Between January and August 2026 Google confirmed six ranking updates on its Search Status Dashboard: a Discover update in February, a spam update and a core update in March, a core update in May and spam updates in June and August. On 15 May it also added AI answers to its spam policy. Five days later at Google I/O it merged AI Overviews with AI Mode.
Across those eight months the sites that gained visibility were mostly the ones selling, booking or publishing something of their own, such as hotel chains, airlines, employers, card issuers and government departments. The sites that lost sat in between: comparison sites, job boards, travel aggregators and forums. Over the same period Google built AI Mode into a place where people get answers without clicking through to anyone, which puts Google in the position it has been squeezing other sites out of.
Dates come from Google’s dashboard. We have added the May policy change and Google I/O because both shaped what the later updates were doing.
| Dates | Update | Duration | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 to 27 Feb | February 2026 Discover update | 21 days | The first core update for Discover alone. Google promised more local content, less clickbait and expertise judged topic by topic. |
| 24 to 25 Mar | March 2026 spam update | 19.5 hours | The fastest confirmed spam rollout on record |
| 27 Mar to 8 Apr | March 2026 core update | 12 days | Visibility moved from aggregators and social platforms to first-party brands and official sources |
| 15 May | Spam policy rewrite | Immediate | Spam now explicitly includes manipulating AI Overviews and AI Mode |
| 20 May | Google I/O | Immediate | AI Overviews and AI Mode merged into one experience worldwide |
| 21 May to 2 Jun | May 2026 core update | 12 days | A finer rebalance toward the best destination for each intent and market |
| 24 to 26 Jun | June 2026 spam update | 2 days | The first spam update with AI answer manipulation in scope |
| 18 to 21 Aug | August 2026 spam update | 2 days 16 hours | No new policies. Google said it did not target link spam or site reputation abuse. |
Only 43 days separated the end of the March core update on 8 April from the start of the May one on 21 May. Between the December 2025 core update and the March one the gap was 88 days. A site hit in March had about six weeks to find the cause, ship fixes and get them crawled before the next core update reassessed it.
At Google I/O on 20 May Google said AI Mode had passed 1 billion monthly users and that AI Mode queries had more than doubled every quarter since launch. It made Gemini 3.5 Flash the default model and joined AI Overviews to AI Mode, so a follow-up question on the results page now opens a conversation inside Google. Background information agents and custom generative layouts were announced for the summer, with the agents going to paying subscribers first.
Google also said Search queries reached an all-time high in the previous quarter. Click-through data points the other way. Seer Interactive’s study of 3,119 informational queries found organic click-through rate on queries with an AI Overview fell from 1.76% to 0.61%. On queries without an overview it still fell 41% year on year. Brands cited inside an overview earned 35% more organic clicks than brands that were not cited.
In practice a page can hold position one for an informational query and lose most of its clicks without moving a single place. In Search Console this shows up as rising impressions next to a falling click-through rate on the same query.
Brand and official sites gained in March. Lily Ray’s analysis of SISTRIX data at Amsive found YouTube lost 567 visibility points between 27 March and 8 April, a bigger drop than Wikipedia’s record loss in December 2025. Reddit, Instagram, X, TripAdvisor, Expedia and Indeed also fell. IRS.gov, SBA.gov, Hilton, American Express and the websites of JFK, LaGuardia and Reagan National airports all gained. In health, WebMD and Mayo Clinic slipped while NIH and WHO rose. Ray described the winners as “the company that owns the thing.”
May favoured whichever type of site fits the search. Aleyda Solis looked at SISTRIX data for the UK and US and called the May update an “intent-destination reset”. Marketplaces where people finish a task came back after March, with Indeed up 26% and Booking.com up 15% in the UK index. Forums kept falling, with Reddit down 24% and Quora down 31% in the UK. High-authority domains such as nature.com, who.int and nih.gov lost ground on queries where users wanted a different kind of page. GoodRx lost 80% of its UK visibility, along with sharp falls for pronunciation tools and dictionary aggregators.
Local sites gained in both Discover and Search. Google’s February Discover update said it would show more content from websites based in the reader’s own country. In May the same preference showed up in UK ecommerce results. amazon.co.uk rose 21%, ebay.co.uk 23% and Screwfix 25%, while amazon.com fell 55% and walmart.com 60% in the UK index. US retailers serving British customers from a .com domain were the most exposed.
Spam rules now cover AI answers. On 15 May Google changed the first line of its spam policies so that spam includes attempts to manipulate generative AI responses as well as rankings. No new policy types were added. Self-promotional “best of” listicles, paid placements and pages written mainly to get quoted in AI Overviews now fall under existing rules such as scaled content abuse and link spam. The June spam update arrived five weeks later and the August one began on 18 August.
Check which type of page ranks first. Take your twenty most valuable query groups and note what holds the top three positions today: a brand site, a marketplace, a government page, a video or a tool. Where your page is a different type from what Google now shows, a longer article on the same topic is unlikely to move it.
Add something an AI Overview can’t reproduce. Original survey data, live pricing, stock levels, a booking form, a calculator or results from testing you did yourselves. These give Google a reason to send the click to you, because the user needs your site to finish the job.
Check your UK market signals. If you sell into the UK, the May data suggests a .co.uk domain or a correct hreflang setup, prices in sterling, UK delivery and returns terms plus reviews from UK customers all count.
Stop paying for AI mentions. Getting cited in AI Overviews is worth working towards through press coverage, original research and genuine reviews. Buying listicle placements to get there now carries the same risk as buying links.
Report citations next to traffic. Clicks are down on most informational queries, so a traffic chart on its own will understate how visible a brand is. Track how often you are cited in AI Overviews and AI Mode for your priority queries and report the two figures together.
The March and May core updates, the Discover update and the 15 May spam policy change all moved visibility toward the business that owns the product, service or data behind a search. Google I/O moved more of the answer onto Google’s own results page.
Brands that sell, book or publish something first-hand have gained the most this year. Comparison sites, information aggregators and forums have lost the most, with the exception of marketplaces where people complete a booking or an application.
Google released core updates in March and May, so another one in September or October would fit the 2026 pattern. When it lands, the first thing we will check is whether the UK localisation seen in May spreads to other markets and sectors.
