Purpose: Compress 12 files — 4 events pages + news landing page + 1 huge updates table — into one timeline plus event series descriptions. The news landing page itself is an entry page that "directs users to events or updates".
Part 1 — Three Major Events Series
1.1 Search Central Live(flagship)
- Predecessor:Webmaster Conference(renamed starting in 2019)
- Frequency: Regularly held in multiple locations worldwide
- 2019 figures:35 cities, 12 languages
- Free + travel expenses not reimbursed
- Duration: A few hours (short)
- Audience: Site owners / developers / SEO practitioners, suitable for everyone from beginners to veterans
- Content: Search news, Search Console, Discover, AI + Search, ecommerce, content quality, etc. — adjusted according to regional market needs
1.2 Search Central Live Deep Dive (added starting in 2024)
Based on Live user feedback requesting deeper content:
- Duration:Multi-day(first event in Bangkok 2025-07, 7/23–25)
- Audience: Deeper Search/SEO learners willing to commit multiple days
- Added content: in-depth talks + Q&A + hands-on workshops + networking
- Also free + in-person + shares T&C/FAQ with Live
1.3 Search Central Unconference (since 2020, virtual only)
A completely different format — "no speakers no presentations":
- Figures: 5 events / 500+ participants / 90+ facilitators / 3 languages
- Process:Users propose sessions → vote → facilitators are actually selected (can be Googlers / Product Experts / community members)
- Not recorded (limited spots, encourages open discussion)
- Registration order: facilitators first + propose topics → topic voting → participant registration
- Origin: After the 2020 pandemic, the community needed "interaction rather than listening"
- Expanded to non-English languages in 2022 (Spanish / Japanese, etc.)
- Diversified screening for applicants (geo / occupation / expertise)
1.4 Common Event FAQ (core)
- Tickets:Free
- Google Not provided Accommodation / visa / transportation (all at own expense)
- Generally 18+(no children)
- Generally no mother's room (depends on individual event)
- Generally food is provided + dietary restrictions can be requested
- Can register for multiple events, but still need individual confirmation
- Wait for confirmation email after registration; full events place registrants on a waitlist
- Code of conduct: Google Event Community Guidelines + Anti-Harassment Policy
1.5 Historical Events Calendar Extract (2022–2026, 100+ events total)
Note: This section is a condensed version of the events.en.md table,listing only regional milestones and themes at the time. See the original events page for the full table.
2026 known:
- 2026-02-04 Superweek Budapest — Google Trends API (Daniel Waisberg)
- 2026-02-24 SCL São Paulo / 2026-02-26 SCL Buenos Aires — dual Latin America stops
- 2026-04-21 SCL Canada / 2026-04-23 TechSEO Summit Hamburg(Martin Splitt)
- 2026-05-15 First SCL Shanghai!(Cherry + Gary, Chinese)
- 2026-05-22 First SCL Sydney!(Daniel Waisberg + Gary, English)
2025 highlights:
- 2025-01-23 SEOFOMO London(Gary)
- 2025-03-20 SCL NYC, 2025-04-09 Madrid, 2025-04-02 South Africa
- 2025-07-23-25 First Deep Dive! Bangkok
- 2025-10-21 SCL Dubai, 2025-10-31 SCL Hong Kong
- 2025-11-07 SCL Tokyo (Japanese), 2025-11-20 SCL TLV (Hebrew)
- 2025-12-09 SCL Zurich
- 2025-12-05 Search Tech Bologna — JS SEO special topic (Martin)
2024 highlights:
- 2024-03-04 SCL Buenos Aires, 2024-04-03 Romania, 2024-04-23 Poland
- 2024-07-24 SCL Jakarta(Bahasa Indonesia)
- 2024-08-08 SCL Bangkok (Thai + English)
- 2024-10-17 SCL Kuala Lumpur, 2024-11-01 SCL Taipei (Traditional Chinese)
- 2024-10-04 BrightonSEO UK(John Mueller — State of the union of Search)
- 2024-12-12 SCL Zurich
2023 highlights:
- 2023-02-16 Search Central Virtual Unconference en Español (entirely in Spanish)
- 2023-03 Multiple events in Brazil (Brasília, Belo Horizonte, São Paulo)
- 2023-09-21+24 SCL India(Bengaluru + New Delhi)
- 2023-10-23 SCL Zurich, 2023-11-21 SCL Singapore
- 2023-12-05 SCL Taipei (Traditional Chinese)
2022 highlights:
- 2022-01-31 Superweek Budapest
- 2022-03-22 First Search Central Virtual Unconference Global!
