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Core Updates SEO Newsletter

🔍 Core Updates: March 2026 core update begins as March spam update completes [30 March]

Published about 1 month ago • 3 min read

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-Cook​
Search with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward​

SEO updates you need to know

🔍

​Google's March 2026 spam update began on 24 March and completed on 25 March. No, that's not a typo; this update took less than 24 hours to roll out and complete. That's the fastest ever Google spam update.

📊

​Google's March 2026 core update began rolling out on 27 March 2026. This is the first core update of 2026 and is set to take two weeks to roll out. Core updates affect broader ranking systems including Google Discover.

📈

​Bing Webmaster Tools adds Grounding queries and Page views connection to the AI Performance report. These new features help users see which pages are being cited for specific grounding queries.

🤳

​Google's Search Live expands globally. Search Live, accessed in the Google app, lets users ask questions out loud or use their camera to give visual context to their searches.

📉

​ChatGPT converts 3 times worse than when users click through to the website. Walmart confirms that the Instant Checkout experience was "unsatisfying" and that Walmart will be creating its own integration in ChatGPT.

⏩

​Google tests 'Skip digging, start guided research' feature on search result pages. This feature looks similar to Web Guide, which was first tested in July 2025, and organises the results by topic, rather than the default ranking order.

🏷️

​Google adds AI and bot labels to structured data documentation. This new property, digitalSourceType, lets sites indicate whether content is created by AI or automated systems like automatic replies.

🤖

​Google tests 'Reply to reviews with AI' for Google Business Profile. This feature seems to be very early testing and feels counterintuitive to building trust with your users.

Sponsor: SearchNorwichXL

SearchNorwichXL early bird tickets are on sale now

SearchNorwichXL is the expansion from the region's longest-running search marketing meetup into an unforgettable one-day conference.

We're very excited to welcome 12 of the best SEO speakers in the world and more than 200 enthusiastic search professionals to Norwich's historic Maddermarket Theatre.

Search with Candour podcast

Get your technical SEO tickets prioritised & shipped

Season 4: Episode 64

Alison Moss joins Search with Candour to discuss how to prioritise technical SEO fixes and get development tickets actioned.

Together, they cover common pitfalls like lack of buy-in and unclear requirements, emphasising translating SEO needs into business outcomes and developer-friendly acceptance criteria, using ticket templates, and providing references.

Alison explains prioritising by impact versus effort, helping teams order “high priority” items, and acknowledging SEO competes with other business priorities while building relationships with product and dev teams and supporting testing.

This week's solicited tips:

No tips this week - Mark was busy!

Mark was busy speaking at SERP Conf. in Sofia and SEO Brein in Rotterdam so no SEO tips (unsolicited or otherwise) this week.

Credit to Borislav Arapchev for the photo of Mark speaking at SERP Conf.

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Core Updates SEO Newsletter

Weekly SEO updates from Mark Williams-Cook

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.

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