Facts, Stats & Latest News from the SEO, Search & Marketing Industry [September, 2026]

Key KPI / Metric	What changed
90%–100% drop in popular products carousels (EEA)	Disappearance of free product listings due to the Digital Markets Act (September 17–18)
~80% drop in scraping data (Nozzle)	Google blocks scrapers as of September 13, affecting tools like Semrush/Sistrix
97% of People Also Ask is now AI Overviews	SERP shifting to AI-format answers (from 86% in August, 12% 14 months ago)
+203% AI referrals in e-commerce, but only 0.4% of visits	Explosive growth, but a small channel share (Similarweb)
57.1% relevance, 54.8% backlinks	What 131 SEOs “vote” as the key ranking factors for 2026 (Zyppy)

September 2026 closed with two developments that practically change things for Greek e-shops, and neither of them came with an announcement. On September 17 and 18, Google’s free product listings disappeared across the entire European Economic Area, with a 90% to 100% drop in popular products carousels, as a result of compliance with the Digital Markets Act. The space shifted to comparison shopping services. A channel that brought free organic traffic to products stopped existing within two days.

At the same time, as of September 13, Google is successfully blocking scrapers, so the data you’re seeing in Semrush, Sistrix, and other tools right now isn’t reliable. And two moves show where the game is heading: Google started paying publishers when their content feeds AI answers, while at the same time it admitted it can’t tell you exactly where you appear inside an AI Overview. It pays for the content, but it still doesn’t measure its visibility.

The FACTS

Free Product Listings Disappeared Across All of Europe

Within two days, on September 17 and 18, Google’s popular products carousels (the organic product blocks on commercial queries) almost completely disappeared from the European Economic Area. Hugo Huijer of Productrise measured 90% to 100% drops in Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, and the Netherlands, while Semrush Sensor shows the same picture across all EEA countries. Ginny Marvin, Google Ads Liaison, confirmed this is compliance with the Digital Markets Act.

The space didn’t stay empty. It shifted to comparison shopping services, i.e., price comparison platforms. It’s the same logic applied on September 8 to hotels, airlines, and restaurants, but now it hits retail. And the difference versus Shopping is that here we’re talking about traffic that was coming in for free.

For Greek e-shops this is immediate and measurable. Open GA4 and Merchant Center and see how much traffic the free listings were getting before September 17. That number is now zero and needs to be covered elsewhere.

The options are three—and none is free:

Paid Shopping via a CSS partner
Strengthening your categories in the classic organic results
Greater reliance on Skroutz and BestPrice

Google Is Blocking SEO Tools and Your Data Might Be Wrong

As of September 13, Google is blocking scrapers much more successfully—i.e., the systems SEO tools use to “read” search results. Derek Perkins of Nozzle reports an approximately 80% drop in the data he’s able to collect, and he’s seeing the same at DataForSEO. Sistrix officially announced on its status page (September 16) that data collection is running at a reduced rate.

Glenn Gabe ran a useful test: he took sites he knows for certain dropped and recovered with the September 4 unconfirmed update and compared what each tool shows. Ahrefs caught the recovery, Semrush caught it with a delay, while Sistrix didn’t catch it at all.

If you see a drop in a rank tracker during these weeks, don’t take it at face value and don’t rush to change content. First cross-check with Search Console and with actual traffic in GA4, which are the only first-party data you have.

AI Contribution: Google Puts a Price on Your Content

Google is testing a pilot program called AI Contribution, which runs through Search Console and pays publishers when their content contributes to answers in Gemini, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. Participants see a monthly amount and can leave whenever they want.

The mechanism has a detail that changes everything: compensation exists only when the content contributes at the moment the answer is generated. If you appear as a link or fact check after the answer has already been composed, you don’t get paid. Google distinguishes content it uses as “raw material” from content it cites as a reference.

It doesn’t explain how it calculates the amount, while the first payments are described as small. The pilot isn’t open, so there’s no immediate action. There is, however, a shift in perspective: until now we measured content based on the traffic it brings; now it gains a second value as raw material for AI.

This increases the value of original material (primary data, guides from real experience, pricing and availability) and zeroes out the value of recycled text.

