Daily Search Forum Recap: October 2, 2026

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

I am seeing new signs of yet more Google Search ranking volatility and a possible tweak to the ranking search algorithm. Something kicked off yesterday, January 15th, that the third-party tools picked up on. With this update, there is limited chatter, unlike the previous unconfirmed Google Search ranking update.

Google seems to be testing hiding the citations, link icons, for the AI Overviews default view. So when the AI Overview first loads in the Google Search results, the link icon is hidden.