The SEOFOMO Newsletter​

March 29, 2026
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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +43K SEOs.
Today's sponsor is Conductor. Ask to advertise here.​

The fastest spam update rollout ever

Google March Combo Updates: They released and completed the rollout of the March 2026 spam update and Began Rolling Out March 2026 Core Update​

Barry Schwartz, Matt G. Southern

• March Spam Update: Google released the March 2026 Spam Core update on March 24, and it finished rolling in 19 hours and 30 minutes on March 25. Google called it a normal spam update that impacted all languages and locations.
• March Core Update: Right after, Google started rolling out the March 2026 core update on March 27. The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete in this case.

Getting ready for AI agents

​Google Adds Google-Agent User Agent​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable

Google has added a new user-agent to the user-triggered fetchers named Google-Agent. Google said the user agent is rolling out over the next few weeks and will be used by Google agents hosted on Google infrastructure to navigate the web and perform actions upon user request.

• Related: Why Google’s New “Google-Agent” is the Biggest Mindset Shift in SEO History by Marie Haynes​

The new model is also multilingual

​Google expands Search Live globally​

Liza Ma / Google

Google is expanding Search Live globally to all languages and locations where AI Mode is available. This makes it available in 200 countries and territories. Google says this expansion is enabled by its new audio and voice model, Gemini 3.1 Flash Live, “which delivers even more natural and intuitive conversations”.

If omitted, Google assumes the content is human-generated

​Google Adds AI & Bot Labels To Forum, Q&A Structured Data​

Matt G. Southern / Search Engine Journal

Google updated its Discussion Forum and Q&A Page structured data docs with new properties, including digitalSourceType, to label AI and machine-generated content.

A helpful new view for AI grounding insights

​Bing AI Performance dashboard gets a new feature that connects the grounding Queries and Page Views​

Krishna Madhavan, Meenaz Merchant / Microsoft

Bing Webmaster Tools announced a new feature that connects the Grounding Queries and Pages views within the AI Performance report. This means users can quickly see which pages are being cited for a specific grounding query, and which grounding queries are driving citations to a specific page.

• Related: How to bulk export the Grounding Query x Page Mapping from the Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance report by Jérôme Salomon​

Shopify-powered agentic commerce available to all

​Shopify: Millions of merchants can sell in AI chats​

Shopify

Shopify announced that millions of merchants can sell to ChatGPT users via Agentic Storefronts: Agentic Storefronts give merchants out-of-the-box access to major AI channels, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, AI Mode in Google Search, and the Gemini app, managed centrally from the Shopify Admin.

AEO & Content Marketing Trends to Prioritize in 2026

AI search is changing so fast that keeping up with the latest trends can get overwhelming.

But not every shift needs your attention. While some trends will significantly affect your visibility and business, others won’t have a lasting impact.

Conductor’s 2026 AEO & Content Marketing Trends Guide cuts through the noise of AI search trends and brings together expert predictions on where AEO is headed and what’s worth prioritizing, including:

• Why AEO and SEO both matter more than ever
• How to prepare your teams and workflows for agentic AEO
• What it takes to build authority that AI systems trust and surface

Check it out to focus your AEO strategies on the trends that actually matter and ignore the content shortcuts that are already starting to backfire.

Optimize for Relevance, Engagement, and Satisfaction

​How Google Click Signals Drive SEO Rankings and AI Answers​

Cyrus Shepard / Zippy Signal

A must read piece by Cyrus Shepard sharing a conceptual framework about how Google thinks about, collects, and uses click signals for ranking and AI citations.

The share of visits to AI tools is 1/1,000th their press coverage

​New Research: Influence Happens Everywhere, an analysis of the 5,000 most-visited sites on the mobile and desktop web​

Rand Fishkin / SparkToro

Rand analyzed the 5,000 most-visited sites on the mobile and desktop web to understand which sites are most popular. Search, while it’s the largest category, is merely a response to influence created in other channels, and social media and news are the most-overlooked channels.

Straight-forward and free

​Google Search Console MCP: Step by Step Setup Guide (OAuth + 20 Free Tools)​

Suganthan Mohanadasan

Suganthan shares how to connect Claude to your Google Search Console in 5 minutes using an MCP server in this step-by-step guide with screenshots.

Learn why SEO visibility didn’t last

​How AI-generated content performs in Google Search: A 16-month experiment​

Bogdan Babiak / Search Engine Land

Google indexed most pages quickly, but without authority, unique insight, or trust signals, rankings collapsed within months. Bogdan goes through the results of the study: Early traffic and impressions may look promising, but without a clear SEO strategy and human guidance, those gains will likely fade.

