Google has announced the new Search Console Search Generative AI performance reports and a toggle to block your site from showing in AI responses. This is available currently only for a small subset of UK site owners, but it will expand globally at some point. Oh, and no, the reporting does not show click data - not that any of you expected that.

Why the UK first? The UK's CMA is requiring Google to do so legally, they wrote:

Google will now also have to allow publishers to opt-out of allowing their content to be used for the 'fine-tuning' of AI models. This provides publishers with confidence that they will have control over the full range of AI use-cases of their content.

Search Generative AI Performance Reports

Google is rolling out within Search Console the new Search Generative AI performance reports. We thought they'd be named the AI contribution report based on some early leaks but Google is calling it the AI performance reports - which is what Bing Webmaster Tools calls its report.

The report includes the following data (just not clicks):

• Impressions: How often URLs from your site appeared in generative AI features in Search and Discover.
• Pages: Check which URLs appeared within AI features.
• Countries: Understand your visibility on a country basis.
• Devices: Identify the devices people are using when seeing your website (available for Search results).
• Dates: Monitor your performance over time with hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly granularity.

No click data and yea, Google gave me the line when I asked. "We're continuing to work with website owners to understand what insights will be most helpful to inform their strategies, and we'll introduce additional metrics over time," a Google spokesperson told me when I asked.

Here is what it looks like:

Here is a screenshot from Adam A on X of the AI performance report:

Again, this is currently rolling out for a small subset of site owners in the UK.

There is a larger help document on this over here for the AI performance report and over here for the AI Discover performance report.

Blocking Controls For AI Search

Google is also rolling out a toggle to allow (that small subset of UK site owners) to block their content from showing in/around the AI features such as AI Overviews, AI Mode or AI Overviews in Discover. This toggle will let site owners opt out of its content being used in the AI features as links or for grounding purposes.

Google said also that "sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features."

Also, Google made sure to clarify that blocking your content by using this control "will not be used as a ranking signal for search results outside of these generative AI Search features." So blocking it this way, will not have an impact on your content not showing up in other search features or within the core search results.

Google wrote in its help document:

Note: We're rolling out this control to a subset of website owners, allowing for thorough testing before rolling it out further. For these site owners, the Search Generative AI control is available to review and configure before it takes effect in Google Search. During this time, these site owners can make changes to their configuration without any impact on Google Search; Google will take this control into account on June 17, 2026.

Google told us they are working on this for a while now, back in January but called it a huge engineering project afterwards, but then in as evidence suggested. I asked SEOs if they would use this feature and 33% said they would block Google from showing or using its content for AI features, although, I doubt that many will end up doing that.

Here is a screenshot from Adam A on X of the blocking controls:

Again, these are for a small subset of UK site owners now and there is no ETA for when it will more fully roll out. Plus, no click data on these AI performance reports. Plus, according to the new UK regulation, Google has nine months to fully roll it out to all in the UK, right now it is a small subset of UK users.

But this is a good and welcome step forward, and I am glad this is on its way to more site owners.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.

Google may be adding more link cards to the sidebar of the Google AI responses. Specifically, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews are testing showing more citation/link cards on the side of the AI response.

Sachin Patel spotted Google showing more of these link cards and posted videos of the interface on X - here is one of those videos:

He shared another example as well, here are those videos:

Google tests more link cards in AI Overviews and AI Mode. @rustybrick @gaganghotra_ @brodieseo pic.twitter.com/Qetwr4fUcK

— Sachin Patel (@SachuPatel53124) June 2, 2026

This looks like a bug more than a feature to me?

Forum discussion at X.

Microsoft held its Microsoft Build event and announced Web IQ, a search engine platform for AI-agents and so many other AI enhancements. But what gave me a double-take was Microsoft Scout. I mean, didn't Yahoo just announce Yahoo Scout in January, in partnership with Microsoft? Why did Microsoft name a similar product Scout, when Yahoo went with that name and even owns the domain name scout.com?

Here is how Microsoft described Microsoft Scout:

Microsoft Scout is a new personal agent for work that we are bringing to Frontier customers today. Built on OpenClaw and WorkIQ, Scout understands how you work, uses the tools you already live in, like Teams and Outlook, and proactively handles things like meeting prep, scheduling conflicts and routine tasks without asking.

I suspect that was where Yahoo Scout was heading, I mean, at least that was the impression I got from speaking with Yahoo earlier this year.

