What changed in search in the first half of 2026
The H1 changes that affect how publishers inspect discovery, AI reporting, crawling, migrations and feature-specific structured data.
GPTBot blocked
robots.txt keeps GPTBot away from the site. Found by AI search visibility (GEO/AEO) →no llms.txt
No llms.txt file at the site root. Found by AI search visibility (GEO/AEO) →
robots.txt keeps GPTBot away from the site. Found by AI search visibility (GEO/AEO) →no llms.txt
No llms.txt file at the site root. Found by AI search visibility (GEO/AEO) →
Monthly
Search digest
Monthly search updates, plus half-year and annual reviews. Find a period below and read the changes that matter for your site.
RSSSeptember 2026
September's spam rollout, AI and visual search reports, crawler controls and Yandex review rewards — with evidence and practical site checks.
analyticsrankingsserp featuresRead the issue2026
2026AugustAn in-depth August SEO review: the global spam update, reporting errors, AI visibility and regional changes — with data charts and practical conclusions.analyticsrankingsinternational seo2026JulyJuly in review: Search Console started measuring content that does not live on your site — and the ranking systems stayed silent for the whole month.analyticsserp featurestechnical seo2026JuneGoogle, Bing and Yandex added or clarified AI-search and query-monitoring reports, while Google narrowed llms.txt expectations.2026MayGoogle published generative-AI search guidance, retired FAQ rich results, and expanded preferred sources into AI surfaces.2026AprilGoogle closed its March core rollout, made back-button hijacking an explicit spam-policy violation, and expanded preferred sources.2026MarchGoogle ran a global spam update, began a core rollout and clarified how crawl bytes constrain rendering.rankingscrawlingstructured data2026FebruaryDiscover changed its content-selection signals while Bing exposed AI citation reporting in preview.eeatanalyticsserp features2026JanuaryGoogle clarified preferred-source controls, retired one rich-result type, and widened a regional carousel.structured dataserp featurescontent strategy