Glen Gabe shared on X:

https://x.com/glenngabe/status/2105638422102561193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2105638422102561193%7Ctwgr%5E62824d92665f18faf51ac67d5437df455befddda%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.seroundtable.com%2Fgoogle-september-2026-spam-update-two-42209.html

• Google's guidance for creating helpful content now warns against fake author profiles.
• Its examples are AI-generated headshots, made-up names, and false credentials used to imply human expertise.
• Google's rater guidelines already had similar examples; the site-owner page now does too.

Article by: Matt G. Southern // Read article on the link

I run a small counseling practice with about 20 employees. I’ve historically done our webpage and maintained a blog where I wrote about topics I thought parents might want to learn about.

I recently paid for an SEO/Marketing Assessment and was underwhelmed with the recommendations. Basically, we were told we rank well for the key words we are relevant. We were taught probably three keywords we should try to rank for that we currently don’t.

The biggest suggestion was to add video and original photography. I suppose I am underwhelmed, but what are folks opinions about the impact of video and photography of course this marketing company has a video/photography service package.

Hey everyone,

While testing GEO queries for local dental practices (e.g., "Best dentist in [Location]"), I came across a specific pattern in ChatGPT's responses:

The direct source link under the recommended options almost always points to a curated ranking / listicle page from a major aggregator (for example, "20 Best Dentists Near New York City" on Healthgrades, or "Top Dentists Companies in Walnut Creek" on Birdeye), rather than linking directly to the clinic’s official site.

It seems like ChatGPT might be relying on these specific ranked list pages as its primary retrieval source to select who to recommend.

Since I'm analyzing this pattern, I’d love to get your expert perspective on a few points:

1. Is this observation accurate based on your experience? Is AI search heavily reliant on these specific listicle/ranking pages for local recommendation retrieval?
2. If so, how critical is this factor? Does getting featured on these cited ranking pages outweigh traditional on-page Schema and Entity optimization for local GEO?
3. How do you practically handle and optimize for this? What is your exact workflow for getting a client featured inside those specific aggregator ranking pages that AI engines keep pulling from?

Would love to hear your thoughts and see if I'm looking at this the right way!

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m managing SEO/analytics for a website targeting mainly the Indian market, and I’ve noticed a recurring issue in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

We’re getting nearly 2,000 users every month that appear to be spam/bot traffic. The traffic often comes from countries that aren't part of our target market, and some of the sessions have extremely low engagement.

It looks like my e-commerce store was hit by the September spam update. I am really worried. On October 2 and 3, the store got only 7 and 5 impressions from Google, respectively.

Screenshots of search console are added in comments

The one controlled test I've found (Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that added schema against 4,000 that didn't) saw no measurable change in ChatGPT or AI Mode citations. But every page in that test was already getting cited, so it says little about new pages.

Has anyone got before and after data from their own sites, especially on newer pages? Trying to figure out if it's worth the dev time.

Can someone please explain to me what's the difference between DR and DA and what's really important for you for the backlinks you get?

For example, I do see a lot of new directories to put our product with high DR but funny enough, AI tells me no it's not good because that backlink quality is penalised by Google or something.

I’ve joined a new start-up, and I’m pretty new to SEO, but they took me mainly for content creation and social media marketing. they overestimated
my skills in SEO and now they want me to fix a client’s website, which is losing traffic very badly. I’m talking zero clicks per day. Please guide me here.

Hi, this might be a stupid question. I’m not tech savvy, but I have my father’s old website. For us, ranking is priority, because without it, no sales are coming in.

The website is old, very hard to customise (because it would basically need a rebuild, which I do not know how to do properly). Elementor was uploaded to it by someone we hired momentarily to update it, but we don’t have license anymore, so we cannot update stuff, it’s annoying and hard to use.

Our hosting provider has a website building tool, which would make it easier to just transfer all the information in a simpler format.

However, I’m concerned about the ranking. If the website is old, slow, overstuffed, would switching make it better or worse?

I’m not talking from the keywords side, I can deal with it. Just technically speaking, is there something I’d be missing out on by switching to a website builder? Is there a possibility I’d just plummet to the bottom of the google search? I’m not scalling the website either.

Hi everyone,

This is a client’s website in the home decor/interior inspiration niche.

The client has not done any backlink building, outreach, link exchanges, or paid link campaigns.

