Search Engine Roundtable: February 2026 Google Discover Core Update Rolling Out – Local Impact. “Google has released its first core update of 2026, which is focused on just Google Discover. Google named it the February 2026 Discover core update. This one is rolling over the next two weeks or so, just English language users in the US and at some point will roll out beyond that to all countries […]

Search Engine Land: Google may be cracking down on self-promotional ‘best of’ listicles. “Google may finally be starting to address a popular SEO and AI visibility ‘tactic’: self-promotional ‘best of’ listicles. That’s according to new research by Lily Ray, vice president, SEO strategy and research at Amsive.”

Search Engine Land: Microsoft rolls out multi-turn search in Bing. “This type of search experience lets a user continue the conversation from the Bing search results page. Instead of starting over, the searcher types a follow-up question into the Copilot search box at the bottom of the results, allowing the search to build on the previous query.”

Search Engine Land: LinkedIn: AI-powered search cut traffic by up to 60%. “AI-powered search gutted LinkedIn’s B2B awareness traffic. Across a subset of topics, non-brand organic visits fell by as much as 60% even while rankings stayed stable, the company said.”

Tubefilter: AI isn’t just changing where we search. It’s changing how we search.. “The rise of contextual answer-gatherers has led Google users to phrase their queries with more detail, and that strategy seems to be producing more accurate results.”

PressGazette: AI answers cite ‘narrow range’ of top newsbrands led by BBC and Guardian. “AI answers from OpenAI, Google and Perplexity draw on a ‘narrow range’ of the biggest publishers when responding to news queries, according to new research from UK thinktank IPPR. Looking at Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity, the research found that on average 34% of […]

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Personal Intelligence Creates AI Frankenstein Recipes. “Glenn Gabe posted a super useful deep dive into how Personal Intelligence works for him and within there, he asked for a Key Lime Pie recipe. So Google knows he visited Inspired Taste a lot, recently, and used that site to provide him a recipe. … The issue is, the recipe was wrong and it claims it is from […]

Search Engine Land: AI recommendation lists repeat less than 1% of the time: Study. “When ChatGPT, Claude, or Google’s AI get asked for brand or product recommendations, they almost never return the same list twice — and almost never in the same order. That’s the big finding from a new study from Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SparkToro, and Patrick O’Donnell, CTO and co-founder of […]

Search Engine Land: Google searches per U.S. user fell nearly 20% YoY: Report. “That drop stands in sharp contrast to Europe, where searches per user declined by just 2% to 3%. Even with fewer searches per person, traditional search still makes up about 10% of all U.S. desktop activity — a share that stayed nearly flat throughout 2025.” For 90% of my basic searches — I’m trying to find a web […]

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