If you look at Yahoo's official announcement of Yahoo Scout, it specifically mentions its partnership with Microsoft on Yahoo Scout. It says:

Yahoo Scout also builds on Yahoo's long-standing relationship with Microsoft by leveraging Microsoft Bing's grounding API. By combining this API with Yahoo's trusted data and content ecosystem, Yahoo Scout ensures that answers are informed by authoritative sources from across the open web. Yahoo is also joining Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace pilot, reflecting a shared commitment to expanding publisher reach, connecting original work with new audiences, and supporting sustainable revenue opportunities for publishers.

If you look at my coverage of Web IQ, it seems Yahoo was using Microsoft technology, specifically Bing's index, for grounding Yahoo Scout and was working closely with Microsoft on this. I don't know if Yahoo ended up switching to Web IQ or is still using the older platform but again, it is just weird Microsoft selected the name Scout for this product when Yahoo, its biggest and probably oldest search partner, selected Scout already just earlier this year.

And then I saw Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Yahoo, tweet this out:

https://t.co/bDKlUTNb8U pic.twitter.com/DPm6gWHCmN

— Jim Lanzone (@jlanzone) June 2, 2026

This must be a super awkward situation for him right now.

In any event - Jordi Ribas, President of Search at Microsoft wrote on LinkedIn about the search side of Web IQ, the search service for AI-agents - here is what he wrote:

As Satya shared in today's keynote at Build, we just launched Microsoft Web IQ - our next generation search engine for AI agents. It is a new suite of AI-native grounding APIs designed to connect AI systems with fresh, reliable web data for enhanced real-world intelligence, including web pages, news, images, and videos.

Search engines like Bing were built for humans, yet the next era of search will be for AI agents. Some estimates indicate that agents will generate 1000 times more queries than all search engines for humans combined in a few years, so not surprisingly, this is an exciting space with many competing solutions already.

To build Web IQ, our search team leveraged more than 20 years of technical innovations in Bing and re-architected the stack to serve agent queries most efficiently. Web IQ leads across the three things that matter most in this space: quality, latency, and token efficiency - as you can see in the graphs of the Bing blog linked below.

As an example, you may remember Harrier, our best-in-class embedding model I posted about a couple months back, which is still #1 in the relevant industry leaderboard. Harrier plays an important role in this system by helping optimize semantic retrieval, which strengthens the grounding pipeline. It's just one of the many innovations that helped us build Web IQ.

Web IQ is also designed to honor publisher preferences by default, with systems and policies respecting publisher controls and content access preferences across the web.

The APIs in Web IQ are already powering nearly all AI agents and chatbots in the industry today, including Copilot and ChatGPT, so Microsoft is currently leading this new and rapidly growing category of search grounding for agents. I'm proud to share this important work and to continue driving innovation that is shaping the future of search.

Is Yahoo part of the community?

Now you know how thoughtful we have been about engaging with the community. #WebIQ #Bing #MAI #MicrosoftBuild #Microsoft https://t.co/FGd3wdTLnQ

— Krishna Madhavan (@kmadhavan77) June 2, 2026

Forum discussion at X.

OpenAI sent out an email to advertisers announcing some new ad unit tests, specifically multi-advertiser placements in ChatGPT. OpenAI also announced new updates to the ChatGPT Ads Manager to help advertisers manage their ads and control targeting. Plus, OpenAI opened up ChatGPT Ads Manager to more countries.

Multi-Advertiser Placement

OpenAI said it is beginning an early test of multi-advertiser placements in ChatGPT on a small subset of ads.

These ad "experiences build on our existing ad unit by presenting multiple relevant ads together within a single placement," OpenAI said.

These eligible ads will be priced through a second-price auction model.

In short, it sounds like we will be seeing more ads in ChatGPT for a single prompt.

ChatGPT Ads Manager Updates

OpenAI also announced updates to the ChatGPT Ads Manager, they include:

• Edit campaign budget type: With the recent rollout of daily budgets, you can now switch existing campaigns from lifetime budgets to daily budgets
• Clone to convert CPM campaigns to CPC: With a single button click, convert a campaign to CPC bidding
• Custom CPM max bids: Previously, all impression-based campaigns had a fixed max bid. Now, you can set a custom max bid
• Bulk edits in Ads Manager UI: OpenAI recently rolled out bulk edits via CSV. You can now also make bulk edits to campaigns, ad groups, and ads directly in the Ads Manager interface
• Flexible budgets in Ads Manager: Starting May 5th, OpenAI will allow some flexibility on daily budget pacing, similar to other ad platforms. Daily budgets will be enforced as average daily budgets, with a weekly allocation
• Expanding campaign targeting to additional countries: Campaigns can currently target the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In the coming weeks, targeting will also become available in the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico

Forum discussion at X.

Google Hotel Ads may have dropped several bid adjustments, or maybe it is a bug. Bid adjustments such as day of the week check-in, advanced purchase, check-in date, length of stay and maybe some others are no longer showing up in the Google Ads interface.

