Google's core update may run until three days before Black Friday

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Every year, retailers and publishers hope that Google will leave its rankings alone in the run-up to the busiest shopping weeks of the year. This year, it has not. On Tuesday, November 10, Google began rolling out its November 2026 core update, a broad change to how it ranks pages, and said it may take up to two weeks to complete. If it uses all of that time, the update will finish on November 24, two days before Thanksgiving and three before Black Friday. The same afternoon, Google put its newest model, Gemini 4 Carbon, inside AI Mode for its most expensive subscribers. Yahoo rebuilt its search engine around an AI answer service, Reddit tested a product review section built from its forums, and Shopify pushed further into advertising with a product that charges merchants only when they make a sale.

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A ranking shake-up before the shopping rush

PPC Land reported that Google's core update shifts rankings for up to two weeks before Black Friday. The update was logged on Google's Search Status Dashboard at 10:06 Pacific time on November 10. "Released the November 2026 core update, which applies globally and to all languages," the entry reads. Google did not say which systems or types of content were affected, which is normal for core updates but leaves site owners to read the effects from their own data.

The timing is the story. Google's earlier core updates this year each took a little under two weeks, with the May update slightly quicker than the March one. The December 2025 update took longer, at well over two weeks. A November update that runs its full course would therefore overlap with the final preparations for Black Friday on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30. Google's own advice is to wait at least a week after a rollout ends before comparing performance, which pushes any reliable before-and-after reading past Cyber Monday itself. For retailers, publishers and affiliate sites, the period in which rankings matter most is also the period in which they will be least able to tell why their rankings moved.

Past updates suggest the moves can be large. After the March update, SE Ranking found that 79.5% of URLs in the top three positions changed place, with aggregators, directories and comparison sites losing the most ground and large news publishers such as nytimes.com and theguardian.com gaining. PPC Land also warned that the measurement tools themselves are unreliable: DemandSphere saw spurious results in about 11% of its daily rank checks, and Nozzle counted 8.0% of results pages as poisoned, which means that some of the volatility trackers report may not reflect real changes.

Search Engine Roundtable confirmed that Google's November 2026 core update is rolling out, quoting Google: "This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites." Barry Schwartz noted that ranking shifts around November 9 had already prompted speculation and that, across 23 previous core updates, the median rollout was about two weeks. The longest, in March 2024, took about six weeks. Google usually releases two to four core updates a year. The previous two in 2026 ran from March 27 to April 8 and from May 21 to June 2.

A comment from John Mueller the same day served as a reminder of how slowly Google's systems can form a view of a site. Responding on Bluesky to the owner of a new domain whose every attempt to request indexing in Search Console had failed on November 1, 8 and 9, Mueller said that it can take time for Google to understand the unique value of new websites. "It can take time for the systems to understand the unique value of it all," he wrote, adding that it is "good to make sure it's really top notch (quality over quantity)." The site's sitemaps listed 644 URLs. Mueller said he would pass the report on internally but recommended "focusing on normal crawling and indexing" rather than the request tool.

Gemini 4 Carbon arrives in AI Mode

On the same afternoon, Google moved its newest model into search. Search Engine Roundtable reported that Gemini 4 Carbon is available in Google Search AI Mode, selectable in the AI Mode model picker for Google AI Ultra subscribers. Google describes Carbon as its "strongest model with frontier performance in cybersecurity capabilities," with leading results in long-running agentic tasks across knowledge work, coding and science. Robby Stein of Google promised answers "with deeper reasoning & better instruction following." Access also extends to the Gemini app and Google Antigravity, Google's coding environment.

PPC Land's report on the core update noted that the Ultra plan starts at $99.99 a month and that some Ultra subscribers did not yet have access. Gemini 4 Argon, the previous model, reached Pro and Ultra subscribers on October 13. Google disclosed no timelines, markets or usage limits, and said nothing about how Carbon affects citations or ads in AI Mode. Not everyone was impressed. Inspired Taste, a recipe publisher run by Adam and Joanne Gallagher, replied to Rajan Patel, Google's vice president of engineering for Search, with an example of a flawed AI answer about roast turkey. "Google really needs to prioritize fundamentally flawed AI output UXs," it wrote. Glenn Gabe, testing with early access in the Gemini app, said he built a new version of the Atari 2600 game Pitfall with a single prompt in a few minutes.

