What changed in Google and AI search this month — and what to actually do about it.
Welcome to the first issue of TopSEOPh What’s New. Each issue, I’ll break down what actually changed in Google and AI search, and what it means for your business — no fluff, just what to do about it.
This issue: an unannounced Google update nobody’s fully diagnosed yet, AI Mode is eating more of the search results page, and a couple of smaller changes worth knowing about.
The Big One: Google Pushed an Unannounced Update
In early September, two well-known SEO analysts — Glenn Gabe and Marie Haynes — independently flagged a significant Google ranking update that rolled out around September 2–4. Google’s own status dashboard never confirmed it happened.
What to do instead:
• Compare your September 2–8 traffic against the same weekdays from prior weeks — not just a flat month-over-month comparison.
• Check whether the drop is site-wide or concentrated in specific pages or topics.
• Look at whether impressions, clicks, and rankings all dropped together, or only one of them moved — that tells you whether it’s a ranking issue or a click-through/relevance issue.
• Give it two full weeks of stable data before changing anything. We’re basically at that point now if you were hit on September 2nd — worth pulling your Search Console data this week.
Quick Hits
AI Mode is taking over more of the results page. Google’s now showing AI Mode responses (partly powered by Gemini 3.7 Flash) with link carousels for developing stories, and is testing flight-price tracking and hotel booking directly inside AI Mode. The trend is consistent: less real estate for traditional blue links, more for AI-generated answers. Getting cited inside those answers matters more than ranking #1 the old way.
Google added tracking parameters to result URLs. New “goto” redirect parameters showed up on search result links — widely read as a move against third-party rank-tracking tools like SerpAPI (which Google is still fighting in court). Most tools already have workarounds, but it’s a reminder that scraped ranking data is getting less reliable, not more.
EEA sites got a policy carve-out. Google now exempts the European Economic Area from part of its site reputation abuse enforcement. If you manage any EU-based client sites, worth knowing — though it’s a narrow exemption, not a green light.
Try This
Search a question your ideal customer would actually type into Google. See whether you’re the one getting cited inside the AI-generated answer — not just showing up as a blue link underneath it. That’s the real bar now, and it’s a five-minute way to check where you actually stand.
Did You Know?
Google’s original name was “BackRub.” Larry Page and Sergey Brin built it in 1996 as a Stanford research project that ranked pages by counting how many other pages linked to them — the core idea that became PageRank, and still underpins a huge amount of how search engines evaluate authority today.
Thanks for reading the first issue. If you’d rather have all of this handled for you instead of tracking it yourself every month, take a look at DWY or DFY — full monthly SEO + AEO service.
Know someone who’d find this useful? Forward it along — every share helps.
See you next issue — Belrie, TopSEOPh
Sources referenced in this issue: September 2026 Google Webmaster Report — Search Engine Roundtable, and Unconfirmed Google Update, September 2026 — Single Grain.
TopSEOPh, Lot 1, Blk 7 Brookside Village, Brgy. Dalipuga, Iligan City, 9200 Philippines
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