Google Ads is removing the ability to manually set your language targeting next month. Google is placing AI-generated images in AI Overviews, and it is not good. Googlebot says it crawls from California but it might not. Google has a new local reviews feature to report owner responses. Google updated a help document within the Google Merchant Center help area to document that Google Merchant Center for Agencies can now link to up to 1,000 Merchant Center accounts. And I posted the weekly SEO video recap.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Google Ads Language Targeting Update Coming In September
  Google Ads will roll out a change to language targeting that will remove the ability to manually adjust the language setting. This change is happening next month, in September 2026. Google said its ad systems already match languages automatically and enhanced AI prioritization will automatically select the most relevant ad language when there are eligible ads in multiple languages, Google told me.
• Google AI Overviews With AI-Generated Images In The Wild
  A month ago, we reported that Google said it would be rolling out AI-generated images within AI Overviews in Google Search. Well, it seems Google is starting to roll out those AI-generated images in AI Overviews this week.
• Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google AI Home Page Test, AI Local Pack Slop, Google Poaching Advertisers & Meta Building A Search Engine
  This week, we of course had more Google search ranking volatility, this time on the 12th. Google is testing new AI buttons on its home page...
• Google Merchant Center For Agencies Can Link Up To 1,000 Accounts
  Google updated a help document within the Google Merchant Center help area to document that Google Merchant Center for Agencies can now link to up to 1,000 Merchant Center accounts. Previously, that number was not there, and now we know - up to 1,000 accounts can be linked to a single agency account.
• Googlebot Say They Are Coming From California But Might Not
  As we know, Google has often declared that its crawlers, Googlebot, etc, come from Mountain View, California. But the truth is, that is where they self-declare the bots are coming from. Google has data centers all over the world, and even though Google may be declaring the crawler is coming from a specific location, it might be coming from a different location.
• Google Local Report Owner Response
  Google has a new reporting option for reviews in Google Business Profiles and Google Local. This one is called "Report owner response." It lets you tell Google if an owner response to a review is off-topic, contains profanity, is harassing, discriminatory, hateful, or includes personal information.
• Don't Fall Off The Google UK Rooftop
  This photo made me a bit nervous, as this lady was a bit too close to the edge of the Google London rooftop. Google had some sort of rooftop party at the office there.

Other Great Search Threads:

• I just looked at site: searches for a few major brands and found thousands of impressions for site: searches, but almost 0 clicks. The number is generally increasing over time, too. Thinking out loud: could this be coming from ChatGPT? If ChatGPT is doing more site: searches, Lily Ray on X
• last 4 weeks hearing a lot about thin content manual actions �' seems like Google web spam team did actions against a set of sites which they have been keeping eye on #SEO, Gagan Ghotra on X
• Ads Decoded season 2 launches next week! Kicking off with Merchant Center tips for Holiday Retail, and we've got some special things planned this season. Let me know your big questions for the Google Ads product teams in the comments., AdsLiaison on X
• Everyone (myself included) assumes AI is swallowing Search and killing organic discovery. Surprisingly, Shopify's numbers say otherwise: AI-referred sessions are up 3x YoY, but organic still grew 12% on a much bigger base. The pie itself got bigger., Mikhail Parakhin on X
• You’re invited: Meet the new AI agent in Merchant Center, Menachem Ani on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

• Google Ads is removing language targeting from Search campaigns
• Shopify: AI referrals up 197%, but organic search still leads traffic
• Microsoft Clarity AI Scrape-to-Referral insights report
• Link building works better when you think beyond links
• Your B2B SEO can win the click and lose the consideration
• Only 1.1% of news publisher visits come directly from AI: Study
• Most AI visibility gains are just technical debt repayment
• Why SEO uncertainty is creating opportunities for challengers

Other Great Search Stories:

AI & LLMs

• ChatGPT and Gemini disagree on the best software in a third of categories, and the review sites have been skipped, TheNextWeb
• I Tested a Popular A.I. Slop Detector. It Felt Empowering., New York Times
• DeepSeek Releases Flagship V4-Pro Model in Challenge to Kimi K3, The Information
• Microsoft starts merging its Copilot consumer and business apps in advance of 'Super App' rollout, GeekWire
• August 2026 Ramp AI Index: Cracks in the AI thesis, Ramp
• ChatGPT can now remember what you did on your Mac — without screenshots, The New Stack
• Gemini 3.7 Flash: our most intelligent workhorse model, Google Blog
• Trust isn't a schema field: how machines decide to believe you, MLforSEO

Analytics

• See Which AI Crawlers Drive Real Website Visits, Microsoft Clarity Blog
• #GTMTips: Split GA Events Between Client-Side And Server-Side Dispatch, Simo Ahava's blog
• Updated conversion window configuration, Google Analytics Help