- 2022-04-04 Search Central Virtual Unconference Japan
- 2022-08-22 SEOnerds Switzerland — Daniel/John/Martin/Gary/Lizzi on stage together
- 2022-10-06 BrightonSEO — Live "Search Off the Record" podcast
- 2022-11-21 Search Fundamentals for News APAC (online)
- 2022-11-30 SCL TLV
1.6 Speaker lineup (common)
By appearance frequency:
- Martin Splitt — main focus on JS SEO, rendering, technical SEO
- John Mueller — general Q&A, What's new
- Gary Illyes — Search keywords, crawl
- Daniel Waisberg — Search Console, Google Trends
- Cherry Prommawin — APAC region, Bahasa languages
- Lizzi Sassman — content quality, accessibility
- Danny Sullivan — Google for News
- Duy Nguyen — spam policy(WordCamp US)
Part 2 — News Landing Page
developers.google.com/search/news Extremely minimal, only 3 entry blocks:
- Latest documentation updates →
/search/updates(Part 3 of this wiki) - Upcoming events →
/search/events#calendar(Part 1 of this wiki) - Send feedback form
No independent content,just go directly to Part 3.
Part 3 — Documentation Update Timeline Major Milestones (2022–2026)
The full updates.en.md is 2710 lines; this section only extracts major changes with significant impact on SEO practice. Minor language expansions, wording adjustments, etc. are omitted. Subscribe via RSS:
developers.google.com/search/updates/search_docs_updates.rss
3.1 ⚠️ 2026 deprecations / latest
| Time | Change |
|---|---|
| 2026-05-15 | New guide:optimizing for generative AI features (local reference material) — emphasizes non-commodity content + AEO/GEO are not an issue, SEO best practices still apply in the AI era |
| 2026-05-15 | Clarified:spam policies apply to generative AI responses |
| 2026-05-08 | ⚠️ FAQ rich result deprecated — no longer shown starting 2026-05-07. Deprecation notice added to documentation |
| 2026-04-30 | Preferred sources expanded to all Google Search languages |
| 2026-04-23 | Further clarified:when/why spam reports trigger manual actions |
| 2026-04-20 | New section: "read more" deep links (local reference material) |
| 2026-04-14 | Important:Google may use spam report submissions to trigger manual actions(previously unclear) |
| 2026-04-13 | New spam policy: "back button hijacking" (local reference material)(deceptive) |
| 2026-03-24 | Discussion Forum + QA Page markup adds supported attributes (more precise understanding of forum/Q&A content) |
| 2026-03-24 | Note added to robots meta tag documentation: behavior of robots meta tags outside of head (previously undocumented) |
| 2026-03-04 | Removed outdated accessibility section from JS SEO basics (Google Search has rendered JS for many years) |
| 2026-03-02 | New preferred image best practices:Google uses schema.org markup + og:image as the two sources to determine image thumbnails |
| 2026-02-05 | Enhancements added to Discover documentation: preparation for the February 2026 Discover Core Update |
| 2026-02-03 | Documentation adjusted for Googlebot default file size limits |
| 2026-01-30 | New preferred sources documentation |
| 2026-01-06 | practice problem SD documentation removed(no longer shown in search results; SC report also removed starting 2025-11) |
3.2 Major changes in 2025
| Time | Change |
|---|---|
| 2025-12-18 | JS execution on non-200 status codes — only 200 is sent for rendering; others may not be |
| 2025-12-17 | JS canonicalization best practice (canonicalize both before and after rendering) |
| 2025-12-15 | JS + noindex tag — do not use noindex in the original HTML if you want the page to potentially be indexed |
| 2025-12-09 | "smaller core updates" documentation — ranking increases may be seen without waiting for the next big core update |
| 2025-11-20 | Multiple crawling documents migrated to an independent /crawling site (crawler infrastructure shared across products) |
| 2025-11-19 | Discover Follow feature removed |
| 2025-11-12 | Review documentation: avoid multiple indications of review target |
| 2025-11-12 | New user-triggered fetcher: Google-Pinpoint |
