gone quiet or strange, this is why.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, September 10, 2026
AI Search
Le Monde says AI Overviews have not hurt its audience so far
September 10, 2026 · 2 min read
French press alliance APIG has asked France's competition authority to enforce Google's 2022 commitments. It cites regulator Arcom's estimate that AI Overviews cost 33-38% of traffic in European markets where the feature was already live.
Louis Dreyfus, CEO of Le Monde Group, says his company has seen no sudden drop beyond normal seasonal change. His arithmetic is the useful part. The Arcom figure is Google Search traffic, and search brings about half the visits to a major news site, so a 30% search drop is a much smaller drop in total audience.
Le Monde in English, read mostly in markets where AI Overviews were already live, grew 7% in the first half of 2026 compared with a year earlier. July and August each brought 24,000 new subscribers, records for the company.
Le Monde did not publish its Google referral breakdown, and the subscriber numbers cover the whole business, so this is one company's account rather than proof.
What it means for your business: If you are worried that AI is killing your search traffic, separate two numbers: visits from Google, and total visits from everyone. A business with a direct line to its customers absorbs the hit. Build that line now: an email list, a healthy Google Business Profile, and repeat customers, next to your search work rather than instead of it.
Source: Search Engine Journal, September 10, 2026
Platform Risk
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg removed as CEO of Automattic
September 9, 2026 · 2 min read
Automattic's board voted Matt Mullenweg out as CEO and put him on paid leave. By his own account he was given 50 minutes' notice, and the board refused his request to have the decision reviewed by independent lawyers first. CFO Mark Davies is interim CEO.
Mullenweg accused the CFO of conspiring with the board, then said in public that he supports him in the interim role. Mary Hubbard, Executive Director of WordPress, says WordPress project leadership and direction are unchanged and that Mullenweg still leads the project.
For context, Automattic is already facing the WP Engine lawsuit that came out of Mullenweg's own actions, plus a motion alleging it failed to preserve evidence, reportedly including a laptop and phone that cannot be accounted for.
Some details come from an internal message and public statements by the people involved, so accounts of the boardroom events differ.
What it means for your business: If your website runs on WordPress, nothing breaks today. But the company behind it is now openly unstable, so do the boring things. Keep a current backup you have actually tested restoring, keep the number of plugins small, and avoid building anything that only works because one company chooses to keep it running.
Source: Search Engine Journal, September 9, 2026
Digital Marketing
Quick hits: Microsoft Advertising redesign, Copilot login change, and new Google AI Mode ads
August 31, 2026 · 1 min read
Microsoft Advertising is rolling out a redesigned advertiser console with new navigation and rebuilt data tables. Separately, Microsoft is now requiring users to log in to use Copilot generally, but Copilot's search-answer feature inside Bing remains open to people who aren't logged in.
On Google's side, AI Mode search results are now showing inline shopping-ad carousels, plus an additional ad placement at the bottom of the AI-generated response. Google's Merchant Center also expanded its 'Popular Products' reports with more coverage and insights, a change that actually shipped back in June but was only announced last week.
What it means for your business: If you run paid ads on Microsoft or Google, or sell products through Google Merchant Center, expect some interface changes to show up in your accounts soon. None of these require urgent action, but it's worth glancing at your ad console layout and the newer Merchant Center reports next time you're in there.
Source: Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable, August 31, 2026
Paid Ads
Microsoft Advertising is rolling out a redesigned advertiser console
August 31, 2026 · 1 min read
Microsoft Advertising is rolling out a redesigned console for advertisers, with new navigation and rebuilt data tables.
The changes described are to the screens advertisers work in — how you move around the account and how the data is laid out — rather than to how campaigns themselves run.
This was reported as a brief notice and does not say when every account will see the new design.
What it means for your business: If you advertise on Microsoft's network, expect the screens to look different soon. Set aside a little time to find where things have moved, and check that any saved reports and bookmarked pages still work after the change.
Source: Search Engine Land, August 31, 2026
AI Search
Microsoft now requires a login for Copilot, but not for Copilot Search
August 31, 2026 · 1 min read
Microsoft is now forcing users to sign in to use Copilot. The exception is Copilot Search inside Bing — that answer surface stays open to people who are not logged in.