Industry & Business

• Former Google Exec Has Been in Talks for a $10 Billion Valuation for AI Startup, Business Insider
• AI Looms Over Software Companies — and the Investors Who Piled Into Them, Bloomberg
• DeepMind’s Hassabis Pitched AI-Oversight Body Before Shake-Up, Wall Street Journal
• OpenAI Hires New Chief Revenue Officer After Less Than a Year, Bloomberg
• OpenAI revenue chief Denise Dresser leaving, second major executive departure in days, CNBC
• OpenAI’s Revenue Run Rate Tops $40 Billion Ahead of IPO, Bloomberg
• The Safety Reckoning Inside OpenAI, Wired
• Customers Can't Depose Google, Apple CEOs, 9th Circ. Says, Law360
• ‘That is not acceptable’: Judge orders Google to make rival app store installs easier, The Verge

Links & Content Marketing

• How To Handle the Old Content AI Keeps Finding, Content Marketing Institute
• Building Quality Links Without Quality Content (8 Examples), The Upper Ranks

Local & Maps

• Prepare your business for the AI era, Google Small Business on LinkedIn
• How Enterprise Brands Can Scale Local Marketing Strategy, Brainlabs

Other Search

• The Future Is for Everyone: Free AI Glasses for Every Blind and Visually Impaired Adult Vision Ireland Supports, Facebook

PPC

• 37 Proven Ways to Use AI in Marketing, Ahrefs
• How To Find the Right Non-Branded Keywords, JumpFly
• AI Max for Search: The Complete Guide to Campaign Controls, Targeting, and Performance Reporting, Amsive
• Homebuilder Case Study: Get Better Leads with Paid Ads, Hop Skip Media
• The ChatGPT ad gap: why major brands are losing ground on brand comparison prompts, PPC Live
• Colgate-Palmolive’s bet on AI Max pays off with 44X conversions, Google

Search Features

• Gemini is getting over a dozen new connected apps – here's the list, 9To5Google
• Build mini-apps with Gemini in Google Sheets, Google Blog

SEO

• Publishers are replacing Google with a little bit of everything, Digiday
• "Yes, Go On": The AI Conversations Leaking Into Your Search Console, Suganthan
• How To Find And Organize AI Mode Queries Via the Search Analytics API, Analytics Edge, and Claude Cowork, GSQI
• How to grow your AI Visibility with community signals, Growth Memo
• AI and organic search are doing different jobs: What Shopify's data shows (2026), Shopify
• Introducing citation decay in Profound, Profound
• Does Your Website Still Matter in the Zero-Click Era?, SparkToro

Feedback:

Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News, add as a preferred source on Google and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or just contact us the old fashion way.

This week, we of course had more Google search ranking volatility, this time on the 12th. Google is testing new AI buttons on its home page, which makes you wonder. Google Search Console expanded its generative AI reporting tools again. Google AI Overviews for local results show AI slop. Google is creating AI-generated images in AI Overviews. Google can show spammy Google-selected canonical in Search Console. Don't misconfigure your Cloudflare account, it can cause major issues for your SEO. Some SEOs are taking over expired X accounts of Googlers. Google Business Profiles now disallows repeated bilingual names and transliterated scripts. You can now report owner responses to reviews in Google. Google is still stealing advertiser accounts from agencies. Google Ads will drop the manual targeting setting in September. Google Ads is testing advertiser names and favicons at the top of ads. Google Ads and Google Analytics gain new AI features. Google Merchant Center performance reporting updates are coming August 24th. Microsoft Advertising has a new bulk edit and appeal for disapproved assets. ChatGPT Ads is testing AI-generated descriptive headlines. ChatGPT is making it harder to find sources in the interface. Google amends its lawsuit against SerpAPI citing licensed content. META/Facebook is crawling the web, maybe building an AI search engine. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Sponsor: This video is sponsored by Ahrefs. Did you know there's a free version of Ahrefs? It has six tools - Site Explorer, Site Audit, Web Analytics, Social Media Manager, AI Content Helper, and SEO Toolbar. All free, no card required, no expiration date. Go to ahrefs.com/free and start working on your website's visibility.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed. For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

