August 26, 2026
Google Will Charge You for Missed Calls: Your 26 August Brief
From 1 October, Google Local Services Ads will charge you for calls nobody answered, and for the follow up call as well. Google tag…
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Daily Brief
Search, social and AI news that actually affects South African businesses — short, plain-English, every weekday.
August 25, 2026
Tuesday Brief: That Search Console Security Email Was a Google Fault
Search Console emailed thousands of site owners on Monday claiming a new owner had been added, and it was a bug. Google also admits…
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August 24, 2026
Monday Brief: Google Quietly Repaired Two of Its Own Faults Over the Weekend
Google confirmed on Sunday that the search favicon bug is fully fixed, and repaired the Search Console crawl stats gap over the same weekend.…
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August 23, 2026
Sunday Brief: Google Has Stopped Fixing Your Broken Schema Code
Google has stopped tidying up badly escaped structured data, so rich results can disappear without a single warning. Reddit lost 86% of its ChatGPT…
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August 21, 2026
Friday Brief: Google’s Video Carousel Has Halved Since 12 August
Google's video carousel now shows on under 20% of searches, down from just over 30%, and on tracked brand names it fell to around…
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August 20, 2026
Thursday Brief: Googlebot Found Just 2% of a Site’s JavaScript Links
A 41 day experiment split one site's internal links between plain HTML and JavaScript. Googlebot found 2% of the JavaScript pages and the AI…
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August 19, 2026
Wednesday Brief: Google Is Running a Spam Update Right Now
Google started the August 2026 spam update on Monday and it is still rolling out worldwide. WordPress 7.1 ships today, Instagram will now let…
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August 18, 2026
Tuesday Brief: Google Says Your Search Console Collapse Never Happened
Your Search Console AI impressions collapsed on 13 August and Google has confirmed none of it was real. Plus a paused AI Overviews test,…
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August 17, 2026
Your Bid Target Just Became an Instruction: Search and Social Update for 17 August 2026
Google's Smart Bidding change went live today, so a target you set as a ceiling is now an instruction. ChatGPT Ads started reading your…
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August 16, 2026
Google Is Deleting the Language Setting: Search and Social Update for 16 August 2026
Google Ads removes campaign level language targeting in late September, which matters more in a multilingual market than almost anywhere else. AI generated pictures…
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August 14, 2026
AI Max Carries 72% More Invalid Traffic: Search and Social Update, 14 August 2026
New Lunio data shows Google search campaigns running AI Max carried 72 percent more invalid traffic, and Google converts eligible campaigns automatically on 1…
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August 13, 2026
Your Next Customer Might Never Touch Your Booking Form
Google's Pixel 11 lets an assistant navigate apps and websites on a customer's behalf, across more than forty apps. Anthropic starts watermarking Claude text…
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