https://seomadman.com Algorithm updates, search announcements and platform changes, with what each one changes in practice. en https://seomadman.com/news/bing-verify-you-are-human-check https://seomadman.com/news/bing-verify-you-are-human-check Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Search Engine Roundtable reports Bing showing a verify-you-are-human checkbox before results. The trigger is unknown and the check was not reproduced. news technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/chatgpt-sponsored-agents-ads-test https://seomadman.com/news/chatgpt-sponsored-agents-ads-test Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez OpenAI is testing Sponsored Agents: labeled conversations with a business agent that users start after clicking a ChatGPT ad, with select US advertisers. news ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/google-discover-desktop-missing https://seomadman.com/news/google-discover-desktop-missing Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Search Engine Roundtable reports Discover no longer appears on desktop Google.com, with no explanation from Google. What is verified and what is not. news search-console https://seomadman.com/news/google-search-bar-ai-mode-button-test https://seomadman.com/news/google-search-bar-ai-mode-button-test Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google is testing an AI Mode button in the search bar on results pages, not only the home page. The button is inconsistent and regular search still works. news ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/google-search-profiles-update https://seomadman.com/news/google-search-profiles-update Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google cut the follower requirement for Search profiles to 10,000, added richer article views, and lets one account manage up to 10 profiles. news technical-seo content-strategy https://seomadman.com/news/ga4-custom-dashboards-launch https://seomadman.com/news/ga4-custom-dashboards-launch Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez GA4 Dashboards let you drag dimensions and metrics onto a grid canvas, combining six chart types into one KPI page instead of separate reports. news technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/search-central-live-india-bengaluru https://seomadman.com/news/search-central-live-india-bengaluru Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's Search Central team holds a free, one-day Search Central Live event in Bengaluru on October 30, 2026, its first India event since 2023. news technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-ai-report-logging-bug https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-ai-report-logging-bug Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A logging error cut reported impressions in Search Console's Generative AI report from August 13, 2026, Google says, with no real drop in visibility. news search-console ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/september-15-ranking-volatility-spike https://seomadman.com/news/september-15-ranking-volatility-spike Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez SEO chatter and rank-tracking tool activity spiked hard on 15 September 2026. Barry Schwartz suspects an update is starting; Google has confirmed nothing. news core-updates https://seomadman.com/news/september-update-reversed-days-later https://seomadman.com/news/september-update-reversed-days-later Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Glenn Gabe tracked large sites dropping hard around September 3-4, 2026, then surging back on September 13. Google confirmed neither move. news core-updates https://seomadman.com/news/search-central-eea-aggregator-features https://seomadman.com/news/search-central-eea-aggregator-features Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's September 2026 changelog documents aggregator units, supplier units and carousels: result formats limited to the EEA, South Africa and Turkiye. news structured-data technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/site-reputation-policy-eea-split https://seomadman.com/news/site-reputation-policy-eea-split Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez From 30 August, a site reputation manual action changes results only outside the EEA. Inside it, the section is separated and left to rank on its own. news core-updates content-strategy https://seomadman.com/news/bing-ai-performance-citations https://seomadman.com/news/bing-ai-performance-citations Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools counts citations in Copilot and AI answers, names the cited URLs, and shows the queries behind them. news ai-search search-console https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-generative-ai-reports https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-generative-ai-reports Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google added a generative AI performance report to Search Console, showing how often your pages surfaced inside AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover. news search-console ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-platform-properties https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-platform-properties Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Platform properties let a creator see the queries that lead people to their Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube content on Google Search and Discover. news search-console content-strategy https://seomadman.com/news/august-2026-spam-update-completed https://seomadman.com/news/august-2026-spam-update-completed Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's August 2026 spam update ran from 18 to 21 August. Here is how to tell a spam-update drop from a core-update drop in your own data. news core-updates technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/ai-mode-ads-rollout https://seomadman.com/news/ai-mode-ads-rollout Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google confirmed on 4 September 2026 that exact and phrase match keywords can serve text ads in AI Mode, once reserved for AI Max and Performance Max. news ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/bing-serp-display-tests-https-sitenames https://seomadman.com/news/bing-serp-display-tests-https-sitenames Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Two separate September 2026 Bing tests change result snippets: one bolds the https segment of the URL, the other drops the site name line. news technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/google-news-sitemap-reporting-lag https://seomadman.com/news/google-news-sitemap-reporting-lag Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Webmasters say the indexed pages report for their news sitemap has not moved since August 28, even though new articles are indexed and visible. news search-console indexing https://seomadman.com/news/ai-overviews-dynamic-expansion https://seomadman.com/news/ai-overviews-dynamic-expansion Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google confirmed on 28 August 2026 that AI Overviews can dynamically expand into a full, detailed answer for some