Google shakes up the rankings, Discover post-update, DMA under the microscope – SEO News – #1 – March 2026

On February 27, Google announced that the February 2026 Discover Core Update has concluded. It lasted 22 days – a week longer than initially expected. This was the first core update in history targeting Discover exclusively, without affecting search results. It focused on English-language content in the USA, but Google has announced plans to expand it to other countries.

So, what exactly changed with this update?

• Less clickbait and sensational headlines in the Discover feed.
• More local content – websites from the user’s country now have higher visibility than foreign sites.
• Promotion of expertise – Google evaluates the entire site, not just a single article. If you build knowledge in a narrow niche, this is good news for you.
• Listicles like “10 reasons why…”? Many have lost visibility – at least those lacking deeper value.

If your Discover traffic dropped in February or at the turn of February and March – it’s worth analyzing your site’s topical consistency and content freshness. General portals covering dozens of categories may face more difficulties now.

If your Google rankings have resembled a sine wave in recent weeks, you are not alone. SERP monitoring tools have shown very high volatility since the beginning of the year.

Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Roundtable notes that high volatility has persisted almost continuously since January. Google is likely implementing many small algorithm changes instead of a single large, announced update.

Semrush Sensor has not dropped below 9.5/10, one of the highest scores the platform has ever recorded. Experts report daily shifts in top positions, and some site owners have experienced sharp traffic drops that partially recovered after a few days.

What does Google say? Almost nothing. While it confirms it is making ongoing minor core updates, it does not announce any official core update. The industry increasingly speculates whether this is a new pattern – instead of rare, large updates, there is a constant buzz of small, unannounced changes. This may be the new norm.

What to do about it?

Honestly? For now, mainly observe. Do not rewrite everything during active fluctuations. It’s worth checking whether the fluctuations affect specific types of sites (product, informational, local), compare with competitors, and wait for the picture to stabilize. During high volatility, rapid “rescue” actions often do more harm than good. This is probably the best advice at this point.

In March 2024, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into effect in the European Union. Its goal was to limit the dominance of the largest tech platforms and create a fairer digital services market – particularly in search engines.

After two years, it is clear that reality has diverged from initial expectations. Google’s dominance in European search has practically not changed, and some users and businesses feel that the search experience has rather worsened than improved.

Why was DMA introduced?

The regulation responded to long-standing accusations against Google regarding the abuse of its dominant position in search. The European Commission repeatedly pointed out that the company promoted its own services at the expense of competing platforms.

Frequently cited examples included:

• preferential positioning of Google Shopping over comparison services
• growing dominance of travel services, such as Google Flights and Google Hotels
• enhancing local results linked to Google Maps

In theory, DMA was intended to prevent such situations in advance – by imposing rules for equal treatment of all services in search results.

What do users say after two years?

Research shows that the regulation’s effects are not particularly impressive. A survey conducted by Nextrade Group among five thousand European users indicates that using search has become more complicated.

Key findings from the survey:

• around 66% of users now require more clicks to find the information they need
• 61% of intensive users report that searches take up to twice as long as before
• 42% of frequent travelers assess that searching for hotels and flights has clearly worsened

Similar conclusions appeared in an analysis by the European Centre for International Political Economy. In this study, 80% of respondents said they had never heard of DMA, yet almost 40% noticed that daily online tasks became more cumbersome.

The problem DMA didn’t solve

The biggest challenge remains the market structure itself. DMA attempts to regulate platform behavior but does not change their dominant position.

Google still handles over 90% of search queries in Europe.

For a company with global revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars, financial penalties are more a cost of doing business than a real threat.

As a result, more experts suggest that regulating platform operations alone may not be enough. Structural measures might be more effective – for instance, enforcing greater competition or separating certain technological services.

For now, however, the first two years of DMA remain, at best, a debatable outcome.

Google Discover has introduced an interesting experiment: a widget allowing users to follow a specific publisher or topic. If the test succeeds, users will be able to “subscribe” to selected sources. Consequently, content from a given site may appear more frequently in their feed.

At first glance, this seems like an attempt to turn Discover into something between a social media feed and a classic RSS. For publishers, this could potentially provide more stable traffic from Discover – instead of one-off spikes.

For now, it’s only a test, and Google has not provided any data regarding its impact on traffic.

Google is active. It just doesn’t say exactly how. Rankings have been unstable for months, Discover has seen a historic update, and the follow widget may slightly change how publishers generate recurring traffic. DMA has not changed the market – at least for now.

Given all this uncertainty, the best strategy is one that does not rely solely on Google rankings.