A summary of what actually happened in search during this period, ranked by likely impact on a single site rather than by publication time. Built from our own archive of 523 stories.
Ranked by estimated impact on a single site, not by publication time.
Searchers outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), the manual action will apply but not within the EEA.
Policy & Penalties
The update took 2.5 days to roll out and is now complete.
Ranking & Algorithms
Google is replacing site reputation abuse manual actions in the EEA with a system that can rank affected site sections independently.
Ranking & Algorithms Policy & Penalties
Google's spam update caused exceptional search disruption, with dramatic ranking losses across 20 industries, according to SE Ranking data.
Ranking & Algorithms
This week’s SEO Pulse covers Google’s AI publisher dispute, spam update fallout, the GEO debate, AI citation gaps, and ChatGPT’s Reddit behavior in search.
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
The update will take a few days to roll out.
Ranking & Algorithms
More than 100 organizations, including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, urge governments and website owners to prepare now for escalating AI cyberattacks.
Book hotels and track airfares, plus view miles and rewards with AI Mode in Google Search.
AI Search & Visibility
A recap of all the incidents involving LLMs made by Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI, which went rogue and attacked real companies and individuals on the internet.
When users didn’t know whether an image was AI-generated, the images we tested did not create any perception penalty compared to stock photos.
Content & Quality Policy & Penalties
OpenAI launches an initiative to strengthen democratic oversight of AI in national security, supporting government institutions with tools, training, and expertise.
New EU guidelines, why AI sparkles aren’t enough, when AI labels are required, and what the rules mean for AI-powered features and products.
Policy & Penalties
Assembled from our own archive of 523 stories, which currently runs from 4 October 2023. Ranking is by the impact score described on the front page — an estimate of how much a story is likely to affect one website, not a measure of how much attention it got.
The archive only holds what it has seen. Periods before it started are empty rather than quiet, and it gets more complete every week it runs.