This was discovered by Ethan H. who wrote on LinkedIn yesterday:

I'm HOPING this is a bug but it seems that Google has removed Google Hotel Ad features recently. From what I can see we have lost the following

- Day of the Week Check-In - Advanced Purchase - Check-In Date - Length of Stay*

This one seriously hurts because bidding is dependent on LOS. If your CPC is $1 a 2 night LOS costs $2.

This lines up a bit too perfect with the GML travel updates. We still have the ability to bid on Traveler Set Dates vs Default but I'll be tapping my foot until we learn more

It only shows him the traveler-set-dates option in the interface, but normally you'd see several more on the right side of that option:

The Google Ads help document still lists all these options as available, so I am thinking this a bug. But here are the types of bid adjustments for hotel ads:

• Location: Where the traveler is located.
• Device: The type of device the traveler is using to search for hotels, such as mobile, desktop, or tablet.
• Length of stay: How long the traveler indicated they'd stay at the property (up to 30 days). You may set a maximum of 30 adjustments.
• Check-in day of week: The day of the week the traveler intends to stay at the hotel.
• Date type: Specifies adjustments to apply to your hotel ads based on whether users search for specific dates or simply search and see prices with default dates.
• Advance booking window: How far in advance the traveler wants to book the hotel (up to 330 days). You may set a maximum of 10 adjustments.
• Audience lists: A Google Ads audience list, such as for customers or website visitors.
• Check-in date: The selected dates the traveler intends to stay at the accommodation.

Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, was asked about it, but she has not replied yet. Dean Schmit, another hotel advertiser said he sees the same issue.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.

The Google May 2026 core update finished this morning after taking 12 days to fully roll out, we even had some really big volatility over the past 24-hours. Microsoft says AI summarizes results, which reduces clicks and website visits - yes, they did. Google Ads updated its terms of service for AI changes. Google Discover is showing a lot of Threads posts in the feed. Google AdSense lets you share your full IP address to buyers now. And we released our Google volatility aggregator tool.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Google May 2026 Core Update Has Completed Rolling Out
  Google's May 2026 broad core update has officially completed rolling out. Google announced this via X this morning and the Search Status Dashboard has been updated to document the rollout. It took less than 12 days to roll out, and this update felt larger than the last core update - the Google March 2026 core update.
• Google May 2026 Core Update Volatility Hits Hard Again June 2nd
  Just when I thought the Google search volatility would start to cool, I am seeing another spike in huge search ranking volatility today - June 2nd...
• Microsoft: AI Summarizes Results, Reducing Clicks & Website Visits
  James Murray, Global Product Storytelling Lead, Generative AI at Microsoft, gave a webinar named How to successfully navigate the human, LLM, and agentic web last week. He had a slide come up at about the 9 minute and 30 second mark that reads...
• Google Discover Showing Threads Posts More Often?
  Google Discover may be showing Threads (the Facebook Twitter alternative social network) more often in the feed. Threads is not shown as much as YouTube or X but it seems to have grown significantly and surpassed TikTok and Instagram.
• Google AdSense New Full IP Address Sharing
  Google announced a new feature in Google AdSense to share the full IP address in bid requests. Google said that full IP addresses are indicated by many buyers to be an important signal, so there is a new setting to allow you to share the full IP address with those buyers.
• Google Ads Terms of Service Updated For AI Changes After 8 Years
  Google has updated the Google Ads Terms of Service (TOS) in the area of policy, payment, and liability. The changes incorporate AI-related changes to Google Ads and more changes. I believe the last time Google updated these TOS was 8 years ago, April 16, 2018.
• New SER Volatility Aggregator Chart & Backend Update
  The Search Engine Roundtable Google volatility aggregator tool is finally live. This takes the volatility scores from the tools I use for my Google update stories and aggregates them into one score. You can then click in for more detail and the scores directly from the sources.
• YouTube Headboard & Pillows At Google Office
  Here is a photo from the Google offices in India of some sort of YouTube event. You can see there is this YouTube branded headboard and pillows near it. It is making me kind of sleepy. I found this on Instagram...

