June 2026: SEO and AI Search News Update

Let’s do a quick roundup of the latest SEO and AI Search news in June 2026, and how you can use it for your website’s optimization. This month has some really important updates for business owners. We have new tools to track your AI search visibility, updates to Google Business Profile, and some guidance from Google on what to ignore when it comes to SEO advice.

For service-based business owners (coaches, photographers, web designers, and other service providers), these are the top 3 updates that probably matter most:

1. 📊 Google Search Console is rolling out a dedicated Generative AI performance report. You can now see exactly which pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode.(Finally!!)
2. 👉🏻 Google released the June 2026 Spam Update.
3. 💎 New Generative AI controls, guidance about LLM.txt and advice from Google about AI visibility

Alright, let’s break down what changed, what’s new and what it all means for you.

📋 Use this free AI Search Optimization Guide + Checklist to get started on AI visibility!

📌 Search Academy members can get full coverage in their members’ area and additional ChatGPT optimization and AIO strategies in the AI Search Vault.

📌 Last month’s SEO and AI News update can be found here.

1. Google Search Console now has a Generative AI Performance Report

Google has launched a new dedicated Generative AI performance report inside Google Search Console. (Finally!)

This will give us a direct view of how our websites appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and generative AI features in Discover.

Until now, there was no way to know how your content was being used to power AI answers.

The new report shows you:

• Impressions: How often your pages appeared inside generative AI features in Search and Discover
• Pages: Which specific URLs are showing up in AI responses
• Countries: Where in the world your AI visibility is coming from
• Devices: Whether people are on mobile or desktop when seeing your content in AI features
• Dates: Performance over time, with hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly views

It is currently rolling out to a subset of websites, starting primarily in the UK, before becoming available globally. So you may not see it yet, but it is coming.

Note: the report currently shows impressions only, not clicks or CTR. So you can see that your page appeared in an AI answer, but not whether someone clicked through.

Google has said they are working with website owners to understand what additional metrics would be most useful, so more data may come over time.

Members in the SEO community are looking forward to it!

What to do:

Log into Google Search Console and look under Performance/Search Results for the new Generative AI report.

Once you have access, analyze which pages are getting the most impressions in AI features and note the type of content on your website that’s getting visibility.

2. Google introduces a new control in GSC to opt out of Generative AI features

Alongside the new AI performance report in GSC, Google is also introducing a new toggle in Search Console that lets website owners decide whether they want their content to appear in generative AI Search features (AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI features in Discover).

Here’s what Google said about this:

Sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features. This control will not be used as a ranking signal for search results outside of these generative AI Search features. This work builds on our long history of designing tools, like snippet controls and Google-Extended, that give websites more choice.

Here’s how you can opt out of Google’s AI features.

Should you opt out?

This came about partly due to pressure from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has been pushing Google for better attribution and transparency for publishers.

It is also why we have been seeing more inline links in AI responses, and Google bringing in preferred sources from news subscriptions into AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Content publishers

For content publishers, this toggle can be genuinely meaningful.

Before this, there was no formal mechanism to negotiate how their content was showing up in AI features. Their content could be summarized, synthesized, and used to ground AI answers, without any choice in the matter and without guaranteed attribution or traffic in return.

The only blunt instrument available was blocking Google’s AI crawler entirely via robots.txt, which would also cut off traditional organic search results indexing.

If AI Overviews continuously misrepresent your content, the toggle control might make sense.

AI Mode Recipe UX Testing 👉 On one hand, Google is now including our link and includes recipe cards👏 On the other, they are doubling down on brand misrepresentation and plagiarism with default full Frankenstein recipes saying the AI recipe is our “official” recipe. We have also… pic.twitter.com/cJRHYpOYzC

— Inspired Taste (@inspiredtaste) June 18, 2026

Before deciding anything, we have to accept that AI Overviews and AI Mode are not going anywhere.

Even if content publishers opt out of Google’s AI results, this would not stop people from using AI Mode or would not slow AI adoption. It’s hard to hear.

AI-powered search will not disappear even if your website decides not to participate.
The user experience stays the same. The only thing that changes is which brands and publications are eligible to show up.

Users are still going to search and ask questions, and increasingly do so through AI-powered experiences.

All the toggle controls is whether your content is eligible to appear in those experiences.

That’s my little rant for the blogging side. And why blogging for a living is getting more challenging.

And for most service businesses, where the business model does not depend on traffic and advertising revenue, I think the decision is clear.

We should stay opted in. Opting out of AI Overviews is essentially opting out of a growing part of how people search.

The only cases where it might make sense are if Google’s AI is consistently representing your business incorrectly in a way you cannot fix by improving your website content. But even then, fixing the content is usually the better move.

3. Google released the June 2026 spam update

The June 2026 spam update has finished rolling out, according to Google’s Search Status Dashboard. It ran from June 24 to June 26, about two days.

Google described it as: “A normal spam update, rolling out for all languages and locations.”

This seems to be a general spam update targeting sites that violate Google’s spam policies.

Spam updates work differently from core updates. A core update is a broad change to how Google ranks content on search results.