| 2025-11-12 | New shipping policies (local reference material) SD documentation |
| 2025-11-05 | ⚠️ practice problem + dataset SD phased out in Search (SC reports stop from 2026-01; practice problem documentation removed 2026-01) |
| 2025-09-09 | Deleted multiple SD documents:course info / estimated salary / learning video / special announcement / vehicle listing(no longer displayed) |
| 2025-08-28 | New guide: considerations for JS-based paywalls (automatically distinguishing paywalled content is very difficult) |
| 2025-08 | structured data carousels (beta) expanded to South Africa |
| 2025-07-11 | merchant return policy + loyalty program documentation update (precedence order) |
| 2025-06-18 | Major revision of URL structure documentation — clearer process + real URL examples |
| 2025-06-16 | AI Mode counted in SC Performance report totals |
| 2025-06-12 | Multiple SD features will be deprecated:book actions, course info, estimated salary, ClaimReview, learning video, special announcement, vehicle listing |
| 2025-06-11 | Multilingual documentation spring cleaning — removed "Block automatically translated pages with robots.txt" because the 2024-03 spam policy update already prohibited this |
| 2025-06-10 | New loyalty programs (local reference materials) SD documentation, return policy split into a standalone page |
| 2025-06-05 | event SD must be physical location + publicly bookable — removed online event attribute |
| 2025-06-05 | recipe image attribute does not affect text result image selection(only used for recipe rich results) |
| 2025-06-04 | Major SafeSearch documentation revision: UGC CSAM prevention + video bytes sharing + how to fix incorrect explicit classification.explicit videos are not allowed to be fetched and will be demoted(major impact on Video mode) |
| 2025-05-21 | New documentation: AI features and your site (local reference materials) + generative AI content guidelines (local reference materials) |
| 2025-04-23 | special announcement SD deprecated(effective 2025-07-31) |
| 2025-04-25 | Google-Extended product token description updated |
| 2025-03-27 | "AI while browsing" feature removed from paywall documentation |
| 2025-03-05 | AI Mode added to robots meta tag documentation |
| 2025-02-13 | New merchant listing examples — sale prices, strikethrough prices, member prices (using priceType + validForMemberTier beta) |
| 2025-02-06 | New documentation: Using GA and SC together |
| 2025-01-22 | breadcrumb markup Desktop only, mobile removed (2025-01 simplifying breadcrumbs blog post) |
| 2025-01-21 | March 2024 FAQ guidance added to site reputation abuse policy |
| 2025-01-15 | New review snippet recommendation: only accept ratings accompanied by comments + author name |
3.3 Major changes in 2024
| Time | Change |
|---|---|
| 2024-12-18 | robots.txt error handling documentation consolidated |
| 2024-12-17 | New documentation: Crawling faceted navigation URLs (local reference materials)(previously only in the 2014 blog post) |
| 2024-12-09 | Crawler cache control headers handling documentation |
| 2024-11-29 | Sitelinks search box removed(Google no longer displays it as of 2024-10) |
| 2024-11-20 | Opt-out documentation added for Page Annotations in the iOS Google App |
| 2024-11-19 | site reputation abuse policy:Exploiting ranking using third-party content = violation,regardless of first-party oversight |
| 2024-11-13 | C2PA metadata displayed in "About this image" |
| 2024-11-01 | Mobile-first: For large sites, if there are fewer mobile links than desktop links,new page discovery will be slower |
| 2024-10-24 | New Google Trends getting started documentation (local reference materials) |
| 2024-10-24 | favicon Must have 1:1 aspect ratio + at least 8x8px, strongly recommended ≥48x48px |
| 2024-10-23 | URL parameters best practices added (originally only in the 2014 faceted navigation blog post) |
| 2024-10-07 | Fields not explicitly listed in robots.txt = unsupported |
