What’s Happening in SEO? The Latest Search Updates

AI OVERVIEWS ARE MOVING INTO BRANDED SEARCHES

AI Overviews aren’t exactly new. What is interesting is where they’re starting to appear.

New data from DemandSphere found AI Overviews appearing on more than 8O% of the branded queries it tracked by late September 2O26, compared with around 26% at the beginning of the month (Source).

Until now, the conversation around AI search has focused on informational queries: someone asks Google a question, and Google attempts to answer it without requiring them to click through to a website.

Branded searches are different. These involve someone entering a company name within their query. They might be looking for reviews, comparing it with another brand, or just trying to find the company website. If Google starts inserting an AI-generated summary into more of those searches, it means that what Google knows about a brand becomes extremely important.

Essentially, it chooses what to tell customers about your brand based on the information it finds on your website and the wider internet. So, having helpful and accurate information about your business online is more important than ever.

An SEO strategy therefore isn't just about influencing whether Google finds you; it should consider how easy it is for Google to interpret information about your business and describe you to potential customers.

GOOGLE HAS MORE TO SAY ABOUT AI-GENERATED CONTENT

The irony of Google generating answers with AI while simultaneously having to decide what to do with everyone else's AI content isn't lost on us.

Recently, Google updated its official guidance around generative AI content. It acknowledges that generative AI can be useful for things like researching a topic and adding structure to original ideas. The problem is using it to generate large volumes of pages without adding meaningful value, particularly when the purpose is manipulating search rankings — otherwise known as keyword stuffing.

This has always been an SEO no-no, but the distinction is becoming even more important as tools like ChatGPT make it incredibly easy to produce content en masse.

Google has been clear that it ranks content highly if it’s genuinely useful and valuable to users, rather than content created primarily to target keywords and manipulate search rankings. Simply having an article about a topic, or 1OO such articles, isn't really a differentiator. Original experience, expertise, examples, opinions, research and genuinely useful information is what gives Google a reason to favour your content over other pages covering the same subject.

GOOGLE JUST ROLLED OUT ANOTHER SPAM UPDATE

Google just rolled out its September 2O26 spam update, and the weeks since have seen several noticeable periods of search volatility. It’s a common side effect when Google brings out updates, but what’s uncommon about this one is that it seems to be happening in waves.

There have been several periods of ranking fluctuations reported by industry watchers in late September and early October.

For businesses and agencies concerned about SEO, this is a PSA that a sudden ranking changes during this period don’t necessarily mean something is actually going wrong with your search visibility. You will likely still see movement for the duration of the update rollout.

So what about the spam update itself? Google didn’t specify how it would affect websites, but early industry analysis found some highly templated, generic and mass-generated content among the sites affected — which may indicate Google is penalising the kind of content created at scale to manipulate search rankings, which ties nicely into what we were talking about above.

BONUS: UNCONFIRMED ISSUES WITH THIRD-PARTY RANK TRACKING

This one isn’t an official update or confirmed event, but it’s an issue we've encountered firsthand.

At the end of September, we saw unusual ranking movements across multiple client accounts in Ahrefs (our third-party SEO analytics software). Keywords appeared to disappear overnight. At first we thought it was related to those recent spam updates, but deeper research revealed something else.

We cross-checked the “lost” keywords with Google Search Console’s average ranking positions. It confirmed what we suspected: Google’s own data didn’t reflect the lost rankings reported by Ahrefs, and our hard-earned page 1 keyword rankings didn’t actually disappear.

When we raised the issue with Ahrefs support, their team confirmed the platform is experiencing issues collecting ranking data from Google’s SERPs.

So, if Ahrefs says you lost half your keywords overnight, don’t panic! Clare from customer support assured me it’s their problem, and not ours.