At the start of this month, Google has released its first core update of 2026 which mainly focuses on just Google Discover as Google named it the February 2026 Discover core update.
Google Released February 2026 Discover Core Update
This latest update will be rolling over the next two weeks or so, just English language users in the US and at some point will roll out beyond that to all countries and languages.
According to Google, “This is a broad update to our systems that surface articles in Discover.”
This specific update will impact non-US publishers from showing up in the US, clickbait or sensational content and will show more in-depth, original and timely content as noted by Google.
How Does It Impact ?
The company further added that this update will improve Discover in showing users more locally relevant content from websites based in their country.
It will also help in showing more in-depth, original, and timely content from websites with expertise in a given area, based on our systems’ understanding of a site’s content.
Thanks to this update, it will show users more locally-relevant content from sites based in their country.
It may also impact the traffic of non-US websites that publish news for a US audience.
As expected, over the time, this update will elevate those websites’ content in their locally relevant regions.
Interestingly, we are not sure if Google ever announced a Discover specific update but it is for sure that the normal core updates impact Google Discover.
Although, this specific announcement is just about a core update impacting only Google Discover.
So, there is no surprise that the amount of comments on this site about visibility changes in Google Discover over the past couple of days is insane.
One of these comments said, It feels like Google is ‘fixing’ the SERPs by serving more low-intent or Discover-style traffic that doesn’t convert.
Another said, “I remain at 90-95% down, wiped from search, images, news, and discover. I’ve been doing this for a long time, but it was all wiped overnight, and yes, my site was in News, just like Discover and removed.”
Another one explained, saying “Not trying sound negative or anything, but my site did start showing up again on Discover and on the first page of Google News…
From Feb 2nd I lost almost all traffic from Discover. It’s just terrible.”
