Changes at Google

The Supreme Commander of whether your website, product or service keywords get found in search engines. The Algorithms keep changing. Following is a brief, but we also have a larger issue coming.

Recent changes at Google are primarily centered around the pervasive integration of AI into its core services, major search algorithm updates to combat low-quality content, and new features across its various platforms like Android and Google Cloud.

Google Search & Algorithm Updates

Google continually refines its search algorithms to provide more relevant and helpful results. Recent significant updates include:

• Core Updates: Google launched December 2025, November 2024, August 2024, and the multi-system March 2024 core updates to improve overall content assessment and reduce unhelpful content in search results.

• Spam Policies & Updates: New policies were introduced to tackle “site reputation abuse” (parasite SEO), scaled content abuse (mass-producing low-quality content), and expired domain abuse. Algorithmic spam updates rolled out in March, June, and December of 2024.

• AI Overviews (formerly SGE): This feature, which provides AI-generated summaries at the top of search results, rolled out to all U.S. users and is expanding globally. These overviews are intended to help users find information faster but have also brought changes to how organic links are displayed.

• Content Emphasis: Google is placing a greater emphasis on content that demonstrates real-world “experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness” (E-E-A-T), favoring authentic, people-first content over content purely optimized for search engines.

• Deepfake Content Management: A new system was put in place to help ensure deepfake content does not rank highly in Google Search results and to simplify its removal process.

Product and Feature Updates

Google has also introduced new user-facing features across its product ecosystem:

• Android: New personalization features include customized group chats in Google Messages, an AI-redesigned Google Photos editor with one-tap suggestions, and the ability to customize Google Home Favorites across devices.

• Google Workspace: Google Meet now uses picture-in-picture automatically when screen sharing, and users can schedule messages to be sent later in Google Chat.

• Google Ads: The platform is transitioning call-only ads to call assets within responsive search ads and has completed the rollout of a new design interface. AI innovations like Performance Max campaigns are being continuously updated to help advertisers maximize ROI using machine learning.

• Google Cloud: There are numerous advancements in AI infrastructure. These include new capabilities for secure AI agents using the Model Context Protocol (MCP), performance enhancements for Kubernetes Engine (GKE), and new database migration tools leveraging Gemini AI.

These changes show Google’s ongoing effort to integrate AI capabilities into all of its services, focusing on improved user experience, better content quality, and enhanced security.

How-To Work It Next Article

In our next issue we address how this affects smaller businesses. The general cost to adapt to Google requirements and work with them on SEO and web searchability is becoming enormous. Google ads is an example. The starting budget and what you get is substantial. Also the hoops one has to jump through to become visible the organic route in the Google search engine is extensive. Neverending setups. Next article we address this.