Live from Momentic Studio, this news feed is curated by the Momentic team so you can stay up to date on LLMd, AI, search, SEO, GEO, AEO, AI search, frontier AI models, and relevant tools. Updated in real time.
> Dashboards and Motion are off by default, and you can turn them on in Organization settings → Artifacts.
> Docs, Slides, and Design turn on by default October 15, or you can turn them on today.
Google published new documentation about the UGC Fresh Data Program. Looks like they want to make it easier and faster for popular forums and social platforms to appear on SERPs.
This statement stood out: "Content submitted must be as fresh as possible, ideally sent within minutes."
> The UGC Fresh Data Program is an initiative designed to help platforms display fresh, high quality, and authentic user-generated content (UGC) across various features on Search. Through this program, approved platforms can use a dedicated data ingestion pipeline to send content and interaction signals to Google. This proactive approach helps ensure that fresh content is processed and quickly updated in Search, so people can easily find useful first-hand perspectives from your platform.
The September Google Spam Update concluded this morning, after a total run of 13 days and 16 hours - much longer than the previous 2 spam updates which only took about 2 days each!
Ahrefs has a new feature in Site Audit - it can show you JavaScript-heavy pages so you can decide if they're worth making accessible to AI bots. (Only works if the crawls have JS rendering enabled)
Find it here:
Google launched a new SynthID Dectector (an early version was introduced last year) - just upload an image, video, or audio file to see if it was made with AI from Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA, Kakao or Apple (coming soon).
Claude for Google Workspace: now in public beta. Work with Claude in your files or use connectors to create & edit files in Claude.
Search Central updated their YouTube channel with 2 curated playlists meant to make it easier for beginners to get the most out of their robust library of videos:
Now you can view, edit & collaborate on Markdown files directly in Google Docs (and view rendered previews in Drive)
Here's a helpful Google Search Console update for businesses that sell in more than one country: now you can select multiple countries at once in the performance report filter.
Google updated documentation on prohibited & restricted content for GBPs. They expanded an existing section about advertising and solicitation.
Merchants with GBPs need to make sure none of the listing content includes *time-bound* pricing, promotions, or CTAs. And GBP posts can't include any contact info or links to other websites unrelated to your business.
Just keep it real. Not worth risking suspension!
Ahrefs has a cool new report in Site explorer: Organic pages by type. You get a bar graph with an overview and you can open up each type to explore sub-types, and click through on any of those to get the exact URLs with performance over time, traffic, keywords, position.
Just pop a domain in Site explorer and scroll down until you see this:
Google commented on spam and spam updates at GSC Live in Barcelona D3. In a nutshell:
If more AI slop keeps getting published, we can expect more spam updates to keep happening.
This recap of GSC Central Live in Barcelona Day 3 includes a "How long it takes Google to..." roundup based on Google's actual data and shared by Gary Illyes. Processes are grouped under Crawling, Indexing & Serving and obviously these processes don't happen in isolation so if one gets delayed it will delay others.
Nice to see some approximate time ranges even if they don't guarantee anything.
Yoast launched "Yoast SEO AI+" for Shopify. It's a mashup of Yoast SEO for Shopify and Yoast AI Brand Insights. It creates an "AI Visibility Index" score and gives you sentiment tracking, competitor benchmarking and the sources AI cites when it mentions your brand. It scans ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity (you'd think they'd scan AIO & AI Mode too, and Copilot in Bing? but those weren't mentioned).
Google also updated documentation on Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. They added this line:
> *"Beyond E-E-A-T, the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines emphasize that one of the most critical factors for assessing page quality is the quality of the main content, specifically how effectively it allows the page to achieve its purpose and provide a satisfying user experience."*
They also added a whole new section right after that defining what "Main content" means, and which fundamental attributes of main content their Search Quality raters are trained to evaluate:
> Main content
>
> Google Search defines "main content" as any part of the webpage that directly helps the page achieve its purpose. Depending on the primary intent of the page, the main content directly fulfills the page's purpose and could include:
> • *Primary text and media:* The main text, articles, images, audio, or video files on the page.
> • *Interactive features:* Built-in functionality such as calculators, online tools, games, or search functionality.
> • *User-generated contributions:* Forum discussions, customer reviews, comments, or user-uploaded media when they directly fulfill the page's purpose (for example, when the page is about discussing a particular user question).
> • *Tabbed or expanded sections:* Information housed behind interactive tabs (such as product specifications, safety notes, or user reviews).
> • *Page titles and headings:* The visible title and headings throughout a page that summarize its topic and helps users make informed decisions about visiting.
> When reviewing content quality, Search Quality raters are trained to evaluate these fundamental attributes of the main content:
> • *Effort:* The extent to which human work went into creating the content or the systems powering it. For example, writing original analysis, translating a poem manually, or building a custom interactive map for a game represents high effort. Conversely, automatically generating pages from feeds or using generative AI to produce large amounts of text without manual oversight or curation represents little to no effort. Attribution or giving credit to other sources doesn't replace the need for original effort.