• 0:00 - Introduction
• 1:00 - Google Search Ranking Volatility Spikes On August 12-13
• 1:28 - Google Home Page Create Images, Ask About Files & Brainstorm Buttons
• 2:23 - Google Search Console Generative AI Performance Report Expands To More
• 2:48 - Google AI Overview Local Results Pulling From Low-Quality Listicles
• 3:39 - Google AI Overviews With AI-Generated Images In The Wild
• 4:23 - Spammy Google Selected Canonical In Search Console
• 5:07 - Misconfiguring Cloudflare Can Hurt Your SEO Badly
• 6:02 - Googlebot Say They Are Coming From California But Might Not
• 7:07 - SEOs Taking Over Expired Google X Accounts
• 7:39 - Google Local Disallows Repeated Bilingual Names & Transliterations
• 8:08 - Google Local Report Owner Response
• 8:30 - Google Still Aggressively Poaching Agency Ads Accounts
• 9:33 - Google Ads Language Targeting Update Coming In September
• 10:09 - Google Ads Sponsored Results Tests Advertiser Name & Favicon Summary
• 10:33 - Google Ads & Google Analytics Gain New AI Features
• 10:52 - Google Merchant Center Performance Reporting Update Coming August 24th
• 11:18 - Microsoft Advertising Bulk Edit/Appeal Disapproved Assets
• 11:39 - ChatGPT Ads With AI Descriptive Heading
• 11:51 - OpenAI Makes The ChatGPT Sources Less Visible
• 12:20 - Google Amends Lawsuit Against SerpApi Over Licensed Content
• 13:03 - Meta/Facebook Crawling Web & May Be Building Search Engine
• 13:26 - Conclusion

Please do subscribe on YouTube or subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don't forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

Google Ads will roll out a change to language targeting that will remove the ability to manually adjust the language setting. This change is happening next month, in September 2026. Google said its ad systems already match languages automatically and enhanced AI prioritization will automatically select the most relevant ad language when there are eligible ads in multiple languages, Google told me.

Google updated its language targeting help document in the Google Ads support area with more details. Here is a summary of the changes:

(1) The manual setting for language targeting is going away.

(2) Google told me this is to simplify language targeting, eliminate redundancy and set up errors.

(3) Note that language targeting does not currently support language exclusions and still won't with this update.

(4) No account restructuring is required. If you currently utilize single-language campaign structures (e.g., one campaign dedicated to English, another to Spanish), these will continue to function normally.

(5) If you have multiple eligible campaigns or ad groups within your account, Google's enhanced AI-driven ad and asset group prioritization will now identify and select the most relevant ad language based on the user's search context.

(6) For the Google Ads API, there are some changes you should be aware of including to:

(A) Stop setting language criteria:

• For new Search campaigns: Stop including language criteria when creating or updating Search campaigns when sending Google Ads API requests.
• For existing Search campaigns: You may optionally remove existing language criteria from your Search campaigns for cleanliness, though it is not strictly required as they will simply not apply.

(B) Focus on Ad and Landing Page Language: Ensure your ad creatives and landing pages are clearly structured in the intended languages. Search ads will primarily use these signals, alongside user language preferences, for matching.

Here is a graphic Google sent me about these changes:

The new help document says at the top:

Note: Starting in September 2026, the way language targeting works is changing for Search campaigns and the Search Network portion of Performance Max campaigns.

• Search Campaigns: The campaign-level language targeting setting will be removed. Search ads will automatically match based on the language of your ads.
• Performance Max Campaigns: The campaign-level language setting will no longer apply to ads shown on the Google Search Network. These will function like standard Search campaigns described above. However, the language settings you select will continue to apply to other channels within your Performance Max campaign, such as YouTube, Display, Discover, and Gmail. Shopping ads within Performance Max are not affected by language settings.

Here is a screenshot of the email sent to advertisers from Natasha Kaurra on LinkedIn:

No action is required by advertisers for this change.

Hi Barry, It's got more info about the AI-driven ad group and asset prioritization that will be used to identify the most relevant ad based on the users' specific context and language preference at auction time.

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) August 14, 2026

Forum discussion at X.

A month ago, we reported that Google said it would be rolling out AI-generated images within AI Overviews in Google Search. Well, it seems Google is starting to roll out those AI-generated images in AI Overviews this week.

Google wrote then, "To help bring those unique ideas to life, we're bringing image generation directly into AI Overviews in Search."

The folks at Inspired Taste posted on X an example of Google showing AI-generated images for recipe results. And as we expected, they are not happy about it. He said this is trying to "replace creators who buy groceries for testing, photography, and filming recipe videos."

Here is what it looks like closed:

Here is what it looks like opened:

Inspired Taste wrote:

We were updating our spaghetti squash recipe today and while searching for ourselves in Google we were shown an AIO with AI step cartoons.

We specifically have an entire section in our article and recipe video demonstrating how to safety cut the squash (which can be dangerous), add a ton more flavor with herbs, and show how you can cook your squash much faster in the microwave.

This AIO is directly trying to replace creators who buy groceries for testing, photography, and filming recipe videos. We also have conversations with our visitors who have questions. We are doing all of the work and Google is directly trying to over simplify everything and replace us with AIOs like this.

There is also risk that a searcher might think that one of the websites cited in the AIO did the illustrations. It is very confusing and extremely oversimplified.

No shock here that creators are not a fan of this...

This is horrible @rmstein and @rajanpatel. This can't be the direction AIOs and AI Mode take moving forward. cc @rustybrick @glenngabe pic.twitter.com/AnVqlmrsHg

— Inspired Taste (@inspiredtaste) August 13, 2026

Forum discussion at X.

