This week, I covered that Google’s June 2026 spam update completed last Friday afternoon. Fraudulent DMCA takedown requests are breaking Google Search and no one seems to be doing anything

Google reviews seem to be disappearing from Google Business Profile local listings. In the past few days or so there has been an influx of complaints in the Google Business Profile forums. I have not seen Google respond to the complaints, but either there is a bug or a change to the review policy that is causing these reviews to go missing.

Google will add to existing penalties or restrictions on your Google Business Profiles if you continue to violate the same policy over and over again. The initial restriction might be 30 days but then if you are caught doing the same thing, Google can make that restriction twice as long.

Google is testing updating the design for the local pack and places listings within Google Search. The map was moved to the top, instead of on the right and the action buttons are also moved and changed.

Google has posted its Fourth of July Doodle for 2026, the United States Semiquincentennial celebrates the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence. The Doodle is an animated GIF of the American flag in the background.

Google added a note to the About Google third-party rates for hotel ads saying after September 30, 2026 this will become unavailable. Google said campaigns will stop serving ads across all Hotel Ads inventory after September 30th.

Microsoft Advertising has opened up a new betas for Performance Max experiments. There are now Max upgrade or uplift experiment available in Microsoft Advertising.

Technical SEO now sits at the center of AI search readiness, giving LLMs the structure and signals they need to retrieve and cite content. The post AI Search Is Nothing Without SEO & It Knows It appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

John Mueller points to a Google case study showing how customizable layouts can skew which element the browser measures as LCP, plus the fixes. The post Google’s Mueller Flags A Case On Why LCP Fixes Miss the Target appeared first on Search Engine Journal .

Google Search now takes searchers directly to a domain’s AMP host pages, ending the viewer/cache serving path. AMP still ranks as normal.