Other Great Search Threads:

• Bing showing feature snippet over ai answer. Here are snaps which I check with different , system for same query. Result are different one feature snippet and other ai result, Khushal Bherwani on X
• Bing test blue underline while hive on suggested search query, usually it's in black color, Khushal Bherwani on X
• Google is testing more changes with favicons and website names in Search. Now both the favicon and website name appear much smaller in the results., Sachin Patel on X
• AI agents and LLMs in general would have had an easy life on Web 1.0., Gary Illyes on LinkedIn
• One year ago, I said yes to Microsoft Advertising. This has easily been the most impactful year of my career. I measure that in how many humans I've been able to help., Navah Hopkins on LinkedIn
• The trend continues: a handful of U.S. federal government domains are quickly crashing toward 0 organic search visibility. These sites also experienced a huge drop in indexed pages over the last year, as much of their content was, Lily Ray on X
• This was an interesting experiment (that I didn't expect much out of). In Claude Code, in a folder with a website that just wouldn't show a favicon in search.. I asked it to review our documentation (the HTML page) and evaluate what's wrong. I was pretty , John Mueller on Bluesky

Search Engine Land Stories:

• DV360 API Adds Demand Gen Support
• Google expands Data Manager API with GMP event ingestion
• Commerce media expands beyond retail sites with Demand Gen integration
• Link intent: How to combine great content with strategic outreach
• How a 'client brain' gives AI the context SEO work needs
• How to use schema markup to optimize for the agentic web
• McKinsey frames AI 2.0; Positionless Marketing delivers it

Other Great Search Stories:

AI & LLMs

• Find live jobs and format your resume in ChatGPT, ChatGPT Release Notes
• Microsoft and Google take on Anthropic and OpenAI in AI coding models, CNBC

Industry & Business

• Alphabet's $80 Billion AI Raise Gets $10 Billion Berkshire Bet, Bloomberg
• Anthropic confidentially files IPO prospectus with SEC, CNBC
• Florida sues OpenAI, Sam Altman, saying they put profit over safety, NBC News
• Google Store Tokyo to be first physical store outside US, 9to5Google
• Judge Limits Google's Access To Search Rival's Data, Law360
• Mozilla To Appeals Court: Google Search Deal Not 'Exclusive', MediaPost
• Stargate updates: OpenAI, Oracle building Michigan data center, CNBC

Links & Content Marketing

• Content Creator Success: Max Ramirez on the SoCal Ecosystem, Portada Online

Local & Maps

• 10 Ways for AI to Make Higher-Flying City Pages for Local SEO, Local Visibility System
• 8 Reasons Waze Is Better (And Worse) Than Google Maps, BGR
• Google Business Agent and Microsoft Brand Agents Compared, Igniting Business

SEO

• ChatGPT Core Updates: Chatbots Have Algorithm Changes Too, SISTRIX
• FAQs for Google's 'Preferred Sources', Practical Ecommerce
• Introducing the AI Visibility Audit, Common Crawl
• What Google's New AI Guide Actually Debunks. And What It Doesn't., No Hacks

PPC

• 2026 Partner Awards: Nominations are open, Microsoft Advertising
• Delhi High Court’s pathbreaking ruling on Google keyword advertising | Explained, The Hindu
• Smart Bidding in Google Ads: Which Strategy to Use in 2026, Hopskip Media
• Why Good PPC Sometimes Starts Slower, PPC Live

Search Features

• Google AI Search Raises New Questions, Mashable
• The 50 Most-Cited Websites in Google AI Overviews (June 2026), Ahrefs

Other Search

• Google Encloses The Web, John Battelle's Searchblog
• Pichai on AI Search: what he said & what SEOs must do, I Love SEO
• The new Google Home Speaker might finally have a release date, Android Authority

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.

Google's May 2026 broad core update has officially completed rolling out. Google announced this via X this morning and the Search Status Dashboard has been updated to document the rollout. It took less than 12 days to roll out, and this update felt larger than the last core update - the Google March 2026 core update.

Just this morning, we reported on major ranking volatility hitting over the past 24 hours. As a reminder, the Google May 2026 core update was announced on May 21, 2026, and then that following weekend, we saw some significant ranking volatility, and then again, this past weekend, we saw even more volatility. But today, I am seeing even more volatility spike up - yes, on a Tuesday - June 2, 2026 right before Google said the update was done.

Google originally said "This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites."

The rollout was complete as of June 2, 2026.

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) June 2, 2026

Google May 2026 Core Update Quick Facts

Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:

• Name: Google May 2026 Broad Core Update
• Launched: May 21, 2026 at around 11:43 am ET
• Completed: June 2, 2026 (12 day roll out)
• Targets: It looks at all types of content
• Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards great web pages
• Global: This is a global update impacting all regions, in all languages.
• Impact: The normal core update - updating some of the "core systems". Google said this May update is a "regular update."
• Discover: Core updates impact Google Discover and other features, also feature snippets and more.
• Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google's core update advice.
• Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future. Maybe this is what we saw the past couple of weeks or all those unconfirmed Google updates.

Google May 2026 Core Update Details

Google wrote, as I said above:

Today we released the May 2026 core update to Google Search.

This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites. The rollout may take up to 2 weeks to complete.