Google updated a help document within the Google Merchant Center help area to document that Google Merchant Center for Agencies can now link to up to 1,000 Merchant Center accounts. Previously, that number was not there, and now we know - up to 1,000 accounts can be linked to a single agency account.

Google wrote:

As an Agency Admin, you can link up to 1000 client Merchant Center accounts.

Here is a screenshot:

As a reminder, Google rolled out Google Merchant Center for Agencies in the US and Canada after beta testing it in October 2025. In May, Google released Google Merchant Center for Agencies globally.

Forum discussion at X.

As we know, Google has often declared that its crawlers, Googlebot, etc, come from Mountain View, California. But the truth is, that is where they self-declare the bots are coming from. Google has data centers all over the world, and even though Google may be declaring the crawler is coming from a specific location, it might be coming from a different location.

I asked John Mueller of Google, after he wrote, "I'm pretty sure the physical location [of Googlebot] varies. What kind of issues are you seeing?" I asked as a follow up, "wasn't it mostly from California but some bots may test or come from other locations but majority CA?"

Gary Illyes from Google responded on Bluesky, "IP location is declared (this is just a text bit you can set for the IPs you manage) to be US, Mountain View, in most cases, but the actual egress points vary." The example he gave was, "if the IP is assigned to a cluster in ATL, the egress point will be ATL."

Gary added:

IP addresses don't have a "geographic location". They typically default to whatever the registrant's location is, or they're defaulted to some location based on BGP anycast routes. Think about addresses like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8. Where do you put these on a map? They're technically everywhere...

So while Google crawlers might say they are coming from Mountain View, California, they may actually be coming from a different location.

We know blocking US traffic would cause big problems from Google crawling. We also know, Google can crawl locally from different regions if necessary with locally aware crawlers. In 2011, we saw Google crawling from China but that might have been a regional legal requirement.

Here are the Bluesky threads:

Forum discussion at Bluesky.

Google has a new reporting option for reviews in Google Business Profiles and Google Local. This one is called "Report owner response." It lets you tell Google if an owner response to a review is off-topic, contains profanity, is harassing, discriminatory, hateful, or includes personal information.

This allows users on Google to report responses left by the business owner, if they feel the response has issues.

This was spotted by Vinay Toshniwal who posted on LinkedIn and later Amy Toman who also posted on LinkedIn - here are screenshots:

And here is the form you submit after you report the owner response:

The options include:

• Off topic: Owner response doesn't pertain to an experience at or with this business
• Profanity: Owner response contains swear words, has sexually explicit language, or details graphic violence
• Bullying or harassment: Owner response personally attacks a specific individual
• Discrimination or hate speech: Owner response has harmful language about an individual or group based on identity
• Personal information: Owner response contains personal information, such as an address or phone number

You can also report legal issues with the response, if you need to.

Amy Toman wrote, "I'm so happy about this, because recently there have been a number of responses that were less-than-professional. Over the years, I've seen questionable responses ranging from comments about people's appearance to bank account details (yes!), both of which had to be addressed on the forum. I'm so glad they've addressed this. "

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.

OpenAI is testing or rolling out a change to how you can click to see the sources from the ChatGPT responses. Google has dropped the minimum number of followers needed to be approved for a Search Profile on Google. What happens when Google selects a spammy Google-selected canonical? Yes, a misconfigured Cloudflare can wreak havoc on your SEO. And we have some big Google volatility over the past 24 hours.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Google Search Ranking Volatility Spikes On August 12-13
  We saw a spike in volatility yesterday amongst the Google Search results rankings. There was a spike in ranking movement outside the day-to-day norm that seemed to start yesterday and maybe into today. The chatter is somewhat cool, but the tools showed a spike in the Google rank volatility.
• OpenAI Makes The ChatGPT Sources Less Visible
  OpenAI is testing or rolling out a change to how you can click to see the sources from the ChatGPT responses. It used to be a button named "Sources" in the footer of the response, but now sometimes it is showing up within the three-dot "More actions" menu, requiring you to click more to find those sources - which very few will do.
• Google Lowers Subscriber Requirements For Search Profiles
  Google has dropped the minimum number of followers needed to be approved for a Search Profile on Google. Previously, it was 100,000 subscribers across YouTube, Instagram, X and Tiktok. Now it is 35,000 subscribers across YouTube, Instagram, and X but still 100,000 on TikTok.
• Misconfiguring Cloudflare Can Hurt Your SEO Badly
  This is just a random tip, make sure not to misconfigure Cloudflare, your content delivery network and/or your hosting server. I see way too many cases of this popping up and causing such a pain for SEOs to fix. All of a sudden, you might notice your rankings drop off a cliff on Google Search and your pages begin to drop out of the Google index. It is likely because you are blocking Google from crawling your site.
• Spammy Google Selected Canonical In Search Console
  When you use the Google Search Console URL inspection tool, Google will show you what it calls the "Google-selected canonical." Sometimes that URL will look off, weird and even scary, because sometimes it might be a URL for a spammy site.
• Google Chrome Construction Sign
  I spotted this large Chrome sign on a stand in what looks like some construction zone. This photo was posted on Instagram and tagged at the Google office in Bangalore, India.

