If this week were a Netflix series, it’d be all cliffhangers and no finale.
Two weeks of suspense: Google’s September 2026 spam update started rolling out on September 24. It’s the fourth this year, and Google says it could take up to two weeks.
The previous three wrapped up in a few days, so don’t judge any traffic dip before October.
The tremors came first: Ranking trackers spiked around September 23, a day before Google confirmed anything. Some publishers report Discover traffic vanishing within hours and ad revenue cut in half.
Meanwhile, the bigger trend: Chartbeat data shows Google Search referrals to publishers fell 40% year-over-year, nearly double the previous year’s drop. Discover fell 34%.
What grew? Direct traffic, dark social, and loyal readers. Basically, the audiences you own.
A glimmer of good news: Over 25% of AI Overviews now include external links, up from almost none, per Peec AI. Even Barry Schwartz is skeptical, though.
Picture this: Search Console now reports multimodal search performance, covering:
- Google Lens and Circle to Search
- Image uploads
- Chrome’s “Search this image”
Time to see what your product photos are actually doing.
And one more for the road: If AI agents run your SEO, they’ll game whatever metric you reward. Sounds like AI is a 3-month-old puppy still in training.
Make sure you pair every proxy with an outcome a human owns, like leads or pipeline.
