SEO in August 2026: what has changed in Google and Yandex

By August 2026, the biggest change in SEO was not yet another ranking formula. Search engines have begun to provide site owners with separate presence data in generative responses. Google is testing special reports on AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s generative functions, and Yandex shows site visibility in Alice AI’s quick responses.

This is an important shift: AI visibility is gradually moving away from being a series of manual checks and screenshots. It can already be included in regular analytics, compared across pages and tracked over time. But new reports do not cancel classic SEO. Indexing, useful content, clear site architecture, reputation and conversion still determine whether search will have something to show the user.

Briefly: As of August 20, 2026, Google has not announced a separate August core update. The latest confirmed ranking changes in the official Google magazine are the May core update and the June spam update. Therefore, sharp fluctuations in traffic must first be checked using site data, and not automatically attributed to the “August update.”

What has changed by August 2026

Change	To whom it concerns	What to check now
Google Generative Search Reports	Sites that are shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode	Which URLs receive AI impressions, in which countries and on which devices
Accounting for AI Overviews in general statistics	All sites with traffic from Google	Is the increase in impressions without an increase in clicks explained by the emergence of AI blocks?
Platform properties in Search Console	Companies with YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or X	Which publications and videos are already receiving search demand?
Website visibility in Alice AI	Websites verified by Yandex Webmaster	Share of mentions, queries and competing sites in generative responses
Yandex hourly data	Projects with active updates and seasonal demand	Anomalies in impressions and clicks during the last 24 hours
Updated ICS	All sites in Yandex Webmaster	Dynamics relative to competitors, but not “positions on ICS”

Google started showing AI visibility separately

In June, Google announced separate Search Generative AI performance reports for Search and Discover. The search report takes into account site link impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Data can be analyzed by page, country, device and date.

There are two limitations that are important to be aware of.

1. The report is being rolled out gradually and is not yet available to all resources. If it is not in your Search Console, this is not a technical error on the site.
2. The special report shows exactly impressions. It helps identify which pages appear in generative features, but it does not provide a separate end-to-end AI impression -> AI click -> lead funnel.

At the same time, AI Overviews and AI Mode data are already included in the general “Search Results” report with the Web search type. Google has clarified the accounting rules: following an external link from an AI block is considered a click, and an impression is recorded when the link becomes visible to the user. In AI Overview, all links within a block receive the position of the block itself.

How to read this data without false conclusions

AI impression growth in itself does not equal business growth. To evaluate the result, you need to connect three layers:

• visibility: which pages and topics fall into the generative functions;
• transitions: whether clicks and CTR change in the overall Search Console report;
• value: whether visitors generate leads, calls, registrations, or branded searches.

If impressions are growing and clicks are stagnant, this does not yet prove the loss of traffic due to AI Overviews. Check queries, positions, device, country and appearance of the issue. This could be due to broader semantics, seasonality, a new type of result, or impressions on less commercial topics.

Search Console now has data not only about the site

On July 29, Google globally opened platform properties. They let you see how a brand's YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and X posts and videos are performing in Google Search, Discover, and Google News.

For SEO, this changes the approach to content. Previously, the search visibility of a website and social platforms were often analyzed separately. Now you can see what exactly the user finds on Google: an article on a website, a video, a publication, or several brand materials at the same time.

Practical scenarios:

• find videos that are already receiving search demand and turn them into detailed articles;
• compare short videos and long analyzes on query topics;
• notice an old publication that has begun to grow again and update related material on the site;
• check whether the brand ranks in several useful formats rather than just one landing page.

This does not mean that a social profile conveys SEO weight to the site like a regular internal link. The value is different: the company gets more contact points in search and better understands the real demand around the content.

Google has officially come out against "AI SEO hacks"

In May, Google released a separate optimization guide for generative search functions. His main takeaway is a fairly down-to-earth one: AI Overviews and AI Mode rely on Google's core search index and quality systems. No separate magical optimization is needed.

Google recommends:

• allow crawling of important pages and ensure their normal indexing;
• create original material with real added value, rather than rehashing general knowledge;
• make important information available in text form;
• use images and videos when they help develop a topic;
• link materials with clear internal links;
• ensure that structured data matches the visible content;
• Keep Business Profile and Merchant Center data up to date, if relevant to the business.