Other Great Search Threads:

• OpenAI is rolling out ChatGPT Maps for users based in the European Union., Radu Oncescu on X
• In my audits, the question I hear most after a deploy is "why hasn't CrUX moved yet?" The window is always 28 days; daily, weekly and monthly are just cadences over the same data. And p75 resists change by design, Joan León on Bluesky
• Google Search for [eclipse 2026], Barry Schwartz on Bluesky
• Thanks for flagging - this is no longer appearing, and was not a manual change by Google. When people vandalize public info sources, this can affect the information that appears in Search., News from Google on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

• Judge lets SEO sabotage lawsuit over toxic backlinks move forward
• Google adds real-time reporting endpoint to Campaign Manager 360 API
• Google adds Local customer optimization to Performance Max
• Google updates YouTube and Discover Feed ad requirements
• Google updates Merchant Center with cross-platform reporting
• Google to migrate Travel campaigns to Search campaigns for Travel
• Query templates: Expanding the scope of topical authority
• How to use MCP to get more data from the tools you already use
• The new search journey changes how SEO and PPC should work
• Community signals are AI’s largest third-party source

Other Great Search Stories:

AI & LLMs

• Oh Lord, AI Reporters Are Actually Breaking Big News, Wired
• ChatGPT Referrals to B2B Websites Nearly Quadrupled in a Year, Demandbase Data Shows, BusinessWire
• Introducing Grok 4.6, SpaceXAI

Analytics

• GTM Workspaces, KRM Digital Marketing

Industry & Business

• Google DeepMind: Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over in frontier AI push, CNBC
• Court allows TM and false advertising claims against "toxic backlink" SEO disparagement campaign (SEM, for minimization?), Rebecca Tushnet's 43(B)log
• Inside the Google executive moves that led to its big AI reshuffle, Reuters

Links & Content Marketing

• How To Find B2B Creators Who Drive Results, Content Marketing Institute
• How Hyundai Is Turning Content Marketing Into Cultural Entertainment, Hyundai

Local & Maps

• This is how Google Maps' algorithm finds you the fastest route in just seconds and it's jaw-dropping to see, Super Car Blondie
• The Worst Photo of Your Business Could Be Everywhere, Reputation Arm

Other Search

• The multi-layered defenses that harden Chrome against abusive notifications, Google Blog
• 7 Pixel 11 updates you should know about, Google Blog
• Made by Google 2026: Latest Pixel devices news, Google Blog
• Apple in Talks to Pay Publishers to Improve AI-Powered Siri, Wall Street Journal

PPC

• Now Live: The 6 ChatGPT Ad Formats (And How They Work), SERP Lens
• Understand how humans and AI find and choose your brand with Microsoft Clarity, Microsoft Advertising
• Winning in Demand Generation When Every Pound Must Work Harder, PPC Hero
• Query report data with the Campaign Manager 360 API, Google Ads Developer Blog
• Ginny Marvin on PPC Mistakes, Leadership & Trust, PPC Live
• Migrate Campaign-level Broad Match and Automatically Created Assets to AI Max, Google Ads Developer Blog

SEO

• Your robots.txt might be the silent killer of your AI traffic, MLforSEO
• How to Use AI to Build an SEO Progress Scorecard in Minutes, Sitebulb
• Candidate Page Selection: The Stage SEO Tools Don’t Measure, Lumar
• SEO Unpacked: What really is a Technical audit and how do you perform one?, Koozai
• How to Run an AI Search Visibility Audit: 8 Stages and Tools, Orit Mutznik

Feedback:

Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News, add as a preferred source on Google and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or just contact us the old fashion way.

We saw a spike in volatility yesterday amongst the Google Search results rankings. There was a spike in ranking movement outside the day-to-day norm that seemed to start yesterday and maybe into today. The chatter is somewhat cool, but the tools showed a spike in the Google Search ranking volatility.

This ranking volatility spiked yesterday, August 13, 2026. And the chatter came in a bit after the ranking volatility hit.

As a reminder, we saw previous unconfirmed on August 5th or so, then around August 1st to 3rd and then before that it was on July 24th and then before that, we had volatility on the 18th and 19th, which honestly lasted through the week. Before that was the Google 7-Eleven update. But the last confirmed Google search ranking update was the June 2026 spam update which started on June 14 and completed on June 26. Prior to that was the Google May 2026 core update that started on May 21st and completed on June 2nd.

As I said before, the sad thing is, these ranking movements continue to matter less and less for publishers because Google is sending less and less traffic to publishers. Which is why many large publishers are considering blocking Google Search from their websites completely. The exchange in value for Google crawling one's site, to it sending traffic, has been flipped on its head.

