Google began rolling out the May 2026 core update, the second broad core update this year. It may take up to two weeks to complete.

Google officially announced the rollout of the May 2026 core update just now, on Thursday at around 11:43 am ET. This core update is expected to take about 2 weeks to roll out. Google said this “is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.”

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google Marketing Live is done and we covered the new conversational discovery ads and highlighted answer ads…

The shared standards that once made one engine’s guidance apply to all of them never got built between LLM providers. Optimization is no longer portable.

Google announced at Google Marketing Live two new ad formats that will show up in Google’s AI Mode.

Google announced at Google Marketing Live that it is also bringing Shopping ads, Business Agent for Leads and expanding the Direct Offers pilot for AI Mode in the coming months.

Google announced it is making one uniform AI-agentic advisor named Ask Advisor that brings together Google Ads Advisor and Google Analytics Advisor, and I assume the beta Google Merchant Advisor.

Launching a redesign or migration? The staging environment tests in this guide will catch SEO issues before they cost you rankings

Google is testing a “for you” label in the product grid, shopping results, within Google Search. It gives you a more personalized response, in this example, a promotion code was available for this merchant.

WordPress 7.0 may be the most consequential CMS release to date, with changes that extend far beyond the platform’s new AI features. The post WordPress 7.0 Is A Winner: Here’s What You Need To Know appeared first on Search Engine Journal .