Google SEO
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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.
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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.
Google indexing report in Google Search Console fixed
After a long three-week delay, Google has finally updated the page indexing report with new data.
Google Search now sends searchers directly to publisher-hosted AMP pages
Google will continue to support the open-source AMPhtml format, the company told me.
Google Trends adds previous time period comparison
You can now quickly add a line to the chart to show previous time period comparison.
Google June 2026 spam update done rolling out
This spam update took two full days to roll out.
Page indexing report in Google Search Console delayed
The report has not been updated for two weeks now but this is not all that uncommon.
Google releases June 2026 spam update
This update should only take a few days to roll out.
Google Search Console AI performance reports rolling out to more users
John Mueller from Google added, "We're just rolling these out incrementally to sites, and reviewing the feedback along the way."
For site moves, specify all domain variants with Google’s Change of Address tool
Google updated its help documentation to clarify how to handle all your domain variants for site moves.
Google says llms.txt files won’t harm or help your search rankings
Google clarifies AI-focused site files may be crawled, but they get no special treatment in Search or AI results.
Schema.org now shows you how many sites are using each schema type
Ever wonder how many sites are using a specific type of structured data element? Now you can know.
Google adds guidance on third-party SEO tools, services, advice and updates hiring an SEO doc
Google added in topics about generative AI optimization, how third-party tools are not endorsed by Google and more.
Google introduces Search profiles within Google Discover
These are enhanced publisher landing pages, where you can follow the publisher, see the publishers latest articles, videos and social posts all in one place.
Google Search Console AI performance reports and controls to block your content in AI responses
These features are rolling out to subset of website owners in the UK and will expand it to more in the future.
Google May 2026 core update rollout is now complete
The second Google core update of 2026 was a big one, causing a lot of search ranking volatility over the rollout.
Matt McGee on the Wild West days of SEO
Matt was also the former Editor-in-Chief at Search Engine Land, so this interview is full of great SEO topics.
Vanessa Fox on the birth of Google Search Console
From the super early days of Google through using AI today for SEO - we covered a lot in this interview.
Google AI Overviews & AI Mode gain preferred sources, plus new perspectives carousel and highly cited labels
Google says these are "new ways to help you find high-quality content and firsthand perspectives."
Google Search Console links report showing old data after breaking
Google Search Console's link report broke last Thursday so Google decided to show old data from weeks ago, while it is being fixed.
Google May 2026 core update rolling out now
This is the second Google core update of 2026, following the March 2026 core update.
Google’s new intelligent Search box – its biggest change to the search box in 25 years
This new search box aims to gives searchers easier access to AI search capabilities, with longer prompts and more AI options.
Google publishes guide on optimizing for generative AI features
This new guide talks about the differences, if any, between SEO, AEO, GEO and so on and touches on commodity content, AI agents and much more.
Google confirms spam policies apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode
Google clarified that spam tactics aimed at influencing AI-generated answers in Search can violate its existing spam policies.
Google Discover performance reporting bug in Search Console
You may notice a decrease in clicks and impressions between May 7th and May 8th, it is a reporting bug only.
Google to no longer support FAQ rich results
FAQ rich results will no longer show in search and the Search Console features will go away.
Google AdSense removes browser back button trigger for vignette ads
This is due to the new Google search penalty for back button hijacking.
Google updates links within AI Overviews & AI Mode
Google says these updates make it "easy for you to connect with authentic voices and explore useful information across the web."
Google expands UCP checkout to main search shopping results
UCP-powered checkout initially went live only in AI Mode but it now seems to be available for some retailers in Search.
Web Bot Auth, Google’s new experimental method to validate authentic bots
This is just a limited test now for some AI agents hosted on Google's infrastructure but it may roll out more widely sometime in the future.
Google fixes Search Console’s year-long data logging issue – well, kind of…
The data going forward should be correct but the 50 weeks or so of data in the past will not be fixed.
Google Preferred Sources now works for all languages
Preferred Sources was supported globally but English only, now it works for all languages.
Google spam reports with personally identifying information won’t be used and processed
This is a change from what Google announced only a week ago.
Google Search Console job data logging issue
Google is actively working on the issue, but it just a data logging and reporting issue.
Google adds Read more links best practices
This was added to the search developer documentation.
Google AI Mode in Chrome now lets you search deeper with fewer tabs
Google Chrome now has a new side-by-side mode, search across tabs, and multi-input tools.