Local and shopping results lose their furniture

Google is also testing changes that would take information away from local results. Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google's AI Overview local pack is dropping action buttons, photos and reviews in a test on mobile. Joy Hawkins, a local search consultant, noticed a new AI-powered local pack that replaces the traditional one and removes the website, call and directions buttons along with reviews, the address and opening hours, while still drawing on Business Profile data. "This is probably the ugliest version of the AI Overview I've seen in local thus far," she wrote. Schwartz, who replicated the test, was blunter about the commercial effect: "This new version, the one being tested, cannot be good for clicks, calls and direction actions to businesses." For small businesses that rely on calls and directions from local search, a pack without buttons is a pack that sends fewer customers.

Shopping results, by contrast, gained a filter. Search Engine Roundtable reported that searchers can now filter Google product results to show only non-incentivized reviews. After clicking a product, the detail panel offers a "Non-incentivized only" option, which Schwartz found on almost every listing he checked across regular Search, Google Shopping and AI Mode. He linked the filter to a requirement Google introduced about a year ago for merchants to label whether reviews were incentivised: "A year ago, Google began to require merchants to label when reviews were incentivized or not." Google has not commented. For brands that rely on sampling programmes to build reviews, the filter gives shoppers a one-click way to set those reviews aside.

Microsoft is experimenting with a different approach to personalisation. Search Engine Roundtable reported that Bing Shopping is personalizing search results with questions. Sachin Patel, writing for Search Engine Watch, found that when a user switches to the Shopping tab, "Bing asks three questions," and then shows results based on the answers. Schwartz could not reproduce it but said: "I think this is a pretty good way to customize and personalize search results for specific queries." Microsoft has not announced a rollout.

In Europe, a regulatory requirement is turning into a practical one. PPC News Feed reported that Google Merchant Center now requires a CSS choice for free listings in Europe. Merchants in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland who have not explicitly chosen a comparison shopping service "may experience disapprovals or limited visibility in free listings." The choice, between Google Shopping and a third-party service, is made in Merchant Center settings, only one service can represent a domain, and "synchronization may take 24-48 hours to clear any disapprovals." With Black Friday approaching, merchants who miss the setting risk losing free exposure in the weeks when it is most valuable.

Yahoo bets its search engine on Scout

Yahoo made the day's boldest search announcement. Search Engine Roundtable reported that Yahoo Search launched Pivot Search and a Yahoo Scout app as Scout, its AI answer engine, left beta to underpin all of Yahoo Search. Yahoo called it "a ground-up rebuild of Yahoo Search, the third largest search engine in the U.S." Scout has delivered more than 3 billion answers since launching earlier in 2026. Pivot Search evaluates each query and lets users move between traditional results and a Scout answer in a single experience, with AI answers suggested for comparisons and step-by-step questions.

A feature called Scout Memories personalises answers using earlier Scout activity, which Yahoo says users "can view, delete or opt out of" at any time. The new experience is live on desktop and mobile web in the US, the UK, Europe and Switzerland, and a new Scout app for iOS and Android adds live voice conversations, questions about photos and Yahoo News digests. Scout is also moving into Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports. "Search is about more than AI," said Feng, a Yahoo executive quoted in the announcement. For advertisers, Yahoo's move means a third large search engine in the US now places an AI answer at the centre of the experience, alongside Google's AI Mode and Bing's AI Mode.

Advertising platforms automate further

Shopify is moving deeper into advertising, and it is taking on risk that most ad platforms leave with the advertiser. AdExchanger reported that Shopify noses further into ad tech with its Campaign Autopilot expansion. Merchants set the price they will pay for each sale, can add controls such as a higher incentive for new customers or targeting by region and time of day, and Shopify runs the ads across partner platforms including Meta, Microsoft Advertising and Snapchat, with X in the pipeline. Merchants pay only per sale, not per impression or click. "Shopify takes that media risk," said Samir Pradhan, Shopify's vice president of product for merchant marketing. Shopify recently added search engine optimisation to the product, which Pradhan called "our first foray, so to speak, outside of ads toward this broader vision" of automated merchant marketing. "Preserving that merchant trust and then making them feel in control was a big part of the ethos of developing this product," he said. AdExchanger described Shopify's first-party data as the largest supply outside Amazon and Walmart.

