Kinda like the rest of search, many things aren't permanent decisions that are never discussed. Things change - SEOs write about what changed - while I have nothing to announce, I can say for sure that very few things online are permanent. It's also good to have input from others, like you all.- John Mueller ( @johnmu.com) January 30, 2026 at 7:00 AM
Google Search Console's "Insights" section no longer shows click trends for individual keywords. It now displays trends for keyword groups, once available only to high-traffic sites. Selecting any group of keywords takes you to the Performance section with the regex filter activated to show details. Many marketers believe the future of organic search monitoring is keyword groups. Consumers' queries are becoming longer and more diverse as they interact with genAI platforms such as ChatGPT and Google AI Mode. Hence tracking individual words is becoming ineffective.
The rel="canonical" link tag helps Google find the canonical version of a page. You can use JavaScript to set the canonical URL, but keep in mind that you shouldn't use JavaScript to change the canonical URL to something else than the URL you specified as the canonical URL in the original HTML. The best way to set the canonical URL is to use HTML, but if you have to use JavaScript, make sure that you always set the canonical URL to the same value as the original HTML. If you can't set the canonical URL in the HTML, then you can use JavaScript to set the canonical URL and leave it out of the original HTML.
Google's Nick Fox said standard licensing deals for publishers are not coming, and that optimizing for AI search is the same as optimizing for traditional search. Google warns not to use JavaScript for noindex tag. Google Ads exact match is not eligible to show ads in AI Overviews. Google Search Console average impressions are going back down. Google Search Console performance report is back up to date but not the page indexing report. Google search results gain read more links.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google Search Console launched an AI-powered configuration tool that helps you build reports. Google Search Console's average position jumped up for many after the num 100 removal. Google's API doc leaks confirms that service area is not a local ranking factor.
With the parameter's removal, Google results are now paginated for all queries, meaning an impression should only be counted when a URL appears on a page a user actually views. This has led to the drop in total impressions for many websites (not just yours), but each impression now represents a more accurate measurement of actual user visibility.
So I dug deeper into GA, and across all four sites I noticed a clear pattern. The spike in Google organic traffic is coming from desktop users on Windows with a screen size of 1280x720. Engagement metrics are terrible, like 2 seconds on site. It's not coming a from a specific country or just to the homepage. Traffic is spread out.
Tyler Gargula posted on LinkedIn that he looked at just about 320 profiles in Google Search Console and said 87.7% of those properties / sites experienced drops in impressions and 77.6% of sites experienced drops in the number of unique ranking keywords. Some are saying that those sites impacted by the great decoupling are more likely to see an impact with this. But I am not sure if there is any data to back that up, at least not yet.
Google Search Console reporting seems off since last week. Plus, third party Google tracking tools reporting is mostly broken since the Google 100 search results parameter going away. Google did not add AI Overview tracking in Search Console, that was fake news. Structured data does not help with AI visibility, not yet at least. FTC is investigating Google over ad pricing and terms.
There are several posts in the Search Central Forum about this, and I just saw the issue pop up for a client. Google's Crawl Stats reporting drops heavily around 8/8. There is no impact to rankings and traffic, but all the sites posting about this see it happen on 8/8. My client is not blocking crawling of Googlebot, and Bing seems totally fine crawling-wise.
The new Google June 2025 core update is showing recoveries associated with past helpful content updates, indicating positive changes in search rankings.
Starting today, Search Console will show Discussion Forum rich results as a search appearance in the Performance reports. Learn more about how to be eligible to this feature at URL.
SEO thought for Monday Morning - is the GSC API a few days behind? Looking at my Looker Studio charts the data stops at the 22nd April - also SEOtesting for the same sites. Meanwhile over in the GSC dashboard itself they up to the 25th April.