That being said, have you seen any significant ranking movement in the past day or two?

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the third-party tools are showing:

AWR:

AccuRanker Grump:

CognitiveSEO:

Wireboard - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

Zutrix Tension:

Mozcast:

Serpstat:

Wincher:

DataForSEO SERP Volatility:

SimilarWeb:

Mangools SERPWatcher:

Algoroo:

SEMRush:

Sistrix:

SEO Chatter

There is some chatter over at WebmasterWorld that just really started to happen this morning but some saw it the day prior - here are some quotes:

Traffic is awful. The SERPs are awful and Google ranking brain is dumber than ever.

Guys, something really bad is happening! Especially on Discover here in Brazil! The drops are sharp, exceeding 70%... Meanwhile, niche-free sites made entirely by AI are booming! Some are appearing 8 times in the feed, which is outrageous!

Yesterday traffic went up 200% till late afternoon. It didn<<'t lead to conversions. Since yesterday late afternonn traffic has reached a new low. Compared to January we are down to 25%.

Amazon sales picked up in this time by 244%.

I can confirm that. Traffic spiked significantly at first and then dropped off on both of my sites. Although the shop performed well yesterday, the conversion rate was pretty weak considering the high number of visitors.

At the same time, I'm seeing a massive amount of finance spam in my niche again. This is the exact same pattern I've been observing repeatedly over several days for weeks now.

Update: Traffic has completely collapsed right now. I'm seeing this across all the sites I have analytics access to. Some are getting zero traffic from Google, and for all the others, traffic has dropped drastically.

Yes, traffic today is the worst I have ever seen. Panda was a joke compared to this quality update!

What are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has dropped the minimum number of followers needed to be approved for a Search Profile on Google. Previously, it was 100,000 subscribers across YouTube, Instagram, X and Tiktok. Now it is 35,000 subscribers across YouTube, Instagram, and X but still 100,000 on TikTok.

Google updated a couple of its help documents with this new information including this document that now says:

You must have a minimum number of subscribers or followers on at least one content platform:

• YouTube: 35,000
• Instagram: 35,000
• X: 35,000
• TikTok: 100,000

The old version said:

You must have a minimum number of subscribers or followers on at least one content platform:

• YouTube: 100,000
• Instagram: 100,000
• X: 100,000
• TikTok: 100,000

So more of you can now claim your Google Search Profile.

"Search profiles are a dedicated, shareable space to highlight content across platforms, and help audiences find accurate, up-to-date information about sources on Search," Google explained. You can follow your favorite publishers from the profile page, see a large header image, find the publisher's other social profiles, the latest articles and more.

Robby Stein from Google also announced on X, "We're lowering the follower thresholds so more creators and publishers can set them up," and added that Google is "also expanding them to more countries soon."

Forum discussion at X.

OpenAI is testing or rolling out a change to how you can click to see the sources from the ChatGPT responses. It used to be a button named "Sources" in the footer of the response, but now sometimes it is showing up within the three-dot "More actions" menu, requiring you to click more to find those sources - which very few will do.

This change was spotted by Glenn Gabe who wrote on X, "I've noticed ChatGPT not providing a visible link to view sources. You have to click the overflow menu and then click view sources. That can definitely decrease visibility and clicks for citations that show up in the right-side panel."

Here is a screenshot of when ChatGPT shows "Sources" immediately:

Here is what it may be changing to, where you first need to click the three-dots and then click on "View sources":

Then that opens up the side panel that shows the sources:

Why the change? Glenn wonders if it is so users focus more on the ads...

Forum discussion at X.

This is just a random tip, make sure not to misconfigure Cloudflare, your content delivery network and/or your hosting server. I see way too many cases of this popping up and causing such a pain for SEOs to fix. All of a sudden, you might notice your rankings drop off a cliff on Google Search and your pages begin to drop out of the Google index. It is likely because you are blocking Google from crawling your site.

There are tons of settings in Cloudflare and similar tools, many of them aim to protect your site from AI bots and rouge crawlers. But sometimes, if you don't read or understand them, you can end up blocking search engines and AI crawlers that you did not intend to block. So just be careful.

Jonathan Bird shared on example on LinkedIn recently, he said:

Please be careful with CloudFlare configuration. I just had to fix a website who's traffic tanked for 2 weeks. Their Managed IT Provider (won't be naming them as it's an easy mistake to make, just catastrophic) toggled on CloudFlare's crawl control to stop all bots crawling the site.

This completely blocked Google from crawling the site. This meant it broke their Google Ads (who happily kept taking their money), all Merchant Centre Listings disappeared, and Google removed from them search organic traffic. Absolutely tanked their business for 2 weeks, and only just starting to recover now.

Here is his screenshot:

Brodie Clark also posted an example of a different site doing this on LinkedIn, he said:

This was an SEO disaster... while it may look like the result of a core update or even a spam update, it wasn't.

