Frank Abagnale posed as a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. Search has stopped buying that act.

Check the robot's homework: Google's AI content guidance now calls it "critical" to manually fact-check all AI output before publishing.

Models predict words, so they can hallucinate. The review also covers titles, meta descriptions, structured data and alt text.

About that byline: Google's people-first guidance now flags fabricated author profiles, like AI headshots, made-up names, and false credentials, as deception and "a signal of a low-quality page."

And when you fix it, when does Google notice?

You’ll need patience, grasshopper: Gary Illyes shared typical timing ranges for Search:

• Title changes: 1 to 2 days
• Site moves: 1 to 3 months
• Core update recovery: 3 to 6 months

No sample size came with them, so treat them loosely.

Publishers want receipts: SPUR, backed by the Guardian, FT and BBC, released a standard for tracking how AI tools retrieve, cite and display content.

It invited OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Anthropic to its advisory board. Adoption would give AI visibility a common yardstick.

And when it comes to SERP-commerce:

• Bing is testing a "Recommended by GearLab" product section where only retailers get the links; and…
• Google is testing its Try on button directly in SERP carousels, before shoppers open them.

Everyone wants proof now: That facts hold, authors exist, recommendations happened, content got used, and the shirt fits. Rankings take months to notice.