> • *Originality:* The extent to which the content offers unique, original information or perspectives that aren't already available on other websites.
> • *Talent or skill:* Whether the content shows the talent, skill, or expertise necessary to provide a satisfying experience for visitors (such as clear writing, well-produced video, or functional page tools). Keep in mind that not all content requires specialized expertise. For example, a person sharing their experience about finding a new way to clear their driveway of snow generally doesn't necessarily require specialized expertise.
> • *Accuracy:* For informational pages, the content should be factually accurate. For topics that could significantly impact people's lives or well-being (YMYL topics), the content must be highly accurate and consistent with established expert consensus.
Google updated documentation on using generative AI content on websites. They said they added information from the Search Quality Raters guidelines and the purpose is to get the documentation in sync with the presentations they use at developer events.
In the section named "Focus on accuracy, quality, and relevance" they added:
> *“Keep in mind that generative models don’t retrieve facts, but predict a likely sequence of words based on their training data. Because of this, generative AI outputs may contain inaccuracies (also known as hallucinations). It is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing.”*
ChatGPT announced virtual try-on for clothing and accessories. Shoppers can also save products to Favorites or even create a folder to organize what they save. It's available on both mobile and web.
I tried to get this to show up but no luck. Even asked ChatGPT directly for virtual try-on and it recommended Google's virtual try-on. Guess it's still rolling out!
Demandshpere data confirms there's been an increase in AIO for branded queries - more than triple in September 2026!
Now confirmed: support for Gems will be removed starting in November 2026 for personal accounts, March 2027 for workspace accounts, and June 2027 for educators. Google will automatically migrate Gems into Skills when Gems go away, or you can transition them yourself - here's the help documentation.
Topics:
Chris Long shared on LI that he is seeing AIO on the "majority" of brand queries - meaning brands he has tested.
Did a few brand name searches myself and it seems like AIOs are showing up mostly for "big" brands, but proximity to brand HQ and whether they have a GBP is also a factor. I saw some brand SERPs where the AIO is at the very top, and other SERPs where the brand's traditional blue link results sit above the AIO. (And many small/medium brands don't get an AIO, at least for my run of point-in-time searches today).
Just good to be aware of and something to check on if you notice a decrease in clicks from plain brand searches - could be a factor. Hard to suss search intent from a plain brand query. Also good to review your brand's AIO for accuracy!
Now Google Maps is forcing users to log in to see all reviews & photos on a GBP (or leave a review, or sort reviews). Can confirm I am seeing this happen as well. Annoying but will hopefully reduce bot spam on GBPs.
MS Clarity now lets you customize which brand terms are used to define branded queries for your AI visibility dashboard. (think: misspellings, abbreviations, employee names, product names, etc).
Shopify announced WebMCP support for checkout:
> "With storefront and cart tools already live, browser agents can now assist the full shopping journey on Shopify, from product discovery and cart management through checkout and order confirmation. These tools serve agents that shop your store from their browser."
I hate sitting through webinars, but I love a good summary! Here's one from Sept 24 where 2 Google reps & 1 Uberall rep talk about how local businesses (single or multi-location) can optimize for visibility in AI searches. Watch on demand also available.
All the advice makes sense - the hard part in my experience is executing recommendations like "establish one source of truth" and "set ownership and response standards".
Meta announced Muse for small businesses. Free stuff and also subscription plans "for those who want more"
Unconfirmed rumor that Google is planning to retire (free) Gems in Gemini, forcing users to migrate them to (paid) Skills instead.
Apparently bad actors and/or bots have been submitting invalid requests in the Google Business Profiles support portal, because Google just updated the GBP Help documentation to add this new section:
> *Misuse of support channels*
> To ensure our support services remain effective and available for everyone, we require all Google Business Profile users to use the support paths responsibly. Google provides these channels in good faith to resolve legitimate business and technical issues. To avoid delays in response times and affect the support for all businesses, avoid any misuse of the portal or flood them with invalid requests.
> Repeated submissions of unfounded support complaints include these examples:
> • False or misleading reports
> • Reports made in bad faith
> Tip: Repeated unfounded submissions can result in rejection of all further complaints without assessment.
Google expanded AI Mode monitoring capabilities to all users (was only for Ultra/Pro subscribers when first announced). It's like advanced Google alerts you set up conversationally. Their example: "tell me when new weekend pop-ups for vintage flea markets, stoop sales or night markets are announced in Austin". The catch: you need to enable saving activity to your Search Services History (Web & App Activity) to create monitoring tasks.
A lot of Google Merchant Center documentation (including API Help) was recently updated, and Barry Schwartz dug in to give us a helpful summary:
> Google did not change the core definitions of the policies themselves [...]
