DEV Community: Alexander Todosuik

Google Restated Merchant Center Reporting Back to July 1, 2026

Alexander Todosuik — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:04:28 +0000

Google restated Merchant Center performance reporting going back to July 1, 2026, with the update landing on August 24. If you manage a Shopping feed and noticed a sudden shift in your historical reports, this is very likely why.

What was restated

The core change is that YouTube affiliate/shopping clicks are now split out from organic traffic in Merchant Center reporting, instead of being folded into the same organic bucket as before. Because the restatement is retroactive to July 1, historical charts change shape even though nothing about your actual traffic changed.

Why this looks like a traffic drop

If a meaningful share of your organic clicks were actually coming from YouTube shopping surfaces, your organic line in Merchant Center can show what looks like a drop starting in the restated period - purely from reclassification, not from any real change in demand or rankings.

What to check

Compare total (organic + YouTube) clicks pre- and post-restatement rather than organic alone.
Check whether your YouTube shopping integration is active - the split only matters if you have meaningful YouTube-sourced traffic.
Do not diagnose a ranking drop from Merchant Center data alone without cross-checking Search Console.

Available in your language

Russian (Ukraine market): https://yositeup.com/ru-ua/blog/merchant-center-cross-platform-reporting-2026
Russian (US market): https://yositeup.com/ru-us/blog/merchant-center-cross-platform-reporting-2026
Russian (Poland market): https://yositeup.com/ru-pl/blog/merchant-center-cross-platform-reporting-2026
Polish: https://yositeup.com/pl-pl/blog/merchant-center-cross-platform-reporting-2026

Google Ads' New Product Titles Report Shows Which Titles Were Rewritten by AI

Alexander Todosuik — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:02:32 +0000

Google Ads has quietly added a Product Titles report inside Shopping campaign diagnostics. It shows which product titles shown to shoppers were rewritten by Google's AI systems, compared to what you actually submitted in your feed.

Why titles get rewritten

Google has rewritten Shopping titles for years to better match search intent, but until now there was no dedicated report to see the scale or pattern of these changes. Advertisers relied on spot-checking individual ads.

What to check in the new report

How many of your active listings have an AI-rewritten title versus the original feed title.
Whether rewritten titles are dropping key attributes (brand, size, color) that your feed structure relies on for filtering.
Whether performance differs meaningfully between rewritten and original titles for the same product.

This is especially relevant if your feed pipeline enforces strict formatting for compliance or brand reasons - the report is the first way to audit that at scale rather than product-by-product.

Available in your language

Russian (Ukraine market): https://yositeup.com/ru-ua/blog/google-ads-product-titles-report-ai-rewritten-2026
Polish: https://yositeup.com/pl-pl/blog/google-ads-product-titles-report-ai-rewritten-2026

Google AdSense Switches to Begin-to-Render Impression Counting (Feb 17, 2027)

Alexander Todosuik — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:02:16 +0000

Google AdSense is changing how it counts ad impressions starting February 17, 2027. The platform is moving to a Begin-to-Render model: an impression will only count once the ad slot has actually started rendering in the browser.

What actually changes

Under the current method, an impression can be logged even when an ad never really became visible - for example when a page is closed or navigated away from before the ad finished loading. Begin-to-Render tightens that: impressions that started loading but never rendered will no longer be counted.

Why this matters for publishers

Dashboard impression numbers may drop after the switch, with no real change in traffic or ad requests.
CTR and RPM metrics that are calculated per impression will shift because the denominator (impressions) gets smaller and more accurate.
It's worth comparing pre- and post-February-2027 data on a like-for-like basis rather than assuming a raw drop means falling traffic.

Available in your language

Full breakdowns with more detail, screenshots and market-specific context:

Russian (Ukraine market): https://yositeup.com/ru-ua/blog/google-adsense-begin-to-render-impressions-february-2027
Russian (US market): https://yositeup.com/ru-us/blog/google-adsense-begin-to-render-impressions-february-2027
Russian (Poland market): https://yositeup.com/ru-pl/blog/google-adsense-begin-to-render-impressions-february-2027
Polish: https://yositeup.com/pl-pl/blog/google-adsense-begin-to-render-impressions-february-2027

If you run AdSense on a site with meaningful traffic, it's worth flagging this internally now so nobody panics in February 2027 when the numbers move.

What Article Marketing Actually Means in SEO (Not What Most Guides Say)

Alexander Todosuik — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:40:21 +0000

Most explanations of "article marketing" in SEO stop at "write content and rank." That is not
wrong, but it skips the part that actually matters: which articles compound and which ones just add
word count.

