📍

​Google Business Profile now connects directly to GA4. Yes, local data tracking has finally been integrated into Google Analytics. GA4 can now track calls, bookings, website clicks, direction requests and more.

🧑‍⚖️

​German courts rule that Google can be found liable for AI Overview results. The courts found that Google is responsible for the results presented in AIOs. This could have huge implications for the future of AI search and LLMs.

❇️

​Gemini can be used to manage your Google Business Profile. Gemini can draft replies to reviews, create Google Posts and update business information. Currently, this feature doesn't apply to accounts that manage multiple GBPs.

🔗

​The Google Search Console link report has been fixed. A few weeks ago, the GSC link report broke with some users seeing a drop of over 50% in reported links overnight. This appears to now be fixed and the data has been updated.

🤖

​Reddit's visibility significantly grew following the May 2026 core update. This study found that, across all niches, Reddit now occupies 5x more top 3 positions than YouTube. YouTube, in fact, saw a decrease in overall visibility.

🔍

​Google publishes new guidance for small businesses affected by blacklisting and review removal. This update is due to a law passed in Tennessee that makes Google more accountable to small businesses and their visibility.

📊

​Schema.org adds usage statistics for how widely types of schema are used. This new dataset shows approximately how many domains actively use a given type of schema.

⚙️

​Google updates its search personalisation settings. These new settings, Search services history and Personalised Recommendations, allow users to review past searches and how they want their experience to be personalised.

🗣️

​Google provides guidance on using third-party SEO tools and services. Unsurprisingly, this advice is broadly 'Don't blindly follow advice from SEOs' and 'Follow official Google guidance'.

Discover how people are really searching, discovering, and engaging online

AI continues to reshape how users discover, engage, and click across search environments. But most teams are still making decisions without a clear picture of what's actually shifting.

The Datos State of Search Q1 2026 report, created in collaboration with Rand Fishkin, maps real search behaviour across millions of users in the US, EU, and UK. AI adoption, regional contrasts, e-commerce discovery, and intent signals are all explored in detail using real clickstream data.

If you like nuanced answers, follow my Substack!

If you're subscribing to Core Updates, you're probably like me, and like your information quickly, and in bite-sized chunks. However, sometimes this can lead to misunderstandings, and some topics deserve more exploration!

That's why I've started a Substack where I take deep-dives into these topics. Last week, I wrote about:

• ​The AI Convergence Problem: Where LLMs are weak, they're stupid. Where they're strong, they're dragging your marketing toward the mean.
• ​Schema, LLMs and the Low Bar for “Evidence” in GEO: I built a fake company with nonsense schema. The LLMs returned the address anyway. That is not the win the GEO industry thinks it is.
• ​ChatGPT Is Secretly Googling Things. QueryFan.com Shows You Exactly What: ChatGPT and Gemini don't just answer questions. They fire traditional searches in the background, and the results of those searches determine whose content gets surfaced.

It would be great to have you along for the ride! Anyway, onto this week's tips.

I have the power...to opt-out of generative AI results

For the UK sites that are eligible, you can find the GenAI opt-out setting in Google Search Console in Settings -> AI Controls.

A couple of other notes:

1. This setting kicks in on the 17th June
2. Subdomains can inherit settings of the main domain, or be specified separately

It seems the Preferred Sources have returned

Get google to prioritise content from your website across Top Stories, AI Mode, and AI Overviews by encouraging your visitors to add you as a "Preferred Source". You can set a link with this URL pattern:

➡️ google(.)com/preferences/source?q=[YOUR_WEBSITE]

Google is not in an indexing vein this day

Google is a lot more fussy with indexing pages now, so it is helpful to be clear on what is an indexing signal and what is not:
​
Indexing signals:
✅ Country
✅ Language
✅ HTTPs / Secure site
✅ Core Web Vitals
✅ Links (not nofollow)
✅ Content recency and freshness
✅ Spam policy violations
✅ Hreflang
​
These things are NOT indexing signals:
❌ Domain age and history
❌ Structured data
❌ XML sitemap
❌ Crawlability
❌ Link velocity
❌ Logical internal linking
❌ Readability
❌ Topical authority
❌ Content depth & comprehensiveness
❌ Matching search intent
❌ Keyword in H1 tag
❌ EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust)
​
Keep in mind:
🕷️ Crawling does not mean indexing
📃 Indexing does not mean ranking
​
Good luck 🙃

