Update: 22nd May, 11:53am AEST
The update has been live for 48 hours and we are already seeing carnage.
We have been tracking a well-known Australian directory site that was sitting
position 1-3 for basically every “near me” keyword you can think of. Plumbers,
electricians, mechanics, cleaners. All of them. Comfortable.
Not anymore.
• Plumber near me. Position 1 to 6. Lost 3,400 clicks.
• Cleaners near me. Position 1 to 10.
• Car detailing near me. Position 3 to 15.
• Hairdresser near me. Gone.
• Gardening services near me. Gone.
75.5% of all near me terms declined in the past 48 hours.
This is a pretty clear indication of the update’s focus.
Someone searches “plumber near me” and Google has two options. Show them a directory that lists 50 plumbers it scraped from the internet.
Or show them the actual plumber with 200 reviews and 15 years of experience. Google does not need a middleman for that anymore. It has Maps, Business Profiles, and AI Overviews. The directory adds nothing.
On May 21, 2026, Google started rolling out its second core update of the year. Two weeks to complete, finishing around June 4.
The timing is not a coincidence. Two days earlier at I/O, Google announced AI Mode at 1 billion users, AI Overviews on 48% of queries, and a complete redesign of Search. The core update is the ranking system catching up to that new reality.
We manage SEO campaigns across dozens of Australian businesses. This one is already showing movement across our accounts. Here is what is happening.
What Google Is Actually Rewarding
Google’s official line is the same as always: better surface relevant, satisfying content. Here is what we are actually seeing.
The update is powered by next-generation Gemini-based quality models.
Google is getting dramatically better at distinguishing content that genuinely helps people from content that exists purely to rank.
The March 2026 core update gave us a clear preview. The May update is doubling down on the same signals.
Information gain is the dominant signal
Information gain measures whether your page adds something the rest of the web does not already have. March was the first time it carried substantial ranking weight at scale. May is amplifying it further.
What counts:
- Proprietary data. Numbers and benchmarks from your own work. Not reshuffled industry stats.
- First-hand experience. You ran the campaign, served the client, tested the tool. Not a summary of someone else’s work.
- Named expert authors. Real people with demonstrated expertise. Not “admin” or “marketing team.”
What we are telling clients:
If your content could have been written by anyone with access to Google and 30 minutes, it is at risk. The pages gaining visibility are the ones that could not have been written by someone who had not actually done the work.
AI content farms got crushed
The numbers from March tell the story:
- Pages with proprietary data or case studies: gained 15-25% visibility
- Templated or rewritten content: dropped 30-50%
- Generic AI content farms: lost 60-80%
Google is not penalising AI content outright. Sites using AI as a tool where humans add real expertise are fine. Sites using AI as a replacement for expertise are getting hammered.
Branded sites are winning
Roughly 80% of top results have shifted toward branded and official websites over content aggregators. Good news if you have built a real brand. Terrible news if your SEO strategy was thin content on a domain nobody has heard of.
The AI Overviews Factor
This update does not exist in a vacuum. AI Overviews now appear on 48% of queries and they are reshaping where clicks go.
Organic clicks are down 38% on AI Overview queries. Zero-click searches have risen from 54% to 72%. Position one CTR has dropped from 27% to as low as 11%.
But brands cited inside AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks than non-cited competitors. Being named in the AI response is now more valuable than holding the top organic position.
What we are telling clients:
The new objective is not to rank number one. It is to be the source that AI Overviews cite. That means original data, named expertise, and content that Google’s AI considers authoritative enough to reference.
E-E-A-T Now Matters for Every Niche
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust used to matter most for health and finance content. In 2026, they matter everywhere.
A blog post about project management software now needs the same depth of expertise that a medical article has always needed. Named authors, first-person experience, transparent methodology, and current data. We have been building this into our content approach for the last 18 months. The algorithm is now explicitly rewarding it.
YMYL sites (health, finance, legal, local services) saw 20-35% ranking drops in March if their content lacked first-hand experience signals. If your content reads like a Wikipedia summary, you are losing ground.
What We Are Doing Right Now
The update is still rolling out. We are not making reactive changes. But we are running a checkpoint across every SEO account we manage.
- Waiting for completion. Our rule: no content decisions until at least one week after the rollout finishes. If you are seeing drops right now, do not panic. Initial volatility often corrects.
- Auditing against information gain. We are reviewing every page against five criteria: proprietary data, first-hand evidence, original framework, expert attribution, freshness. Pages scoring zero are our priority rewrites.
- Prioritising content only we can write. Could someone who has never done this work write this page from Google alone? If yes, it is not good enough. We are pushing clients to share real data and case studies.
- Building AI Overview citation strategies. Structuring content to be cited by AI Overviews: clear factual statements, named statistics, concise expert opinions. That is where the clicks are going.
- Cleaning up author profiles. Real authors, real bios, real credentials. Anonymous content is a liability in 2026.
- Updating stale content. Every page not updated in 12+ months gets refreshed or consolidated. Especially critical for e-commerce SEO where product landscapes change fast.
The Bottom Line
The direction is now very clear. Original content from real experts with real data wins. Generic content loses. AI filler without human expertise gets hammered. This aligns with everything happening across Google Ads too: AI Max, journey-aware bidding. Google is getting better at identifying quality and punishing shortcuts across both organic and paid.
When the dust settles around June 4, audit your content honestly. Ask yourself: does this page contain something the reader cannot find anywhere else?
If the answer is no, that is the page to fix first.