So the AI answers a visitor meets while searching on Bing remain reachable to anyone, while the standalone Copilot assistant now sits behind a sign-in.
What it means for your business: In practice, Bing's AI answers are still visible to any customer, signed in or not — so it is still worth checking what they say about your industry. Type a few of the questions customers actually ask you into Bing and see whether your business gets mentioned.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, August 31, 2026
Google Ads
Google is showing shopping ad carousels inside AI Mode answers
August 31, 2026 · 1 min read
Google's AI Mode is showing inline shopping-ad carousels within its answers, plus a second ad unit at the bottom of the response.
It is a further sign that Google is building advertising into its AI answers rather than keeping that surface ad-free.
What it means for your business: If you sell products, your shopping listings can now turn up inside AI answers — which makes accurate titles, images and prices worth a check. If you run paid campaigns, ask whoever manages them where your spend is now appearing.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, August 31, 2026
Online Commerce
Google's Merchant Center Popular Products report gains coverage and insights
August 31, 2026 · 1 min read
The Popular Products report in Google Merchant Center, the tool online sellers use to manage their product listings, has gained enhanced coverage and new insights sections.
The changes shipped in June and were only announced on Friday, so the additions are already there if you go looking.
What it means for your business: If you sell products through Merchant Center, open the Popular Products report this week — the extra coverage and insights have been live since June even though the announcement has only just arrived.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, August 31, 2026
AI Search
Google's AI search reports are now switched on for every website
August 31, 2026 · 2 min read
Google has finished rolling out two features in Search Console to every website worldwide. The first is a Search Generative AI performance report, which shows how often your pages appeared inside AI Overviews, AI Mode and gen-AI results in Discover, broken down by pages, countries, devices and dates. The second is a Search generative AI control, an on/off toggle that decides whether your site is eligible to appear in those AI features at all.
Google's help documentation now carries a dated confirmation: as of August 31, 2026, the control has been rolled out to all websites worldwide. Turning the control off means your content is not shown in AI features and you receive no traffic or impressions from them, but Google states this choice is not used as a ranking signal affecting the rest of Search. It is also a separate setting from the one governing AI training.
One detail matters if you own more than one property in Search Console: the setting is inherited from the closest parent property, and a property with no parent configured inherits from the domain-level property. A change takes one to two days to take effect.
The report shows impressions only - there is no click, click-through rate, position or query data - so it tells you that you were shown, not that you were the source being cited.
What it means for your business: Open Search Console this week and write down your starting AI impression number, because no historical data is coming to fill in the past. While you are there, check that the Search generative AI control is set to include your site, and check it at the domain level - one toggle on the parent property quietly applies to every subdomain and section beneath it.
Source: Google Search Console Help, August 31, 2026
Google Updates
Google says its spam-fighting team is still fully staffed
August 31, 2026 · 1 min read
There has been speculation in the search industry that Google had quietly moved staff off search spam and onto its Gemini AI teams. Rajan Patel, Google's VP of Engineering for Search, answered it directly: the spam team is still resourced and still shipping new anti-spam algorithms, and he pointed to the August 2026 spam update as the evidence.
Practitioners quoted in the same discussion reported an 82% increase in the number of web addresses dropping out of Google's top 100 results. The biggest casualties were very large sites built on automatically generated pages - one had grown to roughly 1.3 million pages, another had close to 250,000 pages indexed.
The 82% figure and the site sizes come from practitioners posting in a discussion thread rather than from Google, and the sample behind them was not disclosed.
What it means for your business: Spam updates tend to pull pages out of Google's index entirely rather than simply move them down the rankings. If your traffic dropped in August, check whether your pages are still indexed before you assume the problem is content quality - and be cautious of any tactic that involves publishing pages in bulk.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, August 31, 2026
Link Building
Old links to sites that later went bad will not hurt your rankings
August 31, 2026 · 1 min read
A site owner asked Google whether their lodging website would be penalised for links it added years ago. The links pointed to a legitimate business at the time, but that business's web address later changed hands and began serving questionable content.
