News
SEOs report more manual actions as Google stays silent
Marie Haynes and Daniel Foley Carter say manual action cases are rising. It is anecdotal, with no Google data, and the spam update finished the same day.
Google Search Console - reading the data properly
What Search Console means
Google Search Console is Google's first-party reporting surface for a verified site: impressions, clicks, average position, index coverage and crawl behaviour. Its numbers are sampled and rounded in specific ways, so reading it well means knowing which figures are trustworthy at which aggregation and which are not.
Reference: support.google.com
News
Search Console flags child property AI control overrides
Google's help page now says top-level domain owners see a notice on the Search generative AI control page when a child property overrides the parent.
News
Search Console now groups multiple countries in one filter
Search Console's performance report now lets you tick several countries and see their combined Google Search traffic, per two trade outlets.
News
Search Console dark mode was a joke, per John Mueller
A dark mode mock-up shown at Search Central Live in Barcelona was first reported as coming, then described as a joke. Here is what each source says.
Reports
How to tell which Google update hit your site: a 5-step method
Match a Search Console drop to confirmed Google update dates using 7-day windows, search types and a manual actions check, then rule out overlaps.
Tools
Google algorithm update checker: overlay updates on your traffic
Upload your Search Console clicks and see every Google-confirmed update on the same chart, with a week-before and week-after comparison for each. Free.
News
Search Console splits web results into text and multimodal
The Performance report now has a Web: Multimodal search type for image-based searches, separate from Web: Text-based, and it has no query data.
Research
Does Google use Analytics bounce rate to rank pages?
John Mueller said on record that Google does not use Analytics bounce rate for ranking. What that statement covers, and what it leaves open.
News
Google Discover on desktop has disappeared, and Google is silent
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
Logging bug undercounted impressions in Search Console's AI report
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.
Reports
Every confirmed Google ranking update since August 2025
Eight confirmed updates, with Google's own start dates and rollout durations, and what the pattern says about when to judge a decline in your data.
News
Bing reports how often AI answers cite your pages
AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools counts citations in Copilot and AI answers, names the cited URLs, and shows the queries behind them.
News
Search Console now reports impressions from Google's AI features
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 now measures your TikTok, X and YouTube posts
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
Publisher reports Google News sitemap data stuck in Search Console
A publisher says the indexed pages report for its news sitemap has not moved since August 28, even though new articles are indexed and visible.
News
Google fixes a favicon bug and a Search Console crawl stats gap
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.
Studies
Ahrefs: AI Overviews cut position-1 CTR by 58%
Ahrefs analyzed 300,000 keywords via Google Search Console and found AI Overviews now cut position-1 desktop CTR by 58%, up from 34.5% in April 2025.
News
Search Console configures Performance reports from a prompt
AI-powered configuration turns a natural-language request into Search Console filters, comparisons and metric choices, no manual setup required.
News
Search Console adds a branded vs non-branded query filter
A new Performance report filter splits branded and non-branded queries using an AI-assisted classifier, not manual keyword rules.