Microsoft folded an older setting into its newest product. PPC News Feed reported that Microsoft Advertising moved its auto-generated assets setting into AI Max text customization. Advertisers who had auto-generated assets switched on for responsive search ads now have text customisation enabled, while those who had it off stay off, and nobody is opted into AI Max itself. "The Change History shows this migration as a system-initiated update," PPC News Feed noted. The change ties one of Microsoft's longest-standing automation settings to its AI Max campaign type, which it rolled out to all accounts this year.

Google, meanwhile, is testing a richer app ad. PPC News Feed reported that Google is testing "View app screenshots" in mobile search ads, a link on app install ads that lets users see screenshots before installing. The example was a sponsored Trip.com ad promoting cheap flights from New Delhi to Malaysia, spotted by Arpan Banerjee. Google confirms that App campaigns can pull content from app store listings automatically, but "it's currently unclear where this specific format pulls its content from and whether it's limited to a small test."

Reddit's two bets on commerce

Reddit spent the day trying to turn its conversations into a shopping destination and its data into better ad targeting. Adweek reported that, amid a holiday commerce push, Reddit is testing an AI-powered product review portal. Reddit Reviews compiles existing discussions about products into pages that summarise and compare them, and will appear in Reddit's apps and on the web over the next few weeks. At launch it will cover about 10,000 frequently discussed products in four categories: electronics, health and beauty, home and garden, and fashion and apparel. "Lived experience shows up across Reddit communities: in r/skincareaddiction, people share what they've tried for dry skin," the company's blog post says.

On the targeting side, AdExchanger reported that Reddit taps Qloo to strengthen its predictive targeting, gaining access to more than 10 years of Qloo's data on how tastes correlate across restaurants, music, fashion and other categories. Qloo's chief executive Alex Elias gave the example of a New York Italian restaurant tagged for its "Scandinavian minimalism" so that it can be linked to fashion brands with a similar aesthetic. Virgilio Pigliucci, Reddit's senior director of engineering, said the data helps Reddit find non-obvious connections: where its own data might suggest an espresso machine ad on a coffee thread, Qloo's might show that espresso shoppers are also looking for a table. New advertisers, whose campaigns once needed days or weeks of engagement data, can now "optimize against the signals" from a close proxy, Pigliucci said, and see results "instead of having to wait a little bit." He said the model needs no personal data, search queries or browsing history.

Reddit is also paying advertisers to try it. Digiday reported that Reddit dangles seasonal ad credits but advertisers still want better proof it works all year round. New advertisers whose campaigns go live before November 20 can earn credits: in the UK, one email offered GBP 500 for GBP 1,000 spent, and in the US, ads offered $1,500 in credits for $1,500 spent. Reddit called the programme "an ongoing part of our business." Its ad revenue growth has slowed for three quarters in a row, from 74% in the first quarter to 54% in the third, when it reached $847 million, and chief executive Steve Huffman said last month that search referrals fell by more than 1 million a week on average in October, partly because of Google's AI features. Buyers were cautious. "Reddit is still a test-and-learn platform for us, not somewhere we'd confidently put full-funnel budget," said Mark Bellamy of New Gen. "Advertisers do like to test the waters with it but it doesn't necessarily translate in always-on budgets," said the consultant Jonathan D'Souza Rauto.

