How Algorithms Affect Your SEO (2026 Guide)
You have not touched your website in months and your rankings have still moved. Not because you did anything wrong, but because Google's algorithm changed underneath you, again. Three confirmed updates already this year, and a growing share of searches that never even produce a click. If that sounds unfair, it is worth understanding exactly what changed and why.
In 18 years running Optimise Your Marketing from Cromford Mills in Derbyshire, I have watched SEO go from a discipline about keywords and backlinks to something much closer to a running conversation with an algorithm that increasingly reads and summarises the internet before a person ever sees it. East Midlands businesses who still think of SEO as a one-off project are the ones losing ground fastest.
This post expands on a point I made in our guide to how algorithms fit into every part of the BIG12: SEO is essentially the discipline of understanding and working with Google's algorithm. Here is exactly what changed in 2026, and what it means for how you show up.
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Meta titles, backlinks and keyword density were never the whole story, but they are an even smaller part of it now. SEO today means understanding what Google's algorithm is trying to reward at any given moment, and adjusting, because that target genuinely moves several times a year.
The Three Confirmed Updates of 2026
Google confirmed three major ranking updates already this year, and each one shifted what "ranking well" actually means.
March 2026 spam update
This update tightened enforcement against low-quality, manipulative content, and for the first time explicitly extended spam policies to cover AI-generated answers with no genuine value added. Sites leaning on unedited AI content saw the clearest impact.
March 2026 core update
Core updates reassess how Google's systems evaluate relevance and quality across the board. The March core update leaned further into surfacing genuinely satisfying content and rewarding fast, seamless sites, tightening the link between Core Web Vitals and rankings even further.
May 2026 core update
Rolling out between 21 May and 2 June, this update continued the same direction of travel, with FAQ rich results removed from search results entirely and Google expanding Personal Intelligence within AI Mode.
SEO used to be a project you finished. Now it is a relationship with an algorithm that changes several times a year, and the businesses winning are the ones who stay in that conversation instead of walking away from it. Stuart Baddiley, Optimise Your Marketing
Crawled, Indexed, Ranked, and Now Summarised
The traditional SEO funnel, crawled, indexed, ranked, still exists, but a fourth stage has become impossible to ignore. AI Overviews now appear on more than 20% of searches, and around 68% of US searches end without a click at all. Your content can rank well and still never be seen directly, because an AI system has already summarised the answer above it.
This is exactly why traditional SEO now needs to work alongside GEO, generative engine optimisation, which focuses specifically on how your business gets referenced and cited inside AI-generated answers, not just how your page ranks below them.
When a Derbyshire firm recovered from the March core update
A professional services client across the East Midlands saw organic traffic drop 22% almost overnight after the March 2026 core update. Rather than chasing quick fixes, we audited page speed, tightened thin content, and rebuilt several pages around genuinely satisfying, complete answers. Traffic recovered past pre-update levels within ten weeks.
See how we approach SEOHow This Connects to the BIG12 Framework
SEO sits alongside Website, Google and Algorithms in the BIG12, and none of them work in isolation anymore. A fast, well-structured website feeds directly into SEO performance, and understanding Google's own algorithm changes feeds directly into both. Derbyshire businesses who treat these as separate projects keep getting caught out by updates they never saw coming. We cover this properly in our online marketing training, and in our wider guide to where algorithms fit into every part of the BIG12.
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Knowing that Google ran three updates this year is the easy part. Actually auditing content against each one, fixing Core Web Vitals, and adapting a strategy that now spans both traditional SEO and GEO, that is where most Derbyshire and East Midlands business owners run out of time.
That is the gap we close. In 18 years of applying the BIG12 for UK SMBs, the businesses that stay visible through every update are never the ones who found one trick, they are the ones who kept adjusting, consistently, as Google's algorithm evolved.
If your rankings have moved and you are not sure why, it is worth finding out before your competitors work it out first.
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