Google's John Mueller answered with a flat no. He added that it is good practice to keep things fresh overall - "the web is full of turmoil" - but treated a handful of links that drifted as a completely different class of problem from a site whose own content has genuinely become obsolete.
What it means for your business: Do not spend money on a defensive sweep to hunt down and remove every old outgoing link on your website. That budget goes further on the pages themselves - updating the information, prices, photos and advice that have actually gone out of date since you published them.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, August 31, 2026
AI Search
Google's Mueller: markdown files are not getting you into AI answers
August 31, 2026 · 2 min read
A popular idea in marketing circles right now is that you should publish a plain-text or markdown version of your web pages so AI chatbots can read them more easily. Someone asked whether anyone had actually observed a major AI bot requesting those versions.
Google's John Mueller reported from his own test sites that the only crawlers claiming to accept markdown were SEO tools - not the AI companies themselves. He also noted that most standard server setups do not even record the part of a request that would reveal this, so most people asserting there is demand have never measured it.
The publication's own analysis went further: every major AI company already crawls and understands ordinary HTML perfectly well, and content served only to bots and not to humans is inherently untrustworthy - the same flaw that killed the old keywords meta tag.
Mueller's observation comes from his own test sites rather than a large-scale study.
What it means for your business: If a supplier or plugin is selling you markdown files or an llms.txt file as the way to get mentioned by AI assistants, treat it as unproven. There is no evidence the AI companies are asking for it, and the honest first step is checking your own server logs for that demand rather than paying to implement it.
Source: Search Engine Journal, August 31, 2026
AI Search
The EU now formally regulates ChatGPT as a search engine
August 31, 2026 · 2 min read
The European Commission has designated ChatGPT a "very large online search engine" under the Digital Services Act - the first AI chatbot to receive the designation. The trigger was OpenAI's own regulatory disclosure of approximately 159.1 million average monthly recipients of ChatGPT search in the EU, for the six months ending March 31, 2026. Reddit and Roblox were designated very large online platforms at the same time.
OpenAI has four months to meet the obligations that come with the label, including annual independent audits, systemic-risk assessment, data access for vetted researchers, and offering a recommendation option that is not based on profiling.
The Commission's reasoning matters as much as the number: it treated ChatGPT as a search engine because it responds to users' prompts and queries, including by searching the web. That is a regulator putting on record that the chatbot is a search surface.
The 159.1 million figure comes from OpenAI's own regulatory filing rather than an independent measurement.
What it means for your business: This is the first regulator-grade number on how many people use ChatGPT to search, and it largely settles the question of whether AI search is big enough to plan for. Start checking how AI assistants describe your business and whether they name you at all - and expect better independent data once the researcher-access obligation takes effect.
Source: Search Engine Journal, August 31, 2026
Search Visibility
Facebook Groups are now Google's number-two forum source
August 31, 2026 · 2 min read
Google shows a "Discussions and forums" box in some search results, pulling in posts where real people talk about a topic. New research across more than 500 million search results found that public Facebook Group posts now appear in 38.3% of US search results that show this box - second only to Reddit at 87.8%, and ahead of Quora at 32% globally.
Every Facebook address in the dataset came from a public Group rather than a page or profile. Facebook went from no presence at all in late 2024 to second place. The box itself appears in 11.7% of US search results.
The recommendation from the research was not to start a new Group. It was to find the Groups Google already surfaces for the searches that matter to you, and take part in those.
The findings come from one company's dataset and show which Groups appear, not why any particular post gets surfaced.
What it means for your business: Search the questions your customers ask before they buy and see which Facebook Groups come up in the discussions box. Joining those local or industry Groups and answering questions honestly is a cheap way to get your business named where people are already looking - take part as a person, not as an advert.
Source: Search Engine Journal — Glen Allsopp and Xibeijia Guan, August 31, 2026
WordPress
Rank Math pauses a feature that created WordPress logins without asking
August 31, 2026 · 2 min read
Rank Math, one of the most widely used SEO plugins for WordPress, has paused its Help and Support agent after it emerged that the feature generated WordPress Application Password credentials - a form of login key - simply when a user opened the Help and Support section while connected to a free Rank Math account. There was no clear request for permission first.
