The Current: Google Expanded the Answer and Shrank the Explanation

Google took up more of the search page this week and explained less of it. Two of the three changes below arrived with a confirmation and no numbers. The third arrived with numbers and no explanation.

Google made AI Overviews bigger and would not say how often

On August 28, Barry Schwartz reported at Search Engine Land that Google is showing AI Overviews in full on some queries, with no “Show more” click, and loading the “Ask anything” prompt box by default. Chris Long spotted the behavior and posted: “Holy moly SEOs: Google is now revealing the AI Mode prompt box BY DEFAULT for some queries.”

Google confirmed the change. A spokesperson told Search Engine Land:

“For some queries, AI Overviews may dynamically expand for topics where our systems determine it’s most useful for people.”

The same statement claimed a benefit: “Our research has shown that with this dynamic experience, users find Search more helpful and engage deeper in follow-up exploration.”

Google declined to say what share of queries this affects, whether it will reach more of them, or what happens to clicks. Ahrefs and Pew have both published click data on AI Overviews as a feature, and nobody has measured the expanded version. So you can see the behavior and nobody can price it. Any number you read for it this week is invented.

On August 31, Brodie Clark documented shopping ad carousels inside AI Mode responses for the first time, plus an extra ad unit at the bottom. Google has not announced that one, so treat it as a test.

What to do about it

Pull your top 20 commercial queries and record which ones now render an expanded AI Overview. Compare impressions against clicks in Search Console, query by query, month over month. Queries where impressions hold and clicks fall are your exposure. Tell whoever reads your ranking report that a flat position can now sit on top of a real traffic loss.

The spam update cleared more top 10 pages than a normal week, and the ground kept moving after it ended

Google ran the August 2026 spam update from August 18 to August 21. SE Ranking measured what it did, and Danny Goodwin reported the results at Search Engine Land on August 27.

SE Ranking tracked 100,000 US keywords across 20 industries and compared August 17 to 22 against a July 26 to 31 baseline with no confirmed update. In the update window, 16.71% of URLs that had held a top 10 spot fell beyond position 100 for the same keyword, against 9.2% in the July window. That is an 82% increase, and it made a top 10 URL about 1.8 times more likely to vanish from the top 100. Movement ran both ways: SE Ranking also found a 12% increase in URLs reaching the top 3 that had not cracked the top 20 before. Top 10 volatility ran from 74.64% in real estate to 85.55% in fashion and beauty.

Then it kept going. On August 26, Schwartz reported continued volatility after the rollout finished, citing trackers including AWR, Sistrix, CognitiveSEO and Wireboard, and wrote: “It is like Google is pushing out a new Google ranking update post-spam update and did not announce it.” Google has confirmed no second update.

The evidence stops short in two places. Roger Montti at Search Engine Journal reported that practitioners saw the update hit mass-produced AI content hardest, while sites using AI with human review held up better. Google has said nothing about what the update targeted. Rajan Patel, VP of Engineering for Google Search, replied “Yes it is” to a comment that the spam team is writing new algorithms, which confirms the team is busy and confirms nothing about its target. And a page dropping out of the top 100 shows ranking movement. SE Ranking measured positions, so nobody has evidence of penalties here.

What to do about it

Compare August 22 onward against the first half of August at the query and landing page level rather than sitewide. If the loss sits on a handful of pages while the rest hold, read those pages for thin, templated or duplicated copy before you change anything structural. If you gained, hold off on crediting whatever you shipped that week until you check whether a competitor dropped out from under you.

Your rank tracker may break before your rankings do

Google confirmed on August 26 that it now routes search result clicks through a google.com/goto?url=[hashURL] redirect instead of a direct link. Derek Perkins of Nozzle measured the rollout at “nearly a 100% across several residential ip providers.” Google’s statement to Search Engine Land: “We have a long history of deploying technical measures against evolving forms of abuse, and we regularly take steps to protect our services and users.” Google named no specific abuse and gave no timeline. Schwartz tied the change to Google’s litigation against SerpAPI, which scrapes search results.

Third-party rank trackers read the SERP the way a scraper does, so their data may shift. Schwartz hedged his own conclusion: those tools “may be impacted in some way,” and “you have to assume that Google Search Console data is not impacted by this change.” That second clause is an assumption a reporter made rather than a promise from Google, which has confirmed nothing about Search Console.

What to do about it

Email your rank tracking vendor and ask what they are doing about goto redirects. Get the answer in writing, because you will want it when a chart looks strange in October. Until then, treat Search Console position data as your reference and third-party rank data as a second opinion.

Also worth knowing

Darren Shaw published a Whitespark analysis of 1.8 million Google Business Profiles across 4,209 categories: profiles with a specific primary category reached the top 10 12.5% of the time against 9.2% for generic ones, about 36% higher. Shaw reports correlations, so test the finding on your own locations before rewriting categories at scale.

Google will require Merchant Center product images of at least 500 x 500 pixels from January 31, 2027, and recommends 1500 x 1500 or above. Undersized images throw “Image too small” warnings now, so the image audit belongs in Q4.

From August 30, Google stopped applying site reputation policy manual actions to searchers inside the European Economic Area, after discussion with the European Commission. Schwartz noted this is the first time Google enforces a spam policy by searcher location, and manual actions still bite everywhere else.

Amy Toman reported on LinkedIn that reviews go missing after Google reinstates a suspended Business Profile, and that Google knows and is working on a resolution. No fix date exists, so screenshot your review counts before any reinstatement.

Search Console sent a wave of “new owner added” emails naming people who already had access, some since 2021. Schwartz reported that Google confirmed the bug.

The instrument changed more than the performance did

Two of this week’s three stories are Google altering how you observe search rather than how you rank in it. Expanded AI Overviews break the link between your position and your reach. The goto redirect breaks the link between your rank tracker and the SERP. Neither one touched your site.

That splits your reporting job in two. You need a process for measuring performance, and a separate habit of asking whether the instrument moved first. The teams that get burned over the next two quarters will read a chart change as a business change, panic, and rewrite pages that were working.

If you want us to run the impression-versus-click gap on your top queries and tell you what the AI Overview expansion is costing you, reply and we will pull it.