Your rankings may
not have dropped.

Felt a Google update this week? Google says there wasn’t one. Your rank tracker might be wrong too. Check your clicks in Search Console before you change anything.

Owner & Publisher, Search Engine Watch

FREE ONLINE WEBINAR · NEXT TUESDAY

Answer Engine Strategies

OCT

Tuesday, 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m. ET

Starts 8 a.m. PT · 3 p.m. London · 4 p.m. Berlin

Three experts show what actually gets a brand into AI answers. Real examples, a live demo and time for your questions. No sales pitches.

THE SCHEDULE

11:00–11:30 a.m. ET

Promptly Ignored: How a Poor Digital Footprint Censors You from AI Recommendations (And What to Do)

Ann Smarty · Smarty Marketing

11:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. ET

Practical GEO: Generating Visibility and Delivering ROI Outside of GEO

Kevin Lee · Didit

12:00–12:30 p.m. ET

Reddit Is Not Dead for AEO: Why It Matters and How to Do It Properly

Ivan Palii · B2B Gaps

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TOP STORY

Is a Google October 2026 update rolling out? Forum reports say yes, Google’s dashboard says no

Site owners report Discover traffic collapsing, Google News stuck on old stories and Search Console data running days behind. But Google’s dashboard lists no October update, and most complaints started in late August. Before you blame an update, check Search, Discover and News separately in Search Console.

Read the full story →

FEATURED GUIDES

Long-tail keywords in 2027: how to turn specific searches into useful pages

Word count doesn’t make a keyword long tail. Low demand and a specific need do. How to use long-tail research to decide which pages to build, which pages you already have, and which searches aren’t worth your time. Read More

How to use meta tags for SEO in 2027

Start with three things: a clear page title, a useful meta description and indexing settings that match what you want found. Plus which fields only suggest wording to Google, and which can keep a page out of search. Read More

How to run ads on ChatGPT: A beginner’s guide

From opening an Ads Manager account to your first campaign. How much you can afford to pay for a visitor, how to describe when your product is useful, and how to check the conversions you see are real. Read More

ALSO THIS WEEK

Semrush says Google is feeding rank trackers bad results, but impact is limited

Since late summer, Google has been sending rank trackers results pages that look normal but are wrong. Nozzle found 8% of 27.5 million pages affected, and a site can seem to drop out of the top 10 overnight. Semrush says most bad results show up beyond page one. Read More

Google Gemini now lets you turn off Google Search, and publishers could pay the price

A new Search Google option lets people switch web search on or off for each question. An answer written without Search has no web sources to cite, so there’s no link back to your site. Read More

DeepSeek says its search engine filters ‘GEO manipulation’

DeepSeek has opened its search engine to developers and says it filters “GEO manipulation”, along with SEO spam and low-quality AI content. It doesn’t say which tactics it catches. But its API gives every page an authority score, so you can check how your own pages are rated. Read More