SEO changed between 2024 and 2026 mostly on the results page, not in its rules. Google put AI Overviews and AI Mode above the links, folded helpful content into core ranking, added spam policies against scaled content, expired domains and site reputation abuse, made INP a Core Web Vital and began crawling every site as a smartphone.
This page began in July 2024 as a list of that year's SEO trends. It is now a dated record, as of September 2026, of what Google itself announced, with a link to each announcement: what changed, what each change means for a site, which popular trend claims hold up against Google's documentation, what did not change, and a checklist. For how AI Overviews pick their sources, read AI Overviews in Google Search; for Google's rules on AI-written pages, AI-generated content in SEO.
SEO changes from 2024 to 2026, dated
Each row links to Google's announcement or documentation where there is one. The dates of core and spam updates come from the Google Search Status Dashboard, which lists every confirmed ranking update with the day it started and how long it took to roll out.
2024
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| March 5 | The March 2024 core update and three new spam policies (scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse, site reputation abuse); a spam update starts the same day. |
| March 12 | INP replaces FID as the Core Web Vital for responsiveness. |
| April 19 | The March changes finish rolling out; Google reports 45% less low-quality, unoriginal content in results. |
| May 5 | The site reputation abuse policy takes effect. |
| May 14 | AI Overviews begin rolling out to everyone in the U.S. |
| June 20 | June 2024 spam update. |
| June 25 | Continuous scroll starts to leave desktop results, with mobile to follow, as Google told reporters. |
| After July 5 | Google crawls and indexes every site with Googlebot Smartphone only. |
| August 15 | August 2024 core update. |
| September 11 | "About this result" starts linking to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. |
| September 24 | Google removes the cache: operator from its documentation, because the operator no longer works. |
| November 11 | November 2024 core update. |
| November 19 | Google clarifies the site reputation abuse policy: first-party involvement does not change the third-party nature of the content. |
| December | December 2024 core update (from the 12th), then a spam update (from the 19th). |
2025
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| March 5 | AI Mode starts as a Search Labs experiment, and AI Overviews in the U.S. move to Gemini 2.0. |
| March 13 | March 2025 core update. |
| May 20 | AI Mode rolls out to everyone in the U.S., with no Labs sign-up. |
| June 12 | Google starts phasing out lesser-used structured data features, such as Claim Review, Estimated Salary and Vehicle Listing. |
| June 16 | AI Mode starts counting toward the totals in Search Console's Performance report. |
| June 30 | June 2025 core update. |
| August 26 | August 2025 spam update. |
| December 9 | Google's core updates documentation adds that smaller, unannounced core updates also happen. |
| December 11 | December 2025 core update. |
2026 (to September 25)
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| February 5 | February 2026 Discover update. |
| March 24, 27 | March 2026 spam update, then the March 2026 core update. |
| April 13, 14 | A new spam policy section against "back button hijacking"; Google says spam reports may now lead to manual actions. |
| May 7 | FAQ rich results stop appearing in Google Search, per Google's documentation changelog. |
| May 15 | Google publishes its guide to optimizing for generative AI features and states that spam policies cover manipulation of AI responses. |
| May 21 | May 2026 core update. |
| June 3 | Generative AI performance reports arrive in Search Console for a first group of sites. |
| June 24 | June 2026 spam update. |
| August 18 | August 2026 spam update. |
| August 30 | Site reputation manual actions stop applying to results shown in the European Economic Area. |
| August 31 | The AI performance reports and the Search generative AI control reach every website. |
| September 24 | September 2026 spam update begins. |
What the March 2024 core update and spam policies changed
Google described the March 2024 core update as more complex than usual, with changes to several core systems at once, and said there was no longer one signal or system for judging whether content is helpful. The helpful content system Google launched in 2022 became part of its core ranking systems that month. The practical consequence: there is no separate "helpful content update" to wait for any more. Helpfulness is assessed by the same systems that every core update adjusts.
The three spam policies announced with it, aimed at practices Google said had grown in popularity, are still in force:
- Scaled content abuse is generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, "no matter how it's created". Google's spam policies now list using generative AI tools to generate many pages without adding value for users as an example, alongside scraping, stitching content together and keyword-stuffed pages that make little sense to a reader.
