LabraSEO

Spam update rolls out 🧹, Search Console adds Lens data 📷, Google tests fan out model ⚡

Issue 1, 25 September 2026

What changed in search and AI answers, for marketing teams, in five minutes.

Headlines & Launches

Google September 2026 spam update is rolling out (7 minute read)

Google started its September 2026 spam update on September 24, worldwide and in all languages, saying the rollout may take up to two weeks. It is the fourth spam update this year, and John Mueller confirmed to Barry Schwartz that this one is expected to take longer than the previous three. If your organic traffic drops in the next two weeks, check the timing against this update before assuming a site issue, since it only targets spam but can bring collateral damage.

Search Console adds a multimodal search filter (5 minute read)

Google announced that Search Console's performance report and its report for AI features now include a Multimodal search type, covering searches made with Lens, Circle to Search, image uploads and Chrome's Search this image. The data is new, not pulled from existing web results, and rolls out globally from today. If you sell physical products, this is a new way to see how many people are finding you with a camera rather than typed words, though it only appears for sites already getting this traffic.

Google video structured data adds the creator property (2 minute read)

Google updated its video structured data documentation to support creator and author properties, alongside changes to interactionStatistic in VideoObject markup, per Barry Schwartz. If your team publishes video, this is a small update worth passing to your developer so the right person or brand gets named in the markup.

Google tests AI Overviews lower on hotel pages (5 minute read)

Google is testing moving AI Overviews from the top of the page to the bottom right, under the knowledge panel, for hotel searches, according to screenshots reported by Barry Schwartz. It is unclear if this will roll out more broadly or to other verticals, but if it does, it could mean less immediate visual competition for organic hotel listings at the top of the page.

Deep Dives & Analysis

Google announces a faster query fan-out model (1 minute read)

Google researchers described R4T-Diffusion, a small 53.9-million-parameter model that generates the set of related sub-queries used in AI answers, trained by distilling behaviour from a larger, more expensive system. Query fan-out is how Google's AI features decide which pages to pull from, so a faster version could let Google generate more, and more varied, sub-queries per question. The paper is a research announcement, not a confirmed Search deployment, so it is not yet known if or when this reaches live AI Overviews.

Tactics & Tools

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