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
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
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.
Google’s DV360 changes remove targeting exclusions and add new business identity requirements for YouTube responsive ads.
Paid Search
Google will be updating its alcohol advertising policy on September 30, 2026. The update "revises country-specific guidelines, expands allowed advertising locations, and provides clearer details on…
Paid Search Policy & Penalties
Google is rolling out hotel booking in AI Mode with Google Pay checkout. Flight alerts and rewards pricing are available in supported markets.
E-commerce AI Search & Visibility
OpenAI shares findings from the Hugging Face security incident and the steps we’re taking to strengthen AI model security, monitoring, and alignment.
This behavior pushes down the core search results and gives you an AI Mode type of experience within the main Google Search interface.
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
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.