>
> *The overarching theme of these updates is operational efficiency and stricter enforcement workflows.* Google has harmonized its help center documentation so that no matter which policy a merchant violates, they are met with the exact same account-level warnings, the exact same dashboard navigation steps, and the exact same rules for submitting individual or bulk appeals.
I couldn't find any source material for this SearchNorwichXL talk so maybe it was a "had to be there in person" thing, but Mark Williams-Cook shared a finding from Arnout Hellemans.
I always wondered where People Also Asked came from and here's some insight on that: PAA are generated from actual search queries, from published web content, and by using a topic + question template formula.
> Unsolicited #SEO tip: At SearchNorwichXL, Arnout Hellemans shows his research into question sources such as "People Also Asked" likely come from a variety of sources (patent: US9213748B1) and Google cycles through a pool of them.
>
> To get the strongest insights at a particular time, in a specific region, it is a good idea to run multiple, non-cached queries with AlsoAsked to see what survives
Google published a research paper (only 3pp) about a new AI spam detecting system called SAFE (Scaled Abuse Forensics Examiner):
The timing of this research being published right when the 2026 Spam Update was announced seems to indicate this new system is being integrated.
Someone at an SEO agency in Croatia published an SEO meta study that cites a Momentic case study featuring a new health brand:
◦ Momentic cited for item #55 "Publish regular posts alongside technical fixes" on p.50
◦ Link to our case study is on p. 136
This is my first time seeing AI Mode prompts inside a PAA AIO:
Microsoft introduced a new Copilot experience:
Perplexity created a new retrieval & ranking engine called Photon that now powers Perxplexity's AI-first search infrastructure. They coined a new term: *docblob*. It's a compressed record of a document's internal metadata which makes lookups more efficient.
Similarweb also published a free prompt guide so you can benchmark your own data to their findings using Similarweb MCP.
Similarweb published a "State of Ecommerce in 2026" report, combining their own data with Statista's. Their findings reaffirmed that AI's presence in buyer journeys is growing, but it's not replacing any segment of the journey, it's expanding the journey. How AI is used in shopper journeys varies by industry and generation. Here are some standout takeaways:
Here are some standout data points:
Did the August 2026 spam update leave you hungry for more? Google just served another helping: momenticmarketing.com/google-updates/september-2026-spam-update
With this spam update being announced the same day they added the multimodal search report to GSC and updated video structured data documentation, it makes me wonder if this spam update will be more focused on multimodal search. Time will tell!
Gemini is getting a bunch more connected apps - one of them is Webflow. To see available connected apps, click the Settings gear wheel in the lower left corner.
Ask YouTube, a conversational search tool, is getting shopping features "to make your shopping journey easier."
> “When searching for reviews of a specific product, you may receive organized video recommendations, such as a comparison table that includes product attributes and categories based on your preferences. Once you click on a video that interests you most, you can continue asking more questions about the product directly on the video’s watch page.”
Google Search Console now has multimodal Search performance reporting.
Web-multimodal tracks search results triggered by a query that uses an image, photo, or screenshot. Text-only queries are tracked as Web text-based.
Multimodal data in GSC includes searches with Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the Chrome right-click "Search this image" feature.
Find it under the search type filter in the traditional Performance report as well as the Generative AI report. Rolling out globally and I'm seeing it in all our accounts already!
> "We believe this new data will help you better understand your site's performance in the modern search landscape and optimize your visual content."
OpenAI announces MentalHealthBench:
"While ChatGPT is not a substitute for therapy or professional care, expert-informed insights help us measure the *progress towards AI models that are able to respond with empathy, promote well-being*, and guide people towards real-world support such as localized crisis hotlines or someone they trust."
"Alongside this research, we’ve strengthened ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive conversations, expanded access to crisis resources and added Trusted Contact to connect people with someone they trust in moments of distress."
Google updated GBP Help documentation to specify that listing owners have *just 4 days to accept or reject suggestions made by users*.
> If you don’t respond within 4 days, Google may automatically publish the update if it is supported by other publicly available information, such as your business website.
I don't personally look at Shopify Analytics (yet) but if you do, be aware that they changed how sessions & conversion rate are measured. These changes are rolling out Sept 21-23:
Because conversion rate is calculated from sessions, changes to your session count can also change your conversion rate. For example:
These changes are not retroactive so historical data isn't getting reprocessed. BUT reports can display that historical data differently now that bot sessions are automatically filtered out.
New in Microsoft Clarity: Page classification for bot activity
Here is a better screenshot showing where to access dashboards - and of course Julius Fedorovicius has a great guide on how to use them.
If you've ever created or used a custom GPT, get ready for it to go away. They're retiring all of them on December 11, 2026 so you have to migrate any GPTs you created to a plugin if you want to keep them. Migration might not be available for your account yet. I clicked on "GPTs" in the left nav and got a 403 error.
Google Sheets has a new manual calculation setting:
Google Merchant Center updated help documentation about requirements for Google Store ratings:
