The SEOFOMO Newsletter​

August 23, 2026
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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +45.8K SEOs.
Today's sponsors are AirOps and Ahrefs. Ask to advertise here.​

It's time to check your rankings and traffic shifts

Google released and completed the rollout of the August 2026 Spam Update

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable

Google released the August 2026 Spam Update on August 18th and rolled it out in only 3 days, finishing on August 21st.

Use SEOFOMO's Top Search Visibility Shifts Data Studio Dashboard to analyze the impact.​

Another reminder not to make any single platform your AI visibility strategy

​Since August 8, the default model for ChatGPT is GPT-5.6: Reddit, arXiv, YouTube have dropped in citations​

Tomek Rudzki

Tomek’s analysis found that after the GPT-5.6 rollout, ChatGPT citations to Reddit fell by 88%, arXiv by 84% and YouTube by 78%. Reddit was also retrieved as a candidate source 63% less often and cited less frequently when retrieved.

Related:

• ​Which sites increased while reddit decreased around August 7? Competitors, specialized publications and platforms, government sites​
• ​Yet another reason why we shouldn’t approach third-party citation optimization as a “one-trick pony​

Google is giving users more control over which publishers they see

​Google introduces new personalization features across Search, Discover, and Google News ​

Mrinalini Loew / Google

Google is rolling out a new interactive “Preferred Sources” button that publishers can embed on their pages. In Discover, Google will add the ability for users to tailor their feed on mobile. The Google News app will let you curate your audio briefings by choosing specific topics, with clear source attribution and links to full articles.

It should be fixed by today, August 23rd

​Google working on fix for broken favicons in Google Search​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land

After a few reports of favicons disappearing from Search results, Google confirmed the issue was on its end and working on a solution. The fix was rolled out progressively and Google’s favicon display issue is now reported as fully resolved.

Update your code to standard JSON escapes

​JSON-LD Extraction For Googlebot Now Does One Pass Of HTML Unescaping​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land

Google's crawler now strictly enforces standard JSON formatting when reading your site's structured data, schema markup, instead of auto-correcting double-escaped HTML text.

The Marketing Leaders Reality Index

We asked more than 300 marketing execs to share what’s actually happening inside their teams right now, not the polished version that shows up on LinkedIn. They gave us the real picture on budgets, headcount, AI adoption, and channel performance.

Some key findings:

• 86.6% are prioritizing AI search
• 75.4% got higher pipeline or revenue targets
• Only 43.0% got a bigger budget to hit them
• Only 23% feel confident measuring it

Our biggest takeaway was that the teams that are growing aren't simply those with the biggest budgets. Teams that are increasing targets, headcount, and budgets are also changing their KPIs, shifting their channel mix, and building AI capacity inside their organization.

Go deep on how these marketing leaders are balancing increasing targets, changing channels, and AI pressure.

Publisher SEO audits need to assess discoverability, not only rankings

​How to Audit Publisher Websites in 2026​

Harry Clarkson-Bennett / Leadership in SEO

Harry shares a comprehensive approach to auditing publisher sites around four main pillars: technical SEO, content and on-page SEO, E-E-A-T, and entity and brand consistency, and how to prioritize recommendations according to business value, scale, impact and effort.

Prioritize building genuine authority

​How to Publish Citation-Worthy Content​

Shannon Vize / Women in Tech SEO

Shannon shares actionable recommendations for creating content that's original, substantive, well-structured and accessible to both users and machines.

• Related: Should We Stop Writing With AI? by Chima Mmeje​

Leadership funds outcomes, not visibility dashboards

​How to Report SEO & AI Visibility ROI to Leadership Who Do Not Care About Rankings​

Silvia Fratini / Wordlift

Rankings don't win budget conversations, outcomes do. Silvia recommends reporting SEO and AI search performance through four leadership focused KPIs: coverage, attributed pipeline, share of voice and cost per outcome. Read it all here.

Product data mistakes that hurt shopping visibility and how to fix them

​Why your product data is costing you visibility, and what to do about it​

Hannah Masters / Re:signal

Hannah explains how incomplete or inconsistent product data can limit ecommerce visibility and goes through how to avoid it by enriching missing attributes, keeping feeds, product pages and schema aligned, implementing product group structured data and ensuring crawlers can retrieve all important product information.

Prioritize durable brand value, not this month’s most-cited platform

​Third-Party Citation Optimization Prioritization in an AI Search Era: A Framework + Worksheet​

Aleyda Solis

I share a framework for assessing third-party citation opportunities through six dimensions: citation influence, brand association potential, marketing alignment, business value, strategic durability and expected effort, along with a downloadable worksheet that helps identify which citation types to maximize or minimize, and which marketing teams should lead or support the activity.

A useful look at how ChatGPT’s search tool is evolving under the hood

​“ChatGPT Rebuilt Its Search Tool. I Read the New Language It Speaks”​

Suganthan Mohanadasan

Suganthan shares how between August 16th and 20th, ChatGPT's search tool evolved from JSON to a compact query language with freshness windows, domain targeting, and specialized verticals. He captured both sides of the change and explains what it means for SEOs.

More retrieval doesn’t automatically mean more citations

​What We Can Learn from Evolving ChatGPT Fan-Out Queries​

Lily Ray

Lily goes through recent research showing that ChatGPT is running more fan-out searches and increasingly scoping them to specific domains with the site: operator, often prioritizing official sites, manufacturers, established review platforms and government sources.

Technical AI search optimization still starts with solid SEO foundations

​Technical Optimization for AI Search (GEO, AEO) [Video]​

Aleyda Solis, Tory Gray, Patrick Stox, Jamie Indigo/ Crawling Mondays

In the sixth episode of the AI Search Roadmap series I go through the principles, top mistakes, best resources and do's and dont's for technical optimization for AI search with guests specialists Tory Gray, Jamie Indigo and Patrick Stox.

Your brand may rank #1 in search and still be invisible in AI-generated answers

Ahrefs Brand Radar helps you measure and improve your visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, and more. See how often your brand is mentioned, compare your AI share of voice against competitors, and uncover the websites, YouTube videos, Reddit discussions, and other sources that shape AI recommendations.

Built on hundreds of millions of real prompts, Brand Radar gives you actionable insights into where your brand is winning, where it's missing, and what you can do to increase your presence in AI search. Start tracking your AI visibility with Ahrefs Brand Radar.

• ​SEO Strategist at OuterBox​
• ​Growth Marketer at Resend​
• ​AEO/SEO Specialist at AirOps​
• ​Director, SEO & AEO at Houzz​
• ​SEO Strategist at Blacksmith Agency​
• ​Technical SEO Analyst at LOCOMOTIVE Agency​
• ​Organic Growth Specialist at West County Net, Inc.​
• ​SEO Team Lead & Account Manager at Lexigate LLC​

Take the 2026 SEOFOMO State of AI Search Optimization Survey and help us build an updated, community driven picture of how AI search is being approached across the industry, it will take less than 5 minutes and you’ll get the chance to participate in a big search giveaway.

The survey closes on August 27, 2026, and the giveaway winner will be announced on August 28, 2026.