The state of SEO news, 2026 so far
Every figure here is counted from this site's own archives — the headlines it captured and Google's confirmed update record — not estimated. The year is still running, so this page updates itself as it goes.
Covers 1 January to today. Counts are of headlines this site captured, so a month the archive covered thinly reads low.
Headlines by month
What the year was about
| Topic | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Search & Visibility | 4 | 17 | 51 | 84 | 156 |
| Ranking & Algorithms | 4 | 24 | 53 | 71 | 152 |
| Crawling & Indexing | 2 | 9 | 12 | 42 | 65 |
| Measurement | 1 | 4 | 14 | 37 | 56 |
| E-commerce | 0 | 4 | 19 | 21 | 44 |
| Paid Search | 0 | 2 | 14 | 19 | 35 |
| Content & Quality | 1 | 2 | 13 | 16 | 32 |
| Local SEO | 5 | 2 | 15 | 9 | 31 |
Fastest-growing: Measurement, with 10.2× as many headlines in the second half as the first so far.
Google's confirmed updates
| Update | Started | Finished | Rollout |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 2026 Discover update | 5 Feb | 27 Feb | 21 days, 17h |
| March 2026 spam update | 24 Mar | 25 Mar | 19h 30m |
| March 2026 core update | 27 Mar | 8 Apr | 12 days, 4h |
| May 2026 core update | 21 May | 2 Jun | 11 days, 21h |
| June 2026 spam update | 24 Jun | 26 Jun | 2 days, 1h |
| August 2026 spam update | 18 Aug | 21 Aug | 2 days, 16h |
| September 2026 spam update | 24 Sep | 8 Oct | 13 days, 15h |
Most prolific sources
How this is counted
Headlines are those this site archived from its 65 sources — sources were added over the year, so some of the growth is the site's, not the industry's. Topics are assigned by keyword and a headline can carry several. Update dates are Google's own. Use and cite freely; a link back is appreciated.