- Expired domain abuse is buying an expired domain and reusing it mainly to rank low-value content on the previous owner's reputation. Reusing an old domain for a new, original site is fine.
- Site reputation abuse is third-party content published on an established site mainly to borrow its ranking signals, such as a low-quality third-party "best casinos" advertising page placed on a medical site.
The scaled content policy is the easiest to misread, because it is not about the tool. A team that hand-writes near-identical pages for every city it serves, changing only the name, is doing the same thing as a model that generates them.
The site reputation policy has changed the most since. Enforcement started on May 5, 2024. In November 2024 Google made clear that no amount of first-party involvement or oversight turns such content into the host's own, and it added that it may treat a section that is starkly different from the rest of a site as a standalone site. In August 2026, following discussion with the European Commission, Google changed how manual actions under the policy apply: from August 30 they affect only results shown outside the European Economic Area, while inside the EEA the affected section may be separated and ranked on its own over time.
2026 added three smaller rules. Back button hijacking, where a page manipulates browser history so that the back button does not return people to where they came from, is now named as a malicious practice. Spam reports submitted to Google may now lead to manual actions. And since May 15, 2026 the policies say plainly that trying to manipulate AI responses in Google Search is spam. If a manual action does hit your site, Google notifies you in Search Console, and you can ask for reconsideration once the problem is fixed.
How to read the core updates of 2025 and 2026
Core updates kept arriving several times a year, as Google's documentation describes them: four in 2024, three in 2025 and two in 2026 up to September. The recent ones, from the Search Status Dashboard:
| Core update | Started | Rollout took |
|---|---|---|
| March 2025 | March 13, 2025 | 13 days, 21 hours |
| June 2025 | June 30, 2025 | 16 days, 18 hours |
| December 2025 | December 11, 2025 | 18 days, 2 hours |
| March 2026 | March 27, 2026 | 12 days, 4 hours |
| May 2026 | May 21, 2026 | 11 days, 21 hours |
Google's guidance on core updates is the most useful thing to read when traffic moves during one:
- Wait for the rollout to finish, then wait at least a full week more before analyzing.
- Compare like with like: the week after the update against a week before it started, in Search Console, with Web, Image, Video and News search analyzed separately.
- Size the drop. Google's example of a small drop is position 2 to 4, which needs no drastic action; position 4 to 29 is a large drop that calls for a deeper look at the site as a whole against its self-assessment questions.
- Avoid quick fixes, such as removing a page element because someone said it hurts SEO. Improve the content in ways that last.
Recovery takes time. Google says some changes show in days while others take months, and since December 2025 its documentation notes that smaller core updates, which it does not announce, can lift improved pages without waiting for the next named one.
INP, mobile-only crawling and the other technical changes
INP replaced FID in Core Web Vitals
Chrome introduced Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as an experimental metric in May 2022. On March 12, 2024 it replaced First Input Delay (FID) as the Core Web Vital for responsiveness, and FID left Search Console the same day. The difference matters: FID only measured the input delay of the first interaction, while INP observes the latency of every click, tap and keyboard interaction during a visit and reports the longest one, ignoring outliers.
The current Core Web Vitals thresholds for a good experience are an LCP (loading) within 2.5 seconds, an INP of 200 milliseconds or less and a CLS (layout shift) of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads, separately for mobile and desktop. Google's page experience documentation says Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, that there is no single page experience signal, and that chasing a perfect score for SEO alone may not be the best use of your time. Fix the templates that fail in field data; do not polish the ones that already pass.
Mobile-first indexing is finished
Google said the move to mobile-first indexing was complete on October 31, 2023, and closed the last gap the following summer: after July 5, 2024, Google crawls and indexes sites with Googlebot Smartphone only, and a site whose content cannot be reached on a mobile device is no longer indexable. Googlebot Desktop may still appear in server logs for a few features, such as product listings and Google for Jobs.
