In this edition: Big Google Updates!
May 2026 Core Algorithm Update Rolls Out
On May 21st, Google launched the May 2026 core update. It is expected to take up to two weeks to roll out, and we’ve already seen a lot of volatility in the search engine results pages (SERPs) from it. If you’ve noticed a large increase or decrease in organic traffic over the last week, this update (plus Memorial Day) could be contributing to it.
Our recommendation during an update is to keep an eye on your numbers, but don’t react until the dust settles post-completion. Often the data during the rollout is not representative of what sites will see when it’s over.
Began: May 21st, 2026
Ended: June 2nd, 2026
Google I/O 2026: Search Is Now AI by Default
We knew it was coming because Google told us it would in a past Google I/O. In this year’s annual event, Google declared Search is “AI search, through and through.” The company’s supporting data:
- 1 billion plus monthly users of AI Mode in its first year.
- 2.5 billion plus monthly users of AI Overviews
- Queries are at an all-time high, but AI answers more of them, leading to a decoupling of click volume and search volume.
Our SEO team lead, Carolyn Wilborn, explains what this means in her summary of the keynote on our blog, Why Organic Traffic is Down (But Search Isn’t), and we highly recommend you read it!
Google Search Gets Gemini 3.5 Flash
Source: blog.google
Among the big changes that came out of I/O, Google has upgraded Google Search to use Gemini 3.5 Flash, which delivers “sustained frontier performance for agents and coding,” and is now the default mode for everyone globally. Other announcements of note:
- Google’s information agents are crawling the web 24/7 without a user query, surfacing brand recommendations automatically.
- The company has also expanded agentic booking capabilities for services.
- Personal Intelligence, the ability to connect your Gmail and Calendar for more personalized recommendations, has expanded globally.
All of this means that optimizing for AI search is more important than ever, but good news! We’ve been expecting this.
Google Releases New Document on Optimizing for AI Search
Your ROI Revolution team has been testing ways to show up in AI Overviews and AI Mode since the Search Generative Experience (SGE) first rolled out. We’ve learned that (1) good GEO is based on good SEO and (2) unique, helpful content that adds to the knowledge of the internet – the drum Google spokesperson John Mueller keeps beating – is key.
The weekend before Google I/O, the company released its first official documentation about optimizing for AI search. Here are the key points:
- Create valuable, non-commodity content for people, not LLMs. Content based on common knowledge is already available through AI answers. Add a unique perspective, answers that are difficult to find online, personal experience that readers will find helpful, etc.
- Add high-quality images and video when it makes sense.
- Focus on what your users want, but don’t overdo it. The document cautions, “While it might be tempting to create separate content for every possible variation of how people might search (for example, by focusing on other queries that people have asked, or fan-out queries), doing so primarily to manipulate rankings or generative AI responses in Google Search violates Google’s scaled content abuse spam policy.”
- Building and maintaining a clear technical structure based on all existing technical SEO best practices.
- Provide a good page experience, including being mobile-first (a long-standing Google rule).
- Reduce duplicate content to improve user experience and help search engines preserve crawling resources.
If you have any questions about any of this month’s SEO news, reach out to your ROI Revolution SEO team for answers. If you’re not already working with us and you’d like to, please reach out.
ICYMI: Recent SEO Blog Posts
Why Organic Traffic is Down (But Search Isn’t)
