🔍

​Multimodal search reporting launches in Google Search Console. This new report includes data from Google Lens, Circle to Search and image uploads and can be accessed via the web search filters.

📊

​Google rolls out the September 2026 spam update. This is the fourth spam update of 2026, and while it may take up to two weeks to roll out, the previous spam updates have rolled out in roughly two days.

🪭

​Google announces R4T-Diffusion, a new query fan-out framework. This new framework achieves faster, higher-quality query fan-out at a low computational cost. This makes the technology more scalable and affordable overall.

🙄

​OpenAI's quality raters are fired for using AI to train their AI. Google has thousands of human quality raters who help improve search results. It seems OpenAI tried to do the same thing with less than ideal results so far...

👮

​Google deploys a new AI spam detector called SAFE. The Scaled Abuse Forensics Examiner (SAFE) is a follow-up to the previous spam detection system, the Scalable Cluster Termination System.

❇️

​Bing tests calling Copilot 'AI Mode' in search results. To be clear, this is not Bing using Google's AI Mode for their search results; this is simply Bing using the same name as Google but still using Copilot.

📞

​Google updates Google Post documentation for verified phone numbers. This update explains that the contact information that is included in Google Posts must be verified.

£5 tickets for live podcast event next week

In this live podcast, we explore why career longevity isn't about keeping up with change, it's about learning to lead yourself through it.

Hustle culture has taught many of us that constant growth, productivity and pushing through are the path to success. But sustainable success requires something different. We need to understand ourselves, our strengths, our energy and what success actually means to us.

During this live podcast, Sarah, Tazmin & Jack will explore why career longevity is not just about keeping up with change, it’s about learning how to lead yourself through it.

Thank you for the workbook

If you’re struggling with content in the AI-era, and what is important, then Aleyda Solís has you covered in a great free workbook:

It’s always worth remembering: If a chatbot can fully satisfy the need using information anyone can access, then another definition page or “complete guide to X” is just making internet landfill that search wants to avoid. 🚮

Aleyda’s workbook scores content on six criteria:

1. click resilience
2. citation potential
3. brand mention potential
4. business value
5. proprietary advantage
6. effort.

What scores highly: entity pages, transaction pages, official docs and specs, first-hand tests, original research, live first-party data, real tools.

What doesn’t: commodity definitions, rehashed explainers, FAQs split across URLs, press release rewrites, self-serving “best of” lists, programmatic pages built from public data.

Welcome to the smoke parade

An 86 year old person has smoked for 70 years. Would you conclude smoking is not harmful? That is how some people make SEO/AI decisions.
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You will always be able to find examples of spam that works, edge cases, outliers, where sites seemingly have great success in a way that "shouldn't" work.
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It does not mean it is a good idea to copy them.
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Fun fact: This is my 13th year of no smoking 🚭

The Foundations of index

Problem getting your pages indexed? A lot of the time it isn't a technical issue...
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​Adam Gent did a brilliant talk at SearchNorwichXL that showed from a study of 1.4 million pages, a whopping 86% were not indexed because of quality issues.
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One of Google's challenges in 2026 is dealing with the tidal wave of AI-slop "commodity" content, so it is worth thinking from a strategic point of view how far away you can get from that line.

Famous last searches

At SearchNorwichXL, Arnout Hellemans shows his research into question sources such as "People Also Asked" likely come from a variety of sources (patent: US9213748B1) and Google cycles through a pool of them.
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To get the strongest insights at a particular time, in a specific region, it is a good idea to run multiple, non-cached queries with AlsoAsked to see what survives 🎯

I'm not AI (I promise)

What should you be thinking about to SEO/AI search in 2030? Brendan Bennett had an opinion on that in our SearchNorwichXL panel:
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Brendan believes more of what affects visibility will move 'off-site' by 2030. That means your visibility, your brand, your entity, will be impacted by what others say; other websites, other stories, other conversations.
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Brands with clear value propositions, active in communities, and that engage in digital PR will rise with the tide.

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