The Google goto Redirect Broke Our AI Citation Tracking in a Single Week
Google confirmed the google.com/goto redirect on 26 August 2026. Our AI citation capture went from 209 source URLs to zero in one week. What broke, and why.
Google Updates
The permanent index for our coverage of confirmed Google updates. Every analysis we publish on a core update, spam update, AI Mode change or major SERP-feature shift is listed here, newest first. The news desks will always report a Google update before we do. We compete on depth and application instead: plain-English mechanics, what the update explicitly does not touch, separate reads for consultants, agencies and in-house teams, and a consolidated checklist of what to do now. Where we have a genuine first-hand signal from our own weekly AI visibility tracking, we publish it, including when it is inconvenient. Where we do not, we say so rather than inventing an impact. Confirmed core and spam updates are always covered. AI Mode and SERP-feature shifts are covered when there is something substantive to say. Unconfirmed volatility and chatter are not updates, and treating them as such is how a reader ends up making changes in response to noise.