Search Console: Google Admits It Doesn’t Measure AI Search

The Generative AI performance report launched globally on August 31. A few days later, John Mueller confirmed that Search Console can’t tell you exactly where your link is within an AI Overview. It records the position of the answer overall, gives impressions, and doesn’t say how many clicks resulted or which queries produced them.

The reason is structural. In the classic SERP, position is one-dimensional: you’re third or you’re not. Inside an AI answer, a source may be mentioned, summarized, placed as a link on the side, or feed a sentence without appearing at all.

GA4: Custom Dashboards Without Looker Studio

As of September 9, Google Analytics 4 offers custom dashboards. You build your own layouts with new visualisations, save them, and share them with the team or the client—within GA4 itself.

The change is less impressive than the month’s AI news, but probably the most immediately useful. Until now, every time someone wanted a view different from the default reports, the answer was Looker Studio, with all that implies in setup and maintenance time.

For Greek companies with small teams, this is worth half a day of work right now:

Move the 2–3 dashboards the team checks daily into GA4.
Keep Looker Studio only for what truly needs blending from multiple sources.
Reduce points of failure (broken connectors) and keep the numbers next to the data they come from.

The STATS

97%: Almost All People Also Ask Is Now AI Overviews

AlsoAsked examined a sample of 19.2 million English-language queries from 2026 and found that 97% of answers in PAA, in the first week of September, are AI Overviews. That’s up from 86% in August and 12% 14 months ago. Allintitle, using its own sample, is already measuring 100% since August.

Speed is the real finding. From 12% to 97% in 14 months means Google wasn’t testing—it was replacing. PAA was one of the last SERP areas where a page could gain visibility with its own text.

Its real value has always been as data: it’s the best free source for what the user asks after their first question. Pull the questions around your commercial categories and build pages that answer that chain within your own site, where you have control.

+203% AI Referrals in E-commerce, But Only 0.4% of Visits

Similarweb’s State of Ecommerce 2026 (September 10), based on three years of clickstream data from global traffic, measures a 203% increase in referrals from generative AI to e-shops. At the same time, the category remains at 0.4% of total retail visits.

Anyone selling you an AI visibility strategy citing the 203% while omitting the 0.4% is selling you half the truth.

The finding that really matters is a third one: AI presence exists in 11.4% of shopper sessions, and when the user combines AI with classic search, conversion reaches 23% (i.e., 84% higher than those who use only AI). 89% of those who use AI in the shopping journey also use search. AI doesn’t replace search; it prepares it.

SEO Ranking Factors: 57.1% Relevance, 54.8% Backlinks: What 131 SEOs Vote for 2026

Zyppy SEO published its annual survey on September 9. In it, 131 SEO professionals evaluated 103 ranking factors, giving 13,665 ratings. Relevance made the top 3 for 57.1% and backlinks for 54.8%, while the highest-rated single factor was search intent match.

At the bottom are meta descriptions, while mass-produced AI content received a negative score. This is the collective opinion of professionals, not Google data, and opinions can be collectively wrong. Its value is that the survey has run for years with the same method and movement in the fundamentals is small, despite changes in AI Mode, AI Overviews, and the spam updates.

Sources

Zyppy SEO: Google ranking factors expert survey — https://signal.zyppy.com/p/google-ranking-factors-expert-survey
Search Engine Roundtable: Google drops free product listings (EEA) — https://www.seroundtable.com/google-drops-free-product-listings-eea-42113.html
Search Engine Roundtable: Google blocking scrapers and tracking tools — https://www.seroundtable.com/google-blocking-scrapers-and-tracking-tools-42118.html
Search Engine Land: Google tests paying publishers for AI usage — https://searchengineland.com/google-tests-paying-publishers-for-using-its-content-in-ai-mode-ai-overviews-and-gemini-488382
Search Engine Journal: Search Console reporting for AI search is inadequate — https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-admits-search-console-reporting-for-ai-search-is-inadequate/589236/
Search Engine Land: GA4 customizable dashboards — https://searchengineland.com/google-analytics-launches-customizable-dashboards-488343
Search Engine Roundtable: PAA AI Overviews — https://www.seroundtable.com/ppa-ai-overviews-google-42047.html
Similarweb: State of Ecommerce 2026 — https://www.similarweb.com/corp/reports/state-of-ecommerce-2026/