Latest documentation updates

This page details the latest major updates made to the Google Search Central documentation.

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August 2026

August 31

Updated the European Search Dataset Licensing Program page

What: Updated the Google European Search Dataset Licensing Program page.

Why: Refreshed the program overview, eligibility criteria, and application details.

August 28

Updated the favicon documentation

What: Updated the favicon documentation
to specifically list out the supported favicon file formats.

Why: To be clearer about which favicon file formats are supported by Google Search.
Previously, the documentation linked to an external reference that evolved over time and
caused ambiguity about which favicon file formats are actually supported in Google Search.
Google Search’s supported file formats haven’t changed; this update
explicitly lists them in the documentation.

Updated the site reputation policy

What: Updated the site reputation policy.

Why: We’ve adjusted our enforcement approach within the
European Economic Area
(EEA). For more information, see our blog post.

August 20

New custom button for preferred sources

What: Updated the preferred sources documentation
to include instructions on how to add the new custom, interactive button to your site.

Why: Site owners can now implement a custom, interactive button to guide their
audience to set them as a preferred source, ensuring a seamless experience where users are
brought right back to where they left off.

July 2026

July 29

Added guide on analyzing social and video platform content

What: Added a new guide on how to
analyze your social and video platform content performance in Search Console.

Why: To help content creators, social media managers, and SEO professionals
understand how their social and video platform content performs on Google Search.

July 24

Added a new review snippet guideline

What: Added a new guideline to the review snippet documentation
about fake and undisclosed incentivized reviews.

Why: To improve user review transparency.

July 14

Updated the package tracking documentation

What: Updated the feature availability and eligibility requirements sections
package tracking early adopters program documentation.

Why: The package tracking early adopters program is no longer accepting new partners.

July 10

Updated the canonicalization troubleshooting guide

What: Updated the
canonicalization troubleshooting guide
with clarifications on re-evaluation time.

Why: To provide better expectations about how long it takes for canonicalization
changes to take effect.

July 7

Added category to merchant listing structured data

What: Updated the Merchant listing
documentation to detail how the Product.category property can be used with both
Text and CategoryCode types. This aligns with the Google Merchant Center feed
specifications for the
product_type and
google_product_category attributes.

Why: To help merchants provide both merchant-defined
and Google-defined category information within their schema.org markup, enhancing product
information for Google Search and Shopping.

Clarified how to specify sale price effective dates in Product structured data

What: Added a new section on “Sale duration” to the Merchant listing guide. This explains how to use the validFrom, validThrough, and priceValidUntil
schema.org properties to set the effective range for sale prices, including best practices and examples for placement on either Offer или PriceSpecification nodes.

Why: This aligns schema.org usage with the Merchant Center feed attribute
sale_price_effective_date,
providing clear instructions and best practices for merchants using structured data.

July 1

Updating our AMP documentation

What: Simplified our AMP documentation by removing outdated references to the AMP viewer, AMP Cache, and signed exchange.

Why: Starting today, Google Search is updating how it connects users to AMP pages,
and will now take users directly to the publisher’s AMP host pages. This change simplifies
and reduces maintenance efforts for publishers who are creating AMP content, as they no
longer need to update the AMP cache or configure signed exchanges. AMP content will
continue to rank just like any other web page.

June 2026

June 17

Site move guidance now includes information on domain variants

What: The site move guide
now includes information on using the Change of Address tool for all subdomain variants
(including www and non-www) during domain migrations.

Why: The domain migrations work best when all variants of a site are migrated properly.

June 15

Clarifying guidance on llms.txt files

What: Added a note to the AI optimization guide clarifying Google Search’s usage of llms.txt files.

Why: To address questions from the community and clarify that while these files
aren’t needed for Google Search (and won’t negatively or positively impact your
visibility or rankings), it’s fine if you want to maintain these files for other services or
systems that use them.

Removing documentation for the FAQ rich result feature

What: Removed documentation for the FAQ rich result feature.

Why: The FAQ rich result feature is no longer shown in Google Search results, as announced in the changelog entry in May 2026.

June 12

New article for small business owners in Tennessee

What: Created a new article explaining how small business owners in Tennessee can receive notifications from Google Search.

Why: To help small businesses in Tennessee learn how they can get notified if their web content is removed or restricted on Google Search (for example, signing up for Search Console, Business Profile, or Merchant Center).

June 5

Guidance on third-party SEO tools, services, and advice

What: Added Google Search’s guidance on using third-party SEO tools, services, and advice.
Also added guidance to the Do you need an SEO? page on
evaluating your SEO’s recommendations and tools, along with other minor updates to the
page to simplify and modernize the content.

Why: To highlight important considerations when evaluating third-party SEO tools and
advice, and to simplify some sections and remove outdated examples in existing
documentation.

