Category: Google updates

I am seeing signs of another Google Search ranking update with a lot of volatility hitting this past weekend again. This one started on Saturday, August 1st, and has continued thus far through today, August 3rd. Both the third-party tracking tools are …

As I mentioned in my Friday video, there were some rumblings kicking into gear starting late Thursday, July 23rd, and through Friday, July 24th. It seems like Google kicked some of its search ranking servers, and as a result, we are seeing an unconfirm…

Google may have released yet another unconfirmed Google search ranking update this weekend. I am seeing some signs of ranking movement from the third-party Google tracking tools and the SEO chatter spiked a bit this weekend.

Google may have released yet another unconfirmed Google search ranking update this weekend. I am seeing some signs of ranking movement from the third-party Google tracking tools and the SEO chatter spiked a bit this weekend.

Gary Illyes from Google said that you are better off not using a lastmod date in your XML Sitemap if those dates are wrong. He said on Bluesky, “probably better off without the lastmods. at least you save a few bytes.”

We may have had another unconfirmed Google Search ranking update around July 11th, which I will call the 7-Eleven update. It has been an unusual time since the completion of the June 2026 spam update, where I was on the verge of covering a few unconfr…

Liz Reid, Google’s Head of Search, was interviewed by Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis on the AI Inside podcast. In that interview, Liz Reid said Google wants great content to shine in its search results and AI experiences. She said, “we really do want gr…

It only took about two days – the Google June 2026 spam update is now done rolling out. It started on Wednesday, June 24, 2026 at around noon and completed on June 26, 2026 at around 2pm ET. This update felt like it started earlier than it was announc…

Google has just announced the release of the June 2026 spam update and said it should only take a few days to roll out. Truth is, we kind of saw this coming, although Google would say no, we did not.

Google has posted a new policy document for subscription linking for news publishers under the Google Publisher Center help area. Google wrote, “Any publisher using this service must adhere to these policies.”

Google may have quietly rolled out an update on Friday, June 19th, that seems to may have impacted more of the black hat SEO side of things. It is not 100% clear because most of the tools seem pretty stable and yes there is chatter also in the more “wh…

I’ve been watching the chatter in the SEO industry, and honestly, it hasn’t calmed down much since my last report for the period of June 8-12. The Google search results seem more heated today, and there appears to be an unconfirmed Google search rankin…

This week has been weird, in terms of Google Search ranking volatility. The volatility seems to have extended from this past weekend, throughout most, if not all, of this week. But again, like this past weekend, the tools are really not showing much …

Earlier this month, the Google May 2026 core update was completed on June 2, 2026. But the volatility has not seemed to calm down. I am seeing a lot of chatter spike up from within the SEO community over the weekend. The SEO chatter started Friday, J…

Google’s May 2026 broad core update has officially completed rolling out. Google announced this via X this morning and the Search Status Dashboard has been updated to document the rollout. It took less than 12 days to roll out, and this update felt lar…

Just when I thought the Google search volatility would start to cool, I am seeing another spike in huge search ranking volatility today – June 2nd…

The Google May 2026 core update seemed to have hit some sites in a very big way yesterday, Saturday, May 30, 2026. As a reminder, the May 2026 core update was announced on May 21, 2026, and then that following weekend, we saw some significant ranking …

Gary Illyes from Google reportedly said at the Search Central Live Shanghai 2026 event on May 15th that he and Google strongly warns against buying or manipulating mentions brand mentions to try to show up in the AI responses, AI Overviews and AI Mode.

As you know, Google announced the May 2026 core update on Thursday afternoon and it didn’t take long for the update to be felt by the SEO community. Many, not all, but many, started to feel the impact of this core update over the weekend.

Google officially announced the rollout of the May 2026 core update just now, on Thursday at around 11:43 am ET. This core update is expected to take about 2 weeks to roll out. Google said this “is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, …