๐Ÿ“Š Core Updates: GSC adds social media search tracking and generative AI controls expand outside of UK [13 July]


SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-Cookโ€‹
Search with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Wardโ€‹

SEO updates you need to know


๐Ÿ“Š

โ€‹Google Search Console adds search tracking for social media with new properties. These properties help creators understand which search terms lead users to their content across Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube.

โš™๏ธ

โ€‹The generative AI controls in Google Search Console appear to be expanding outside of the UK. The controls were first launched earlier this month in the UK, but users are reporting that the options are appearing for non-UK accounts.

๐Ÿ“…

โ€‹Google explains that re-evaluation for canonicals can take up to two weeks. The updated documentation says that the process of differentiating pages can be sped up if the difference is more significant and clear.

๐Ÿค–

โ€‹Google adds AI disclosures to ads in Search, YouTube and Discover. The new 'How this ad was made' panel explains if an ad has been created or edited using generative AI.

๐Ÿ›‘

โ€‹Google says that Cloudflare's robots.txt directive to control AI actions is ignored by crawlers and LLMs. Google's John Mueller says that the Content Signals directive only adds bloat and future maintenance to your robots.txt file.

๐Ÿ›’

โ€‹Google adds new structured data properties for merchant listings. The new Category and Sale Duration schema types allow merchants to be more specific about the type of product category and how long a sale will run for.

๐Ÿ“ˆ

โ€‹Google Search reaches an all-time usage record during Argentina vs Egypt on 7 July. Events like the World Cup often drive a huge number of searches and this seems to rebut the 'Google is dead' idea that many have stated recently.

๐Ÿ“

โ€‹'No reviews yet' error affects multiple Google Business Profiles. This error appears for owners trying to reply to reviews, despite the public listing still showing the correct number of reviews.

Sponsor: Semrush

Build your strategy with the definitive study into AI visibility

AI visibility isn't uniform. Performance diverges sharply across platforms and industries, meaning a strategy built for one environment can fail to perform in another.

Semrush's AI Visibility Index tracks 126 million prompts across 22 industries and ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. It's our biggest ever piece of research into AI visibility, complete with playbooks, expert guidance, and deep-dives into the winning brands.

Build a strategy that wins across where your audiences search. Start with the AI Visibility Index.

Search with Candour podcast

Tactics for ranking in AI search

Season 4: Episode 79

Lรฉo Poitevin, founder and CEO of Astrak Agency, joins Search with Candour to discuss why your competitors may be recommended in ChatGPT and other AI search tools while you are not.

Topics discussed:

  • Why AI search engines are easier to manipulate than Google
  • How to identify competitors in AI search
  • How to build trust signals for AI search
  • How to use listicles and guest posts to rank in AI search
  • The risks of self-promotional listicles

Wait! Allow me to hijack you quicklyโ€ฆ

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:

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

โ€‹

Refer subscribers and earn rewards!

If you enjoy reading Core Updates, you can earn ยฃ1000's of free access to software and tools by referring your friends to sign up using your personal referral link.

Your referral link: [RH_REFLINK GOES HERE]


Here are the fantastic rewards on offer:

Refer 3 Subscribers:
Get tagged in a LinkedIn post to thank you for your support

Refer 10 Subscribers:
Get included in a Core Updates email as a supporter

Refer 25 Subscribers:
Get 1 month free subscription to Liam Fallenโ€™s MostlyMarketing Slack

Refer 50 Subscribers:
Get 1 month free AlsoAsked Lite subscription

Refer 75 Subscribers:
Get a free copy Majesticโ€™s SEO in 2025 book (20 to give)

Refer 100 Subscribers:
Get 3 months free InLinks Freelancer subscription

Refer 150 Subscribers
Get free access to Kyle McGregorโ€™s Google Analytics 4 course

Refer 200 Subscribers:
Get free access to Mark Williams-Cookโ€™s Complete SEO course

Refer 250 Subscribers:
Get 1 year free subscription to Sitebulb Pro

Refer 300 Subscribers:
Get free access to Mark Rofeโ€™s Digital PR Course

Refer 404 Subscribers:
Get 1 year free subscription to Little Warden Small team

Refer 500 Subscribers:
Get 1 year free AlsoAsked Pro subscription

Your referral link:

[RH_REFLINK GOES HERE]

Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Telegram Linkedin Email

PS: You have referred [RH_TOTREF GOES HERE] people so far

See how many referrals you have

Top Core Updates referrer leaderboard

A big thank you to our top referrers, who have signed up over 10 people to the Core Updates newsletter, go follow them!

๐Ÿฅ‡ MJ Cachรณn Yรกรฑez (LinkedIn / Bluesky)

๐Ÿ… Nikki Pilkington (LinkedIn / Bluesky)

๐Ÿ… Lidia Infante (LinkedIn / Bluesky)

๐Ÿ… Saijo George (LinkedIn / Bluesky)

๐Ÿ… Alice Rowan (LinkedIn)

๐Ÿ… Martijn Jeurissen (LinkedIn)

๐Ÿ… Chester Beard (LinkedIn)

Candour, 30-34 Muspole Street, Norwich, Norfolk NR31DJ
โ€‹Unsubscribe ยท Preferencesโ€‹

Core Updates SEO Newsletter

The Core Updates newsletter is written by Mark Williams-Cook, a veteran SEO who is Digital Marketing Director at Candour, Founder of AlsoAsked and organiser of SearchNorwich. Over 40,000 SEOs follow Mark's 'Unsolicited #SEO tips' on LinkedIn, which has now been wrapped up into the Core Updates newsletter, along with an overview of weekly news and the current episode of the Search with Candour episode, hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward.

Read more from Core Updates SEO Newsletter

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know ๐Ÿ“Š Google's generative UI expands from AI Mode into AI Overviews. This generative UI introduces interactive tools, visualisations and simulations directly into the search results page. โœ… Google's August 2026 spam update began and was completed. The rollout lasted a little more than 2 days, similar to the previous spam update in June 2026. It's still early days but this...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know ๐Ÿท๏ธ Claude adds watermarks to AI-generated content. This new transparency will be added to all content including text, code and images and is driven by the EU AI Act's Article 50. ๐Ÿค– Microsoft Clarity adds a new scrape-to-referral ratio metric. This metric compares the scraping activity from AI crawlers with the referral traffic received from those crawlers. ๐Ÿ“ˆ AI traffic to...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know ๐Ÿ“Š Microsoft Clarity introduces branded and non-branded AI query data. Queries will be labelled and can be filtered by branded or non-branded. Share of Authority can also be broken down by branded and non-branded queries. โ˜๏ธ Cloudflare adds AEO visibility dashboard to its AEO suite. This new dashboard joins the existing Agent Readiness tool and includes metrics such as...