Previous Broad Core Updates

Here is a list of the most recent core updates we've seen since Google started to confirm them. Previously, we nicknamed them Phantom updates or unconfirmed updates.

• May 2026 Core Update: May 21, 2026 through June 2, 2026.
• March 2026 Core Update: March 27, 2026 through April 8, 2026.
• December 2025 Core Update: December 11, 2025 through December 29, 2025
• June 2025 Core Update: June 30, 2025 through July 17, 2025
• March 2025 Core Update: March 13, 2025 through March 27, 2025
• December 2024 Core Update: December 12, 2024 through December 18, 2024
• November 2024 Core update: November 11, 2024 through December 5, 2024
• August 2024 Core Update : August 15, 2024 through September 3, 2024
• March 2024 Core Update : March 5, 2024 through April 19, 2024
• November 2023 Core Update : November 2, 2023 through November 28, 2023
• October 2023 Core Update: October 5, 2023 through October 19, 2023
• August 2023 Core Update: August 22, 2023 through September 7, 2023
• March 2023 Core Update: March 15, 2023 through March 28, 2023
• September 2022 Core Update: September 12, 2022 through September 26, 2022
• May 2022 Core Update: May 25, 2022 through June 9, 2022
• November 2021 Core Update: November 17, 2021 through November 30, 2021
• July 2021 Core Update: July 1, 2021 through July 12, 2021
• June 2021 Core Update: June 2, 2021 through June 12, 2021
• December 2020 Core Update: December 3, 2020 through December 16, 2020
• May 2020 Core Update: May 4, 2020 through May 18, 2020
• January 2020 Core Update: January 13, 2020 through mostly January 17, 2020
• September 2019 Core Update: September 24, 2019
• Google June 2019 Core Update: June 3, 2019 through June 8, 2019

Previous Helpful Content Update Impact

Here is the list of the previous Google helpful content updates:

• Septemebr 14, 2023 - September 2023 Google helpful content update - completing on Septmeber 28, 2023
• December 5, 2022 - December 2022 Google helpful content update, completing on January 12, 2023
• August 25, 2022 - August 2022 (original) Google helpful content update, completing on September 9, 2022

Google Tracking Tools On May 2026 Core Update

Here is what the tracking tools are showing today:

SEMRush:

Advanced Web Ranking:

Sistrix:

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

Zutrix Tension:

Wincher:

SimilarWeb:

Algoroo:

Mangools:

Data For SEO:

Mozcast:

Accuranker:

SERP Stat:

You can also check out our new Google search ranking volatilty aggregator tool to see these all on one chart:

What are you all seeing with this Google May 2026 core update, now that it is done rolling out?

Forum discussion at X.

Just when I thought the Google search volatility would start to cool, I am seeing another spike in huge search ranking volatility today - June 2nd. As a reminder, the Google May 2026 core update was announced on May 21, 2026, and then that following weekend, we saw some significant ranking volatility, and then again, this past weekend, we saw even more volatility. But today, I am seeing even more volatility spike up - yes, on a Tuesday - June 2, 2026.

I do believe this started Friday, May 29th but really was seen more on Saturday, May 30th. This is turning out to be a pretty significant Google core update, a big Google search ranking update.

When Google announced this core update, Google said, "This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites. The rollout may take up to 2 weeks to complete." Two weeks will be later this week, but I suspect it is almost fully rolled out by this time.

I thought the update would be done, so maybe this is a sign of one last push from this core update and Google will say it is completed soon...

UPDATE: The Google May 2026 core update is now done - it finished rolling out about an hour after I posted this story.

Google Tracking Tools

Here is what the third-party Google search results tracking tools are showing:

SEMRush:

Advanced Web Ranking:

Sistrix:

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

Zutrix Tension:

Wincher:

SimilarWeb:

Algoroo:

Mangools:

Data For SEO:

Mozcast:

Accuranker:

SERP Stat:

You can also check out our new Google search ranking volatilty aggregator tool to see these all on one chart:

SEO Chatter

Here is some new SEO chatter from WebmasterWorld and this site:

The volatility on the ground is absolutely insane right now.

Well, things have been bad for 5 months after dropped 90% in December. I've been trying to make fixes. However, I didn't think it could get worse. Dropped another 50% this May update. Hoping something changes : (

Back to traffic changes:

May was extraordinarily strong conversion-wise, Google traffic has re-stabilized at April levels, bot visits are outrageous, and CF isn't keeping up with a large portion of them - yet again, overall conversions were great, and revenue is up on my project.

Putting in a lot of work cleansing the UI and removing technical debt lately, sometimes "move forward regardless" is a good strategy when Google goes crazy.

