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ποΈ The Latest Updates from Search Engines
Grabbing my anti-spam πΏ ...
βGoogle September 2026 Spam Update Has Been Unleashedβ
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable
Google released the September 2026 spam update on September 24 globally and said it should take a couple of weeks to roll out. This update only impacts sites that abuse Google's spam policies.
It's time to better monitor your site image led search performance
βGoogle announces web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Consoleβ
Harsh Kharbanda, Moshe Samet / Google Search Central
Google introduces a new web multimodal filter in Search results, and Generative AI features reports globally. The data includes searches with Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the Chrome right-click "Search this image" feature.
It's part of the agentic browsing category, separate from SEO audits
βGoogle Lighthouse Adds Audit For AI Agent Resource Discoveryβ
Matt G. Southern / Search Engine Journal
Googleβs Lighthouse 13.5 introduces an audit for Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD), a proposed spec for how AI agents locate the tools and services an organization offers. The Lighthouse team expects this update to roll out in Chrome 156 DevTools and in PageSpeed Insights within the coming weeks.
Eligible Shopify products can become available for Google's AI checkout
βGoogle Merchant Center Auto Enables Native Checkout: Buy On AI Mode & Geminiβ
Barry Schwartz
Google is notifying Google Merchant Center users whose e-commerce platforms support the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) that their products are automatically eligible for native checkout. Eligible products listed on a merchant's Shopify storefront and published in Merchant Center require no additional setup.
Clarity makes it easier to see which types of pages bots visit
βMicrosoft introduces Page Classification in Clarity Bot Activityβ
Microsoft Clarity
Clarityβs Bot Activity dashboard now groups pages by type, using page content and URL rules. You can also define your own categories, such as product or blog pages, to compare bot activity across sections.
What a surprise... (not really)!
βGoogle AI Mode cuts clicks and user satisfaction: Studyβ
Danny Goodwin / Search Engine Land
A 1,100-person experiment found that the share of searches that led to an external website fell by 18.8 percentage points compared with when people used Google normally, and the share using Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo increased by 11.2 percentage points compared with people who normally use Google.
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βοΈ Sponsor Highlight: AirOps
AI ads are showing up inside AI answers. Here's what that means for growth teams
Paid is starting to appear inside AI platforms, not just beside search results. The category is forming now, and the rules are still being written.
Join Matt Hammel, COO of AirOps, and Alex Hallenbeck, Lead Product Manager, for a live look at generative ads across AI platforms. Matt covers how paid fits alongside the organic, owned, and third-party channels already shaping AI discovery. Alex shares early AirOps learnings and runs a live product demo showing how teams can decide where to invest.
You'll get a read on where AI ad adoption stands today, what changes for creative, brand control, and measurement when an ad can answer a buyer's question, and how to weigh this opportunity against your other AI discovery channels.
Built for performance marketers, growth teams, and marketing leaders deciding where to place next quarter's bets.
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π This week's Top SEO Resources
A healthy network-wide SEO result can conceal struggling locations
βHow to segment SEO data for multi-location brandsβ
Dayna Lucio / Search Engine Land
Dayna explains how to go beyond aggregate performance to uncover which markets, locations, and search behaviors are driving your SEO results.
A useful AI generated brief needs your business context & defined workflow
βHow To Automate Content Brief Creation For B2B With Claudeβ
Valeriia Verheles / Sitebulb
Valeriia walks through building a custom Claude skill for B2B content briefs, separating reusable brand and brief requirements from research that changes by topic.
AI to super-charge your usual SEO checks, in your brower
βIntroducing Nano SEO - my AI-assisted SEO extensionβ
Chris Green
Chris introduces Nano SEO Lab, a browser extension for page-level SEO checks. It gathers SEO related configurations related to links, indexability, structured data and differences between server HTML and the rendered page, then lets you use local Gemini Nano or an optional model to interpret findings and draft Jira tickets.
The digital PR news monitoring struggle is real
βThe Always-On News Monitoring PR Report: Staying informed shouldn't require you to be chronically onlineβ
Finchling
Finchling surveyed 119 PR professionals and analysed publishing across 20 major UK and US news organizations. While 89% of respondents check the news before 9 a.m. and 56% feel overwhelmed by monitoring it, 64% say they find an actionable story for a client or brand about once a week or less.
