A core update finishing the rollout that started last week, Brussels readying its largest DMA penalty against Google, a Merchant Center feed designed for conversational AI, and Business Profiles surfacing per-photo view counts for the first time.
The Regulatory Layer: Brussels Moves Past Threat to Enforcement
The European Commission’s first major DMA fine against Google is days away, and the compliance remedies attached to it matter more for European SERP visibility than the headline penalty number.
- EU Prepares Record DMA Fine for Google Over Search Self-Preferencing — The Commission is moving toward a high triple-digit million euro penalty for Google’s ranking of its own Shopping, Travel, and Local results above rivals, with the decision expected before the August recess. The compliance orders attached to it, not the fine amount, will determine how fast European organic visibility shifts in vertical SERP features.
The Algorithm: May 2026 Core Update Goes from Theoretical to Felt
Three days into the rollout, the May 2026 core update produced sharp swings in rankings, with an asymmetric winners-and-losers pattern that complicates competitive reading.
- May 2026 Core Update Lands With Force Across Multiple Verticals — Glenn Gabe’s tracking and SEO Chatter posts both confirm broad, vertical-spanning impact over the Memorial Day weekend. The Brazil Discover pattern is the most geographically specific signal: smaller sites pushed out in favor of news portals and backlink-heavy properties. Holiday-distorted US data makes short-window comparisons unreliable through the end of this week.
The Commerce Layer: AI Mode Gets Its Feed Format
Google’s Merchant Center now accepts conversational attributes designed for AI Mode, Gemini, and Business Agent retrieval. Product feed optimization is no longer about matching keywords; it is about anticipating the questions a conversational agent will ask.
- Google Merchant Center Adds Conversational Attributes for AI-Driven Commerce — Six new optional attributes including question_and_answer, related_product, and popularity_rank give ecommerce SEOs a way to instrument their feeds for conversational retrieval. The historical parallel with structured data is instructive: early adopters of Product schema were six to twelve months ahead. The window for building a similar lead here may be shorter.
Local SEO: Photo Views Become a Native Signal
Google quietly added per-asset view counts to Business Profile photos and videos, giving local SEOs their first native A/B testing surface and a concrete number to attach to the photo-upload billing conversation.
- Google Business Profiles Now Show Per-Photo View Counts — Individual view counts on photos and videos appear inside the Business Profile gallery, no third-party tool required. The rollout is partial. Pair this with yesterday’s coverage of detailed rejection notices and a clear pattern emerges: Google is reducing the opacity that has frustrated local SEOs for years.