Google Search and AI updates: October 29, 2026 recap

By Nathan Brooks

Google’s Q3 2026 results put search advertising revenue at $82 billion, up 10.5%, while total revenue reached $127.6 billion, up 25%.

Microsoft’s first-quarter 2027 results showed search and advertising revenue up 12%, two points above the prior quarter’s 10%, and overall revenue up 19%. Separately, the recap cites 10% current-quarter ad growth after a listed sequence of 10%, 12%, 10%, 16% and 21%.

Which Google changes are confirmed?

Google confirmed that AI Mode ads now reach Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore. Brazil, Mexico and the United Kingdom will follow in Q4.

It also launched multiturn ads in the United States. Advertisers can now buy AI Mode ads in 10 named markets, while U.S. campaigns gain multiturn formats.

Restaurants can now manage third-party ordering providers individually in Google Business Profiles. They can disable each ordering feature completely or partially.

Google also launched the Connected Apps Platform preview for Search and Gemini. The unified platform lets more developers bring app capabilities into both products.

Google Ads API version 26.1 is a minor release covering assets, campaigns, local services, recommendations, reporting and targeting. The Merchant API’s October 26 update expands YouTube Shopping and AI-commerce reporting.

Merchant changes also add video and warranty product attributes, improve disapproval diagnostics, enhance integrations and begin reporting deprecations. Developers and merchants gain more control over catalog data and error diagnosis.

Which Google interface changes remain unconfirmed?

Three Google interface changes remain tests or reports, not confirmed launches:

• AI Mode product blending. Screenshots suggest Google may place sponsored products and ads inside organic product results beneath “Sponsored” and “All products” labels. The forum author could not confirm whether every “All products” result is paid.
• AI Overviews citations. Google may test removing the desktop citations card that links desktop users to overview sources. The visible change concerns the card, not citation quality.
• AI Overviews refinements. Query-refinement bubbles appear above some overviews. Clicking one opens AI Mode for that query set without first changing the original search query.

No rollout has been confirmed for any of those three tests.

What does this mean for site owners?

Google’s Search Console links report samples links rather than showing every link, including every spam link. Google has long documented that limitation, so a missing suspicious link does not prove a clean profile.

Google’s new Halloween-themed episode of The Non-Canonical Cabinet explains why 404 pages are not scary. The session offers guidance for publishers and site owners encountering missing URLs.

What did the forums add?

Recipe rankings drew an anecdotal warning. Inspired Taste’s @rmstein and @rajanpatel reported full branded “Frankenstein” AIO recipes ranking first for unbranded recipe queries, often above a large stack of ads. They described the packages as plagiarizing, but supplied no Google-wide sample.

Lily Ray said: “Showing Top Stories in AI Overviews is also a way for Google to disincentivize publishers from blocking Google from showing them in AI Overviews.” That was her interpretation, not a published Google policy.

She also reported that AI Mode citations failed to point to the actual Google article requested. That issue differs from the tested citations-card removal because it concerns destination accuracy, not card visibility.

Google separately confirmed that it is fixing 2020 election queries in AI Mode so the Gemini app answers more fully. The company said its systems verify recent election answers with news articles or AP data, and older answers with historic records.

John Mueller said: “The world of technical SEO is not going away, though you might use AI to make it a bit easier to figure it out.” His post said crawling and rendering remain complex for all parties.

Artificial Analysis introduced Intelligence Index v5 with two new benchmarks, three upgrades and a majority of the index built on private datasets. The index measures model capabilities across tasks.

Khushal Bherwani reported a Bing result page showing “wired,” a large dislike button and an odd ad-grouping show/hide control, possibly a bug. Google also posted that it was fixing a feed issue raised by Rajan Patel.

Google dressed Waymo vehicles in pumpkin costumes for Halloween, with a video and Instagram photo showing the seasonal stunt.

What else appeared in the wider roundup?

• AI and models: The roundup linked a New York Times report on ChatGPT advice to cut a seizure drug and its devastating consequences. It also covered SISTRIX research on why AI-visibility breadth beats repetition, Google’s Agents CLI evaluation work, Anthropic research on agents and expert judgment, Gemini 4 Carbon, Meta’s Tamagotchi-like Waddle World AI pet app, and OpenAI’s election-interference war room.
• AI products: Other links covered a 2026 citation study for ChatGPT and Google AI, Gemini student explorations, LiteRT for smaller apps and faster GPU inference in Google Play services, marketer AI training, and API credits for eligible ChatGPT subscriptions.
• Analytics and business: Seer Interactive examined agentic-commerce measurement, KRM Digital Marketing explained GA4 event failures, CNBC scrutinized Google’s AI spending, and Apple Insider reported an order requiring OpenAI to detail employee information to Apple.
• Corporate developments: Linn County approved an independent water-study agreement with Google. Apple and OpenAI received a 2027 trial date. Google’s Q3 earnings-call remarks also appeared, alongside a content-marketing case study on building a community to differentiate a firm.
• Local and consumer search: The roundup covered multimodal search’s SEO implications, Google Maps fall colors on Android Auto, review removals, SMB misalignment, AEO strategy, local product inventory, ChatGPT Search, Near Media, and seasonal map features.
• Product and PPC updates: Amazon introduced the Echo Show 16, Alexa speakers, a smart clock and photo frame. Chrome gained “Suggested by Gemini” autofill and Gmail-powered enhanced autofill. PPC links covered Microsoft Advertising’s October AI tools, budget triage, native Google AI checkout for Shopify stores by default, Black Friday planning, and a PMax audience-exclusions pilot.

Publishers and advertisers should watch the Q4 AI Mode rollout, blended-product tests, citations-card behavior, ordering-control uptake, API adoption and whether branded recipe AIOs spread beyond the reported examples.