RESOLVED: September 2026 spam update
Incident began at 2026-09-24 09:15 and ended at 2026-10-08 01:00 (all times are US/Pacific).The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026. Affected products: Ranking
Ranking & Algorithms
The stories about Ranking & Algorithms from this period, ranked by likely impact on a single site.
Ranked by estimated impact on a single site, not by publication time.
Incident began at 2026-09-24 09:15 and ended at 2026-10-08 01:00 (all times are US/Pacific).The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026. Affected products: Ranking
Ranking & Algorithms
I know I just reported on an unconfirmed Google Search ranking update from this past Saturday, October 24th. But I am now seeing a larger spike in volatility, along with an increase in SEO community…
Ranking & Algorithms
This past Saturday, October 24th, we saw some significant ranking volatility captured by many of the third-party Google tracking tools. There was also some heavy chatter within the SEO industry about…
Ranking & Algorithms
An AI search strategy starts with diagnosis. Rewriting content won‘t help if AI can‘t reach your site or keeps describing your brand wrong.
Ranking & Algorithms
Check whether search engines can find and understand your images, and spot technical issues that limit their visibility in multimodal search.
Ranking & Algorithms
Key takeaways: Treat citation volatility as normal. It seems to be a built-in trait of AI answers, and it may change significantly with model updates. So, aim to appear more often over time, not to…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Google says missing pages aren't a ranking threat, but what visitors encounter after a 404 can matter to a business.
Ranking & Algorithms
Understand why Google can serve unindexed hreflang URLs and why market pages need unique local value to stand out in AI search.
Ranking & Algorithms International
Ask ChatGPT the same question today and tomorrow, and you will often get two different answers. Sometimes your brand is mentioned, sometimes it isn’t. So can AI visibility be measured at all? It can…
Ranking & Algorithms
The best free SEO tools include Keyword Magic Tool, Position Tracking, and Ubersuggest.
Ranking & Algorithms
Learn how Semrush is addressing “poisoned” Google Search results, validating ranking data, and investing in visibility for users.
Ranking & Algorithms
Garrett French, Valerie Cecil and James Wirth of Citation Labs tell Greg Sterling and Mike Blumenthal how a link-building agency rebuilt itself for AI visibility: satellite comparison sites, query…
Ranking & Algorithms AI Search & Visibility
Assembled from our own archive of 1,107 stories, which currently runs from 4 October 2023. Ranking is by the impact score described on the front page — an estimate of how much a story is likely to affect one website, not a measure of how much attention it got.
The archive only holds what it has seen. Periods before it started are empty rather than quiet, and it gets more complete every week it runs.