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 released the March 2026 spam update yesterday…

Nearly half of publisher search traffic has disappeared post-AI Overviews, raising urgent questions about how content gets funded next.

Google has released the March 2026 spam update on March 24, 2026 at around 3:20 pm ET. This update applies globally and to all languages and will take a few days (not weeks) to complete

Google had made a few changes to its SEO developer help documentation.

There is new data out from Newzdash that shows just how often AI Overviews appear within Google across new sections. And while AI Overviews shows 60%+ of the time for health queries, when it comes to breaking news and major headlines, it shows less than 6% of the time.

Google is testing showing a call to action in the search results that says, “Skip digging, start guided research” which drives users to a Web Guide-like results page.

Google added a new section to the “Understand available performance metrics” within the Google Business Profiles help documentation. The new section added a section on offer data and it shows the number of times customers viewed and clicked on offers on your Business Profile.

On March 17, 2026, Google retired some of its Google Ads policies on Ad format requirements.

Marketing leaders are grounding SEO in zero- and first-party data to better align content with real-world customer behavior and needs. The post How Zero-Party & First-Party Data Can Fuel Your Intent-Based SEO Strategy appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

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