| 2024-10-03 | Certification markup added to merchant listing (replaces EnergyConsumptionDetails starting 2025-04) |
| 2024-10-02 | noarchive rule moved to historical reference section (cached links no longer displayed) |
| 2024-10-01 | Product markup best practices:Output in initial HTML + when generating markup via JS, be able to handle increased traffic |
| 2024-09-25 | Spam policies wording revised — centralized "what is web spam + tactics" + clarified that circumvention also leads to ranking demotion |
| 2024-09-24 | ⚠️ cache: search operator no longer works |
| 2024-09-23 | priceType attribute added to merchant listing (supports sale pricing) |
| 2024-09-17 | Infinite scroll guidance migrated from blog to official documentation |
| 2024-09-16 | Major crawler documentation revision: GoogleProducer UA + content encodings + reorganization |
| 2024-09-11 | Indexing API submissions subject to spam detection(may be revoked if quota is exceeded) |
| 2024-09-10 | Added to video SD ineligibleRegion attribute |
| 2024-09-04 | Indexing API default quota is for setup; usage requires additional approval (380/min/project) |
| 2024-08-30 | ⭐ AVIF added to supported image formats! |
| 2024-08-26 | Organization markup documentation clarifies: some attributes affect the logo, others are behind-the-scenes |
| 2024-08-26 | og:title added to title link sources list |
| 2024-08-23 | Major Video SEO revision: indexing standards + technical requirements + new watch page section |
| 2024-08-20 | New crawler:Google-CloudVertexBot(used by Vertex AI Agents) |
| 2024-08-15 | Core updates documentation restructured + helpful content system marked as "already incorporated into core ranking systems" (as of 2024-03) |
| 2024-08-15 | AI Overviews logged in SC Performance report(like featured snippets) |
| 2024-08-09 | Notes documentation removed (closed at the end of 2024-08) |
| 2024-07-31 | Geo Data Upload replaced by Google Maps Content Partners |
| 2024-07-31 | spam policies + ranking guide:Sites with a high proportion of sexually explicit non-consensual fake images demoted |
| 2024-07-24 | GoogleProducer UA string updated (goo.gl closed) |
| 2024-07-10 | Translated results expanded to 8 languages: Arabic, Gujarati, Korean, Persian, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese |
| 2024-07-09 | New IPTC type: compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia |
| 2024-07-05 | URL fragment guidance clarified |
| 2024-06-21 | return policy precedence:product-level > organization-level > Merchant Center |
3.4 Major changes in 2023 (partial)
| Time | Change |
|---|---|
| 2023-12 | Support regions expanded for various SD types |
| 2023-09-26 | Key point: Search Console "8.5 month upgrade" (local reference materials) — data retained for 16 months |
| 2023-08 | UGC nofollow attribute documentation improved |
| 2023-04 | Helpful content system multilingual expansion |
| 2023-04-13 | video must be main content of the page (otherwise not shown in SERP videos) |
| 2023-02 | AI generated content guidance:Evaluate output quality, not the source |
| 2023-01 | Mobile-first indexing completed for nearly all sites(fully completed in 2024-07) |
3.5 Major changes in 2022 (partial)
| Time | Change |
|---|---|
| 2022-09 | Helpful Content Update first launched (later incorporated into core in 2024-03) |
| 2022-08 | Helpful content update launched in August — what creators should know article |
| 2022-01-26 | New robots meta rule: indexifembedded — embedded embedding + noindex combination |
| 2022-12-22 | Search Status Dashboard launched |
Part 4 — Summary of major themes
4.1 SD simplification trend (2024–2026)
Overall direction: Google is reducing SD types rather than adding them. Those to be deprecated:
- ❌ FAQ rich result(2026-05-07)
- ❌ Practice problem(2026-01)
- ❌ Dataset SD (Google Search, still used by Dataset Search)
- ❌ Course info, Estimated salary, Learning video, Special announcement (removed 2025-07), Vehicle listing (removed 2025-09)
