SEO Daily News Recap for Thursday, August 13, 2026
Organic SEO & Search News
Meta publishes holiday marketing guides – The company advised brands to start planning early in order to take advantage of audience insights before the December gifting phase heats up.
X shares new insights into transparency and shadowbanning – The platform released an update to its code display on GitHub that allows users to check their content for any potential restrictions.
Meta removed more than 750,000 teen accounts in Australia – The company credited artificial intelligence analysis for improving its enforcement rates with regards to the country’s eSafety Commission under-16 social media ban.
Paid Search & Platform Innovations
Google Ads is removing language targeting from Search campaigns – Google’s shift to automated language matching removes a manual Search targeting control, leaving advertisers with less control.
Microsoft Clarity AI Scrape-to-Referral insights report – This report shows you the AI scrape activity against referral traffic as a metric to help you determine if that bot activity returns value.
Shopify: AI referrals up 197%, but organic search still leads traffic – New Shopify data shows AI drives higher-converting, first-time buyers, but Google still delivers the biggest share of merchant traffic.
General Digital Marketing
OpenAI Makes ChatGPT Sources Less Visible – OpenAI is testing or rolling out a change to how you can click to see the sources from the ChatGPT responses, potentially impacting the visibility of sources.
Google Search Profiles Lowers Subscriber Requirements – Google has dropped the minimum number of followers needed to be approved for a Search Profile on Google, presenting new opportunities for influencers and businesses.
Why SEO uncertainty is creating opportunities for challengers – Market leaders getting nervous opens up opportunities for challengers to close the gap and gain competitive advantage in the SEO landscape.
Dive into our detailed sections for more insights and updates.
Organic SEO & Search News
SEO Daily News and Algorithm Updates
Spammy Google Selected Canonical
When you use the Google Search Console URL inspection tool, Google will show you what it calls the "Google-selected canonical." Sometimes that URL will look off, weird and even scary, because sometimes it might be a URL for a spammy site.
Source:
Search Engine Roundtable
Google Search Profiles Lowers Subscriber Requirements
Google has dropped the minimum number of followers needed to be approved for a Search Profile on Google. Previously, it was 100,000 subscribers across YouTube, Instagram, X and Tiktok. Now it is 35,000 subscribers across YouTube, Instagram, and X but still 100,000 on TikTok.
Source:
Search Engine Roundtable
Google Search Ranking Volatility Heated August 12-13
We saw a spike in volatility yesterday amongst the Google Search results rankings. There was a spike in ranking movement outside the day-to-day norm that seemed to start yesterday and maybe into today. The chatter is somewhat cool, but the tools showed a spike in the Google rank volatility.
Source:
Search Engine Roundtable
Daily Search Forum Recap: August 13, 2026
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…
Source:
Search Engine Roundtable
Only 1.1% of news publisher visits come directly from AI: Study
AI referrals made up 1.1% of publisher visits after AI chats, with most traffic coming from direct visits and search.
Source:
Search Engine Land
Technical SEO
Misconfiguring Cloudflare Can Hurt Your SEO
This is just a random tip, make sure not to misconfigure Cloudflare, your content delivery network and/or your hosting server. I see way too many cases of this popping up and causing such a pain for SEOs to fix. All of a sudden, you might notice your rankings drop off a cliff on Google Search and your pages begin to drop out of the Google index. It is likely because you are blocking Google from crawling your site.
Source:
Search Engine Roundtable
SEO Tools and Data Analysis
X shares new insights into transparency and shadowbanning
The platform released an update to its code display on GitHub that allows users to check their content for any potential restrictions.
Source:
Social Media Today – Latest News
Microsoft Clarity AI Scrape-to-Referral insights report
This report shows you the AI scrape activity against referral traffic as a metric to help you determine of that bot activity returns value.
Source:
Search Engine Land
AI and Machine Learning in SEO
Meta removed more than 750,000 teen accounts in Australia
The company credited artificial intelligence analysis for improving its enforcement rates with regards to the country’s eSafety Commission under-16 social media ban.
Source:
Social Media Today – Latest News
OpenAI Makes ChatGPT Sources Less Visible
OpenAI is testing or rolling out a change to how you can click to see the sources from the ChatGPT responses. It used to be a button named "Sources" in the footer of the response, but now sometimes it is showing up within the three-dot "More actions" menu, requiring you to click more to find those sources – which very few will do.
Source:
Search Engine Roundtable
Most AI visibility gains are just technical debt repayment
AI search may be making long-standing problems with site architecture, content, internal linking, and rendering more costly.
Source:
Search Engine Land
37 Proven Ways to Use AI in Marketing
Realistic, practical ways to use AI in all areas of marketing, according to real marketers.
Source:
SEO Blog by Ahrefs
Content Marketing and Strategy
Your B2B SEO can win the click and lose the consideration
The brands cited in AI Overviews can influence which companies buyers investigate next, even when no one clicks the source.
Source:
Search Engine Land
Meta publishes holiday marketing guides
The company advised brands to start planning early in order to take advantage of audience insights before the December gifting phase heats up.
Source:
Social Media Today – Latest News
Link building works better when you think beyond links
The strongest off-page signals aren’t always followed links. See how content, PR coverage, and outreach can reinforce one another.
Source:
Search Engine Land
Career Development and Industry Trends
Why SEO uncertainty is creating opportunities for challengers
When market leaders get nervous, years of competitive advantage become vulnerable. Search uncertainty creates an opening to close the gap.
Source:
Search Engine Land
E-commerce and Affiliate SEO
Shopify: AI referrals up 197%, but organic search still leads traffic
New Shopify data shows AI drives higher-converting, first-time buyers, but Google still delivers the biggest share of merchant traffic.
Source:
Search Engine Land
User Experience and SEO Optimization
Instagram reveals its new logo
It’s the first updated branding for the app in more than a decade and users have received the refresh with mixed reactions.
Source:
Social Media Today – Latest News
Meta gives 15,000 pairs of AI glasses to vision impaired users
The initiative is run through not-for-profit charitable organization Vision Ireland and may help assuage some negative sentiment about the devices.
Source:
Social Media Today – Latest News
Paid Search & Platform Innovations
Paid Search and Advertising
Google Ads is removing language targeting from Search campaigns
Google’s shift to automated language matching removes a manual Search targeting control, leaving advertisers with less control
Source:
Search Engine Land




