What article marketing actually is

It is the practice of publishing topic-specific, high-quality articles whose purpose is to build
topical authority around a cluster of related search intents, not just to target one keyword each.
A single article rarely ranks in isolation for long -- what ranks and holds is a cluster where each
piece links to the others and covers a distinct angle of the same underlying question.

Why most article marketing efforts underperform

Articles are commissioned by keyword volume alone, with no check on whether the search intent is informational, commercial, or navigational
No internal linking plan between articles in the same cluster
Publishing stops as soon as rankings appear, before the authority signal compounds

What to check before commissioning content

Does this topic already have an AI Overview or featured snippet answering it in one paragraph? If yes, a generic article will not get clicks even at position 1-3.
Is there an existing cluster this article should link into, or is it a true standalone topic?
What does the top 10 for this query actually cover that a generic 800-word article does not?

Full guide with the complete framework: https://yositeup.com/blog/seo-article-marketing

Your SEO Competitors Are Not Who You Think They Are

Alexander Todosuik — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 22:51:30 +0000

A common mistake in competitor analysis: teams list their direct business rivals and
call it done. But a search competitor is not the same thing as a business competitor -- it is
simply whoever else ranks for the same queries, and that list is often unrelated to who you
compete with for customers.

Why this matters

If you only track companies you already know, you miss:

Aggregator and comparison sites that outrank every individual business in the category
Content publishers with no product at all, just better-optimized pages
Adjacent businesses that happen to rank for a shared keyword cluster

A quick way to find your real list

Take your 10-15 most important queries
Search each one and record every domain in the top 10, not just ones you recognize
Any domain that appears for 3+ of your queries is a real SEO competitor, regardless of what it sells

What to do with the list

Once you know who actually occupies page 1, the useful comparison is technical and content
depth, not brand size: page speed, internal linking, content freshness, and how much of the
query's search intent each page actually answers.

Full walkthrough with the complete methodology: https://yositeup.com/en-ua/blog/competitors-website-analysis-for-seo-marketing

Reading Google Search Console Data Without Fooling Yourself

Alexander Todosuik — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 12:58:32 +0000

Three ways Search Console performance data gets misread, and what to check instead.

Average position is a blend, not a single truth

A page at "position 8" can be #1 for its main keyword and #40 for ten low-volume variants
dragging the average down. Before reacting to a position number, filter the Queries tab to
that specific page and look at the actual query breakdown.

Low CTR at a bad position is expected

CTR naturally drops under 1% past position 20-30. That is not a red flag by itself - the
position is the actual problem. Low CTR at position 5-8 is the pattern worth investigating,
because it usually means a title/meta mismatch with what users actually want to click.

High impressions with zero clicks

This usually means Google is showing the page for real queries, but the listing isn't winning
the click. Cross-reference the specific queries driving those impressions against your title
and meta description - the mismatch is often obvious once you see the actual query list.

What is actually worth acting on

Pages with high impressions AND position 11-20 - real demand, one push from page one
A position swing across many pages at once on the same day - algorithm update, not a page-level problem
Good position (top 5) but unusually low CTR - a title/meta fix, not a ranking fix

Full report-by-report guide:
Search Console data guide 2026

Multi-Regional Website Structure: The Mistakes That Actually Tank Rankings

Alexander Todosuik — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 12:57:37 +0000

Expanding one site into multiple languages/markets fails in a small number of predictable
ways. Checklist form, because it's faster to audit against than prose.

URL structure — pick one, do not mix

Subdirectory: example.com/en-us/
Subdomain: us.example.com
ccTLD: example.de (strongest local signal, highest cost/maintenance)

Mixing patterns across different sections of the same site is the single most common
structural mistake found in multi-regional audits.

hreflang, done correctly

Every variant must reference itself AND every sibling variant — self-referencing is required, not optional
Include an x-default for the fallback/international version
Use exact ISO codes (en-us, not en_US or en-US-x)

What actually breaks rankings

Machine-translating without local market adaptation (currency, examples, local regulations) — Google and users both notice
Internal links defaulting back to the English version instead of the current language/region
Duplicate hreflang errors — Search Console's International Targeting report surfaces most of these directly
Treating "same language, different country" as identical — UK English and US English have different commercial intent and different competitors

Full guide on planning multi-regional structure from scratch:
Multi-regional website expansion guide

The "AI Overviews Killed CTR by 61%" Number Everyone Misquotes

Alexander Todosuik — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 12:57:25 +0000

A widely cited study found a 61% CTR drop tied to AI Overviews. The number is real, but it
gets misquoted as "AI Overviews cut organic CTR by 61%" across the board, which is not what
was measured.