Rank Math has acknowledged the consent flow was not explicit. It says the agent was read-only and worked within the permissions of whoever was already logged in rather than escalating them, and that the feature will return once the access request is rebuilt to ask in plain language before any credentials are created.
The company framed the agent as the first step in a broader rollout of AI agents for WordPress.
What it means for your business: If your website runs on WordPress with Rank Math installed, go to Users, then your profile, and look at the Application Passwords section. Revoke anything you or your web person did not deliberately create. It is worth making this a routine check on any plugin that starts shipping AI features.
Source: Search Engine Journal, August 31, 2026
AI Commerce
The shopping standard behind AI assistants gets its first update since April
August 31, 2026 · 1 min read
The Universal Commerce Protocol has published its first specification update since April. The release adds grocery readiness and lays the groundwork for food and lodging, alongside changes to the way product information is structured.
UCP is the plumbing behind agentic commerce - the emerging ability for an AI assistant to actually place an order for you rather than just point you at a website. It is the same standards work Google flagged when it announced AI-assisted food ordering inside its Ask Maps feature.
What it means for your business: Nothing to act on today unless you sell products online, but it is worth watching if you sell a service. The moment these standards cover appointment booking, AI assistants will be able to book jobs directly - and the businesses whose hours, services and prices are published clearly will be the ones they can book.
Source: Search Engine Journal, August 31, 2026
Industry News
Google details how it shares search data with rivals in Europe
August 31, 2026 · 1 min read
Google has updated the page describing its European Search Dataset Licensing Program with operational detail about how the scheme works.
Under Europe's Digital Markets Act, Google is designated a gatekeeper and is legally required to share its search data with competing search engines to foster fair competition. This program is the mechanism by which that happens.
What it means for your business: Nothing changes for your website today. The longer-term effect is that more rival search engines and AI answer tools will be built on data that originated with Google, so their results are likely to look like Google's. That makes ranking well in ordinary Google search more valuable over time, not less.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, August 31, 2026
Roundup
Also today: Microsoft ad console redesign and new ads in Google AI Mode
August 31, 2026 · 1 min read
Microsoft Advertising is rolling out a redesigned console for advertisers, with new navigation and rebuilt tables. Separately, Microsoft is now forcing users to log in to use Copilot - though Copilot Search answers inside Bing stay open to logged-out users.
On Google's side, AI Mode is now showing inline shopping ad carousels plus a second ad unit at the bottom of the response. And the Merchant Center Popular Products report has gained enhanced coverage and new insights sections - a change that shipped back in June but was only announced at the end of last week.
What it means for your business: If you run paid ads, expect the Microsoft interface to look different next time you log in, and account for the fact that Google's AI answers now carry ads in two places within a single response. If you sell products, the updated Merchant Center report is worth a look for what is actually selling.
Source: Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable, August 31, 2026
AI Search
Google confirms AI Overviews now open in full on some searches
August 28, 2026 · 2 min read
On some searches, Google's AI Overview no longer appears folded up with a "Show more" button. It opens straight to the complete answer. That pushes the normal list of website links further down the page.
A Google spokesperson said: "For some queries, AI Overviews may dynamically expand for topics where our systems determine it's most useful for people." Google added that its research shows people find Search more helpful this way.
There is one limit. If you have already started scrolling past the AI Overview, Google does not expand it, so the page does not jump under you. Google has not said how many searches this affects, or whether it is spreading.
Google has not disclosed what share of queries this affects, and there is no measured figure yet for how much it changes clicks.
What it means for your business: Being the number one result is no longer the same as being the first thing a person sees. On these searches, the top link can sit below the fold on a laptop screen. Expect the gap between how often you are shown and how often you are clicked to get wider, without your ranking dropping at all. So watch those two numbers separately, and work on getting your business quoted inside the AI answer itself, because on these searches that is the only slot people see.