At the same time, Google does not directly recommend relying on artificial “chunking” of text, special AI files and inauthentic mentions. File llms.txt is not a condition for participation in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and there is no special schema markup for AI results.

If you need step-by-step technical instructions, it is already included in a separate material how to get into Google AI results. Another thing is important here: by August 2026, Google not only formulated the rules, but also began to provide data to verify them.

Yandex shows the site's presence in Alice AI

The “Site Visibility in Alice AI” tool has appeared in Yandex Webmaster. It's located in the Performance section and shows how the verified site appears in Alice's Quick Replies below the search bar.

Available in the report:

• share of site mentions among Alice AI sources;
• dynamics of the share of requests mentioning the site;
• examples of requests for which the site is used in responses;
• other sites on the topic that are mentioned more often or less frequently.

The data is updated weekly and is based on queries where the site appears in search results. The tool itself does not affect rankings. This is analytics, not a promotion button.

What to do with the report in practice

First, download example queries and distribute them among intents:

1. Informational questions where the user needs a short answer or instructions.
2. Comparisons and solution selection.
3. Commercial tasks, where after the answer you need a performer, price or consultation.
4. Brand queries where the accuracy of company information is important.

Then map each cluster to an existing page. If Alice uses a minor article instead of a core service, check the internal links and completeness of the landing page. If a site is not mentioned on an important topic, compare your material to sources already visible in the report to see if they have a more definitive answer, recent data, clear authorship, or evidence of experience.

When working specifically with Yandex, avoid mixing every AI channel into one task. A dedicated approach to this search experience is described on the page neuropromotion in Yandex.

Yandex hourly data speeds up diagnostics

In June, Yandex added fresh data for the last 24 hours to “Query Monitoring” with hourly detail. Previously, query reports took up to two days to update.

Hourly mode is useful when you need:

• quickly notice a drop in impressions after release;
• check if the search engine has started showing the updated page;
• track a surge in seasonal or news demand;
• see an anomaly after changing the template, robots.txt or redirects;
• evaluate the first signals after a major content update.

This data is preliminary. Yandex continues processing it, so the latest hourly values may change. For a final conclusion about a query, wait for the processed data and compare at least a two-week period.

The working rule is simple: the hourly report is needed for signal, not for the final SEO report. Don't roll back a useful edit because of a few hours of unstable statistics.

ICS was updated, but did not become a ranking factor

In February, Yandex updated how its Site Quality Index (SQI) is calculated. It considers audience size, user satisfaction, and trust in the website. As a result, some websites may have seen a noticeable change in SQI.

Yandex explicitly states that SQI does not affect search rankings. Therefore, trying to raise SQI solely to improve rankings is the wrong objective.

The indicator can be used as a comparative benchmark:

• observe the dynamics of your site;
• find strong competitors in the niche;
• check whether the growth of content and audience coincides with the overall development of the resource.

If the ICS has decreased, and traffic, conversion and brand demand are growing, there is no urgent need to rewrite the site just for the sake of one metric.

Why is there no August Google Update yet?

SEO services and industry chats regularly record the volatility of search results. But fluctuations in positions are not equal to a confirmed update of the algorithm.

As of August 20, 2026, the latest Google history listings are:

• March 2026 spam update;
• March 2026 core update;
• May 2026 core update;
• June 2026 spam update.

The official log contains no separate August 2026 core update. If traffic changed in August, diagnose it in this order:

1. Compare pages, queries, countries, and devices in Search Console.
2. Check indexing, canonical, robots.txt, server errors and template changes.
3. Separate the drop in positions from the decrease in CTR with the same positions.
4. Compare demand year to year and take into account seasonality.
5. Check whether the content of the search results has changed: AI blocks, videos, maps, products or rich results.
6. Only after this compare the date of the fall with the official update log.

This order protects against the most expensive mistake: massively rewriting good pages due to an unverified version from SEO chat.

