June 2026 Google Search Observations

[BigKat]

I am supposed to believe that AI is useful for business when biggest AI company (Google) itself can't make AI that can spot spam from real content.

It demonstrates AI is more hype than anything else. If AI were so great, all the states allowing AI data centers to be built would be using the technology themselves and they're not. I'm sure a lot of politicians are getting rich, along with the AI companies, but that's about it at this point.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:46 am (utc) on Jun 3, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[shadowlight]

Conducting searches on mobile yesterday.

Text on screen for organics was significantly smaller than the text used for AD's and all other G 'SERP Features'.

Has anyone else seen this before, I have seen it before, a few months ago.

[Micha]

The UK is getting serious. Google will have to be more transparent about how search rankings work. This could get interesting.

[seroundtable.com ]

[Martin Ice Web]

I would love to see google have to shut down AIO because of anti-competitive practices.
Stealing content is not a business.

Therefor it would just be right if google has to share all its data. So they can see how it feels when someone gets data for free, make money with it and you can do nothing about it.

[RedBar]

My hotel and other localised sites are continuing with steady / average traffic and my main, plus all other global sites, are continuing at 50% and not generating any NEW project / bulk business enquiries whatsoever.

I'm pretty sure G's data is driving their ad model even more towards localisation.

The local sites are all public / retail, the global are all bulk / projects therefore make your own conclusions as to what the last 3+ months have done to specific sectors of the global economy. This isn't a political comment, it's a factual reality of what is affecting many of us.

[shadowlight]

In a world first, publishers will be able to opt out of their content being used to power AI features in Google search

To boost consumer trust, Google is also now required to make sure that publisher content is properly attributed, using clear links, in AI generated search results.

Source: [gov.uk ]

Noticed today that google page speed is now giving warnings if your site doesn't include llms.txt.

If your llms.txt file does not follow recommendations, large language models may not be able to understand how you want your website to be crawled or used for training.

Maybe in future, this will be used for UK publishers to opt out of AIO.

[Micha]

It seems that something is going on again. Traffic to the shop has virtually come to a complete standstill, and the news site is just limping along. Other websites are also reporting today that they are receiving little to no traffic from Google.