How Google orders results, and what moves when it changes its mind: core and spam updates, ranking volatility, visibility gains and losses. Most of what is published here is reaction, so read it against the confirmed dates in the update history before deciding anything moved because of an update.
No Google update is rolling out. Last: September 2026 spam update, finished Oct 8, 2026 · Google algorithm update history with rollout times →
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Disclosure: Seowolf's Guide to SEO is published by Seowolf, the company behind this site. Everything below describes what's in the book. It makes no ranking promises — nobody outside a search engine…
Read on SEO-Serps Blog →Disclosure: SEO-Serps.info is our sister site, run by the same team (Seowolf) as this blog. It is free, has no accounts, and every headline links straight to the original publisher. Continue reading…
Read on SEO-Serps Blog →A clean keyword list is a starting point, not an answer. The value comes from analysis: which keywords belong together, which competitors rank for topics you have missed, where your own pages compete…
Read on SEO-Serps Blog →Links from other websites remain one of the strongest signals search engines use to judge which pages deserve to rank. They are also where small sites most often go wrong — either ignoring links…
Read on SEO-Serps Blog →The search results page has changed more in the last few years than in the previous decade. AI Overviews and AI Mode summarise answers above the traditional results, assistants like ChatGPT and…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on SEO-Serps Blog →Technical SEO is the foundation everything else sits on. The best content in your niche will not rank if search engines cannot crawl it, choose not to index it, cannot render it, or cannot work out…
Ranking & Algorithms Crawling & Indexing Site Architecture
Read on SEO-Serps Blog →It has been a while since I reported on a Google Search ranking update. I blame the tools, but in all seriousness, I am seeing a spike in volatility and, now probably more importantly, a spike in…
Read on Search Engine Roundtable →Microsoft is testing adding the label "Popular Links" to the Bing search results sitelinks. This reminds me of the Google top pages test and variations of that.
Ranking & Algorithms SERP Features
Read on Search Engine Roundtable →For the past several hours, Google Dataset Search has not been able to return any search results or matches. Google Dataset Search returns a response that says "Your search - [keyword phrase here] -…
Read on Search Engine Roundtable →AI search visibility improves in six steps, and the order of the steps matters more than the list. Find the […]
Read on Onely →To rank in AI search, stop looking for a position and work on presence: being the brand an engine names […]
Read on Onely →ChatGPT-attributed traffic fell sharply in several analytics datasets this month, and analysts tie the drop to ChatGPT links that open without tracking tags.
Ranking & Algorithms Measurement
Read on Search Engine Journal →Google flips its default from ranked results to AI answers when answer-layer ad yield matches the SERP. That crossover lands between 2028 and 2030.
Read on Search Engine Journal →Prepare for a potential Panda-style Google update by addressing scaled AI content and fake authors that could threaten rankings across your site.
Ranking & Algorithms Content & Quality
Read on Search Engine Journal →AI Overviews have shifted how audiences discover brands. Gone are the days when users would click through multiple search results until they found what they’re looking for. Now, AI Overviews answers…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on HubSpot Marketing →Google explains how it ranks PDFs in Search and AI Mode and how to check if a PDF is SEO friendly.
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on SEJ — Generative AI →Your AI visibility check was probably in English. However, new research across 1,650 responses shows AI recommends different brands in different languages.
Ranking & Algorithms International
Read on SEJ — Generative AI →Learn how to build an AI visibility dashboard that shows whether the pages AI cites are the ones earning Google clicks.
Read on Semrush Blog →We wanted to see for ourselves how ChatGPT retrieves information—and what that means for AI visibility—so we analyzed 66.6 million free, logged-out GPT-5.6 Luna responses and their 15 million fan-out…
Read on Ahrefs Blog →Learn the four types of keywords in SEO and how to optimize your content to rank for each type of keyword.
Read on Semrush Blog →Clients are asking about AEO. Some have seen competitors show up in AI results and want to know what it means. Others have read that AI is changing how buyers find vendors and want to know what their…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on HubSpot Marketing →Enterprise brand teams face a complex version of AEO that most tools weren’t built for. A single brand might span a dozen product lines, operate in multiple languages, and compete in markets where…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on HubSpot Marketing →Garrett French, James Wirth and Valerie Cecil of Citation Labs talk to us about how they measure AI visibility across six layers, build the prompts worth tracking, and replace the stale facts AI…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on Near Media →Incident began at 2026-09-24 09:15 and ended at 2026-10-08 01:00 (all times are US/Pacific).The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026. Affected products: Ranking
Read on Google Search Status →That puts AI ahead of YouTube as a source of signups, and second only to Google. If we’d relied on our referral traffic alone, we’d have badly undersold it. Most AI influence happens out of sight. A…
Ranking & Algorithms Measurement
Read on Ahrefs Blog →Local SEO is the process of improving search visibility, traffic, and brand awareness for local businesses.
Ranking & Algorithms Local SEO
Read on Semrush Blog →Wil, take me right to the KPI for long term sustainable GEO visibility!!
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on Seer Interactive →AI visibility is downstream of real-world influence — reviews, third-party mentions, brand demand and pages that make the decision easy — so the teams that chase today's citation sources will lose…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on Near Media →Use this SEO checklist to optimize your site for both Google and AI-driven search results.
Read on Semrush Blog →Your brand might be missing from important conversations, losing recommendations to competitors, associated with the wrong topics, or described using outdated information. AI assistants may even…
Read on Ahrefs Blog →Discover the key differences between SEO and AEO. Learn how each works, where they overlap, and practical strategies to win visibility in both.
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Read on Semrush Blog →One of the ways to improve your local SEO ranking is by optimizing your Google Business Profile (GBP). While it might seem like a simple task, small oversights—like selecting the wrong category—can…
Ranking & Algorithms Local SEO
Read on Sterling Sky →This is a question I get pretty frequently in the Local SEO community: What URL should I link my GMB listing to? The homepage? A location page? Something else? We wanted to test & measure how the…
Ranking & Algorithms Local SEO
Read on Sterling Sky →Google’s September 2026 spam update may take up to two weeks to roll out, making ranking drops harder to diagnose.
Read on Semrush Blog →Andrew Shotland & Mark Kabana join us for Part 2 to discuss what "AI visibility" actually is as an agency product, why nobody can tie it to revenue yet, and how ads are quietly taking the clicks that…
Read on Near Media →Google’s agentic commerce updates give advertisers new ways to boost AI visibility, engage shoppers and turn discovery into sales.
Ranking & Algorithms Paid Search E-commerce
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