The SEO Update by Yoast – March 2026 Edition

Hosts

Alex Moss

Principal SEO

Carolyn Shelby

Principal SEO

Topics and sources

SEO & AI news

1. New AI-powered personal and desktop computing tools launch
   • Perplexity Computer launches
   • Perplexity Personal Computer launches
   • Introducing My Computer: When Manus meets your desktop
   • Claude Dispatch
2. A Google patent describes replacing search results with AI-generated landing pages​
3. Google’s Liz Reid on AI, search, and multimedia indexing
   • Google’s Liz Reid: Search and Gemini may converge, or diverge further
   • Google’s Liz Reid says LLMs unlock audio and video indexing
4. WordPress.org now serves markdown outputfor AI agents and developers​
5. Crawl entire websites with a single API call using browser rendering
6. Branded queries filter in Search Console is now available
7. Google Maps introduces Ask Maps and immersive navigation powered by Gemini AI
8. AI shopping gets simpler with UniversalCommerce Protocol updates
9. Zero-click search doesn’t mean zero-influence​

Also in the news…

1. February 2026 Discover core update complete
2. Loading content with JavaScript does not make it harder for Google Search
3. Nvidia is planning to launch an Open-Source AI Agent Platform
4. Amazon blocks Perplexity’s automated shopping bot
5. Is Google hitting self-promotional listicles hard again? 
6. Tech boss uses AI and ChatGPT to create cancer vaccine for his dying dog
7. Bing Webmaster Tools matches grounding queries to pages

Yoast news

1. Yoast Duplicate Post 4.6
2. Futureproof your website for the agentic web with Yoast SEO Schema Aggregation