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.

📊 Core Updates: Google adds new visualisations to AIOs and August 2026 spam update completes [24 August]

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

about 9 hours ago • 6 min read

🤖 Core Updates: Claude marks AI content and Microsoft Clarity adds scrape-to-referral metric [17 August]

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 🏷️ 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. 🤖 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. 📈 AI traffic to...

7 days ago • 6 min read

✍️ Core Updates: Cloudflare offers AI tracking and GSC showing AI Mode follow ups [10 August]

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 📊 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. ☁️ Cloudflare adds AEO visibility dashboard to its AEO suite. This new dashboard joins the existing Agent Readiness tool and includes metrics such as...

14 days ago • 5 min read

📊 Core Updates: AI content must be labelled in EU and GSC social media properties launch [3 August]

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 🏷️ AI-generated content must be labelled clearly according to new EU guidelines. The EU is pushing digital transparency that expands outside of just images and includes published text that doesn't receive human review. 📊 Social media properties rollout globally for Google Search Console. These new platform properties were announced a few weeks ago, and users can now...

21 days ago • 7 min read

✍️ Core Updates: 5.3% of top-ranking pages are AI-generated and ChatGPT partners with Yelp [27 July]

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know ✍️ 5.3% of top-ranking pages are AI-generated. This study dispels some of the beliefs that 100% AI-generated content can't rank on Google. AI-generated content was present in every ranking position across 331k analysed pages. 📊 More than 40% of US searches trigger AI Overviews.This study from Similarweb also shows that Google search length has increased by 5.4% since AI...

28 days ago • 8 min read

💰 Core Updates: Ads in nearly 30% of AI Mode and Google is second-most cited domain [20 July]

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 💰 Ads now appear in nearly 30% of AI Mode queries. Interestingly, CPC appears to be the strongest determining factor, with ad presence increasing to 53.56% with a CPC of $10 or higher. 🥈 Google is now the second-most cited domain in AI Mode. This increase in the last few months is primarily driven by Google Business Profiles in local searches and Product Knowledge Panels...

about 1 month ago • 5 min read

📊 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-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 📊 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. ⚙️ 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,...

about 1 month ago • 4 min read

📈 Core Updates: Google Trends adds comparisons and fake DMCA takedowns [6 July]

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 📈 Google Trends adds comparison over time data and graphs. These new clickable chips add month-over-month, week-over-week, and year-over-year comparison options. ©️ Fraudulent DMCA takedowns are negatively impacting SEO performance. Publishers are reporting that they have had pages deindexed due to fake copyright claims from competitors. ☁️ Cloudflare adds new ways to...

about 2 months ago • 6 min read

👀 Core Updates: Google explains AI search impressions and June 2026 spam update completes [29 June]

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 👀 Google explains how impressions work in AI Mode and AI Overviews. A link to a site, not a brand mention, is counted as the trigger for an impression. So don't confuse unlinked mentions in AI search with impressions. ⚡ Google's June 2026 spam update rolled out and completed. This update began its rollout on 24 June and was completed on 26 June. It was a relatively fast...

about 2 months ago • 8 min read

👤 Core Updates: Google adds to AI spam fighting arsenal and must give notice of updates in UK [22 June]

SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 📊 Bing adds new AI visibility insights to Bing Webmaster Tools. There are 2 new ways to categorise queries, Intents and Topics. While Citation Share is a 'share of voice' view of visibility and Compare shows overlaid changes over time. ⚖️ Google must makes rankings fairer and announce significant ranking changes. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also...

2 months ago • 7 min read