Rationing the tokens

The cost of AI is now a line that agencies manage person by person. Digiday set out the case for and against AI token capping, prompted by a Bloomberg report on November 4 that Apple caps daily AI token spending at $200 for engineers and may cut other staff to $25. Several agencies already ration. The performance agency Roast has given each employee an allotment since March, with higher caps in busy periods. "It's up to the individual to use those tokens responsibly," said John Campbell, its head of innovation and AI. PMG applies a $50 daily limit through its internal portal, and staff who hit it more than once get either a bigger budget or advice on cheaper models. "That provides us a human in the loop moment to meet with teams or meet with individuals," said Dillon Larberg of PMG. Dept caps usage at team level. "Constraints are sometimes useful for us to find new ways of working," said Jonathan Whiteside, its global executive vice president. The argument for caps is that today's low prices reflect heavy spending by Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic, which will eventually want a return. The argument against is that cheap AI is the time to experiment, and Digiday cited MoviePass and WeWork as reminders that subsidised prices do not last.

Some publishers are already selling AI visibility to brands. Adweek reported that Who What Wear sells AI visibility to brands, helping fuel double-digit revenue growth. The fashion publisher, owned by Future plc, marks its 20th anniversary as its US revenue grew by double digits in fiscal 2026, partly because of Future Optic, a product launched in 2025 that helps brands appear more often in AI answer engines. "The bigger story is that our ability to win in AI is so big," said Elizabeth Bagdasarian, its head of US.

Platforms court advertisers on safety and sales

X tried to reassure advertisers that it can explain its own moderation. Adweek reported that X previewed labels that tell users why its AI system flagged their posts. Michael O'Herlihy, a former Twitter employee who recently rejoined X as head of safety, showed designs at the Brand & AI Safety Summit in New York on November 10: labels beneath posts that explain what X's AI detected, how a post's reach was limited and how to appeal. Adweek opened with an example of the problem the labels are meant to address: a post showing a SpaceX rocket launch labelled "adult content" with no explanation. O'Herlihy's stated aim is for X to "show the work" on moderation decisions. X's advertising revenue has roughly halved since Elon Musk took over in 2022, and the features were previewed rather than launched.

Samsung hired a Google executive to sell its TV inventory. Adweek reported that Nelson Boyce was named Samsung Ads senior vice president of ad sales. Boyce joins from Google, where he was managing director for large customer sales in the Americas, and earlier held senior roles at BET Networks and Nickelodeon. He said Samsung Ads "is at a really opportune moment in its history" and that its work is "ultimately resulting in providing clear and definable outcomes" for partners. He plans to give the sales team AI tools to free time for client work, and to use Samsung's position as the leading smart TV maker as the basis of its pitch.

Holiday stories that leave the product out

Three brand campaigns launched on November 10 said little about the product. Netflix released a brand campaign about the less obvious shows viewers become obsessed with after finishing hits such as Stranger Things, Adweek reported. Made by its in-house studio with Mother London, it launched in the US, Canada, Brazil and Spain with three films, including one in which an axolotl becomes the most popular amphibian in its tank by keeping a Bridgerton marathon going with its feet, and another in which a lonely astronaut wakes a crewmate from hypersleep to talk about K-pop Demon Hunters.

Rao's, the pasta sauce owned by The Campbell's Company, traded product shots for a story. Adweek reported that Rao's trades saucy product shots for a four-minute film about family time, titled "Limited-Time Only," in which three people learn how few meals they have left to share with their families. One participant, Karen, learns she has 192 chances left to eat with her mother. "The conceit here was that it felt like it was a limited-time only product in the traditional sense," said Chris Tutor, vice president of integrated marketing. "It's a little bit of a bait-and-switch, but it came across in a powerful way."

Maybelline, meanwhile, rewrote one of the best-known lines in beauty. Adweek reported that Maybelline rewrites its 35-year-old tagline for Gen Z with a new platform, "The Beauty of Infinite Possibility," fronted by Miley Cyrus. The L'Oreal brand wanted a more declarative statement about creativity, confidence and reinvention than the original question about a single woman's beauty.

The common thread is uncertainty about what drives results. Retailers enter their busiest weeks without knowing where Google's rankings will settle. Local businesses may lose the buttons that brought them calls. Reddit is trying to prove it deserves budgets beyond a holiday test, Shopify is betting it can take the media risk itself, and agencies are rationing the AI tools that are supposed to make all of this easier to manage.