SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know βοΈ Google confirms that AI-generated titles are being tested in search results. Of course, Google rewriting titles is nothing new but this is the first time AI-generated titles have been confirmed. π«Έ Google confirms development of controls to opt out of generative AI features. This is in response to the Competition and Markets Authority's proposals to keep search results...
9 days agoΒ β’Β 5 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know πΊοΈ Google launches Ask Maps, a new AI-powered interface for Google Maps.This near feature uses Gemini to allow the user to prompt Google Maps about local businesses, get recommendations and make travel plans. π Google Search Console's branded query filter expands to all eligible sites. This feature was announced in November and allows easier filtering for branded and...
16 days agoΒ β’Β 4 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π Google publishes a new help page for Universal Commerce Protocol. This documentation clarifies some implementation requirements for UCP and cements UCP as a core part of Google's agentic checkout. πΊοΈ Yoast launches Schema Aggregation, a feature that maps all of your site's structured data. This new visualisation creates a 'schemamap' for your entire site at once, and, in...
23 days agoΒ β’Β 6 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π AI Overviews coverage increased by 58% in the last 12 months. This growth was primarily driven by increases in the healthcare (88% of queries), B2B tech (82% of queries) and education industries (83% of queries). π Google's February 2026 Discover core update completes its rollout. The rollout completed on 27 February and took 22 days in total. This update was focused on...
30 days agoΒ β’Β 5 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π Google Search Console's AI-powered configuration is now live for all users. The test of this new AI-powered GSC was reported on a few weeks ago and now every user can use prompts to create comparisons and filters. π Groups of links now appear in a pop-up on hover in AI Overviews and AI Mode. This new pop-up shows more descriptive and prominent link icons and should, in...
about 1 month agoΒ β’Β 5 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π Bing introduces AI performance reports to Bing Webmaster Tools. This new dashboard provides data about how your site is cited in AI answers including average cited pages, grounded queries and visibility trends over time. πΈοΈ Google announces WebMCP, a new protocol that lets site developers tell LLMs what each link and button does. The WebMCP also introduces two new APIs...
about 1 month agoΒ β’Β 7 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π Google releases the February 2026 Discover core update. The Google Discover documentation was also updated to recommend avoiding clickbait, sensationalism and artificially inflating engagement. βͺοΈ Bing launches multi-turn search worldwide. Multi-turn search allows users to perform follow-up searches in a Copilot chat without leaving the search engine results page. βοΈ...
about 2 months agoΒ β’Β 5 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π Google introduces Chrome Auto Browse to Chrome. Google is launching a Gemini-powered agentic experience that can complete multi-step research and browsing processes. β Yahoo launches Yahoo Scout, an AI-powered answer engine. Yahoo Scout uses Claude and, most interestingly, it appears to be more friendly than other AI search engines when linking directly and opening to...
about 2 months agoΒ β’Β 5 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know π Traffic from SEO is only down -2.5% YoY and AIOs stealing clicks is a 'myth' according to a study based on Graphite and Similarweb data that analysed over 40,000 of the largest sites in the US. π eBay bans AI agents and LLM-driven bots from its platform. This is the first move from a major ecommerce site in banning unauthorised AI agents. eBay also updated its robots.txt...
2 months agoΒ β’Β 7 min read