Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Google has announced its UGC Fresh Data Program, which Google says “is an initiative designed to help platforms display fresh, high quality, and authentic user-generated content (UGC) across various features on Search.” Basically, it seems like an API UCG sites like Reddit can use to push content to Google Search faster.

Google may be issuing more manual action penalties over the past few weeks than it has over the weeks before that. The increase in manual actions seems to have started several weeks ago, but more so recently, according to some SEOs.

Google Ads is adding new AI Max related columns to the Google Ads reporting console. The columns include brand inclusions, locations of interest, commission and optimized targeting.

Google Ads now lets advertisers set up Conversion Lift measurement themselves. Google updated its help documentation to say that you no longer need a Google Ads representative to set up Conversion Lift measurement; you just need at least 1,000 observed conversions and a $5,000 budget.

Google has updated the how leads work help documentation within Local Service Ads with a lot more detail. The changes are meaningful, including what counts as a billable phone lead and how Google handles lead quality/credits.

Google updated its help document in Merchant Center to say that if a product changes more than once per day, it may be “disapproved instead of updated if we detect a mismatch.”

The Google September 2026 spam update is now done rolling out. It started on Thursday, September 28, 2026 at around 12:00 pm ET and completed on October 8, 2026 at 4:37 am ET. This was different from the previous few spam updates in that this one took two weeks to roll out whereas the others […]

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

Google Merchant Center is rolling out the UCP integration hub in the United States. The UCP integration hub allows you to onboard to UCP program from your Merchant Center account.

Google is now showing WhatsApp buttons, in place of chat or in addition to the other action buttons, in the local panel results within Google Search. Next to the call, directions. website, share buttons can be a WhatsApp button to let searchers chat with the store or company over WhatsApp.

Google seems to no longer be showing review rich reviews in Google Search when review schema or structured data is added to healthcare web pages.

Google is testing allowing AI Overviews to add items to your calendar with an add to calendar link on event dates. I can’t replicate this and the truth is, every time i refresh the queries I am testing on, I get a slightly different AI Overview, so who knows.