What was actually measured

The 61% figure is the CTR drop for queries where an AI Overview appears ABOVE the organic
results, compared to the same query type without an AI Overview present. It is not a blanket
number across all search traffic.

Where the impact concentrates

Informational "what is / how to" queries: largest measured impact
Transactional / commercial-intent queries: comparatively smaller impact
Branded queries: minimal impact, people searching your brand name still click through

The practical read

If most of your organic traffic is informational content, expect CTR compression specifically
on the queries that trigger an AI Overview — not site-wide. Search Console's query-level data
will show you exactly which queries have impressions growing while clicks stay flat; that
pattern is the AI Overview signature.

The response is not to abandon informational content — being the cited source inside an
Overview still drives some referral clicks — but to weight commercial/transactional query
tracking more heavily as the currently more reliable traffic base.

Full study breakdown:
AI Overviews CTR drop study, explained

AI Max for Shopping Is Not Performance Max With a New Name

Alexander Todosuik — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 12:57:02 +0000

Merchants keep asking why their Performance Max playbook stopped working after switching
to AI Max for Shopping. Three concrete mechanical differences explain most of it.

1. Product feed weight went up

Title quality, product type hierarchy, and custom labels now carry more direct weight in who
sees which product. A generic or SKU-only title has a bigger downside than it did before.

2. Negative keywords are actually enforced

Performance Max had well-documented cases where negatives were inconsistently applied across
an account. Early AI Max data shows more consistent enforcement — which also means old negative
lists that "didn't seem to matter" suddenly do.

3. Creative generation is now explicit policy

The July 2026 Terms of Service update formally states the system can generate and test ad
creative combinations from your feed and assets. This behavior existed under Performance Max
too, it just wasn't documented as clearly.

Before migrating, check

Are product titles descriptive, or just codes?
Are custom labels actually used for margin/season/bestseller segmentation?
Are negative keywords account-level (more reliable) or campaign-level only?

Full migration breakdown with more detail on each mechanism:
AI Max for Shopping vs Performance Max

Your Google Ads Historical Data Is Gone. Here Is What Actually Survives

Alexander Todosuik — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 12:56:49 +0000

Google deleted historical performance data older than a June 2026 cutoff from the Ads
interface and API — campaign history, keyword performance, search terms, auction insights.
Support tickets about "missing data" all trace back to the same policy change, not an account bug.

What is gone for good

Search term reports not exported before the cutoff
Auction insights history
Keyword-level Quality Score history

What you can still pull back

If GA4 was linked with auto-tagging on, click and session data survived independently:
Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition, filtered to google / cpc.

If BigQuery export was enabled on the GA4 property, the raw events_* tables still have it —
query for traffic_source.medium = 'cpc' over the deleted date range.

Any scheduled CSV/Sheets export from before the cutoff also still has the numbers, just not
inside the Ads UI anymore.

The actual fix

Set up a recurring quarterly export (a simple Ads Script writing to Sheets, or a BigQuery
export) so a future retention policy change can't erase your own history again. Waiting for
Google to reverse a data policy is not a strategy.

Full breakdown of exactly what changed and a step-by-step recovery checklist:
Google Ads reporting data deleted - what to do

Google Search Console Now Tracks YouTube and Social Media in Search

Alexander Todosuik — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 14:53:19 +0000

Google Search Console expanded its coverage in 2026 to track how pages perform when they surface alongside YouTube and social media results inside Google Search - not just classic blue-link organic results.

Why this changed the reporting picture

Previously, a page could be driving real visibility through video or social integration in the SERP without that showing up anywhere in Search Console's standard performance report. That blind spot is now closed.

What to check

Filter the Performance report by the new search appearance types. Compare position and CTR for pages with video/social integration against pages without - the difference is often larger than expected.

Full breakdown: yositeup.com

Unconfirmed Google Ranking Volatility, August 12-13 2026

Alexander Todosuik — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 21:55:41 +0000

Multiple independent SERP trackers - AccuRanker, Algoroo, AWR, SEMrush Sensor, Sistrix, Mozcast - registered a synchronized volatility spike on August 12-13, 2026. Google has made no official statement; the Search Status Dashboard still shows the June 2026 spam update as the most recent confirmed event.

Why the silence doesn't mean nothing happened

Each tracker runs its own keyword panel and its own methodology. When several independently-built tools spike on the same dates, that agreement is a stronger signal than any single tool moving alone.

Scale

Reported at roughly 56% of a typical confirmed core update's magnitude, and it faded within about a day.

What to actually check

Treat average position, impressions and clicks in Search Console as three separate signals, not one blended number. Separate Discover/Google News traffic from regular Search. Cross-check GA4 against Search Console before concluding anything.

Full data breakdown and market context: yositeup.com