Are you seeing a big change in your rankings today?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google has updated the Google Ads Terms of Service (TOS) in the area of policy, payment, and liability. The changes incorporate AI-related changes to Google Ads and more changes. I believe the last time Google updated these TOS was 8 years ago, April 16, 2018.

Google sent an email to advertisers that says, "We are updating our Google Ads terms of service, which affects the Google Ads accounts associated with your email address. This change does not affect your use of Google Workspace, Cloud Identity, or any other Google product."

The changes include:

• Updates addressing how your inputs can be used across various Google Ads features to improve campaign performance, including:
• Information or URLs that you enter into conversational experience and other similar Google Ads features
• URLs or accounts that you provide Google access to and authorize Google to crawl in connection with automated campaign setup
• Additionally, the new terms reinforce your responsibility to ensure you have the rights to your inputs and continued obligation to review, approve, or remove all campaigns and ad assets generated automatically by Google Ads features
• Modifications to the language in our arbitration agreement, including allowing for batch arbitration of similar claims to make the process more efficient when there are several identical (or nearly identical) claims

You can see the new terms of service over here (it changes based on type/location/currency) and the old version over here.

Here is the email I received from Google:

I asked Gemini to compare the differences for me, because I am really not good at these legal doc changes:

Here is a quick, high-level summary of the key changes between the old and new terms:

• Arbitration & Disputes (Massive Overhaul): * Switched from international rules (ICDR) to US-centric rules (AAA).
• Arbitration now happens in your local county instead of Santa Clara, CA.
• Added a 30-day window to opt out of arbitration entirely via a web form.
• Allows Small Claims Court for minor disputes.
• Added Batch Arbitration rules to handle mass filings (25+ similar claims) more efficiently.
• Automation Liability: Removed language about "optional" automated features. You are now automatically and fully responsible for any ads, targets, or landing pages generated or modified by Google's automated features.
• Privacy & Data Updates: Dropped the "EU" prefix from data terms, making the Data Privacy Terms globally applicable. Google explicitly restricted its own ability to modify these data terms.
• New Fees & Discretion: Added a clause requiring you to pay local regulatory/jurisdiction-specific fees. Clarified that issuing ad credits is entirely at Google's reasonable discretion.
• No Fallback Support Email: Removed ads-support@google.com as a backup cancellation method; cancellations must now be handled strictly through your account portal or assigned representative.
• Whistleblower Provision: Added a brand-new safety clause allowing either party to report legal non-compliance to public authorities without breaching confidentiality.
• Liability Cap: Narrows the 30-day liability cap strictly to the specific advertiser account associated with the dispute, rather than your entire overall spend.

Forum discussion at X.

Google Discover may be showing Threads (the Facebook Twitter alternative social network) more often in the feed. Threads is not shown as much as YouTube or X but it seems to have grown significantly and surpassed TikTok and Instagram.

This was spotted by Damien who posted charts on X from his Google Discover tool named 1492.vision - it shows that at the end of May, Threads saw a big boost in Google Discover. Damien wrote, "We're seeing a significant increase in Discover cards with the Threads social network, in addition to having seen Threads appear a few days ago in the list of social networks for Google profile pages for publishers."

Here is the chart:

Here is how it compares to X:

Here is how it compares to Instagram and TikTok:

I wonder if the Google May 2026 core update has any impact on this.

Forum discussion at X.

James Murray, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft, gave a webinar named, How to successfully navigate the human, LLM, and agentic web last week. He had a slide come up at about the 9-minute and 30-second mark that reads, "AI summarizes results, reducing clicks and website visits."

Here is a copy of that slide (which he didn't really go into much if you listen to the presentation):

As you can see, that section under "LLM Web" section it says, "AI summarizes results, reducing clicks and website visits."

I spotted this via Natzir on X who wrote, "Holy moly. Microsoft puts "LLMs reducing clicks and website visits" on a slide! Google says the opposite: clicks "relatively stable," even "slightly more quality clicks," "more queries" and calls the decline studies "flawed methodologies."

Yep, Google said clicks are stable and the studies out there are flawed.

But here is someone from Microsoft saying yep, clicked are reduced and website visits are reduced.

Forum discussion at X.

Google announced a new feature in Google AdSense to share the full IP address in bid requests. Google said that full IP addresses are indicated by many buyers to be an important signal, so there is a new setting to allow you to share the full IP address with those buyers.

Google wrote:

We've introduced a new feature in Google AdSense that allows you to share the full IP address in bid requests.

Many buyers consider the full IP address a critical signal for assessing the quality and relevance of an ad impression. Sharing the full IP address in bid requests helps you maximize the value of your inventory.