Source: Search Engine Land — Barry Schwartz, August 28, 2026
AI Search
Google AI Mode can now book hotels and track flight prices
August 27, 2026 · 2 min read
Google added three travel features to AI Mode at once. You can describe the hotel you want in plain words, see options with reviews and comparisons, and then book on the spot with Google Pay through partners including Booking.com, Expedia and Marriott. This is US and English only for now.
You can also track flight prices from more than 300 partner airlines and travel sites across more than 180 countries, and get an alert when your target price is hit. And you can see the live cost in airline miles or hotel points from partners including American Airlines, Alaska Airlines and Hilton.
Rajan Patel of Google said: "You can now pull up the live cost in points or miles for flights and hotels directly in AI Mode… AI Mode links you straight to the airline/hotel site to complete the booking."
The hotel booking feature is limited to the United States and to English at launch.
What it means for your business: The point here is the pattern, not the travel. Google is building booking and comparison straight into AI Mode, and it is doing it with named partners: the big platforms and the brands themselves. The middleman comparison sites are not in that list. If your industry gets the same treatment, and booking-type services are the obvious next step, a plain contact form will not be enough. Start thinking about real online booking that another system can plug into.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable — Barry Schwartz, August 27, 2026
Google Ads
Google puts numbers on what makes a YouTube ad convert
August 28, 2026 · 2 min read
Google published creative guidance for YouTube ads with research figures attached. Nielsen puts creative at 49% of a campaign's return. Ekimetrics found that better creative can more than double the return on YouTube.
For skippable in-stream Demand Gen ads, Google named three things that lift conversions: a human voice (12% higher on average), your brand visible in the first 5 seconds (4% higher), and text overlays (3% higher).
Google also gave a do-not list. Take out fake interface bits — "embedded buttons, arrows and other elements that appear clickable but aren't". Use high-resolution, full-bleed images that look at home on YouTube. And show a real person: assets "showing a visible human presence consistently outperform other assets."
These figures come from Google's own published guidance citing Nielsen and Ekimetrics research; the sample sizes are not stated.
What it means for your business: If you run video ads, this is a short checklist you can apply today without spending more money. Put a human voice on the ad. Show your logo or name inside the first 5 seconds. Add text on screen for people watching with the sound off. Show a real person, not just product shots. And take out any drawn-on play button, cursor or arrow that looks clickable but is not.
Source: Search Engine Land — Anu Adegbola, August 28, 2026
Google Policy
Google changes how it punishes "parasite SEO" for European searchers
August 28, 2026 · 2 min read
Google has a rule against "site reputation abuse" — when a trusted website rents out a section to third-party content that has nothing to do with the site, just to borrow its ranking power. Until now, a site caught doing this got a manual penalty that hit that section everywhere in the world.
From 30 August 2026, that penalty works differently inside the European Economic Area. Google says the manual action's impact does not apply there. Instead, the affected section "may be separated in our systems so that, over time, it ranks independently from the rest of the site." Outside the EEA, nothing changes. The same page can carry a penalty that only affects results shown to people outside the EEA.
Site owners still get the notice in Search Console, can still ask for a review, and eligible sites can now take a dispute to mediation. Google made the change after talks with the European Commission and said it "remains concerned that an overbroad application of the DMA could prevent us from addressing real threats to the integrity of our search results."
This changes manual penalties only — Google says it is not pausing or weakening spam detection in Europe.
What it means for your business: Do not read this as "renting out pages is allowed in Europe now." The penalty softens, but the ranking result does not: Google still separates that content so it stops borrowing your site's reputation. If your site hosts sponsored or third-party sections, the business case for them has not improved. And if your traffic is mostly European and rankings drop after 30 August, a site reputation penalty is no longer the explanation — look elsewhere.
Source: Google Search Central Blog, August 28, 2026
Google Updates
August's spam update knocked top results out 82% more than a normal week
August 27, 2026 · 1 min read
Google ran a spam update in August 2026. Rank-tracking company SE Ranking measured how violent it was and gave the numbers to Search Engine Land.
During the update, 16.71% of pages that had been sitting in Google's top 10 fell past position 100 for the same search term — in other words, they vanished. In a comparable five-day stretch in July with no confirmed update running, the figure was 9.2%.
