Google announced the Google September 2026 spam update a week ago today on September 24th. We most likely saw the first wave of sites getting hit on September 25th, 26th and into the 27th. Then things cooled a bit but it all heated back up yesterday, September 30th. September 30th may have been the second wave, the second phase of this Google spam update.
OpenAI announced that it is rolling out virtual try-on for clothing and accessories for ChatGPT on the mobile and web interfaces. This also includes saving these to your ChatGPT Library.
About a year ago, Penske, which operates and owns Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Variety, and others, sued Google over its AI Overviews. Well, that case was dismissed because Penske failed to prove that Google entered into any formal agreement with Penske to sell its content in exchange for any amount of traffic.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...
There seems to be a bug with Google Local Service Ads showing ads from advertisers who are not targeting specific locations. With Local Service Ads, an advertiser can say they serve a specific city or location, but Google seems to be showing ads from advertisers who do not serve in those locations.
Here is the big Google webmaster report for October 2026, where I recap the most important organic and webmaster-focused Google Search news for the past month. Clearly, the Google September 2026 spam update, which started off strong and is still rolling out, is the big ticker. But we also have other unconfirmed Google updates to cover.
Google seems to be going after team rosters with the latest Google AI Overview to overtake website content for its own AI-generated version of that content. If you search for certain team rosters, Google will generate an AI answer, an AI Overview, with the answer.
Microsoft Advertising announced that optimization experiments is now generally available for Search, Shopping, Audience, and Performance Max campaigns. An Optimization experiment measures the impact of a campaign change through a controlled A/B test, Microsoft's help center explains.