profile

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.

Featured Post

πŸ¦† Core Updates: Google tests AI Mode in main search tab and March core update completes [13 April]

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know πŸ—“οΈ The March 2026 core update completed its rollout on 8 April. This core update has been reported as relatively quiet, especially compared to the previous core update from December 2025. πŸ” Google tests integrating AI Mode into the main 'All' search tab. This continues Google's experiments of making AI Mode part of the central search experience, rather than a separate...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know πŸ“‰ A GSC error has affected impression reporting since May 2025. This error has been confirmed by Google. Once resolved, it may cause a decrease in impressions so keep a close eye on your GSC data over the next few weeks. πŸ“ ChatGPT adds location sharing feature for more accurate local information. This can be toggled on and off to allow ChatGPT to provide more relevant...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know πŸ” 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. πŸ“Š 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...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know ✍️ 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. 🫸 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...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know πŸ—ΊοΈ 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. πŸ“Š 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...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know πŸ›’ 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. πŸ—ΊοΈ 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...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know πŸ“ˆ 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). πŸ“Š 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...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know πŸ“Š 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. πŸ”— 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...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know πŸ“Š 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. πŸ•ΈοΈ 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...

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know πŸ” Google releases the February 2026 Discover core update. The Google Discover documentation was also updated to recommend avoiding clickbait, sensationalism and artificially inflating engagement. β†ͺ️ 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. βš–οΈ...