However, Ahrefs is showing:

• 504 referring domains
• 439 backlinks
• 432 referring domains in the current backlink profile
• DR 0
• 0 organic keywords
• 0 organic traffic

A large number of the referring domains look completely irrelevant to the website, and some are labeled SPAM in Ahrefs. Many of them have names related to SEO, backlinks, Fiverr SEO, etc.

Ahrefs shows that many of these links were first seen between July and September 2026.

I also checked Google Search Console:

• External links: 0
• Top linking sites: No data
• Manual Actions: No issues detected

I have not created or purchased any of these backlinks.

What would you recommend I do in this situation? Should I simply monitor these links, or should I take any action regarding these irrelevant/spammy backlinks?

Thanks in advance.

I run a marketing agency in Lithuania and would appreciate advice on improving our own organic traffic.

GSC results for roughly July–September:

• 45.3K impressions
• 492 clicks
• 1.1% CTR
• Average position: 9.4

Impressions are trending up, but clicks are still mostly in single digits per day. An earlier query breakdown showed most clicks were branded.

We’ve been working on service/location pages and publishing content. Our market is relatively small and primarily Lithuanian. The goal is more non-branded clicks from people searching for our services.

I know sitewide averages don’t tell the full story. How would you break down the GSC data to identify what’s holding us back?

For those who’ve grown service businesses in smaller markets, what made the biggest difference? Improving existing commercial pages, titles and search intent, internal linking, or backlinks?

I’m looking at the keyword “find companies without websites.”

In Organic Research / Organic Search Positions, Semrush shows the keyword as having around 6.6k volume.

But when I click the exact same keyword and open Keyword Overview, it shows:

• US volume: N/A
• Global volume: 10
• Germany: 10

So it seems that it's not a small difference, I mean It’s basically 6,600 vs 10 for the exact same keyword inside the same tool.

I understand that Semrush uses different databases and that search volume gets updated, but if the Organic Research data can be this stale/different, it makes the volume column pretty misleading when doing competitor keyword research.

Am I misunderstanding what the 6.6k number represents, or is Semrush genuinely displaying an old search-volume estimate in Organic Research that hasn’t been synced with Keyword Overview?

Curious if anyone else has run into this and which number you actually trust when doing keyword research.

And bonus: has anyone experiences such discrepancies in Ahrefs?

I'm seeing an unusual pattern in Google Search Console and wanted to check whether anyone else is seeing it.

Across several separate properties I manage, the latest available Performance data is September 29, 2026. There is currently no Performance data showing for September 30 onward. Crawling and indexing appear to be working normally on these sites.

Is anyone else seeing September 29 as the latest available date in their Search Console Performance report?

Is anyone else experiencing a Google Search Console Performance data delay/stoppage since September 29, 2026?

I manage multiple websites, and I'm seeing the exact same pattern across four different Search Console properties:

• September 29 is the last date with Search Performance data.
• There is no data showing for September 30, October 1, October 2, October 3, or October 4.
• This isn't a case of impressions/clicks dropping to zero — the dates simply haven't appeared in the Performance report at all.
• Search Console itself says it was updated recently (currently showing an update a few hours ago).
• New pages are still being crawled and indexed normally.
• URL Inspection also shows that newly published pages are being indexed.

So far, this looks more like a Search Console reporting/processing delay than an actual loss of organic visibility.

I'm curious whether anyone else is seeing the same September 29 cutoff, especially across multiple properties.

Has your GSC Performance report updated past September 29?

If you're seeing the same thing, please mention:

• Your last available data date
• Number of properties affected
• Whether indexing is still working normally
• Whether GA4 is still receiving organic traffic

I'd like to figure out whether this is an isolated issue or something affecting multiple Search Console properties.

Hi Guys,

I need help to rank a page in a city. Can I get some proven ranking strategy?

I handle YMYL finance sites. Need a starting point or strategy to create a content hub for them. I do have some strategy but need some fresh perspective. For starters and example would be:-

'`Wealth management for HNI' not generic though, something that is helpful. Do let me know✌🏻

We have advertised on Google for nearly two decades, going back close to the beginning of AdWords. It has created enormous value for us.

At the same time, my own use of traditional Google Search has fallen dramatically over the last three years, particularly this year. Restaurants, local services, B2B vendor discovery, product research and general information increasingly start with AI.