Weekly SEO check-ins for deeper focus

​How to Build SEO Habits that Deliver Consistent Results​

Kelly-Anne Crean / Women In Tech SEO

Kelly shares a practical guide to building daily, weekly, and monthly SEO habits that reduce stress, prevent burnout, and deliver consistent results.

Building credibility before tools

​Rethinking SEO Structure: Entities, Internal Links, and Topic Hubs​

Gianluca Fiorelli, Dixon Jones / Advanced Web Ranking

Gianluca sits down with Dixon to explore entity SEO, internal linking, topic hubs, and AI visibility strategies for modern search.

Learn how to adapt your strategy

​Aligning Your Content Strategy with the Customer Journey​

Yordan Dimitrov / Reflect Digital

Align content strategy with the customer journey with Yordan: Use behavioural science and E-E-A-T to create valuable content that attracts, converts and retains.

Your SEO and GEO strategies should always work together

​Your GEO Strategy Might Be Destroying Your SEO​

Lily Ray

Many tactics designed to win in AI search can undermine SEO performance - which is, ironically, necessary for success in AI search. Lily goes through five GEO tactics that she believes could eventually backfire for both SEO and AI search performance.

40% of commercial queries cite listicles

​The content types most cited by LLMs​

Tom Wells / Wix

Tom analyzed 75,000 AI answers, with 1,056,727 citations retrieved from three AI models, to understand which content types are most likely to be cited by different LLMs. More than half (52%) of AI citations come from three content types: listicles, articles, and product pages.

Weapon or tool? The mistranslation that is splitting the industry

​The Arrival Effect: What a Sci-Fi Masterpiece Teaches Us About Surviving AI Search​

Gianluca Fiorelli

Arrival is a meditation on what happens when a fundamentally different intelligence forces you to restructure how you perceive reality. Gianluca explains that is exactly what AI search is doing to us. And the practitioners who refuse to learn the new language will suffer the same fate as the generals in the film who misread the signal.

This is stranded brand equity

​LLM Ghost Citations: Why Your Content Is Working and Your Brand Isn't​

John Lovett / Seer Interactive

Your content gets cited. Your competitors get recommended. You don’t. That gap is a ghost citation problem. Learn how ghost citations impact brand visibility in AI responses and learn strategies to ensure your brand gets the recognition it deserves.

Consider specifying locations or personas

​4 Prompt Tracking Mistakes — Whiteboard Friday​

Tom Capper / Moz

Are you measuring AI visibility wrong? Tom Capper shares the 4 biggest mistakes in AI prompt tracking and 4 creative ways to expand your list of prompts.

Find PR story opportunities before your competitors do

Finchling scans the news cycle and surfaces PR opportunities your brand can realistically win — with the context needed to turn them into links, mentions, and AI-visible citations.

Most digital PR teams still rely on keyword alerts or slow, reactive workflows — leading to missed opportunities and coverage that doesn’t move the needle.

Finchling works differently.

Instead of tracking keywords, it asks:“Is there a real opportunity here for this brand?”

With Finchling you get:

• Focus on what drives visibility: Find stories where your brand can contribute meaningfully — increasing chances of earning links, mentions, and AI citations.
• Move faster with data-backed angles: Spot opportunities early and get suggested angles to create pitch-ready stories quickly.
• Learn from competitor coverage: See where competitors are getting featured and refine your PR strategy.

• ​Lead SEO at Rival Digital​
• ​SEO Manager at Clutch​
• ​SEO Strategist at Fire&Spark​
• ​Senior SEO Data Analyst at Scorpion​
• ​Organic Growth Strategist at Omniscient​
• ​Executive Director of SEO/AEO at TrendyMinds​
• ​Business Development Associate at Trisolute Software​
• ​SEO Account Strategist at Restoration Digital Marketing​

The Digital PR Summit, from Digitaloft.

The Digital PR Summit is back with a bigger and better event in 2026.

The UK’s largest dedicated digital PR conference, the Digital PR Summit, will return to Manchester April 22nd 2026 at the iconic Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.

The Digital PR Summit 2026 will bring together more than 500 agency, freelance and in-house marketing professionals for a full day of insightful talks, industry panels and networking opportunities.

With 20 talks and industry panels from in-house marketers, agency-wide marketers and journalists across two tracks, the event offers an incredible opportunity to learn from and network with some of the brightest minds in digital PR and SEO.​
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