A spam update is an improvement to the automated systems that detect spam, including SpamBrain, Google’s AI-based spam prevention system.

If your rankings or traffic shifted around June 24th-26th, this update is worth looking into as a possible cause.

Google has not announced any policy changes alongside this update, so the existing spam policies are still the framework to check yourself against.

One important thing to know if you were affected: recovery is not quick.

Google’s guidance says that even if you make changes to address spam issues, it can take many months for their systems to reassess your site. So if you think this update hit you, it’s worth reviewing your backlink profile and looking out for toxic backlinks.

4. Gemini can now connect to your Google Business Profile

Google has announced that Gemini can connect directly to your Google Business Profile, turning it into an AI assistant that actually knows your business and can even help update your listing!

Once connected, you can ask Gemini questions and give it tasks related to your Business Profile, without having to log in and manually update things each time.

Here are some things it can help with:

Understanding your performance:

• Ask “how did my business do this month?” and Gemini can analyze your actual search impressions, direction requests, call data and customer engagement
• Review the specific keywords customers are using to find your business.

Managing reviews:

• Ask “help me respond to my latest review” and Gemini drafts a tailored response in your brand’s voice, referencing the specific feedback the customer left
• Get a summary of your star ratings and recent reviews.

Updating your profile:

• Ask Gemini to update your operating hours, post seasonal updates or identify gaps in your profile
• Manage your website URL, social media links, photos, and business attributes

This integration is beginning to roll out globally in June 2026.

What to do:

Make sure you have a Google Business Profile set up and verified if you have not already.

Once the integration is available to you, connect it and experiment with automating simple tasks.

5. Google reinforces: LLMS.txt files won’t help or hurt your rankings

Google updated its AI Optimization Guide this month to clarify its position on llms.txt files once and for all.

The update added this note:

It’s completely fine if you decide to create and maintain LLMS.txt files (or other similar files) for other services or systems that use these files. Doing so won’t harm (nor help) your visibility or rankings in Google Search, as Google Search ignores them.

Google also reinforced: “You don’t need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in Google Search (including its generative AI capabilities), as Google Search itself doesn’t use them.”

This has been a source of a lot of noise in the SEO world. Some tools and services have been selling the idea that creating an llms.txt file is essential for AI search visibility.

Google says: it makes no difference to Google Search at all.

What to do:

Nothing. You do not need an llms.txt file for Google. If you have already created one for other reasons (some non-Google AI systems do use them), that is fine. But if someone is trying to sell you this as an AI SEO service, this update is your answer.

6. Google says HTML is the standard for SEO, not Markdown

On a similar note, Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt addressed the question of whether you should build a separate Markdown version of your website for AI systems, in their Off The Record podcast this month.

The answer is no.

John Mueller summed it up: “For all of the SEO-related things and discovery of content, a normal HTML website is like… basically, what you need.”

Web crawlers and search engines have decades of experience processing standard HTML. Publishing normal HTML pages is the primary requirement for your content to be crawled, indexed, and discovered by both traditional search engines and AI systems.

They also specifically said you should not create separate, parallel Markdown versions of your website to cater to AI.

Maintaining two versions of a site doubles the workload and significantly increases technical complexity.

If a hidden “LLM version” of a page breaks, human visitors will never see it, meaning errors go unreported.

What to do:

Keep your website as a normal HTML site. Focus on making sure your pages are well-structured, easy to read, and clearly organized. That is what both humans and AI systems need.

7. Google Business Profile gets a new “Collected Info” feature

A smaller but useful update: Google is adding a new Collected Info section to Google Business Profiles, currently rolling out for select regions, languages, and business categories.

Here is what it does:

When Google collects new information about your business (through the web, phone calls, texts, or WhatsApp to your verified number), it will now show you exactly what information it found and where it came from. You can then confirm the update or reject it if it is incorrect.

This is helpful because Google can and does update your Business Profile automatically when it finds new information about you. Until now, those updates could happen without you realizing it. This new feature gives you visibility and control over what Google has collected.

You can find it by going to your Google Business Profile and selecting Edit profile, then Collected info.

What to do:

Once this feature is available to you, you can check it periodically to make sure any automatically collected information about your business is accurate.

Incorrect auto-updated details (wrong hours, wrong phone number) can affect both how clients find you and how Google’s AI represents your business.

The big picture for June 2026

The theme this month is tools and transparency. Google is giving website owners more direct visibility into how their content is being used in AI search, more control over whether they appear in those features, and more ways to manage their local business presence through AI.

The message from Google seems consistent: focus on your content, keep your business information accurate and up to date, and be skeptical of anyone promising shortcuts for AI visibility.

The businesses that will benefit most from the growing AI search landscape are the ones doing the fundamentals well, having well-structured and good content, a complete Google Business Profile, and a website that is easy for both people and machines to understand.

For more SEO tips written specifically for photographers, designers, and service-based business owners, check out these resources:

AI Search Optimization Checklist (Leanne Wong)

How to do SEO in 2026: AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Organic Search

What are Google’s AI Overviews and how to track if your website ranks for them

Google’s Official AI Optimization Guide (Google Search Central)

Google’s guidance on third-party SEO tools and advice (Google Search Central)