Industry News

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google released the March 2026 spam update yesterday...

Google has released the March 2026 spam update on March 24, 2026 at around 3:20 pm ET. This update applies globally and to all languages and will take a few days (not weeks) to complete.

Google had made a few changes to its SEO developer help documentation. First it documented how Google Search handles and processes robots meta tags outside the HTML head. Second, it added more supported properties for Discussion Forum and QA Page markup.

There is new data out from Newzdash that shows just how often AI Overviews appear within Google across new sections. And while AI Overviews shows 60%+ of the time for health queries, when it comes to breaking news and major headlines, it shows less than 6% of the time.

Google is testing showing a call to action in the search results that says, "Skip digging, start guided research" which drives users to a Web Guide-like results page.

Google added a new section to the "Understand available performance metrics" within the Google Business Profiles help documentation. The new section added a section on offer data and it shows the number of times customers viewed and clicked on offers on your Business Profile.

On March 17, 2026, Google retired some of its Google Ads policies on Ad format requirements. These are specific to "old ad formats that are no longer in use are also being retired," Ginny Marvin of Google.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

Google was asked if Personal Intelligence in AI Mode will come to paid accounts across the world (not just the US - where it has hit non-paid accounts). Google replied... (Now is the point where you click on the article...)

Google is testing changing out some of the links within AI Mode to show as overlay cards, instead of take you directly to the website it is mentioning. This obviously will result in fewer direct clicks to those websites.