Episode Details

For two years, the marketing world has been telling you that your website matters less. AI Overviews are stealing clicks. Social is where the audience is. Reddit is the new search engine. Google's most recent core update tells a different story. First-party brand sites gained visibility. Aggregators and user-generated content platforms lost it.

In this episode of Measured, we break down what happened in Google's March 2026 core update, why brand sites are winning, and what to do about it.

Lily Ray and the team at Amsive analyzed US search visibility data after the update finished rolling out on April 8. The biggest losers were aggregators and user-generated content platforms. YouTube took the largest single-domain hit Amsive has tracked recently. Reddit, Instagram, and X all posted significant losses. TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Expedia got hit hard on the travel side. On the winning side, brand sites, government domains, and original content publishers gained ground.

This is happening on two fronts at the same time. Users are going to ChatGPT and Perplexity for direct answers instead of clicking through to aggregator pages. And Google itself is making the same choice in its own results, ranking brand sites higher and skipping the middleman.

We also cover what a website built for 2026 actually looks like. It is built for three audiences at once. People, search engines, and AI tools. The good news is these three audiences want most of the same things. Clear, fast, well-structured, and honest.

In this episode: What happened in Google's March 2026 core update The aggregators and platforms that lost the most ground Why brand sites are winning on two fronts at the same time What a website built for 2026 actually looks like What to do about your own site without needing a full redesign

Customer question: Is it worth sponsoring local events?

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