- ❌ Book actions (partially deprecated but still useful)
- ❌ ClaimReview (marked for deprecation 2025-06)
- ❌ Sitelinks search box(2024-10)
- ❌ Page Annotations(2025-03)
- ❌ Notes(2024-08)
- ❌ AI while browsing(2025-03)
- ❌ Follow feature in Discover(2025-11)
- ❌
cache:operator(2024-09) - ❌
noarchive(2024-10 historical)
Still active: Product / Merchant listing / Loyalty program / Shipping policy / Return policy / Video / Article / Recipe / Job posting / Event (physical) / Organization / Local Business / Profile page / Discussion forum / QA / Education QA / Carousels (beta) / Review
4.2 Evolution of AI topics (2024–2026)
- 2024-08: AI Overviews counted in SC Performance report
- 2025-05: AI features + generative AI content guidelines
- 2025-06:AI Mode counted in SC totals
- 2026-03: AI Mode added to robots meta tag documentation
- 2026-05:Complete guide to optimizing for generative AI features — standard SEO applies,AEO/GEO is a myth, no special optimization needed
4.3 Crawler infrastructure expansion
- 2024-08: Google-CloudVertexBot added (Vertex AI Agents)
- 2025-10: Google-NotebookLM added
- 2025-11: Google-Pinpoint + Google-CWS added
- 2025-11-20: crawler documentation moved out
/searchto/crawling(shared across products)
4.4 Mobile-first truly completed
- 2023-10: Nearly completed
- 2024-07-05:Officially completed(M-F indexing is no longer a separate label)
- 2024-11-01: missing mobile links = slower new page discovery
4.5 Key updates to Spam Policies
- 2024-03:Helpful content system incorporated into core(not an independent update) + scaled content abuse prevention
- 2024-11:site reputation abuse — third-party first-party "oversight" also counts as a violation
- 2025-09:focus on web spam tactics + circumvention will also cause ranking demotion
- 2026-04-13:new back button hijacking policy
- 2026-04-14:spam reports May directly trigger a manual action
4.6 User privacy / EU compliance
- Starting 2024-09:DMA-related crawler behavior changes
- 2024-03-07:began accepting EU Search Dataset Licensing applications
Cross-references
- Google SEO basics + How Search works + Search Essentials — Search Essentials updates / AI features guidelines launched
- Complete overview of Structured Data (framework + one-click lookup for 34 rich result types + JSON-LD/Microdata/RDFa selection guide) — 34 types + FAQ deprecation + 5 quality guidelines (Part 3 of this wiki is its historical change log)
- Complete guide to rich features / Discover / Images / Video / Page Experience / Web Stories / SXG / Paywall — Discover Follow removal + sitelinks removal + Web Stories / Image License
- Complete guide to Googlebot crawling mechanisms and indexing control (URL/Links/Mobile-first/Meta/Testing/AMP) — Googlebot file size limits + crawler list updates (2024–2026)
- Full panorama of search result visual elements (Visual Gallery / Title / Snippet / Favicon / Sitelinks / Featured / AI / Translated / Preferred) — title link adds og:title / sitelinks removal / breadcrumb removal on mobile
- Google ranking systems + Core/Spam Updates + business information establishment — core updates / spam policies / helpful content merged into core update details
- Highlights of Google SEO Office Hours (2022.11–2024.08) + summary of 3 major FAQ topics — issues repeatedly mentioned in office hours during the same period
- Usage of the Search Console + Analytics + Trends trio (traffic diagnostics / keyword research / Looker Studio) — AI Mode/Overviews counted in SC
- GSC Help Operations: debugging tools, status dashboard, DMA, EU data program, reporting — Status Dashboard announcement system
- Complete collection of Google Search Central Case Studies (13 cases + landing page) — Vimeo uses indexifembedded (2022-01)
2026-09-26 inbox supplement: European Deep Dive events and autumn regional events
The following records the information provided by five announcements at the time of capture, preserving the evolution of the announcements, and cannot replace the current registration page.
