Research, guides
and case studies.

On June 5, 2026, Google updated its Search Central documentation to formally name AEO and GEO as legitimate SEO services, and, in the same set of pages, published a public framework for auditing whether a vendor selling those services is credible. It is a genuinely useful accountability tool, whether you are hiring an agency or evaluating your own internal AEO programme.

As of May 7, 2026, FAQ rich results no longer appear anywhere in Google Search, for any site, in any query type or language. This followed the earlier 2023 restriction that had already limited the feature to a narrow set of government and health properties. Yes, this changes the calculation. No, it does not mean you should delete your FAQPage schema.

Google's own May 2026 documentation confirms, in plain language, that AI Overviews and AI Mode issue multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources before generating a single response. This is why a page that ranks fifth for a broad query, but contains one exceptionally specific paragraph, can still earn a citation the broad-query ranking alone would never predict.

Google's May 2026 generative AI guide states directly that unique, compelling, useful content will influence AI search visibility more than any other single recommendation in the document. It calls the opposite of this "commodity content" — and in a world where any competitor can generate a competent generic article in seconds, that distinction has become the entire game.