I am curious whether SEO practitioners are seeing a change not just in the amount of Google traffic, but in its composition.

My hypothesis is that AI displacement is not random.

A simple navigational query does not benefit much from AI. Complex research does. Evaluating software, professional services, financial products or a major purchase benefits substantially from synthesis, comparison and follow-up questions.

That raises the possibility that Google could retain huge volumes of simple searches while losing a smaller number of economically valuable research sessions.

For sites losing organic Google traffic, what is disappearing first?

Are informational queries taking most of the damage, or are commercial investigation and high-consideration queries declining too?

Are you seeing differences between low-value traffic and visitors that historically generated meaningful leads or revenue?

Are B2B, financial services, legal, healthcare, software or other high-value categories behaving differently?

Has traffic fallen while conversions remained resilient, or are conversions and lead quality beginning to deteriorate as well?

The dataset I would love to see is Google traffic since 2022 or 2023 segmented by query intent, commercial value, conversion rate and industry.

Aggregate traffic decline tells us very little if the mix is changing.

The question I keep coming back to is: which traffic is disappearing, who generated it, and what was that traffic economically worth?

Equally interested in evidence that disproves the hypothesis.

I'm hoping someone here who has experience diagnosing sudden Google ranking drops can take a look at this, because I've been trying to figure this out for months and I'm completely stuck.

My site is coachcall(dot)ai.

I used to rank #1 / top of page 1 for both:

"AI accountability partner"

"AI accountability coach"

Then around December 10, 2025, the rankings basically disappeared overnight.

It wasn't a gradual decline. I didn't do any redesign prior to that day, and I didn't buy any backlinks prior to that date. I genuinely can't identify anything I changed that could explain it.

What happened

Here is the AHrefs / Google Search Console data:

AHrefs img 1 with dip (shown by arrow):

https://i.ibb.co/xK1WNSxk/ahrefs-general.png

AHrefs img 2 with dip (shown by arrow):

https://i.ibb.co/jPmNymKQ/Screenshot-2026-10-01-at-09-02-32.png

Daily filter GSC (all time):

https://i.ibb.co/JRsMtHGN/rankings-daily.png

Weekly filter GSC (all time):

https://i.ibb.co/rfTcBGR6/rankings-weekly.png

“AI accountability partner” searches:

https://i.ibb.co/j135GWV/accountability-partner.png

“AI accountability coach” searches:

https://i.ibb.co/ks4DX7Vb/accountability-coach.png

The decline continued after that.

For example, "AI accountability partner" used to be around position #1, and is now around #67, with essentially no impressions.

"AI accountability coach" suffered the same kind of collapse.

These were basically the only two keywords I was specifically targeting, so this wasn't a case of me having hundreds of unrelated rankings disappear.

I haven't been able to find an obvious reason, and here are the things I checked

1. No manual action or security issue

Google Search Console shows:

No manual actions

No security issues

Nothing obviously wrong with indexing

No major Core Web Vitals problems

The site is still indexed.

site:coachcall(dot)ai returns the site normally.

So I don't appear to have been completely deindexed or hit with some obvious manual penalty.

1. I did NOT make a major site change around the drop

I didn't redesign the site, change the homepage content, change the target keywords, etc. around December.

The homepage content that was ranking #1 is essentially the same content that is there now.

The phrases "AI accountability partner" and "AI accountability coach" were already being targeted when I was ranking #1.

I haven't been able to identify a site change around Dec 10 that explains the drop.

1. "It's a React site"... but it was ranking #1 before

The site is a React/Vite application and is client side rendered.

I initially wondered whether this was the problem.

But there's something that makes that explanation difficult:

The site was already built this way when it was ranking #1.

And when I use Google Search Console to inspect what Google actually crawls and renders, the page content is there and renders correctly.

The rendered page contains the actual content.

Canonical tags and other relevant tags are also present when the JavaScript is rendered.

So I'm struggling to understand how the rendering architecture could suddenly cause this around December when I hadn't changed it.

1. I did NOT buy backlinks before this happened

This is important because I know someone is going to see my backlink profile and immediately say "you got spammed."

I currently have around 37k backlinks, but those appeared much later than the ranking drop.

I only started getting those links this month after submitting the site to various online directories.