When you use the Share full IP address feature in AdSense, you can provide this signal to all demand sources, Authorized Buyers, Display & Video 360, and Google Ads.

To set up full IP address sharing, take these steps:

• Sign in to your AdSense account.
• Click Brand safety.
• Click Content, then Blocking controls.
• Click Manage Ad serving.
• In the "Personalized ads" section, for "Share full IP address", make a selection:
• To allow full IP address sharing, disable the toggle Off.
• To not allow full IP address sharing, enable the toggle On.
• Click Save.

Note that full IP address sharing is off ("Blocked") by default. When it's turned off, only the truncated IP address is shared. This feature won't affect your current serving logic unless you change the setting.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The Search Engine Roundtable Google volatility aggregator tool is finally live. This takes the volatility scores from the tools I use for my Google update stories and aggregates them into one score. You can then click in for more detail and the scores directly from the sources.

Here is a screenshot of the new sidebar widget:

Here is a video of the Google volatility aggregator tool:

I also launched a brand new backend for me to add these stories.

If you notice any bugs, please let me know in the comments below.

The Google May 2026 core update was super heated over the weekend, this might be the tailend of this update. Google Ads has a new invalid activity credit report. Google begins testing healthcare ads in AI Mode. Google Ads branded searches controls are available for AI Max. Google Ads is testing a leads management feature. Google AI Mode and AI Overviews tests a sliding carousel for link cards. And Google has a Disco ball for a Doodle today.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Google May 2026 Core Update Hits Hard Saturday - May 30th
  The Google May 2026 core update seemed to have hit some sites in a very big way yesterday, Saturday, May 30, 2026. As a reminder, the May 2026 core update was announced on May 21, 2026, and then that following weekend, we saw some significant ranking volatility, and then again, this past weekend, we saw even more volatility. I suspect the update will be completed in the next few days.
• Google Begins Limited Test Of Healthcare Ads In AI Mode
  Google has confirmed it is doing a small test of healthcare-related ads in AI Mode. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, said this on LinkedIn when asked if the rumors of Google testing ads in AI Mode for healthcare a few weeks ago were true.
• Google Hosted Forms Leads Screen In Google Ads
  Google Ads has a new leads section under the Conversions section that shows Google-hosted form leads for the past 60 days. This will give you the lead's name, stage, date submitted, email, phone, the form contents and more.
• Google AI Mode & AI Overviews Sliding Carousel For Link Cards
  Google is testing a new way to show citation link cards within AI Overviews and AI Mode. In this test, if you click on a citation bubble, Google opens a carousel at the bottom of the screen that you can swipe left or right on to see the links to publisher sites.
• Google Ads New Branded Searches Controls For AI Max
  Google Ads is rolling out branded searches controls to some advertisers within AI Max. This allows advertisers to control how your ads appear in searches that include brand names.
• Google Ads Invalid Activity Credit Report - New Help Document
  Google added a new help document to the Google Ads help documentation section named About the Invalid Activity Credit Report. I am not sure if the report is new, or if it is just that the help document is new - but either way, this is a report advertisers should be looking at frequently enough.
• Google Disco Ball Doodle
  Google's Doodle today is an animated Disco ball, titled "The Art of Disco." Google wrote, "In celebration of Pride Month, today's Doodle celebrates the art of disco by shining a light on the LGBTQ+ artists who helped create space for everyone on the dance floor."
• Newspaper Wallpaper At Google
  Here is a photo from the Google office in Germany of one of the conference rooms with newspapers all over the walls. I guess this is the news room?

Other Great Search Threads:

• I felt a disturbance in the SEO force this morning. It shook me a bit... I immediately knew that millions of sites started publishing llms.txt files and markdown files. And that happened recently. I knew I must reach out to Yoda..., Glenn Gabe on X
• The price needs to be a number, so what you have there wouldn't be considered valid., John Mueller on Bluesky
• I just made the robots.txt manager for WordPress I've always wanted. Now on to the next plugin., Jon Henshaw on LinkedIn
• LLMs.txt: Google saying two different things?, Reddit

Search Engine Land Stories:

• The latest jobs in search marketing
• Google appears to be testing new branded search controls in AI Max campaigns
• Matt McGee on the Wild West days of SEO
• Google Ads launches built-in lead management dashboard
• How to train Claude to sound like your brand
• How to structure paid social creative testing for better performance
• Beyond RAG: Why every AI search platform is now agentic and what that means for your content
• Why your B2B PPC metrics may be lying to you

Other Great Search Stories:

AI & LLMs

• AI Overviews is the most undertracked AI search: 500,000 prompts show why, Peec AI
• Gemini 3.5 Flash : Fast Answers Are Not the Same as Honest Answers, Search Engine World
• Hands-On With Gemini Spark: I Gave It Access to My Life and It Friend-Zoned My Boyfriend, Wired
• How to use Lighthouse to test your website for agentic readiness, Marie Haynes
• Retiring OpenAI o3 and GPT-4.5, ChatGPT Release Notes
• Watch Google Deepmind's Parada on Robotics Technology, Bloomberg
• You Can Finally Measure Content Alignment. That’s the Dangerous Part., Duane Forrester Decodes

Analytics

• Full URL in GA4, KRM Digital Marketing

Industry & Business

• Founders seize on Indian court ruling to revive criticism of Google's ad business, TechCrunch
• The Billionaire Coding Genius Making the Tough Decisions at OpenAI, Wall Street Journal

Links & Content Marketing

• How Content Marketers Misuse GenAI, Practical Ecommerce
• The New Reality of Marketing Careers: What You Need To Know, Content Marketing Institute

Local & Maps

• Google is Suspending eXp Realty Agents, Sterling Sky
• Yandex updates Maps with walkable routes, International Search News
• 335,520 Deleted Google Reviews Analyzed (2026 Update), Localo
• Google Maps helped me discover my own neighborhood was lying to me, Android Police

SEO

• AI "hacks" Are Fucking Up Your SEO - Same As It Ever Was, Nikki Pilkington
• FAQ SEO: How To Optimize FAQ Pages for Search Visibility, Shopify
• Google Zero: The Search Traffic Cliff Publishers Cannot Ignore, Search Engine World
• SEO Myth Debunked: Guest Posting Is Dead!, Nikki Pilkington

PPC

• Demand Gen in Commerce Media Suite Now Available for 2026, PPC News Feed
• Set It, Forget It, Regret It: What’s Really Happening Inside Your Google Ads Account?, SearchLab Digital
• Checkout Links, Google
• Merchant Center Migration to Merchant API Deadline Reminder, PPC News Feed
• Data Manager API now supports sending events to Google Marketing Platform destinations and IP ingestion for Google Ads Customer Match, Google Ads Developer Blog
• Display & Video 360 API will start supporting Demand Gen resources on June 10, 2026, Google Ads Developer Blog
• Standardizing Reach Metrics with Total Co-view in the Google Ads API, Google Ads Developer Blog
• The “What” and “Why” on Meridian: Ads DevCast E6, Google Ads Developer Blog

Other Search

• Apple Glasses: Late 2027 Release, Watch Comparison; iOS 28; Apple TV, HomePod, Bloomberg

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.

Google added a new help document to the Google Ads help documentation section named About the Invalid Activity Credit Report. I am not sure if the report is new, or if it is just that the help document is new - but either way, this is a report advertisers should be looking at frequently enough.

This report helps advertisers see the credits they get over invalid clicks from Google AdSense.

The invalid Activity Credit Report is available for Search and Performance Max campaigns.

The help document says:

Google Ads employs sophisticated automated defenses to protect your campaigns from invalid traffic, and from serving in placements that violate Google's AdSense Program policies. While most of these defenses are applied in real-time to protect advertiser campaigns and prevent them from being billed for associated traffic, some activity is identified after an invoice has been issued. Invalid activity credits are issued for associated advertiser spend, where appropriate and possible.

While credits for invalid activity are also reported as line-item adjustments in your billing and transaction history, the Invalid Activity Credit Report breaks these credits down by campaign and network. The report also includes the number of clicks and interactions associated with the credits, allowing you to track how this activity impacted your campaign performance. By providing a clear view of your "net" performance after credits are applied, these reports enable more accurate optimization and offer enhanced transparency into Google's protection measures.

Here are the benefits from this report:

• View performance after the billing period: Get a precise view of your adjusted cost, adjusted clicks, adjusted interactions, and more after all invalid traffic and invalid activity credits applied during the billing period to-date have been subtracted.
• Reduce manual reconciliation: Eliminate the need to manually reconcile credits back to specific campaigns to determine performance.
• Increased transparency: Understand exactly how Google's ongoing invalid activity protections directly safeguard your specific campaign spend.

You can access the report through:

• Go to Report Editor within the Campaigns menu Campaigns Icon.
• Under the 'Template gallery' section, select Invalid Activity Credit Report: Search & PMax. The report will populate the standard set of campaign performance metrics, new 'credited clicks', 'credited interactions', and 'credited amount' columns. Users can drag and drop additional performance metrics (including 'adjusted' metrics that subtract credited clicks, interactions, and cost) as they see fit.
• To save your report, select Save or Save as. 'Save as' lets you create a copy of your report with a new name.

Here is what it looks like:

For more details check out this new help document.

Forum discussion at X.