Google report: no new core update as AI Overviews top 80% of searches
Google's November webmaster report said the September spam update finished in October with no new core update announced, while AI Overviews top 80% of searches.
Barry Schwartz's November 2026 Google webmaster report said Google completed its September spam update in October and announced no new core update despite several unconfirmed spikes in ranking volatility.
The report said AI Overviews now appear on more than 80% of Google searches, including queries with typos and queries that return no results. It noted link updates in AI Overviews, that Argon 4 powers part of AI Mode, and that Universal Search is now live in the US.
On the SEO side, Google updated its documentation to require fact-checking and review of AI-generated content, revised its helpful content guidance on main content, and warned against faking authorship information. It also warned about tools in user-generated spam and said it may issue more manual actions.
The report also covered new data on crawling, indexing and serving, country filters in Search Console and other changes to Google's webmaster tools. The updates come as the industry waits for a new core update to be announced.
What do these terms mean?
Core update: A broad change to Google's ranking systems aimed at improving result quality, affecting many sites.
AI Overviews: AI-generated summaries shown at the top of search results that combine information from several sites.
Spam update: An update targeting sites that manipulate search with low-quality content or artificial links.
Manual action: A penalty Google's team imposes on a site after a human review finds it violates search guidelines.
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