As I mentioned in my Friday video, there were some rumblings kicking into gear starting late Thursday, July 23rd, and through Friday, July 24th.
Google may have released yet another unconfirmed Google search ranking update this weekend. I am seeing some signs of ranking movement from the third-party Google tracking tools and the SEO chatter spiked a bit this weekend.
Gary Illyes from Google said that you are better off not using a lastmod date in your XML Sitemap if those dates are wrong. He said on Bluesky, “probably better off without the lastmods
We may have had another unconfirmed Google Search ranking update around July 11th, which I will call the 7-Eleven update.
Liz Reid, Google’s Head of Search, was interviewed by Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis on the AI Inside podcast. In that interview, Liz Reid said Google wants great content to shine in its search results and AI experiences. She said, “we really do want great content to shine and continue to connect people to it.”
It only took about two days – the Google June 2026 spam update is now done rolling out.
Google has just announced the release of the June 2026 spam update and said it should only take a few days to roll out. Truth is, we kind of saw this coming, although Google would say no, we did not.
Google has posted a new policy document for subscription linking for news publishers under the Google Publisher Center help area.
Google has posted a new policy document for subscription linking for news publishers under the Google Publisher Center help area. Google wrote, “Any publisher using this service must adhere to these policies.”
Google may have quietly rolled out an update on Friday, June 19th, that seems to may have impacted more of the black hat SEO side of things. It is not 100% clear because most of the tools seem pretty stable and yes there is chatter also in the more “white hat” forums, but I see a much larger spike in chatter in the more “black hat” forums.