The SEOFOMO Newsletter​

March 1st, 2026
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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +42,600 SEOs.
Today's sponsors are Semrush Enterprise and Ahrefs. Ask to advertise here.​

It's time to assess your Discover performance

​February 2026 Google Discover Core Update Is Done Rolling Out After 3 Weeks​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable

Google's February 2026 Discover core update started on February 5, 2026, and ended on February 27 after 21 days and 17 hours.

The goal of the update was to show more locally relevant content, reduce sensational and clickbait-style material, and provide more in-depth, original, and timely reporting.

John Shehata has already developed an initial analysis, which is a highly recommended read: Google Discover Feb 2026 Core Update Scorecard: Data Shows What Actually Changed.​

PS: Remember you can use the SEOFOMO Latest Google Rankings Shifts Looker Studio Dashboard that features a Google Discover section for analysis.

Worthy to compare the before/after of your AI traffic

​Google's contextual overlay, pop-up link cards are now live in AI Mode​

Aleyda Solis

Robby Stein from Google had announced in X that AI Overviews and AI Mode would start showing groups of links in a pop-up as you hover over them on desktop. We can see this experience now live.

Coincidentally, Bing is also testing a new UI for AI Responses with new links and references.​

Also, almost at the same time, Tom Critchlow spotted that sidebar links within AI Mode are not passing any referrer. John Mueller has replied saying he's passing a note about it.

Submitting a sitemap doesn't guarantee anything

​Google Won't Use Sitemap Files If Its Not Convinced Of New/Important Content​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable

John Mueller said that if Google is not convinced that there is new and important content to index on your site, then it won't use the sitemap file. Just because you have a sitemap, it does not mean Google will index all the pages in that file.

Martin and Gary unpack how HTML parsing works

​How Browsers Really Parse HTML (and What That Means for SEO) ​

​[Video]​

Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes / Search Off the Record Podcast

Martin and Gary explain how HTML parsing really works, why the HTML standard is so lenient, and how messy markup can silently break key SEO signals like hreflang and rel canonical.

Feature your brand in all the right answers

Discover how Semrush Enterprise helps brands like Square 10X their productivity to leave competitors behind in SEO and AI search. Our clickthrough demos let you preview:

• Advanced automations that scale work across thousands of pages
• Prompt tracking, citation analysis, and content optimization for AI search
• Enterprise reporting with customizable dashboards for different stakeholders
• Competitive intelligence powered by Semrush's market-leading database

Consolidate your stack and be first everywhere customers search, with Semrush Enterprise.

Brand, Entity and Coherence: What We Should Have Always Done

​SEOFOMO Berlin: SEO, AI Search and the New Playing Field in 2026​

MJ Cachón

MJ goes through the top insights shared at SEOFOMO Berlin: “SEO is no longer just a tactical optimization discipline. It has become a strategic one, one that aligns brand, product, content, experience, and data. We must accept that perfect attribution may never return, yet still explain clearly what problem we solve and the impact we generate”.

A handy use of Screaming Frog integration with OpenAI API

​How to use embeddings to map hreflang tags at scale​

Gus Pelogia

Gus explains how to collect embeddings with Screaming Frog and use the Hreflang Finder Google Colab Notebook to map hreflangs tags at scale.

UCP covers the entire commerce lifecycle

​Agentic Commerce Optimization: A Technical Guide To Prepare For Google’s UCP​

Alex Moss / Search Engine Journal

UCP expands commerce beyond checkout into discovery, loyalty, and post-purchase support, redefining how brands compete for AI-mediated selection. Alex goes through it.

Your Preferred Sources 101

​What are Google's Preferred Sources?​

Jessie Willms, Shelby Blackley / WTF is SEO

Google’s Preferred Sources feature is a shift toward personalization on search, but it can help publishers build audience loyalty. Jessie and Shelby share what else to know.

