September 2024 Google Webmaster Report: August Core Update, AI Overviews Updates & Monopoly Ruling

It finally happened, we got a new core update, the Google August 2024 core update touched down on August 15th. It resulted in some movement with some of the sites that were hit by the September helpful content update and also many sad stories, including many sites that saw even more degradation in their search rankings. Yes, we also saw early ranking movement, prior to the official announcement of the core update.

Google also had a search ranking bug that was fixed four days into that core update. Some are also seeing thumbnails return to the results, likely due to the core update.

Google AI Overviews have new links and are now visible incognito mode – i.e. signed out. Google Search Console is testing recommendations, that most people do not see.

We also posted a ton of SEO stories, tons of Google user interface tests and local related stories.

The big business news, Google was ruled a monopoly and then Yelp sued Google on top of that.

Here are a lot of additional top headlines for the past month of August:

Google Algorithm Updates:

Google Search:
Google AI Overviews:
Google SEO:
Google User Interface:
Google Local & Maps:
Google Business:

The Google August 2024 webmaster report was published last month, if you missed it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.