| Announcement date | Phase and region | Original information and restrictions |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-18 | European Deep Dive interest survey | Candidate cities are Barcelona, Budapest, Berlin, Frankfurt, Lisbon, and Prague; tentatively scheduled from mid-September to early October. Express interest before July 1; applications were originally planned to open on July 6. The interest survey does not equal registration or selection, and no travel subsidies are provided. |
| 2026-07-06 | Official announcement for the European event | Finally scheduled for Barcelona from September 30 to October 2, for a total of three days, covering crawling, indexing, result presentation, and search trends. Free in-person event, in English with no interpretation provided, prioritizing European applicants. Application deadline is September 5; invitations will be sent no later than September 10; community talk proposal deadline is July 28, with results notified on August 6. |
| 2026-09-16 | European community speakers announced | Based on the Bangkok event content with additional AI-related content; the community segment features 7-minute lightning talks and 40-minute poster sessions. The list of 42 community speakers is retained in the source table; this is a list announcement, not a verbatim transcript of the talks. |
| 2026-09-08 | Mexico City, Bogotá | Mexico City on October 15 from 08:30–13:30, Bogotá on October 19 from 14:30–18:30. Topics include Search, Discover, and News; some English presentations have Spanish translation provided. Original registration deadline for both locations was September 16, with confirmations sent on September 21; the events are free but spots are limited. |
| 2026-09-14 | Bengaluru | In-person event on October 30, free, with no live stream or recording; content covers crawling, indexing, structured data, search quality, and Q&A. Apply before October 15; selection is based on applications rather than first-come, first-served; the original text states that selected applicants will be notified after October 3 and no later than October 24. |
These materials supplement the event organization methods and timeline, and do not add search ranking rules. Deep Dive (multi-day in-depth event), lightning talks, and poster sessions are different participation formats; the three statuses of applied, invited, and attended cannot be mixed.
Sources and related materials
- https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/06/scl-deep-dive-europe-2026?hl=en
- https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/07/search-central-live-deep-dive-europe-2026?hl=en
- https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/09/scl-dd-europe-2026-community-speakers?hl=en
- https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/09/search-central-live-india-2026?hl=en
- https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/09/search-central-live-mexico-and-colombia?hl=en
- https://developers.google.com/search/events?hl=en
- https://developers.google.com/search/events/search-central-live?hl=en
- https://developers.google.com/search/events/search-central-live?hl=zh-cn
- https://developers.google.com/search/events/search-central-live-deep-dive?hl=en
- https://developers.google.com/search/events/search-central-live-deep-dive?hl=zh-cn
- https://developers.google.com/search/events/search-central-unconference?hl=en
- https://developers.google.com/search/events/search-central-unconference?hl=zh-cn
- https://developers.google.com/search/updates?hl=en
- https://developers.google.com/search/updates?hl=zh-cn
- Google SEO basics + How Search works + Search Essentials
- Complete overview of Structured Data (framework + one-click lookup for 34 rich result types + JSON-LD/Microdata/RDFa selection guide)
- Complete guide to rich features / Discover / Images / Video / Page Experience / Web Stories / SXG / Paywall
- Complete guide to Googlebot crawling mechanisms and indexing control (URL/Links/Mobile-first/Meta/Testing/AMP)
- Full panorama of search result visual elements (Visual Gallery / Title / Snippet / Favicon / Sitelinks / Featured / AI / Translated / Preferred)
- Google ranking systems + Core/Spam Updates + business information establishment
- Highlights of Google SEO Office Hours (2022.11–2024.08) + summary of 3 major FAQ topics