By the power of regex

Instead of spicy 'probably ok' AI, you can reliably* filter your GSC query data to uncover a treasure trove of query types your site is ranking for, with the following regex patterns: 🧙‍♂️
​
📃 Informational intent (Guides, tutorials, how-tos)
\b(how to|guide|tutorial|step by step|tips|tricks|ways to|best way to|learn|help|explain|understand|instruction|methods|examples|meaning of|definition)\b
​
⚖️ For comparisons (e.g., "best", "vs", "alternative", "cheaper"):
\b(best|vs|versus|compare|comparison|alternative|alternatives|better|cheaper|worse|cheapest|highest|lowest|top|difference|differences|differences between)\b
​
🛍️ Questions on products/services (e.g., "is X good?", "where to buy X?")
\b(price|cost|buy|purchase|available|best|quality|brand|reviews|ratings|features|specifications|order|discount|warranty|deal|shop|store|version|options|model|type|compare)\b
​
💰 Transactional intent (Buying, pricing, locations)
\b(buy|purchase|price|cost|cheap|discount|deal|coupon|order|shop|store|near me|online|sale|best price|affordable|available|in stock)\b
​
🧭 Navigational intent (Brand-specific, reviews, support)
\b(review|reviews|rating|ratings|customer service|support|warranty|return policy|refund|complaint|feedback|scam|legit|trustworthy|experience|testimonial|problems|issues)\b
​
🛠️ Specific for SaaS (Tool queries from Pietro Mingotti)
\b(?:tool|software|app|system|platform|application|program|solution|portal|suite|service)s?\b
​
❓ Queries with more than 4 words (Likely to be questions)
([^ ]+\s){4,}
​
To get this:
1) Open your Google Search Console
2) Go to "Performance"
3) On the filters at the top click on "+ Add filter"
4) Select "Query"
5) Change the drop down to "Custom (regex)"
​
Paste in the regex and be amazed ✨
​
🏆 BONUS TIPS and Community comments:

• ​Malte Landwehr warns using the GSC frontend for large sites can be unreliable.
• ​Stephan Czysch has a GSC Helper Chrome extension with present filters you can use too (link in comments)
• ​Gianna Brachetti-Truskawa defines small site as ~10k pages, medium as 100k, and large above.
• ​Ryan Jones points out regex filters is it changes all the metrics to sum up pages - so you get greatly inflated impression counts.
• ​🔎 Charles Meaden points out these can be used in other tools such as Ahrefs that support regex

I must automate everything, or I automate nothing

A 'silent' Google update around 20th January claimed a lot of 'programmatic' SEO victims, even some large brands ⚰️ But why?
​
Like many things in SEO, 'programmatic' is a new name for an old tactic. We used to call it generating 'dynamic' sites. There was a mini economy for individuals scraping the web and building structured databases that SEOs could use to mad-lib together websites to generate all kinds of page variations - and it worked!💰 (Until it didn't).
​
The GenAI boom made this kind of approach a lot more accessible by lowering the technical bar (what's a Markov chain anyway?). Now you can just feed spreadsheets of data into your favourite LLM and generate content you tell yourself is good. 🙉
​
We see so many traffic graphs showing 'booming growth' as content, pages, sections, are churned out, producing FOMO in equal measure. Then you get the amazing case study, and nobody talks about the next couple of years when the site's traffic bleeds out.
​
"But it was worth it, because of all that traffic and revenue!" is something I hear at this stage, but let's consider:
​
1) The updates we've seen have affected non-programmatic content as well, applying a sitewide suppression; Google telling you it doesn't really trust you as a source anymore. This will take years to recover from.
​
2) A good way to think about your reputation in Google is a "rolling average", which is why SEO takes time. You've just given yourself low scores, month on month. Even if you bin everything and start over, you've dug yourself an expensive hole to get out of.
​
3) The reason those signals are bad is because you've given users bad experiences. This is going to rot your brand over time, and SEO aside, that is a hard thing to come back from.
​
But, of course, it's all Google's fault 🙃

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