Google SEO
Search Engine Land is your premier source for Google SEO news, strategies, and in-depth content.
You’ll find a variety of up-to-date and authoritative resources, including the latest news, tactic-rich tutorials, and the latest data to help you optimize your website, work smarter, and make data-driven decisions that boost your organic search performance.
Why staying updated on Google SEO matters
Google’s search algorithms evolve constantly, and staying ahead of these updates is key to maintaining and improving your website’s rankings. Whether it’s changes to core web vitals, guides to E-E-A-T, or advancements in AI-driven search like generative AI features in Google Search, understanding these shifts can give you a competitive edge.
Search Engine Land brings you actionable strategies to navigate algorithm updates, optimize for featured snippets, and improve your site’s technical SEO performance. Our resources are tailored to anyone that wants to maximize organic visibility.
What you read here is written by our experienced in-house team, and subject matter experts from leading agencies and top-ranking brands across various industries.
Looking to stay informed? Don’t miss out! Get the Search Engine Land newsletter delivered daily to your inbox. Subscribe for free and stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of organic search!
Google Search disclosed its UGC Fresh Data Program
The UGC Fresh Data Program is an initiative designed to help platforms display fresh, high quality, and authentic user-generated content (UGC) across various features on Search, Google said.
Google September 2026 spam update done rolling out
This update took almost 2 weeks to roll out and seemed pretty impactful.
Google shares preferred source follower data via email
Google is also asking if you want these reports in Search Console via a survery.
Google warns against using fake author information on your content
Google wrote in its documentation to "avoid using deceptive authorship information."
Google Search Console performance report filter allows selection of multiple countries
Google now lets you select multiple countries at the same time when filtering the performance report within Google Search Console.
Google Search shares data on how long crawling, indexing and serving takes
Google broke down the general timing it takes for various Google Search tasks take, both in terms of average time and longest time.
Google says main content is critical and describes how search quality raters evaluate it
Google has updated the creating helpful, reliable, people-first content help document with more information.
Google Search now says it’s critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness
Google has updated its AI-generated content guidelines for Google Search.
Google releases September 2026 spam update
This update can take about two weeks to roll out.
Google Search Console performance reports gets multimodal filter
This lets you see if people are finding your content using Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the Chrome right-click "Search this image" feature.
CrUX ad metrics added to the page experience SEO documentation
Last week, Google Chrome released a new Chrome user experience report metric for ad measurements, now it was added to Google's help documentation.
Google testing “Dive deeper” for Google Discover – it’s not good for publishers
Robby Stein from Google said "we're experimenting with a new way to make exploring a topic and discovering related web content easier in Discover."
Gemini 3.8 Live powers Google Search Live
Google just released its Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking models and 3.8 Live is now powering Search Live on the Google app.
Google tests paying publishers for using its content in AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini
This is a Google Search Console feature named AI contribution and is being tested with a limited number of publishers.
Google Search Console Indexing report missing June data
This is impacting everyone, so it seems to be just a reporting issue and not an issue with your site's indexing performance within Google Search.
Google says DMA changes in EU resulted in worse degradation of search quality ever
Google said "the changes mark the largest reduction in quality of service at the world's most popular internet search engine in its 29-year search history."
Google to fix citation bug with Gemini 3.8 Flash in AI Mode
The latests Gemini model was unlikely to link or cite its sources. Google has confirmed the issue and will push a fix soon.
Google Trends adds category filters
You can now filter Google Trends by pre-defined categories, without having to enter a query.
Google Search Console AI performance reports and Search generative AI control rolling out globally
After a few months of slowing rolling out these features, everyone should soon have access to them.
Google is dynamically expanding AI Overviews for some queries
This behavior pushes down the core search results and gives you an AI Mode type of experience within the main Google Search interface.
Google won’t respect manual actions for site reputation abuse in European Economic Area
Searchers outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), the manual action will apply but not within the EEA.
Google confirms deploying goto URL redirects to search results links
Google said it deploys technical measures against evolving forms of abuse and this is one of those.
Google adds link carousels for developing topics in AI Mode
This is after Google has already added these link carousels for AI Overviews in Google Search.
Google working on fix for broken favicons in Google Search
The issue started earlier this week and today, Friday, Google has confirmed it is a bug on its end.
Google August 2026 spam update done rolling out
The update took 2.5 days to roll out and is now complete.
Google makes the Preferred Source button more seamless
Readers who click on the Google Preferred Source won't have to leave your page anymore.
Google releases August 2026 spam update
The update will take a few days to roll out.
Google Search pauses AI-generated images within AI Overviews
Robby Stein from Google said, "This was a small experiment we're no longer running."
Gemini 3.7 Flash rolling out in Google Search
This is first rolling out AI Mode for Google AI Pro & Ultra subscribers in English.
Google confirms testing new buttons on home page to drive users to AI-powered search features
Google said this is a limited test where they add create images, ask about files and brainstorm buttons under the search box.
Google Search Console Platform properties are now globally live
Plus, Google released new help documentation on how to analyze the social and video data.
Google indexed Claude Chats because Anthropic didn’t block your private chats from search engines
If you make URLs accessible to search engines and do not exclude them properly, search engines will index them.
Google says don’t include fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews in review snippet structured data
Google updated the review snippet structured data markup documentation with some new guidelines and examples.
3.5 Flash-Lite rolling out in Google Search
Google said Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is designed for both low-latency tasks and tasks where high throughput is critical for developers workflows, like agentic search.
Google says AI Search features send billions of clicks to websites each week
Nick Fox, SVP at Google, said Google continues to send billions of clicks to the web every day and within AI Search it is billions weekly.
Google Image Search drops clean search box and adds gallery of images
Google Image Search has turned 25 years old and is now making its biggest change to its home page yet.
Google clarifies canonicalization fixes can take up to two weeks to resolve
Google made updates to some of its canonicalization documentation to clarify timing and more technical details.
Google merchant listings support sale duration and product category
These changes aim to align more with the Google Merchant Center feed and capabilities.
Google Search Console gains reporting on social and video platforms
There is a new way to verify and filter your performance reports, insights reports and achievements by platform property.
Google is investigating reports of reviews going missing and pausing reviews on local listings
Google has confirmed it is investigating the reports of bugs with reviews in Google Business Profiles after several days of complaints from businesses.