Feeds decide eligibility

​The Most Underrated Retail SEO Levers for 2026: What Experts Really Think​

Will Critchlow / SearchPilot

Will asked SEO and ecommerce leaders, including Aleyda Solis, Brodie Clark, Emina Demiri-Watson, and more, to reply with one lever they think most teams are overlooking. The four themes kept repeating: feed quality, AI shopping surfaces and bot access, category strategy, and trust signals.

Including practical observations for publishers

​Google Discover Architecture: Clusters, Classifiers, OG Tags, NAIADES - What SDK Telemetry Reveals​

Metehan Yesilyurt

Metehan shares what we can learn by examining the observable telemetry, event naming conventions, and client-side state of Google’s own SDK.

The risk of using AI content generation tools

​The real risk of AI-generated content​

Tomek Rudzki / Peec AI

Tomek goes through how AI content sites lose visibility, shares important considerations while creating AI content, and explains how to use AI content safely.

AIOs behave differently depending on the thematic category

​First study on the impact of AI Overviews on Spanish Publishers​

Clara Soteras, MJ Cachón

AIOs appear in 34.6% of timeless searches, while only 1.1% of the time for breaking news. There is an almost total segregation between AIOs and the “Top Stories” module. Query length is a direct predictor of AI appearance. Learn more about these and other findings from the first AIO's impact study developed for Spanish publishers.

LLM referral traffic is still small

​What 13 months of data reveal about LLM traffic, growth, and conversions​

Jason Tabeling / Search Engine Land

An analysis of LLM referral traffic shows low volume, rapid growth, shifting citations, and an 18% conversion rate. Jason goes through the findings.

Pages that are Not Indexed in Google can appear in Bing AI Answers

​The Bing AI Index Gap: How AI is Citing Not Index Pages [Study]​

Adam Gent / Indexing Insight

Adam conducted a study using the new AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools to determine why pages might appear in Bing but not in Google. “98% of the cited pages in Bing AI Answers are Not Indexed in Google because of page quality issues”.

A must watch interview with the fantastic Lazarina

​Entity Search, Query Fan-Out, and Practical ML for SEO ​

Gianluca Fiorelli, Lazarina Stoy / Advanced Web Ranking

Lazarina shares about the rising importance of entity search, limitations of generative AI, how AI-generated follow-ups reshape intent, and much more in this insightful interview with Gianluca.

Think in questions, not keywords

​From Archive to Asset: How to Optimise Existing Videos for Search & AI in 2026​

Georgie Kemp / Women in Tech SEO

Discover how optimizing your existing video library can boost AI citations, YouTube visibility, and search performance without creating new content.

Track Brand Mentions Beyond Google

Ahrefs Brand Radar helps you track brand mentions where people actually discover products today — in YouTube videos (titles, descriptions, and transcripts), TikTok content, and Reddit discussions that appear in search results.

See how often your brand is mentioned, which competitors dominate attention, and how visibility changes over time.

Brand Radar combines search demand, mentions, and share of voice into one clear view, so marketing and SEO teams can understand real brand exposure — not just rankings.

If your brand lives in search, video, and communities, Brand Radar makes it measurable.

Answer the SEOFOMO Ecommerce SEO & AI Search Optimization Survey and help us identify this year’s biggest ecommerce SEO challenges, shifts, and goals.

By taking part, you’ll also be entered into a giveaway for a SEOFOMO hoodie and mug, randomly selected from all participants.

The survey closes on March 3rd, and the winners will be announced on March 4th, 2026.

• ​SEO Strategist at Masse​
• ​Senior SEO Strategist at Nectiv​
• ​Technical SEO Engineer at Nectiv​
• ​SEO Specialist at Silencer Central​
• ​SEO Specialist – Contract at Torque​
• ​Senior SEO Executive at Blue Array​
• ​Senior Analyst, SEO at Home Depot​
• ​SEO Operations & Account Manager at indexllm.me​