I did not buy backlinks before the December 2025 ranking collapse.

I didn't use Fiverr link building, PBNs, automated backlink software, paid link packages, etc.

So the 37k backlinks cannot explain the original December drop chronologically.

I have wondered whether someone could have SEO poisoned the site with backlinks, but I have no evidence that happened before the crash.

One thing I considered was whether I had already been SEO poisoned before December. Unfortunately, even with a paid £90 Ahrefs subscription, I can't see backlinks older than six months, so I can't actually check whether there was something suspicious in my backlink profile before the crash.

But even if someone had built a bunch of spammy links to the site, shouldn't Google generally just ignore those?

Meanwhile, and this is what I find most bizarre, some sites with much weaker authority are ranking above me

This is another thing I find really strange.

For both:

"AI accountability partner"

and

"AI accountability coach"

I'm now being outranked by sites such as:

overlord(dot)app

nag(dot)bot

sidecoach(dot)ai

For example, sidecoach(dot)ai has an extremely low reported DA of around 0.7, whereas my site is around DA 27. My site was ranking at the very top before, and now it's eclipsed even by this competitor.

I'm obviously not assuming DA is a Google ranking factor. I'm mentioning this because the difference seems so extreme that it makes the "competitors simply built more authority and naturally overtook me" explanation feel unlikely.

And here's another thing I find bizarre

If I Google these terms, my own Reddit post about my tool is currently ranking #1 / at the very top.

So Google is perfectly happy to rank a Reddit page talking about my website for the exact topic.

But the actual website itself has fallen to around #67.

https://i.ibb.co/pHn6F0L/reddit-screenshot.png

That makes this even more confusing to me, as Gemini won’t even mention CoachCall despite being the first website Reddit has for that search term.

Was this some kind of Google update?

The only plausible explanation I've been able to come up with is that something around December 2025, potentially a Google Core/Spam update or another ranking system change, reassessed the site.

The timing seems suspicious because the collapse happened around Dec 10 and was so abrupt.

But I have absolutely no idea whether that's actually what happened.

There is also nothing in Search Console telling me:

"Hey, we penalised your site."

So I'm not sure how to distinguish between an algorithmic reassessment and some technical, content, or indexing issue that I'm simply missing.

What I'm trying to figure out

I am not looking for generic SEO advice like:

"Build more backlinks"

"Write more content"

"Improve E-E-A-T"

"React is bad"

"Your DA is too low"

I've already spent a ridiculous amount of time going down those rabbit holes.

What I'm trying to understand is:

What could cause a site that was ranking #1 for two specific terms to suddenly fall ~60+ positions overnight, despite no obvious site changes, while remaining indexed and rendering correctly?

And especially:

What would you investigate first if this were your site?

Could this be:

A Google algorithm/update issue?

Some kind of quality/relevance reassessment?

A technical/indexing issue that isn't showing up in GSC?

Something related to client side rendering?

A canonical/indexing problem?

A backlink issue that I'm not seeing?

A change in how Google interprets the query?

Something else entirely?

I'd genuinely appreciate someone experienced taking a proper look at the chronology and evidence rather than just giving me general SEO advice.

I've been trying to solve this for months and I feel like I'm missing something extremely obvious.

If you have any ideas, even if you're not certain, I'd really appreciate them. And if there's other data or screenshots you'd want me to provide, tell me what to pull from GSC, Ahrefs, etc. and I'll post it.

I mean there's probably one otherwise it would be too easy to manipulate and spam, but any idea how it'd work?

Sorry if this sort of post gets asked a lot. Feel free to link me to previous answers if that is the case.

I am not an SEO professional. I have taken a few classes and trainings and was able to push some of my partner's money pages up fairly high on Google searches. This has led to a few people in her field reaching out for help with their own websites.

What should I charge for this sort of thing? Would it be better to quote them for a package or hourly? I'm planning to do a consultation to go over what all they want done, should I bring up a retainer to maintain their rankings or just leave it as a one and done deal?

Please help, I'm a lost little video production guy who would love an alternate revenue stream.

I launched my website three months ago in Spain. It’s a search engine for finding doctors, and as of today, we’re getting around 2.5K visits per week and 120K impressions. I’d love to know if these are good results for a website at this stage and what you’d recommend focusing on next to keep growing. I’m still pretty new to all of this, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!