Search Tools Fight Spam and Fake News – SEO News March 2026

Whether you think that the future of search is Google or ChatGPT, they both have a shared problem: spam and fake news that is increasingly generated by AI. Many experts have shown how easy it is to manipulate AI, including Jo Goodey who features in our SEO news below. Jo managed to convince Google that a Google Core Update was released on March 10^th and his fake news story (originally a hallucination by Perplexity), ranked in Google and was widely reported by other experts. To add to the confusion, Google did later release a March 2026 Core Update, but on March 27^th, two weeks after the fake news was circulating.

Both Google and ChatGPT released updates to search algorithms in March. It is possible that all these updates are intended to fight back against spam or fake news. Search tools can do this by being more rigorous on checking sources and taking into account authority signals. It is certainly something that is needed to increase trust in AI-generated responses vs traditional search results.

Google usage is still well ahead of ChatGPT

At the beginning of March, SEO Lily Ray shared data on LinkedIn comparing the use of Google to ChatGPT and other LLMs. The data from SimilarWeb shows that Gemini is gaining ground on ChatGPT, but Google is still way ahead of them all. The first chart shows LLMs only. It plots visits from September 2025 to January 2026 to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek and Copilot.

The second chart adds visits to Google and Bing and shows Google way ahead of all the tools. Lily says that she will “keep sharing these, considering I continue to get calls and emails about how ‘no one is using Google anymore’”.

Echoing Lily Ray’s figures with his own findings – that ChatGPT has roughly 3% market share in search – Rand Fishkin also notes that alternative claims were circulating on the web stating that ChatGPT has a “whopping” 20% market share worldwide. Rand investigated a report by Ethan Smith that seems to be at the origin of the 20% claim and he published his findings in this LinkedIn video. Rand concludes that data being shared contains erroneous information about ChatGPT having 550 million mobile app users whereas the true figure is 10 times less. He is adamant that market share shown in the graphs above is a true reflection of usage even when mobile app usage is factored in.

Lily Ray included her findings about market share in her SubStack article Your GEO Strategy Might Be Destroying Your SEO which warns site owners against undermining SEO in an attempt to gain an advantage in AI search. There are specific warnings against producing content with AI, artificial refreshing, excessive self-promotion and summarize with AI buttons.

The GPT 5.4 update improves web search

OpenAI announced the release of GPT-5.4 on March 5^th saying that GPT-5.4 Thinking improved deep web search on ChatGPT, particularly for highly specific queries. SEO Chris Long commented on LinkedIn that he thought this new ChatGPT model had made “monumental changes” to search results by

• searching with more fan-out queries,
• using site: operator searches more often to find content from brands,
• looking at more trusted sources for information,
• and taking into account authority signals

Using an example of the prompt “Best SEO agency” he concludes that ChatGPT now gives better answers than before and has eliminated spammy responses. Lily Ray has highlighted Chris’ findings and suggests that this is “a clue that OpenAI is likely working on solutions to reduce biased sources influencing the results”.  She reflects that this is just an example of countermeasures that AI search tools (including ChatGPT and Google) will have to take in 2026 to fight against new types of spam intended to manipulate AI-generated results.

GPT-5.4 Thinking is currently only available for Plus, Team, and Pro paid subscribers and has to be selected from the model selector at the top of the ChatGPT screen.

Later in March, OpenAI also added Location sharing as a feature for ChatGPT subscribers on iOS and web (Android is not yet supported). This feature is intended to add local results like Google and should lead to local knowledge graph results featuring more often.

The Fake Google March 2026 Core Update

On March 17^th, SEO expert Jon Goodey reported on how he had created and then amplified false news that Google had released a Core Update on March 10^th. While researching marketing news for a daily newsletter using Perplexity, Jon was given an invented story purportedly from Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable saying that a Core Update was ongoing. Perplexity even invented the link to the article.

Note: there really was a Core Update in March, but it was released on March 27^th. See below.

Jon says that he spotted the error but decided to publish the news in his LinkedIn newsletter as a test. He was initially amused to see that the news started to rank in Google. Then the fake Core Update news started to feature in Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT before being picked up by other websites who republished considerably embellished versions of the story. One even published a 2,000-word article on how to recover from the March 2026 Core Update. Although some readers spotted and reported the error, it was still a news item on March 17^th when Jon published his disclaimer.

The experiment highlights the risk of AI generating hallucinations, but also the fact that most people don’t read and fact check what they share. Jon feels that Google’s own AI Overviews were also guilty of validating the fake news, leading to it being reproduced on many sources.

Google March 2026 Spam Update

Google released a spam update in March. They announced the update on LinkedIn on March 24^th with the message “Today we released the March 2026 spam update to Google Search. This is a normal spam update, and it will roll out for all languages and locations. The rollout may take a few days to complete. More information about spam updates can be found at  We’ll update our ranking release history page when the rollout is complete:

The Search Status Dashboard shows the update starting on March 24^th at 12:18 and finishing on March 25^th at 07:39 – less than a day later (times are Pacific Daylight Time). This is the quickest update since Google started communicating on release and completion dates through the dashboard. The links in both the Dashboard and the LinkedIn post both point to Google’s standard documentation on spam updates and this has not been updated since December 2025. There is no indication about what type of spam was targeted by this update and SERP tracking tools don’t seem to be showing any widespread volatility on this date.

If you see drops in ranking for your keywords from March 24^th to March 26^th then you may be one of the rare sites hit by the March 2026 Spam Update. Be aware that there was a second official update from Google starting March 27^th (a Core Update, see below). Rank changes from March 27^th are probably linked to the Core Update and not the Spam update.

The real Google March 2026 Core Update

Google launched a second official update in March on March 27^th. The post on LinkedIn read “Today we released the March 2026 core update to Google Search. This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites. The rollout may take up to 2 weeks to complete. We’ll update our ranking release history page when the rollout is complete:

Once again, the link from the Search Status Dashboard went to standard documentation about Core Updates and not specific information about what the March update was meant to achieve. Generally, Core Updates aim to improve the ranking of good quality websites (whereas the Spam Updates will demote or blacklist poor quality sites that are trying to manipulate results).

The documentation from Google gives tips on how to detect traffic drops using Google Search Console. It suggests waiting a full week after the update has finished rolling out before analyzing your site in Search Console. We recommend using keyword rank tracking like SEOPress Insights to get more accurate information on ranking changes and how they impact your SEO.

SEO Glenn Gabe is often a good source of information about how a Core Update is affecting ranking in general. He shares daily news on X, BlueSky and LinkedIn and shows rank or traffic drops for specific sites. Glenn will often get a feel for what the update is specifically about. On March 30^th he has posted that “I do not believe the update has landed yet” but also “I surfaced clear movement from the March 2026 Spam Update.” As shown in the graphic below. This plots estimated traffic to a site over the month of March. At the bottom, the two Gs show the dates of the two Google updates, the Spam Update and the Core Update. We can see the traffic for this site drop after the Spam Update.

By Benjamin Denis

CEO of SEOPress. 15 years of experience with WordPress. Founder of WP Admin UI & WP Cloudy plugins. Co-organizer of WordCamp Biarritz 2023 & WP BootCamp. WordPress Core Contributor.