Google Releases August 2026 Spam Update as Gemini 3.7 Powers New AI Mode Features
TLDR
Google's third spam update of 2026 finished rolling out Friday; Gemini 3.7 Flash now powers AI Mode, while multiple other search, ads, and crawler changes roll out across platforms.
Optimixed Overview
Optimixed's original report on this story.
SERoundtable reports that Google completed its August 2026 spam update on Friday morning, marking the company's third spam update this year. Google Search's AI Mode is now powered by Gemini 3.7 Flash, while the company also paused AI-generated images in AI Overviews and is hiring for content automation roles. Beyond core search updates, Google is addressing data logging bugs in the Performance report for generative AI features, may be fixing favicons disappearing from results, and is expanding support for HTTP QUERY methods; meanwhile Google Ads is rolling out enhanced matching and new experimentation features, Microsoft Advertising is launching AI Max globally, and Applebot gained thousands of new IP addresses for crawling.