Discover Core Update, AI Mode Ads & Crawl Policy – SEO Pulse

Welcome to the week’s Pulse for SEO: updates affect how Google ranks content in Discover, how it plans to monetize AI search, and what content you serve to bots.

Here’s what matters for you and your work.

Google Releases Discover-Only Core Update

Google launched the February 2026 Discover core update, a broad ranking change targeting the Discover feed rather than Search. The rollout may take up to two weeks.

Key Facts: The update is initially limited to English-language users in the United States. Google plans to expand it to more countries and languages, but hasn’t provided a timeline. Google described it as designed to “improve the quality of Discover overall.” Existing core update and Discover guidance apply.

Why This Matters For SEOs

Google has historically rolled Discover ranking changes into broader core updates that affected Search as well. Announcing a Discover-specific core update means rankings in the feed can now move without any corresponding change in Search results.

That distinction creates a monitoring problem. When you track performance in Search Console, you should check Discover traffic independently over the next two weeks. Traffic drops that look like a core update penalty may be Discover-only. Treating them as Search problems leads to the wrong diagnosis.

Discover traffic concentration has grown for publishers. NewzDash CEO John Shehata reported that Discover accounts for roughly 68% of Google-sourced traffic to news sites. A core update targeting that surface independently raises the stakes for any publisher relying on the feed.

Read our full coverage: Google Releases Discover-Focused Core Update

Alphabet Q4 Earnings Reveal AI Mode Monetization Plans

Alphabet reported Q4 2025 earnings, showing Search revenue grew 17% to $63 billion. The call included the first detailed look at how Google plans to monetize AI Mode.

Key Facts: CEO Sundar Pichai said AI Mode queries are three times longer than traditional searches. Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler described the resulting ad inventory as reaching queries that were “previously challenging to monetize.” Google is testing ads below AI Mode responses.

Why This Matters For SEOs

The monetization details matter more than the revenue headline. Google is treating AI Mode as additive inventory, not a replacement for traditional search ads. Longer queries create new ad surfaces that didn’t exist when users typed three-word searches. For paid search practitioners, that means new campaign territory in conversational queries.

The metrics Google celebrated on this call describe users staying on Google longer. Google framed longer AI Mode sessions as a growth driver, and the monetization infrastructure follows that logic. The tradeoff to watch is referral traffic.

AI Mode creates a seamless path from AI Overviews, as detailed in our coverage last week. The earnings data suggest Google sees that containment as part of the growth story.

Read our full coverage: Alphabet Q4 2025: AI Mode Monetization Tests And Search Revenue Growth

Mueller Pushes Back On Serving Markdown To LLM Bots

Google Search Advocate John Mueller pushed back on the idea of serving Markdown files to LLM crawlers instead of standard HTML, calling the concept “a stupid idea” on Bluesky and raising technical concerns on Reddit.

Key Facts: A developer described plans to serve raw Markdown to AI bots to reduce token usage. Mueller questioned whether LLM bots can recognize Markdown on a website as anything other than a text file, or follow its links. He asked what would happen to internal linking, headers, and navigation. On Bluesky, he was more direct, calling the conversion “a stupid idea.”

Why This Matters For SEOs

The practice exists because developers assume LLMs process Markdown more efficiently than HTML. Mueller’s response treats this as a technical problem, not an optimization. Stripping pages to Markdown can remove the structure that bots need to understand relationships between pages.

Mueller’s technical guidance is consistent, including his advice on multi-domain crawling and his crawl slump guidance. This fits a pattern where Mueller draws clear lines around bot-specific content formats. He previously compared llms.txt to the keywords meta tag, and SE Ranking’s analysis of 300,000 domains found no connection between having an llms.txt file and LLM citation rates.

Read our full coverage: Google’s Mueller Calls Markdown-For-Bots Idea ‘A Stupid Idea’

Google Files Bugs Against WooCommerce Plugins For Crawl Issues

Google’s Search Relations team said on the Search Off the Record podcast that they filed bugs against WordPress plugins. The plugins generate unnecessary crawlable URLs through action parameters like add-to-cart links.

Key Facts: Certain plugins create URLs that Googlebot discovers and attempts to crawl. The result is wasted crawl budget on pages with no search value. Google filed a bug with WooCommerce and flagged other plugin issues that remain unfixed. The team’s response targeted plugin developers rather than expecting individual sites to fix the problem.

Why This Matters For SEOs

Google intervening at the plugin level is unusual. Normally, crawl efficiency falls on individual sites. Filing bugs upstream suggests the problem is widespread enough that one-off fixes won’t solve it.

Ecommerce sites running WooCommerce should audit their plugins for URL patterns that generate crawlable action parameters. Check your crawl stats in Search Console for URLs containing cart or checkout parameters that shouldn’t be indexed.

Read our full coverage: Google’s Crawl Team Filed Bugs Against WordPress Plugins

LinkedIn Shares What Worked For AI Search Visibility

LinkedIn published findings from internal testing on what drives visibility in AI-generated search results. The company reported that non-brand awareness-driven traffic declined by up to 60% across the industry for a subset of B2B topics.

Key Facts: LinkedIn’s testing found that structured content performed better in AI citations, particularly pages with named authors, visible credentials, and clear publication dates. The company is developing new analytics to identify a traffic source for LLM-driven visits and to monitor LLM bot behavior in CMS logs.

Why This Matters For SEOs

What caught my attention is how much this overlaps with what AI platforms themselves are saying. Search Engine Journal’s Roger Montti recently interviewed Jesse Dwyer, head of communications at Perplexity. The AI platform’s own guidance on what drives citations lines up closely with what LinkedIn found. When both the cited source and the citing platform arrive at the same conclusions independently, that gives you something beyond speculation.

Read our full coverage: LinkedIn Shares What Works For AI Search Visibility

Theme Of The Week: Google Is Splitting The Dashboard

Every story this week points to the same realization. “Google” is no longer one thing to monitor.

Google is now announcing Discover core updates separately from Search core updates. AI Mode carries ad formats and checkout features that don’t exist in traditional results. Mueller drew a policy line around how bots consume content. Google filed crawl bugs upstream at the plugin level, and LinkedIn is building a separate measurement for AI-driven traffic.

A year ago, you could check one traffic graph in Search Console and get a reasonable picture. The picture now fragments across Discover, Search, AI Mode, and LLM-driven traffic. Ranking signals and update cycles differ, and the gaps between them haven’t been closed.

Top Stories Of The Week:

This week’s coverage spanned five developments across Discover updates, search monetization, crawl policy, and AI visibility.

More Resources:

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