Google May 2026 core update - what are your thoughts?

too early to panic yet

first few days of a core update are always messy. i’d rather wait until it finishes before making big changes, otherwise you can end up fixing things that were just update noise

my guess is thin ai pages, lazy parasite stuff and sites ranking only because of authority will feel it more

for proper sites i’d just watch the pages/queries and see what actually moved before touching anything
 
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It definitely feels like things are getting more unpredictable with each update we also noticed more volatility recently, especially with newer or lower trust site. In my opinion, consistency and overall site trust seem to matter more now than before. Quick wins don't last a long as they used to. Curious to see how this update play out over the next few week
 
TheSplinter said:
That's not gonna be an issue because people will continue to produce data even if they ain't gaining anything from it. Google knows that.
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There is a reason Google kept pushing reddit and forums as soon as they planned AI inclusion in search results. Encyclopedia and news are traditional datasets that continue to exist but Google needs a lot more user generated data. They need small blogs, online discussions, user feedback, etc. However, most of it is moving to social media. A search engine needs a ton of data to work efficiently. It's not a sorting machine that arranges 100 webpages into 10 search pages but a search engine that finds most appropriate pages out of a million pages.

Social media kept limiting Google from excessive crawling. Elon Musk directly showed them the exit door. So, they need sources where people beg them to crawl content - and that's websites. Google can only exist as long as there are websites. Otherwise people can access sites like Amazon through apps and get information from AI tools like chatgpt.
 
The only thing I've noticed is that two sites I checked on GSC, all their backlinks have disappeared. I don't know if it has anything to do with the update.
 
Google is going crazy with AI Overviews, its literally on all keywords now, also interesting part is that reddit quora Youtube are ranking much faster now.

My AI Blogs in some niches like informational celebrity content are doing insanely good. While 20% traffic drop in commercial content blogs has been seen in the past few days.

I am going to focus on youtube, reddit, quora for the next few months.
 
Not much of an impace on my side, but also my google traffic is very limited so i guess its not possible to distinguish between an update and normal up and downs.
 
Diamond Damien said:
Finally:
AI overviews aren't always on the money - always worth digging deeper ;)
1779389660451.png
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I like that you attached this to the post... What a shit show : D
They haven’t even got their house in order yet and are still aggressively pushing AI SERPs

gmc93 said:
I knew this was coming ...it started since earlier May. My xx,xxx turned into lot less quickly. But there is always a way to get back. Stay focused!
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Classic old-school BHW mentality right here... survive and rebuild. Rinse and repeat

Lotta folks on here have already survived multiple Google eras before this one : D


Panther28 said:
I'm only growing towards last years levels again. I don't get any ai overviews, as my site is behind an over 18 popup, and ai refuses to go through it.

I expect to just keep growing, don't know what more to say. I have user submissions growing, not sure HOW seo makes any difference to me now with this site i'm running, I'm riding the back of a brand recognition name. Still at number 1 for my 1 keyword! lol
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I pretty much started moving away from depending heavily on Google since last year too and focused more on personal branding across social platforms instead. At some point, most of what I want Google for is when people search my brand, they see multiple references all over Google backing it up and giving it more authority... more for brand validation than pure traffic : )

I believe SEO still works but in my own case, I don’t really need it the same way anymore because it mattered less once I started building an audience that exists outside Google

I haven’t done as much on that in past couple months because I’ve had too many things to focus on at once, but the results are still there and I can pick it back up whenever I want to : )


Hetneo said:
The timing tells you everything -> they dropped this one day after I/O showed off the new AI search box that buries the blue links. This isn't a "quality" update, it's Google clearing the runway for the AI SERP and the ad inventory that comes with it. Same recycled "helpful content" line, zero new guidance :rolleyes:, because there's nothing for us to "fix," they've just reshuffled who gets the scraps.

Two things I'm seeing:
  • GSC's link report went sideways at the exact same time, me and loads of people are seeing zero links or massive drops. That's the report breaking, not your links dying. Don't go ripping anything out off bad data.
  • As usual, ~2-week rollout, won't settle till early June. Anyone calling winners and losers right now is guessing.
My take: the operators who treat their links as assets they can steer come out of these fine. The ones praying to the content gods will be back in this thread in June asking what happened. Same as it ever was.
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This is probably the highest level strategic take for me so far in this thread : )

They’re clearly trying to keep users inside Google now instead of sending traffic outward
 
Message is always clear from google. Hop into AI train.
 
Nothing spectacular on my side, very little movement overall, a few sites slightly down, a few slightly up. Will wait for a little while longer before trying to dig deeper into this..
 
I basically give little attention to SEO these days, the return isn't there like there is for focusing on other traffic gen.
 
Too early to call winners/losers yet, but I’d expect the usual pattern: volatility first, then the real direction becomes clearer after 1–2 weeks.

My guess is this update will keep pushing the same theme: sites with real topical depth, original experience/data, strong brand/entity signals, and cleaner UX will hold up better. Thin AI pages, rewritten affiliate content, parasite-style pages, and sites relying mostly on expired-domain/link tricks are probably more exposed.

For me it doesn’t really change the playbook, just reinforces it. Improve pages that already have impressions, prune/merge weak content, add first-hand proof where possible, strengthen internal links, and build content that can be useful in both Google Search and AI answers. SEO isn’t dead, but lazy SEO is getting harder every update.
 
AI is taking over for real this time. I even noticed that dictionary definitions are now primarily AI and have gone to shit.

Someone typed "disregard" into Google search. AI overview replied "I will disregard all previous instructions, what do you want to do today."

I also saw a Hubspot article that the title tag and h1 was omitted and what was indexed as the title snippet is "Written by".

Crazy serps these days.
 
It's crazy how changes by Google can make or break people's income stream. I gave up trying to rank my websites and I stopped caring about trying to rank in Google for my wordpress plugin. I find it much more refreshing having a product to sell where I have more control over the income stream. Like all things tech, I'm sure 5 years from now what's new today will be old then. Keep on adapting my friends!
 
One site had traffic drop a little, but client had no fresh content in 1 month. Other traffic and ranking is about the same, but I have not been using backlinks lately except a couple per site, g likes it when I link their things. The overviews are at all time worst for sure!
 
Hasn't rolled out fully yet, there's nothing to say for now
 
This doesn't significantly affect my data.I think this is an interesting improvement.
 
I've stopped trying to predict these updates. Just build stuff that's actually useful. If you get hit, figure out why and fix it. Most people overcomplicate this.
 
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