What gets indexed is therefore what a phone receives. Google's mobile-first indexing best practices ask for the same primary content, headings, structured data and image alt text on mobile as on desktop, recommend responsive design as the easiest pattern to maintain, and allow content to sit in accordions or tabs on small screens rather than being removed.
Cached pages and continuous scroll are gone
Google's documentation changelog records the end of the cache: the cache: search operator documentation was removed on September 24, 2024 because the operator no longer works, and on October 2, 2024 the noarchive rule moved to a historical section because cached links are no longer shown in results. For checking what Googlebot saw, Google has said since April 2020 that cached links were unreliable for debugging and that the URL Inspection tool in Search Console is the better view. To see an older version of a page, "About this result" now links to the Wayback Machine.
Continuous scroll ended by statement rather than documentation: Google told Search Engine Land, as Mashable reported, that desktop results would return to pages from June 25, 2024 and mobile would follow in the coming months, so that Search could serve results faster. It matters for your data. Search Console counts an impression when a result appears in the current page of results, so with pagination back, a result on page two is only counted when someone opens page two.
AI Overviews, AI Mode and the new Search Console controls
The visible change of these three years is AI answering on the results page. AI Overviews began rolling out to everyone in the U.S. on May 14, 2024; AI Mode, a conversational mode for complex, multi-part questions and follow-ups, started in Labs on March 5, 2025 and reached everyone in the U.S. on May 20, 2025. AI Mode uses a "query fan-out" technique: it runs several related searches at once across subtopics and brings the results together into one answer.
For site owners the important point is where those answers come from. Google's optimization guide for generative AI features says they are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems and highlight content from the Search index. Its AI features documentation sets the only entry requirement: to be shown as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet. There are no additional technical requirements, and clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in Search Console's Performance report under the "Web" search type.
2026 gave site owners two new tools, both available to every website since August 31, 2026:
- The Generative AI performance report shows how often your URLs appeared in AI features in Search and Discover, by page, country, device and date. It reports impressions, not clicks.
- The Search generative AI control, under Settings in Search Console, keeps a site's links and content out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover. Google says it is not a ranking or inclusion signal for the rest of Search, that exclusion generally takes a few days after you change the setting, and that it does not affect AI training, which Google-Extended covers.
The results page also lost features. In 2025 Google phased out lesser-used rich result types such as Claim Review, Estimated Salary and Vehicle Listing, saying the change would not affect ranking, and FAQ rich results stopped appearing on May 7, 2026. Markup for retired types no longer produces a display in Google Search, although a clear question-and-answer section can still help readers.
How AI features choose sources and how to limit what they show is covered in AI Overviews in Google Search. How to measure what they do to your clicks is in AI Overviews and your traffic, and how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot find pages is in AI's impact on SEO.
Which 2024 SEO trend claims hold up
Many "SEO trends" lists, including the one this page used to carry, mix Google's documentation with industry opinion without saying which is which. In June 2026 Google published a test for third-party SEO advice: good advice either qualifies its claims as opinion based on data or experience, or backs them up with official Google guidance. It also notes that third-party tools do not have access to Google's internal ranking data. Here is the 2024 list measured that way:
| 2024 claim | What Google documents | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Voice search optimization | No voice-specific ranking guidance; the speakable markup is a beta for English news on Google Assistant devices in the U.S. | Industry opinion; clear answers cover it |
| Internal linking | Google crawls links in <a href> elements; descriptive anchor text tells people and Google what the target is about | Documented, still true |
| Core Web Vitals | Used by ranking systems; INP replaced FID in March 2024 | Documented, one factor among many |
| E-A-T | Now E-E-A-T, with trust the most important part; not a specific ranking factor | Documented as a concept, not a score |
| Local SEO | Local results rest mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, which draws on links and reviews | Documented; see local SEO |
| Mobile-first indexing | Finished; smartphone-only crawling after July 5, 2024 | No longer a trend, a requirement |
| Author entities | Bylines that lead to author information; author.url or sameAs in Article markup to tell authors apart | Partly documented; the rest is opinion |
| Programmatic SEO | Not named in the spam policies; many pages generated mainly to manipulate rankings are scaled content abuse | Judge each page by the value it adds |
| User engagement metrics | Aggregated, anonymized interaction data helps assess relevance; no specific metrics published | Partly documented; named metrics are inference |
| SEO communities | Google points site owners to its Search Central blog, its help forum and Search Console | Useful, if claims are checked |
A few of these need more than a table row.