It was a result of bots heavily impacting the servers of an online marketplace (this is just one of many domains), and the team needed to put in place bot access restrictions at the firewall level that destroyed SEO just to keep the site up.

Here are some of those screenshots showing the damage:

This is more and more common these days but this isn't new. Even 20+ years ago, I cannot tell you how many examples of sites blocking Google or other search engines from crawling, either by Apache rules, robots.txt misconfiguration, and so on. But now with all the various tools and configuration options, it can be even more confusing...

So be careful.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.

When you use the Google Search Console URL inspection tool, Google will show you what it calls the "Google-selected canonical." Sometimes that URL will look off, weird and even scary, because sometimes it might be a URL for a spammy site.

That is exactly what came up for Dan Lauer who showed this example on Bluesky and wrote, "I have never seen Google selected canonical to be a spammy site before like this? This is for a new clients blog and its not indexed yet. I discovered this inspecting it in GSC."

Here is his screenshot:

John Mueller from Google said it is hard to know why this is happening in all cases but he did say, "Sometimes domains have used the same interstitial / parked page, which can easily lead to this." He did encourage Dan to wait a few weeks to see if Google updates the URL to something else.

John Mueller wrote:

These things are impossible to say without more details. Sometimes domains have used the same interstitial / parked page, which can easily lead to this. I'd check back after a few weeks to see how it settles down, otherwise post in the help community with the full details.

I don't think it is that uncommon to see these weird Google selected canonical URLs in that record but maybe I am wrong.

Forum discussion at Bluesky.

Google has amended its lawsuit against SerpApi, this time citing licensed content protection. Google Ads has a new help document named About Local customer optimization within Performance Max campaign for store goals. Google will randomly show AI Overviews for local results, and when it does, It will often show AI-generated information about each local listing. Google announced several new updates to the Merchant Center performance report, starting on August 24, 2026. OpenAI is testing placing descriptive headings above the ads within ChatGPT responses. I assume it is using AI to generate these headlines above the ChatGPT Ads.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Google Amends Lawsuit Against SerpApi Over Licensed Content
  After Google's lawsuit against SerpAPI, the Google Search scraper tool, was dismissed a month ago, Google has decided to amend the complaint. Google filed the amendment on August 10, 2026 as an "Amended Complaint." Google is now taking an approach around protecting licensed content within its search results.
• Google Ads New Local Customer Optimization Help Doc
  About Local customer optimization within Performance Max campaign for store goals new Google Ads help document.
• Google AI Overview Local Results Pulling From Low-Quality Listicles
  Google will randomly show AI Overviews for local results, and when it does, It will often show AI-generated information about each local listing. The issue is that Google often cites low-quality and self-promotional listicle articles from across the web when showing those snippets in the local pack.
• Google Merchant Center Performance Reporting Update Coming August 24th
  Google announced several new updates to the Merchant Center performance report, starting on August 24, 2026. There are four updates: separating YouTube affiliate results from organic traffic, updating the YouTube organic traffic definitions, expanding product-level reporting for Google Ads, and adding new performance segmentation capabilities.
• ChatGPT Ads With AI Descriptive Heading
  OpenAI is testing placing descriptive headings above the ads within ChatGPT responses. I assume it is using AI to generate these headlines above the ChatGPT Ads.
• Jeff Dean Turned In His Google Badge & Google Laptop
  As you know, Jeff Dean, who has been at the helm of Google Search & AI for 27+ years, has left the company. Well, he shared a photo of him turning in his Google badge and laptop the other day. He wrote on X, "Turned it in..." This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search industry and share them with our readers.

Other Great Search Threads:

• How should I handle a large number of Next.js URLs crawl issue?, Reddit
• Google added the shopping cart icon in the Google APP next to the user account icon with cart and order data, Damien Andell on X
• I noticed today for the first time underlined, hyperlinked, business entities in ChatGPT., D@RWIN on X
• By *subdomain and protocol* -&gt; I have written several posts about the importance of understanding that robots.txt files are handled by *subdomain and protocol*. In other words, sites can unknowingly have different robots.txt files for www, non-www, http, and/or https. And that, Glenn Gabe on X
• 1B+ people are now using @Geminiapp every month to spark new ideas and get things done. It’s our fastest growing product ever, and our 14th to hit the 1B-user mark. Kudos to @JoshWoodward &amp; the entire Gemini team, and thank you to everyone who has been on this journey with us, Sundar Pichai on X
• Yesterday, the llms.txt proposal got a major v2 update, and I didn’t see many people talking about it. There are several meaningful changes in the new version, so I’ll keep this simple and focus on 3 of the biggest ones: First,V2 now clearly defines how llms.txt works across, Amin Foroutan on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

