Google has shipped two more spam updates since June. The August update ran from August 18 to August 21 with no new policies. The September update started on September 24, and Google says it may take up to two weeks, longer than any earlier 2026 spam update, so ranking moves during the rollout cannot be pinned on it yet. It is the fourth spam update of 2026, and the checklist in this article still applies.
Google pushed the DSA auto-upgrade back to February 2027, so the September timeline below no longer applies. What is getting auto-upgraded to AI Max in September 2026 is a different set: campaigns running automatically created assets (ACA), and campaigns with the campaign-level broad match setting turned on. Neither involves DSA. The migration checklist here still holds, just on a later clock.
As of July, Merchant Center Checkout links — the Buy Now CTA that takes shoppers from a listing straight to your checkout page — expanded to seven new countries: Indonesia, France, Mexico, Argentina, Israel, Poland, and Australia. Merchants based in those countries can enable it in Merchant Center to shorten the listing-to-checkout path.
Google's AI-generated summaries are eating into organic clicks. Here's what's actually happening, which queries are affected, and what cross-border sellers can do about it now.
Your store probably has dozens of blog posts that AI search engines have never cited. You don't need to rewrite them. Adjusting titles, openings, and structure is enough.
Traditional SEO gets you Google rankings. This guide walks you through robots.txt, llms.txt, structured data, and citation-friendly content to get your store cited in AI-generated answers.
AI shopping assistants are moving from recommendations to purchases. Shopify is betting on it, Google is building protocols for it, and Morgan Stanley predicts half of online shoppers will use AI agents by 2030. Is your product data ready?
Writing meta descriptions for hundreds of product pages is tedious. This guide shows how to use AI to generate high-quality descriptions in bulk, with reusable prompt templates.
Solve the common problem of keyword stuffing and over-optimization when using AI tools for SEO content, making your copy search-friendly and naturally readable.
A practical guide on combining AI tools with traditional SEO platforms for keyword research, uncovering high-value long-tail keyword opportunities for cross-border e-commerce.
A step-by-step tutorial on using ChatGPT and other AI tools to generate high-converting Shopify product descriptions in bulk, saving up to 80% of copywriting time.