Voice search. Google publishes no ranking rules for spoken queries. Its one voice-specific markup, speakable, is still a beta that works for English-language news publishers and U.S. users of Google Home devices. The voice experience Google did expand is Search Live, a voice and camera conversation inside AI Mode that reached more than 200 countries and territories on March 26, 2026, and AI Mode draws on the same Search index as typed search. Google's AI guide even says you need not chase every "long-tail" variant of a question, because its systems understand synonyms. Pages that answer questions clearly are voice-ready without a separate plan.
E-A-T and author entities. Google added the extra E for Experience to its rater guidelines on December 15, 2022. Its helpful content guidance says trust is the most important part of E-E-A-T, that E-E-A-T itself is not a specific ranking factor, and asks whether pages carry a byline that leads to more information about the author. What Google documents for "author entities" stops there and at markup: its Article structured data guide says Google can use author.url or sameAs to disambiguate authors. Advice that an author's footprint elsewhere boosts rankings is opinion.
Engagement metrics. Google's How Search Works says it uses aggregated and anonymized interaction data to assess whether results are relevant to queries, and turns that data into signals for its machine-learned systems. That supports "interactions matter" in general. It does not support any claim about a specific metric, such as dwell time, bounce rate or time on page, being a ranking factor.
What did not change
Take away the announcements and the work that makes a site rank looks the same in 2026 as it did in 2024:
- Crawlable, indexable pages. Google's technical requirements are still three: Googlebot is not blocked, the page returns HTTP 200, and the content is indexable. Meeting them makes a page eligible; indexing is not guaranteed. AI features add nothing to this list.
- Helpful content made for people. Google's self-assessment questions ask who wrote a page, how it was made and why it exists. The answer to "why" should be to help people, not to attract search visits.
- Links that are earned. Links still help Google find pages and understand what they are about, and buying or selling links for ranking is still link spam. See what backlinks are and how to build links within the rules.
- Fast, stable pages. Core Web Vitals changed one metric; the goal of a page that loads, responds and stays still did not.
- No shortcuts from scores. In March 2024 Google said that third-party "reputation" or "authority" scores do not correspond to any of its own signals, which is worth remembering before optimizing for one. How Google judges relevance and authority explains what it looks at instead.
Google's own summary for the AI era is short: from its perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO. Its 2026 guide lists tactics you can ignore for Google Search, including llms.txt files, "chunking" content into small pieces and seeking inauthentic mentions.
Important
Before acting on a trend, find the Google page that says it. If there is none, treat the advice as someone's opinion, however confident it sounds, and test it on a few pages before rolling it out.
What to do now: an SEO checklist for 2026
- Check crawling and indexing as a smartphone. Use the URL Inspection tool and the Page indexing report in Search Console, and make sure the mobile page carries the same content, links and structured data as the desktop one.
- Fix Core Web Vitals in field data, starting with INP on the templates that fail at the 75th percentile.
- Audit for scaled and third-party content. Look for near-duplicate template pages, sponsored or partner sections that have nothing to do with your site, and AI-generated pages nobody reviewed.
- Put a byline on every article that leads to an author page, and source and date the facts in it.
- Clean up expectations for retired rich results. FAQ rich results and the types retired in 2025 no longer display; keep markup that describes visible content and still earns a feature.
- Open the Generative AI performance report to see which pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and decide deliberately whether to keep the default setting of the generative AI control.
- Annotate your reporting with update dates from the Search Status Dashboard, and compare full weeks before and after each rollout.
- Test every new trend claim against Google's documentation, and label the rest as opinion.
For the full audit and prioritization process, follow how to improve SEO. If you would rather have it done for you, our SEO service starts with a technical audit: a crawl of the whole site, a read of Search Console and, where you have them, your server logs. We track where you are cited in AI answers alongside classic rankings, and we do not buy links.