That is an 82% increase. Put simply, a top-10 page was about 1.8 times more likely to disappear from the first 100 results during the update than in a quiet week.
This is third-party tracking data from a rank-tracking vendor measuring one metric; it does not say why pages moved or which sites were affected.
What it means for your business: If your rankings moved after 21 August, this is useful context: August was genuinely rough, not imagined. Do not panic-rewrite your site because of one bad month. Check that your pages are still reachable and still say what they should, then measure again once things settle.
Source: Search Engine Land, August 27, 2026
Google Search
New pages stopped showing in Google for about 80 minutes on 28 August
August 28, 2026 · 1 min read
For roughly 80 minutes on the morning of 28 August 2026, from about 6:15 to 7:35 am US Eastern time, freshly published pages stopped appearing in Google Search. Search Engine Roundtable checked the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and CNN — sites that publish constantly — and saw almost nothing new from the past hour.
It looked like a serving problem rather than an indexing one. Search Console's URL inspection tool reported a page published within the previous 30 minutes as indexed, while an actual search for that page returned nothing.
Google's public Search Status Dashboard showed no incident the whole time. By 7:35 am ET, recent pages were appearing again. At least one person noted it was the second such incident in August 2026.
What it means for your business: If you published that morning and your page "wasn't in Google," this was probably why — recheck before changing anything. The wider lesson: Google's status dashboard stayed green through a real, visible outage, so it is not a reliable way to tell whether the problem is you or Google. A faster check is to search a big news site's pages filtered to the last hour. If nothing new is showing for them either, it is not your site.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, August 28, 2026
Technical SEO
The IRS site collapsed in Google — the likely cause was its own bot blocking
August 27, 2026 · 2 min read
Over several days in late August 2026, the US tax agency website and other US government sites dropped heavily in Google's results. The likely cause reported by Search Engine Roundtable is not a penalty: the government appears to have switched on bot blocking so aggressive that it also blocked Google.
The symptoms give it away. The IRS result showed a broken favicon (the little icon next to a result) and no description text underneath. Both of those mean Google could not fetch the page to build them. On some searches the site now shows lower down as a bare web address.
Analysts Lily Ray and Glenn Gabe looked at it. Ray posted a chart showing collapse across terms the IRS ranked first for the month before — stimulus, identity theft protection, free tax filing, tax brackets — and reported she could not even reach the site herself on a normal desktop browser, so the blocking was not aimed only at Google. The industry first noticed the problem as a separate mystery: PDFs disappearing from Google. Same root cause. Fixes have been applied and recovery is partial and slow.
What it means for your business: This is the most useful warning sign of the day and it can happen to any business. Bare web address, broken icon, no description in Google's results means Google cannot reach your page. That is an access problem — a firewall rule, a bot-protection product, a Cloudflare setting or a security plugin — not a ranking punishment. If you run any bot protection on your site, someone can switch this on in an afternoon and it will look exactly like a penalty. Check by loading the live page yourself, not by staring at a rank-tracking tool.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, August 27, 2026
Google Updates
Google: naming an update is about transparency, not a to-do list for you
August 28, 2026 · 1 min read
Every time Google names an update — "August spam update," "core update" — site owners ask the same thing: is this telling me to change something? Google's John Mueller answered directly.
"This is primarily transparency for site owners. If there's something actionable for site owners to do, we'll publish that in our policies, help center, documentation, and blog independently — usually well in advance of any changes in our systems."
The site reputation policy change announced the same week is the working example: a blog post, updated documentation, and two days of notice before the change took effect. Two limits are worth knowing. Google does not announce every update, not even every smaller core update. And of the ones it does announce, most carry no new instructions.
What it means for your business: When you see a named Google update in the news, that is a reason to measure, not a reason to act. The name is a timestamp. If Google actually wants you to change something, it publishes that separately in its documentation and blog, usually before the change lands. So watch Google's own blog and documentation for instructions, and treat update names as a note in your calendar explaining why your numbers wobbled.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable, August 28, 2026