May 2026

May 27

Preferred sources is available in AI Mode and AI Overviews

What: Updated the feature availability section of the
preferred sources documentation to
include AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Why: The preferred sources feature is starting to roll out to AI Overviews and AI Mode.

May 20

Added hasAdultConsideration to product-related structured data types

What: Added the hasAdultConsideration property to the
Merchant listing and
Product variant
documentation.

Why: This property brings parity with the Merchant Center feed specification for the
adult property.

May 15

Adding a new guide on optimizing for generative AI features

What: Added a new guide on optimizing for generative AI features
on Search. Notable new sections include guidance on the importance of providing non-commodity content,
tips about providing local, shopping, image, and video content, mythbusting common “AEO/GEO”
misconceptions, initial guidance on AI agents, and more information on why SEO best practices
continue to be relevant for success in our generative AI features on Search.

Why: To help site owners, SEOs, and developers better understand how to optimize
their content for appearance in generative AI features on Search, and what they can ignore.

Clarifying that spam policies apply to generative AI responses in Google Search

What: Clarified that our spam policies
also apply to generative AI responses in Google Search.

Why: To make it clear that the spam policies apply to all of Google Search,
including generative AI responses.

May 8

Deprecating the FAQ rich result feature

What: Added a deprecation notice to the FAQ rich result documentation.

Why: This feature will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026.

April 2026

April 30

Expanding preferred sources to all languages where Google Search is available

What: Added that the preferred sources feature
is now available in all languages where Google Search is available,
including new translated downloadable button assets.

Why: The preferred sources feature is now available in all languages supported by Google Search.

April 23

Clarifying when and why we may take manual action based on spam reports

What: Further clarified when and why we may take manual action based on spam reports.

Why: To address feedback we received about the change on using spam reports to take
manual action.

April 20

Added a section about “read more” deep links

What: Added a new section on “read more” deep links
to the snippet documentation.

Why: To explain how to increase the likelihood of your content appearing with a
“read more” deeplink in Google Search results.

April 14

Clarifying the use of spam reports

What: Clarified that Google may use spam report submissions
to take manual action against violations.

Why: Google may now use spam report submissions to take manual action.

April 13

Introducing a new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

What: Added a new section to the malicious practices spam policy
to address a deceptive practice known as “back button hijacking”.

Why: Learn more about this update in our blog post on back button hijacking.

March 2026

March 24

Added new supported properties for Discussion Forum and QA Page markup

What: Added more supported properties
for Discussion Forum
and QA Page markup.

Why: For providing more clarity on comment thread structure to Google ingestion systems.
This prevents misinterpretations in our handling of forum and Q&A content.

Added a note on the robots meta tags documentation

What: Added a note to the robots meta tags documentation on the way Google Search processes robots meta tags outside the HTML head.

Why: The behavior didn’t change but was previously undocumented.

March 4

Removed outdated information about JavaScript and accessibility

What: Removed a section on accessibility from the JavaScript SEO basics documentation.

Why: The information was out of date and not as helpful as it used to be. Google Search has been rendering JavaScript for multiple years now, so using JavaScript to load content is not “making it harder for Google Search”.
Most assistive technologies are able to work with JavaScript now as well.

March 2

Added preferred image best practices

What: Added a new section on specifying a preferred image with metadata
to the image SEO best practices and Discover documentation.

Why: Based on feedback, we’re clarifying that Google uses both schema.org markup and the og:image
meta tag as sources when determining image thumbnails in Google Search and
Discover.

February 2026

February 5

Added information to the Get on Discover page for site owners

What: Added more information on how sites can increase the likelihood of their
content appearing in Discover.

Why: We’re rolling out the February 2026 Discover Core Update.

February 3

Clarified information about the default file size limits for Googlebot

What: While moving over the information about the default file size limits of
Google’s crawlers and fetchers to the
crawler documentation,
we also updated the
Googlebot documentation
about its own file size limits.

Why: The original location of the default file size limits was not the most logical
place as it applies to all of Google’s crawlers and fetchers, and the move enabled us to
be more precise about Googlebot’s limits.

January 2026

January 30

Adding preferred sources documentation

What: Added preferred sources documentation
for website owners.

Why: To help publishers understand how to help their audience find their site as a preferred source.

January 21

Adding more supported query types to South African carousel documentation

What: Updated the structured data carousels (beta)
documentation and the South African badges and refinement chips blog post
to include additional query types.

Why: The South African carousel, badges, and refinement chips now support queries
related to food delivery, car hire, and bus booking.

January 6

Removing documentation for the practice problem structured data type

What: Removed documentation for the practice problem
structured data type.

Why: The practice problem structured data type is no longer shown in Google Search results.
Learn more about this change in our blog post and changelog entry announced in November 2025.