The SEOFOMO Newsletter​

February 22, 2026
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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +42,400 SEOs.
Today's sponsor is Ahrefs. Ask to advertise here.​

Let's see if this time it actually makes a difference...

​Google Says Links Will Be More Visible In AI Overviews​

Matt G. Southern / Search Engine Journal

Google is adding hover link pop-ups on desktop in AI Overviews and AI Mode, plus more prominent link icons within responses across desktop and mobile. They described the new UI to be “more engaging, making it easier to get to great content across the web.”

Filipino, Afrikaans, Catalan, Basque... are now supported

​Google AI Mode Works In 53 New Languages​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable

Nick Fox from Google announced they have added 53 new languages to AI Mode, which means AI Mode works in just under 100 languages.

After a couple of months of tests, it's now live for all

​Google Search Console AI-powered configuration rolling out​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land

Google is rolling out their new AI-powered configuration tool that lets you ask AI questions about Google Search Console performance reports and get answers. This is only supported in the Performance report and isn’t available for Discover or News reports yet.

They don't like it

​Google & Bing: Markdown Files are Messy & Cause More Crawl Load​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable

Google and Bing commented on markdown files, saying these files are messy, which can cause issues with finding errors, cause more crawl load, and, either way, search engines use what people can see over what bots can see.

Gotta love how the use of JS can end up causing issues... not

​Google Warns Not To Serve "Not Available" With JavaScript​

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable

John Mueller warned one site owner not to load "not available" in the JavaScript before the actual content that loads is available. It can lead Google to believe the page does not exist, preventing indexing and ranking in Google Search.

Featuring how traditional SEO & AI search optimization overlap

​AI Search Demystified: A Practical Guide for Marketers​

Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising has published a new version of AI Search Demystified: a clear, practical blueprint for today’s AI-driven discovery, featuring insights by SEOs Aleyda Solis, Lily Ray, Mike King, and more. A must bookmark guide.

Don't. Do. This.

​Microsoft: ‘Summarize With AI’ Buttons Used To Poison AI Recommendations​

Matt G. Southern / Search Engine Journal

Microsoft found over 50 hidden prompts from 31 companies across 14 industries. The hidden prompts are designed to manipulate AI assistant memory through "Summarize with AI" buttons.

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.

Learn what changes and what's still critical

​Why Your SEO Strategy Still Matters for AI Search (And What Needs to Change)​

Jojo Furnival

The reality is that AI search has added a new layer of complexity on top of traditional search, but it hasn't replaced the foundations.

Does the page adds unique value that doesn't already exist in Google?

​Indexing is now a quality signal, not a technical step.​

Jan-Willem Bobbink

Jan-Willem goes through why if your pages sit in "Discovered, currently not indexed" or "Crawled, currently not indexed," that's Google saying the content doesn't meet its threshold. Resubmitting won't fix it.

It's time to speak the same language

​Why your SEO tickets get ignored​

Eli Schwartz / The Future of SEO

Eli explains how the friction between SEOs and developers is almost as fraught as the relationship between marketing and sales. He explains how to navigate it in this guide.

Covering a wide range of related questions makes content richer

​How answering People Also Ask questions correlates with organic rankings (Study)​

Chris Green / AlsoAsked

Understanding user needs is critical for search engines, LLMs, and every industry that relies on these platforms to get in front of audiences. A huge part of this is understanding the questions users want answered. Chris has tested how across the top 5 positions, pages that fully answer more PAA questions tend to rank higher.

We shouldn't chase trends for the sake of it

​Why Going Viral Isn’t the Flex Your Boss Thinks It Is: How to Craft Content with Purpose​

Zoe Burke / Women in Tech SEO

Zoe challenges the obsession with going viral and introduces her PURPOSES framework - a practical system for creating strategic, multi-platform content built on trust, clarity, and long-term impact.

German software companies disappear in German searches

​ChatGPT searches in English, even when you don't​

Tomek Rudzki / Peec AI

Tomek analyzed over 10 million ChatGPT searches to understand how it actually finds its answers. “43% query fan-outs for non-English prompts are performed in English”.

The Problem: AI Models Are Naive Readers

​AI Search Has a Spam Problem​

Dan Petrovic

Dan explains why this is worse than traditional web spam, how it works, how platforms will respond, and what you can do to help.

Don't invest in GEO tactics that could be detrimental to SEO performance

​Are Citations in AI Search Affected by Google Organic Visibility Changes?​

Lily Ray

An analysis of 11 sites hit by Google's recent January 2026 algorithm update shows that losing organic visibility could mean losing AI search citations too. Lily goes through it.

Citation winners are almost 2x more likely to contain definitive language

​The science of how AI pays attention​

Kevin Indig / The Growth Memo

Kevin analyzed 1.2 million search results to find out exactly how AI reads. The verdict? It’s a busy editor, not a patient student: "44.2% of all citations come from the first 30% of text (the intro)."

Featuring a Merchant Readiness Checklist

​A Strategic Analysis of Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)​

Gianluca Fiorelli / Advanced Web Ranking

The transition from a human-centric web to an agent-mediated digital economy represents the most significant shift in retail infrastructure since the inception of electronic commerce. Gianluca goes through it in this comprehensive guide.

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 Analyst at Terakeet ​
• ​SEO Strategist at OuterBox​
• ​Senior SEO Strategist at Nectiv​
• ​SEO Specialist – Contract at Torque​
• ​SEO Operations & Account Manager at indexllm.me​
• ​Senior Marketing Manager, SEO & GEO at HG Insights​
• ​Digital Marketing Manager (SEO, SEM, Social, Local SEO) at Renewal by Andersen ​