Welcome to Weekly Pulse: This week’s updates cover rankings, search, AI mode behavior, and Google’s guidance regarding AI agents.
Google rolled out a core update, announced what it called the biggest upgrade to the search box in over 25 years, released first-party AI Mode usage data, and sent mixed signals on llms.txt from two different product teams.
This is what matters to you and your work.
Google begins rolling out May 2026 core update
Google began rolling out the May Core Update on the 21st, according to a post on the Google Search Status Dashboard.
Highlights: This is Search’s second major update of 2026 and the fourth ranking update confirmed this year. Deployment may take up to two weeks. Google has not published a follow-up blog post or shared goals for the update.
Why it matters
The timing places this update in the middle of Google I/O week. Ranking changes over the next two weeks will overlap with other changes announced by Google, which could make it more difficult to identify the cause of the changes you see in Search Console.
Your baseline should be the weeks leading up to May 21, compared to performance after the rollout is complete. Wait at least a full week after completion before reviewing the data.
What SEO Professionals Say
Mary Haynesfounder of Marie Haynes Consulting Inc., related timing to I/O:
“This makes sense given that Gemini 3.5 Flash now powers search AI capabilities.”
Harpreet Singh ChathaSEO & AI Search Consultant, suggested that this update could target websites that over-optimize for AI citations:
“Call him now. If you did stupid things to appear in the AI, this one is coming for you.”
Read our full coverage: Google begins rolling out May 2026 core update
Google redesigns search box, upgrades AI mode, and introduces I/O-level search agents
Google announced Gemini 3.5 Flash as the new default model in AI mode, redesigned the search box with AI capabilities, and previewed information agents coming this summer.
Highlights: Google described the redesigned search box as its biggest upgrade in more than 25 years. It grows dynamically, supports multimodal inputs like images and files, and provides AI-based suggestions beyond autocomplete. Information officers will monitor the web and provide updates. New features include agentic booking, generative user interface and the expansion of Personal Intelligence to nearly 200 countries.
Why it matters
The search box redesign prompts users to describe their needs in longer, conversational queries. Combined with Gemini 3.5 Flash in AI mode, responses come primarily from AI rather than traditional pages.
News agents continually research and summarize updates, raising questions about whether your content is cited or overlooked in these summaries.
What SEO Professionals Say
Jake WardSEO/Content Entrepreneur Creation Mentions, wrote:
“My feed today is full of ‘SEO is dead’ messages. But none of this should come as a surprise. Every platform we use is moving toward proactive, agentic, AI-driven experiences like this. And clicks were already dying. We’ve seen CTR decline for 2-3 years straight now. However, search is very much alive, just different. We’re moving further into a world of viewability > clicks.”
Read our full coverage: Google’s new search box forwards queries to AI agents, I/O reveals
Google publishes first AI mode usage data after one year
Google released a report on how people are using AI Mode in the United States, drawing on internal search data and Google Trends a year after its launch.
Highlights: AI Mode has over 1 billion monthly users, with queries doubling every quarter. Searches are three times longer than traditional searches and follow-up queries are growing 40% per month in the United States. More than 16% of searches are multimodal, using voice, images or video. Scheduling queries are growing at a rate of 80% compared to overall usage. Trend data is not publicly available.
Why it matters
The key information lies in behavioral data, not milestone numbers. Users write longer queries, do more tracking, and use multiple input types, changing the content and how it appears.
Pages with short keywords may not match AI mode conversation patterns. The growth in planning queries is significant; When users ask AI Mode to compare products, review services, or conduct research, that content has commercial value, even without clicks.
Google’s report is based on unverifiable internal data, and AI mode search trends are not publicly available.
What SEO Professionals Say
Jeffrey Cohendirector of business development at Skai, wrote:
“Buyers don’t type in ‘running shoes.’ They ask “what are the best running shoes for a wide foot that I can wear for sidewalk half marathon training under $150.” It’s not a keyword. It’s a brief one. Scheduling queries have grown overall 80% faster than AI mode over the last 6 months. This means shoppers are using AI as a research partner long before they make a purchase. The brand that appears during the search owns the consideration phase. The transition from keyword to conversation has been talked about for years. The data indicates it’s already there.
Alice SharpCAIO at Seer, highlighted the measurement gap:
“For those of us who weren’t already investing in AI viewability tracking, we need to put our product or procurement teams in place to do more tracking. You can’t optimize what you can’t measure. If anyone from Google is tracking me, it’s really pretty crazy that none of these metrics are available for free in Google Webmaster Tools. I so rarely shake my fist in the general direction of Palo Alto, but this is getting obscene. Shout out to the Bing team which invests in a real information control center with their tools for webmasters.
Read our full coverage: Google reveals first AI mode usage figures after one year
Google’s Llms.txt guide splits between search and flagship
Google’s search team and its Lighthouse team give different advice on llms.txt. Meanwhile, Mueller clarified where markdown pages for LLMs are and are not helpful.
Highlights: Google’s AI guide states that llms.txt is not necessary for AI search. Lighthouse 13.3 checks llms.txt by default, flagging sites with errors. Mueller said markdown pages are useful for documentation but not for most websites. He differentiated discovery (search visibility) from on-page tasks, advising sites to focus on search.
Why it matters
The answer depends on your traffic. If agent tools visit and complete tasks, markdown versions of your documents can help those tools. If you’re planning for the future, Mueller recommends prioritizing current needs by saying, “Prioritize needs over dreams.”
The conflict between the Search and Lighthouse teams exists and Google has not resolved it. Search Central offers guidance for search visibility, while Lighthouse assesses agentic browsing readiness, not ranking or AI eligibility.
What SEO Professionals Say
Chris Longco-founder of Nectiv, wrote:
“Chrome just released documentation on their new agent navigation audits. A little buried in there, they reference how the audit will check the LLMs.txt file. It mentions how it “checks for the presence of a machine-readable summary at the root of the domain.” This is less than a week after their documentation explaining how SEOs don’t have to worry about additional files + markup. I’m starting to look back a bit on the LLMs.txt. Some very smart people, including Crystal Carter, John-Henry Scherck, Joost de Valk, are changing my mind a bit. It also seems very clear that Google doesn’t want us to continue to do SEO as we usually do without looking behind the scenes and waiting for their advice.
Read our full coverage: Mueller explains why Google uses Markdown on dev documents | Google’s llms.txt advice depends on the product you are requesting
Theme of the week: Quiet reconstruction
Google is rebuilding search around AI while telling everyone that the fundamentals remain relevant.
The optimization guide released last week states that AEO and GEO are “always SEO.” Mueller says to focus on current needs. The core update rollout is similar to the others. But the same week, Google announced what it called the biggest upgrade to the search box in more than 25 years, reported that AI Mode had surpassed 1 billion monthly users, announced always-on information agents, and released data showing that user behavior is already shifting toward longer, multimodal, tracking-heavy queries.
The gap between Google’s public guidelines and its product roadmap continues to widen. Infrastructure evolves faster than guidelines.
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Featured image: PeopleImages/Shutterstock