Action plan for 30 days

Week 1: Collect a Basic Painting

1. Capture clicks, impressions, CTR, positions and leads on priority URLs.
2. Check to see if the Generative AI performance report is available in Search Console.
3. Open the “Site Visibility in Alice AI” report in Yandex Webmaster.
4. Keep a list of pages and queries that are already receiving AI visibility.

Week 2: Solve Discrepancies

1. Find URLs that are seeing higher impressions but lower CTRs.
2. Check real results for important queries without personalization.
3. Separate the snippet problem from the position problem and from the appearance of a new block in the search results.
4. Map AI visibility to claims and brand dynamics.

Week 3: Strengthen Useful Pages

1. Update outdated facts, prices, interfaces and source links.
2. Add a direct answer to the beginning of each important section.
3. Link informational articles to a specialized service and a real case study.
4. Remove duplicate materials that respond to the same intent weaker than the main page.

Week 4: Create a Measurable Experiment

Select 5-10 URLs, make meaningful changes, and annotate them in analytics. Don't change your entire site at once. After two to four weeks, compare:

• organic impressions and clicks;
• AI impressions, if the report is available;
• share of mentions in Alice AI;
• brand queries;
• target actions and leads.

What does this mean for your SEO strategy?

In 2026, search visibility became wider than a list of ten blue links. The user can see an AI response, a video, a brand publication, a company card, and only then go to the website. Therefore, a strong strategy must connect four layers:

1. Technical availability: the search engine can retrieve, render and index the page.
2. Reply to intent: the material solves a specific problem without fuss or substitution of the issue.
3. Evidence: author, cases, sources, product data and general information about the company.
4. Business Dimension: impressions and positions are linked to bids, revenue and brand demand.

Individual “AI SEO hacks” do not replace this system. But new reports help to see which part of the system is already working, and where the search engine still lacks a reliable source.

FAQ

Was there a Google Core Update in August 2026?

As of August 20, 2026, Google did not indicate a separate August core update in the official Search Status Dashboard. The last confirmed ranking update is the June 2026 spam update. Check the current status before attributing traffic fluctuations to the algorithm.

Where can I see site impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode?

A separate Generative AI performance report is being tested in Search Console. It shows AI impressions by page, country, device and date. The report is not available to all sites, and its absence does not mean an optimization error.

Is it possible to see individual clicks from AI Overviews?

Transitions from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the overall Search Console report with a Web search type. The special report on generative functions is currently focused on impressions, so it is impossible to build a separate full funnel of AI clicks for it.

How to check website visibility in Alice AI?

Confirm the site in Yandex Webmaster and open “Efficiency” -> “Site Visibility in Alice AI”. The share of mentions, dynamics, examples of requests and comparison with other sites on the subject are available there.

Do I need to create llms.txt for Google?

No. Google explicitly states that AI Overviews and AI Mode do not require special AI files or separate markup to participate. Priority is given to indexing, useful original content, internal linking and correct business data.

Does Yandex SQI affect search rankings?

No. Yandex explicitly states that SQI is not a ranking factor. Use it to monitor website development and compare competitors, not as a standalone SEO goal.

What to do if impressions are rising but clicks are falling?

First, separate the data by page, query, device, and country. Check whether the positions are saved and what the results look like. Then finalize the title, description, offer, and first screen of the page. Don’t attribute the drop in CTR to AI results without checking specific queries.

Useful on the topic

• Domains through Gosuslugi from September 1, 2026: what should a website owner do?
• Payment in digital rubles from September 1, 2026: connection on the website
• How to get into Google AI results: AI Overviews and AI Mode
• AEO, GEO and AI SEO: how to choose a strategy for AI search
• Why ChatGPT does not see the site: reasons and step-by-step verification
• Case AI2SEO: AI platform for SEO processes
• SEO promotion and technical audit of the site

Sources

• Google Search Status Dashboard: ranking update history
• Google Search Central: Search Generative AI performance reports
• Google Search Console Help: Generative AI performance report
• Google Search Central: optimizing for generative AI features
• Google Search Central: platform properties for social and video content
• Yandex Webmaster: website visibility in Alice AI
• Yandex Webmaster: hourly data in Query Monitoring
• Yandex Webmaster: Site Quality Index calculation update