• SMX Now: The Target bidding apocalypse and how we’ve been here before
• Anthropic adds AI text watermarking to Claude models worldwide
• 300 French newspapers file complaint over Google AI Overviews
• Google tests advertiser list above mobile Search ads
• Google adds Campaign Data Import Validation Report
• 12 things Reddit needs to make its ad platform more competitive
• DMCA as a weapon: How to fight fraudulent takedown claims
• A 5-layer framework for measuring AI search performance
• How to decide whether a keyword deserves its own page

Other Great Search Stories:

AI & LLMs

• Anthropic says it will watermark text generated by its AI models, TechCrunch
• Abbott and Google launch first-of-its-kind partnership to transform everyday health through glucose insights and AI, Abbott
• Learn Vibe Coding with the Google AI Certificate, Google Blog
• Grok Bot is an all-new iPhone and Mac app from SpaceXAI and Cursor, 9to5Mac
• Google’s Gemini app hits 1 billion monthly active users, Google Blog

Industry & Business

• Drought made us desperate. Google’s data centre will bring disaster, The Times
• French newspapers target Google over AI summaries, France24
• Google Builds its Largest Overseas AI Data Centre in India, Data Centre Magazine
• OpenAI Is Hiring a Power-Trading Lead for Its Data Center Portfolio, Bloomberg
• A Google insider spills the tea on how the company forsook its founding ideals, Ars Technica
• Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's longtime COO, is leaving to 'start something new', TechCrunch
• Introducing Americas Connect, Google Cloud Blog
• Google Defeats Valtrus Patent Suit Over Search Engine Technology, Bloomberg Law News
• OpenAI: AI policy will still be made in the states, POLITICO

Links & Content Marketing

• How Claude marks AI-generated content, Claude Help Center
• How To Build Marketing Judgment Without Producing Clones, Content Marketing Institute

Local & Maps

• 5 AI Workflows for Local SEO, Moz
• Stars, Search & Strategy: Why Gold Stars (and Even Bad Reviews) Are Your Best Secret Weapon in Google Search, JumpFly
• 10 Step Local SEO Audit Checklist, Sterling Sky

PPC

• Google Is Making Smart Bidding More Obedient. Here’s What Advertisers Must Control Next., Optmyzr
• The Best PPC Decisions Start Before You Even Open Google Ads, Screaming Frog
• 3 AI Prompts for Google Ads, Practical Ecommerce
• Google Algorithm Change, What Advertisers Should Know and Do, Measured
• How to Prepare for Google Ads’ August 17 Smart Bidding Update: Advice From PPC Experts, PPC Live
• Updates to the YouTube and Discover Feed ad requirements (August 2026), Google Advertising Policies Help

SEO

• What are log files and why are they important for SEO?, Oncrawl
• Your Understanding Of RAG Is Critical To Unlocking AI Search & GEO Success, Joe Hall
• AI Got Your Business Wrong? That’ll Be $500 To Fix, SEO For Lunch
• AI Search Visibility Graders for Real Estate Agents: What You Need to Know, SEO Savvy Agent
• Topical Gravity: Why topics are the new unit of your search strategy, Semrush
• LLM Consensus: What Most AI Visibility Strategies Are Missing, Ann Smarty

Feedback:

Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News, add as a preferred source on Google and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or just contact us the old fashion way.

With Google migrating Local Service Ads to the main Google Ads platform, Google is already preparing new Google Ads help documents with more details about the change. A new document named About Local customer optimization within Performance Max campaign for store goals was just posted by Google.

This document is about the new PMax option that the Local Service Ads campaings will be migrated to.

It says:

Local customer optimization is a feature within Performance Max campaigns for store goals that allows you to prioritize reaching potential customers who are close to or interested in your business area and ready to take action immediately such as visit or contact.

This campaign feature is intended to reach potential customers at the most critical moment when they are actively navigating, trip-planning, or searching for locations on Google Maps, Waze or Google Search for a service in a specific area of interest.

It also links to a new document named About Performance Max for store goals that says:

Performance Max campaigns for store goals are designed to help businesses provide their potential customers the information that they need to decide when and how to visit their stores. Performance Max campaigns for store goals streamline the process for you, making it easy to promote your stores across Google's largest properties including the Google Search Network, Google Maps, Waze, YouTube, Gmail, and the Google Display Network. Add a few lines of text, creative assets, and a budget, and the rest is optimized to help customers find you.

Google also noted that Local customer optimization is not compatible with online campaign goals and Performance Max campaigns with products from Merchant Center.

Local customer optimization may help businesses with physical locations increase their local visibility and offers the following additional benefits that Google posted are:

• Capture ready-to-act customers: Reach users who are ready to take actions immediately as they plan routes, search for services, or travel near your business location with immediate intent to act.
• Targeted local reach: Target users near your business area by directing campaign budgets to locally tailored ads on channels such as Google Maps, Waze and local formats on Google Search.

Here is a screenshot of this new help document:

Forum discussion at X.