Edelman Trust Barometer 2026: seven in ten now hesitate to trust anyone unlike them
33,938 people in 28 countries. 70 per cent unwilling or hesitant to trust people with different values. Employers trusted at 78 per cent, government at 53.
Marketing
Strategy, growth, measurement, martech and search: how brands find customers and prove it worked.
6 stories
Marketing
Google's August spam update hits rankings harder than any before
Google's August 2026 spam update ran from 18 August to 21 August, completing in two days and 16 hours, and landed as the hardest-hitting spam update on record across all 20 industries tracked by Semrush. Dramatic visibility losses appeared with no large-scale exceptions.
Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2026: budgets flat at 7.8 per cent of revenue, 15 per cent of it going to AI
401 senior marketers. Budgets 7.8% of revenue (7.7% in 2025). 15.3% of budgets allocated to AI, but only 30% say they are ready to scale it. 56% say they lack the budget for their 2026 strategy.
Google's August spam update hits rankings harder than any before
Google's August 2026 spam update ran from 18 August to 21 August, completing in two days and 16 hours, and landed as the hardest-hitting spam update on record across all 20 industries tracked by Semrush. Dramatic visibility losses appeared with no large-scale exceptions.
Google routes search clicks through internal goto redirects
Google has confirmed it is rolling out redirect URLs on search result links, routing every click through google.com/goto?url=[hashURL] before forwarding users to their destination. The visible URL displayed under each snippet title stays the same, so the results page looks identical to before.
Google's August spam update completes; recovery takes months
Sites hit by Google's August spam update face a recovery measured in months. Google says the pre-announcement volatility was something else, and no new spam policies shipped.
Every Google spam update of 2026, on one timeline
Google has shipped three spam updates so far this year, in March, June and August, alongside two core updates. Each ran global and language-wide, none came with new spam policies, and the August rollout finished in under three days.