queries, dropping the Show more control. news ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-favicon-crawl-stats-bugs-fixed https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-favicon-crawl-stats-bugs-fixed Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google fixed a bug replacing site favicons with a default globe icon in search results, and separately restored a two-day gap in Crawl Stats data. news search-console technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/chatgpt-ads-product-feeds https://seomadman.com/news/chatgpt-ads-product-feeds Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez OpenAI added beta conversion bidding, dynamic URL macros and a multi-product carousel to ChatGPT Ads product feed campaigns on August 7, 2026. news ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/ai-mode-france-publisher-terms https://seomadman.com/news/ai-mode-france-publisher-terms Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahead of its French launch, Google told publishers it would offer an opt-out, separate AI traffic reporting, and neighboring-rights compensation. news ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-ai-config-tool https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-ai-config-tool Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez AI-powered configuration turns a natural-language request into Search Console filters, comparisons and metric choices, no manual setup required. news search-console ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/bot-traffic-passes-human-traffic https://seomadman.com/news/bot-traffic-passes-human-traffic Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Cloudflare's CEO says automated requests for HTML pages now outnumber human ones, 18 months ahead of his own forecast. news ai-search technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/w3c-llms-txt-standardization-draft https://seomadman.com/news/w3c-llms-txt-standardization-draft Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A W3C tracking issue on llms.txt and an unrelated IETF working group on robots.txt-adjacent AI signals are getting blended into one false headline. news ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/faq-rich-results-removed https://seomadman.com/news/faq-rich-results-removed Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez FAQPage markup no longer earns an expanded snippet in Google Search as of 7 May 2026, though the schema stays valid and other crawlers still read it. news structured-data technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/openai-licensing-deals-citation-premium https://seomadman.com/news/openai-licensing-deals-citation-premium Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A study joining licensing-deal records to 129.3 million AI citations finds a ChatGPT premium for OpenAI partners, but no matching edge on Google. news ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/ietf-aipref-robots-txt-successor https://seomadman.com/news/ietf-aipref-robots-txt-successor Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez The IETF's AI Preferences group is standardizing AI training and search signals that extend robots.txt. Still an Internet-Draft, not a shipped standard. news technical-seo ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/indexnow-adoption-google-holdout https://seomadman.com/news/indexnow-adoption-google-holdout Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Bing's own published numbers show IndexNow submissions climbing steadily since 2022, yet Google still has no roadmap to join the instant-indexing protocol. news technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/structured-data-ai-citation-priority https://seomadman.com/news/structured-data-ai-citation-priority Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Schema.org's own numbers, Google's AI documentation and Bing's public statements, separated from unverified SEO claims. news structured-data ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/gemini-3-7-flash-ai-mode https://seomadman.com/news/gemini-3-7-flash-ai-mode Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google added Gemini 3.7 Flash to AI Mode's model picker on 14 August 2026, limited to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, one day after the model shipped. news ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-branded-query-filter https://seomadman.com/news/search-console-branded-query-filter Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A new Performance report filter splits branded and non-branded queries using an AI-assisted classifier, not manual keyword rules. news search-console https://seomadman.com/news/search-central-live-events-latam-europe https://seomadman.com/news/search-central-live-events-latam-europe Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's Search Central team adds Bogota to its live event roster and returns to Ciudad de Mexico in October, alongside a three-day Deep Dive in Barcelona. news technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/may-2026-broad-core-update-complete https://seomadman.com/news/may-2026-broad-core-update-complete Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's May 2026 broad core update ran 21 May to 2 June, its second confirmed core update of 2026. What the dates mean for reading your own traffic. news core-updates technical-seo https://seomadman.com/news/merchant-center-ai-performance-insights https://seomadman.com/news/merchant-center-ai-performance-insights Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A new Merchant Center report benchmarks brand visibility on AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini, plus shopping funnel and attribute-gap data. news ai-search structured-data https://seomadman.com/news/merchant-center-product-data-spec-2026 https://seomadman.com/news/merchant-center-product-data-spec-2026 Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez New shipping and video attributes, a higher minimum image resolution and a longer rollout: what changes on 14 April 2026, 30 June 2026 and 31 January 2027. news structured-data https://seomadman.com/news/ai-overview-citation-rank-decoupling https://seomadman.com/news/ai-overview-citation-rank-decoupling Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs data shows top-10 pages went from 76% to 38% of AI Overview citations in eight months. Ranking well no longer guarantees a citation. news ai-search https://seomadman.com/news/discover-first-dedicated-algorithm-update https://seomadman.com/news/discover-first-dedicated-algorithm-update Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's first Discover-only core update ran three weeks, targeted clickbait and thin republishing. Discover clicks arrive fast: over 70% land on day one. news core-updates content-strategy https://seomadman.com/news/ai-mode-expands-40-new-areas https://seomadman.com/news/ai-mode-expands-40-new-areas Tue, 07 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google added more than 35 languages and 40 countries to AI Mode, including its first EU markets: Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland. news ai-search