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π€ Latest AI Search Insights
A practical AI search optimization workflow from visibility to business impact
βUpdated: The AI Search Optimization Framework & Checklist β With Worksheetβ
Aleyda Solis
Iβve updated my 12 step checklist and worksheet to take you from selecting meaningful prompts and measuring AI search presence through diagnosing technical, content and third-party gaps, prioritizing fixes, and checking business impact. Each step sets out the question to answer, the action to take and the outcome to assess.
Which AI search tactics create more risk than value?
βAI Search Optimization Spam, Myths & Risky Tactics to Avoid [Video]β
Aleyda Solis, Gerry White, Dawn Anderson and Eli Schwartz / Crawling Mondays
In the ninth episode of the AI Search Roadmap series, I cover AI search optimization spam, myths, and risky tactics to avoid with guest specialists Gerry White, Dawn Anderson, and Eli Schwartz.
Chris Long turns AI page optimization advice into a visual checklist
βThe Perfectly Optimized Page For AEOβ
Chris Long
Inspired by the classic βperfectly optimized pageβ graphic, Chris proposes six elements for an AI search oriented page: crawler access, clear takeaways, structured sections, current information, questions buyers actually ask and coverage of related subqueries.
Googleβs AI report becomes more useful when you add business context
βThe Generative AI Report Sucks - Letβs Make It Brilliantβ
Harry Clarkson-Bennett
Harry shows how to combine Search Console's Generative AI impressions with commercial value and dependence on organic traffic to identify where AI visibility may matter most. He then considers optional AI Overview and server-log data, plus audience and content resilience.
AI visibility trackers measure a sample whose conditions matter
βThere Is No βAccuracyβ in AI Search Tracking - Only Precisionβ
Mike King
Mike explains why two AI visibility tools can return different numbers: prompt selection, account state, location and whether a tool uses an API or the consumer interface all change what it observes. He recommends documenting those conditions, repeating collections to measure drift, retaining raw responses and checking whether tracked visibility relates to business results.
Personal context can change which brands AI search recommends
βInside Personalized AI Search: How Private Data Shapes Brand Discovery β
Gianluca Fiorelli, Garrett Sussman
Gianluca and Garrett discuss how SEO is evolving as AI platforms introduce new paths to brand discovery, brand sentiment, relevance engineering, AI-generated content, and the challenges of preparing for personalized agentic search.
Itβs hard when you need to be focused on everything
βWhich Data Sources Should You Care About for AI Search?β
Chris Green
Chris groups potential search and data sources into tiers to help marketers decide where to investigate their presence. He warns that useful sources will vary by market and niche, and recommends examining the sources appearing in answers to your customersβ actual questions before deciding where to invest.
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βοΈ Sponsor Highlight: Findrix
No brand wins across all chatbots, each LLM picks different. See who leads in your market for Free.
Every month, Findrix Radar asks ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode the questions buyers ask, across 19 industries. Then it ranks the brands they name. You see who leads, who each engine recommends, and the exact sites each engine cited to pick them.
- Agencies: That list of sites is your outreach list.
- Brands: See who is stealing AI traffic from you.
Categories go from CRM and accounting software to skincare and running shoes. Free and public. No signup.
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πΈ SEO & AI Search Jobs
π Free(mium) SEO & AI Search Tools
βGSC Wizardβ
Jan-Willem Bobbink
GSC gives you numbers. GSC Wizard gives you answers. Spot declining pages, discover quick wins, and forecast traffic - without the spreadsheet gymnastics.
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ποΈ Upcoming SEO & AI Search Events
βSEO On Stage: Athens Editionβ
Black Lantern Marketing / Athens, Greece / +β¬80 / October 24, 2026
Join Arnout Hellemans, Gianluca Fiorelli, and Natalia Witczyk for the first live conference where search, storytelling, and strategy take the stage.
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βWTSFest London 2027 β
Women in Tech SEO / London, UK / Β£399 / March 19, 2027
You have 8 days left to save Β£200 on WTSFest London ticket. Β£399 now β Β£599 after 15 speakers are announced. Join the WTS community on March 19th, 2027.
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I hope you've liked today's edition of SEOFOMO. Do you have any comments or feedback? Don't hesitate to let me know over here!β
Until the next edition,
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