SEO News
Every day in SEO, on one calendar Topic
Everything about Google Search: official announcements from Search Central and the Search Status Dashboard, documentation changes, and how the trade press and tool vendors covered them.
AI summary The Invalid Traffic Overview Card shows estimated savings, post-billing credits and campaign-level reports for advertisers.
AI summary Gemini 4 Hydrogen became the default model in AI Mode worldwide and is used for the hardest AI Overview questions.
AI summary Google confirmed a data logging bug in the Search Console Generative AI performance report between 9 and 11 November 2026 that resulted in decreased impressions.
AI summary Google's Nick Fox and Robby Stein described Gemini 4 Hydrogen as the biggest model upgrade to Search yet, citing speed, understanding, query fan-out and linking.
AI summary Google announced that Search is being upgraded with Gemini 4 Hydrogen, presented in a carousel of cards showing examples from the Search interface.
AI summary A new Google help document explains how to check whether Google Search is sending traffic by inspecting the HTTP Referer header in web analytics or server logs.
AI summary Growth Memo's brief reports record lows for Amazon and Best Buy, a 35% fall for Wayfair, gains for eBay, records for DoorDash and Grubhub, and Reddit gaining visibility as its Google clicks fall.
AI summary Google Ads is rolling out an Invalid Traffic Overview Card to give advertisers front-end transparency into how their campaigns are protected.
AI summary Google Ads clarified that impersonating public figures with AI is not permitted even when the use of AI is disclosed.
AI summary Google Ads added a line to its personalised advertising policy stating advertisers cannot target users based on an interest in categories prohibited on Google's ad network.
AI summary Google is testing a "Found on site" label, with a magnifying glass icon and a clickable site link, on sponsored results in Google Ads.
AI summary Google released version 2.14 of Google Ads Editor, which adds 10 new features.
AI summary Google Ads published a help document on the data strength uplift metric, a month after a separate document on Data Strength Best Practices.
AI summary Google is testing moving the source icons in AI Overviews from the top to the bottom, which may make the citations harder to find.
AI summary Google released version 26.2 of the Ads API, a minor update covering assets, campaigns, reporting and general changes.
AI summary Google now expands AI Overviews for definitions by default, so users no longer need to click Show more to see the full version.
AI summary Gary Illyes and Chery Prommawin explained in a video why moving a site to a CDN can raise Googlebot crawling and overload the origin.
AI summary The daily forum recap noted that Google has started rolling out the November 2026 core update, among other search forum discussion.
AI summary Google analysed millions of Nano Banana prompts and identified unexpected patterns in how businesses use the tool for marketing.
AI summary Google Ads documented a pilot Overview page card called Customer Journey Insights that reports how campaigns move users through conversion stages.
AI summary John Mueller said a Crawled/Discovered - Currently Not Indexed status in Search Console may indicate Google does not consider the pages high quality enough to index.
AI summary Google Ads added a Visit site link as plain text within mobile search ad descriptions, following earlier desktop and organic placements.
AI summary Google set out new eligibility requirements for the merchant loyalty program, an add-on for merchants with an existing loyalty scheme.
AI summary Google Ads revised the Page feeds section for Performance Max campaigns to make it clearer which pages advertisers should supply.
AI summary Google updated its help documentation to clarify that brand lists are managed through single, global canonical brands rather than localised ones.
AI summary Semrush explained which of its tools connect to Google Search Console, how to set each up, and six ways to use the data.
AI summary A court ruled against Google again in its scraping case with SerpApi and gave it 21 days to amend the complaint.
AI summary Google published guidance on deploying a CDN to cut visitor latency and shield the origin server without overloading it or blocking Googlebot.
AI summary Google has started rolling out the November 2026 core update worldwide, saying completion may take up to two weeks.
AI summary Google is extending English-language ads in AI Mode to more than 10 new countries and introducing multiturn ads for follow-up queries in the US.
AI summary Google announced the November 2026 core update on Tuesday afternoon, saying it is a regular update designed to surface relevant, satisfying content and should take about two weeks to roll out.
AI summary Google released the November 2026 core update, which applies globally and to all languages and may take up to two weeks to complete.
AI summary Google's Modern Web Guidance 1.0 adds a codebase audit to the free toolset it offers AI coding agents.
AI summary Google has released Gemini 4 Carbon, described as its strongest model for cybersecurity, agentic workflows, software engineering and scientific reasoning, now available in Search via AI Mode.
AI summary Some Google Ads accounts show an Asset activity page where AI delivers weekly insight cards on ad creative, including headline ideas to test.
AI summary Ziff Davis's chief executive said the publisher is not planning on a search recovery after organic Google referrals fell again, citing Search Console's AI report.
AI summary A site that opted out of Google's AI features estimated that AI Overviews and AI Mode sent it about 21% of its clicks, with a possible lift on regular listings.
AI summary Google updated its documentation for the aggregator unit and supplier unit to say both now support "things to do" queries.
AI summary Google is bringing Gemini's Business Profile tools to Workspace accounts and relocating the Maps Message button, with its help page no longer listing regional restrictions.
AI summary Holiday data counting ads in Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT across five shopping categories shows most ChatGPT ads in beauty and travel ran on research prompts.
AI summary Google has clarified how server-side redirects influence ranking signals and canonicalisation.
AI summary SERP data providers report that Google limits how quickly goto links can be followed per results page, so some rank data may store redirect links instead of page URLs.
AI summary A guide explains how to use the free Google Keyword Planner to find terms and where to obtain accurate search volume data.
AI summary Google is extending UCP-powered direct checkout in AI Mode and the Gemini app to Canadian shoppers, with a Merchant Center integration planned for next year.
AI summary Google's AI Mode now links home service searches to booking and quote pages, with Search Engine Journal covering how businesses reach those pages and partner views on lead fees.
AI summary Semrush offers guidance on optimising for ChatGPT shopping, noting that 83% of its carousel products also rank in Google's top 40 Shopping results.
AI summary Google will hold its Search Central Live event in Zurich on 4 December 2026.
AI summary Semrush describes using Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 together to identify a site's keywords and study their performance.
AI summary Google plans to support a shared AI training control in robots.txt, letting sites state their AI training preferences to multiple providers in one step, based on AIPREF working group work.
AI summary Ahrefs explains Google AI Mode, noting that Sundar Pichai called it the biggest upgrade to Search ever and said it had passed 1 billion monthly active users.
AI summary Semrush says it is tackling so-called poisoned Google Search results by validating ranking data and investing in visibility for users.
AI summary Semrush published a guide to Google Business Profile, the free business listing formerly known as Google My Business that supports reviews, Q&As and posts.
AI summary Google updated its user-generated spam prevention guide with advice on blocking indexing of link-shared content and spotting abuse in Search Console.
AI summary Google Search is adding information agents and a Universal Cart, which Semrush says could alter how people discover and buy products online.
AI summary Google updated its URL structure best practices to clarify when to use hyphens rather than underscores for separating words, aligning the documentation with its video series.
AI summary Google has revised its documentation on controlling what you share with Search, listing existing options including the robots meta tag, data-nosnippet, X-Robots-Tag and the Search generative AI control, with minor clarifications that the…
AI summary Google has revised its Indexing API quota page to show the current quota limits and process, and to remove an outdated form.