Week in Brief
- Google confirmed on 29 June that AI Overviews and AI Mode will launch in France before 23 September, one of the last major markets to get AI results.
- The rollout carries an opt-out, separate AI impression reporting, and neighbouring-rights payment for France’s ~450 news publishers but the click displacement will hit every B2B site ranking in France.
- Fraudulent DMCA takedowns kept removing legitimate pages from Google Search, with the Press Gazette reporting a second removal and no fix confirmed by Google.
- Google began testing a Top Stories carousel inside AI Overviews that surfaces Preferred Sources on developing topics.
- Google fixed the Search Console page indexing report on 3 July after another two-week delay.
Google confirmed AI Overviews and AI Mode reach France before 23 September, per a 29 June letter to publishers
Google sent French press publishers an official letter on 29 June confirming the rollout before 23 September, first reported by Ouest-France and covered by Le Blog du Modérateur, Abondance and Journal du Net. France is among the last major markets to get AI results; AI Overviews has run in 120+ countries and 11 languages for two years.
The letter makes three commitments to the ~450 publishers under France’s neighbouring-rights agreements. Publishers get an opt-out that leaves classic ranking untouched, AI impressions reported separately in Search Console, and payment per AI impression. France’s AI Overviews rollout was likely delayed more because of legal concerns than technical challenges. The key factors were France’s 2019 neighbouring-rights law and the €250 million fine Google received in March 2024.
What this AI overview rollout in France means for B2B, ITES, and SaaS
The opt-out and remuneration apply to news publishers, but the displacement applies to every B2B company ranking in France. B2B SaaS, ITES, and professional services firms with French-language informational content are the most exposed because informational queries are where AI Overviews land hardest.
Position-1 organic CTR falls 58% when an AI summary appears, per Ahrefs (December 2025). That means French informational pages can maintain their rank and still lose half their clicks once the rollout is complete. Now is the time to audit your highest-traffic French informational pages for AI Overview exposure and restructure them for citation before September. Pull your top informational URLs this week and check how many trigger an AI Overview in the UK or German SERP as a proxy.
The difference between being cited and being displaced often comes down to how clearly the page is formatted, using answer-first sections that support AI conversational discovery.
Fraudulent DMCA takedown requests are removing legitimate pages from Google Search, with pressure on Google mounting
Press Gazette, UK reported that a second story was removed from Google Search over a spurious copyright claim, the target being its reporting on the SEO firm Clickout Media. Press Gazette’s page was reinstated on 2 July after it contacted Google, but the ease of the removal is the point, not its permanence.
Several SEO consultants on LinkedIn and X have claimed that even a fake DMCA notice can remove a URL from search results for two weeks or longer. They also suggest that repeated notices against the same URLs can extend the removal period to several months. However, these are practitioner observations, not official Google figures. Google has not confirmed any change in how it verifies DMCA submitters.
What the DMCA takedown means for B2B, ITES, and SaaS
B2B publishers and SaaS companies with high-value informational or comparison pages should watch this most closely. A competitor could file a fake claim against a page that is already ranking, and the removal window can be long enough to hurt the pipeline that page supports.
Relying only on Search Console alerts may not be enough, as many notices can go unnoticed. The better approach is to add direct monitoring and treat any sudden drop on a key page as a possible takedown, not just a ranking loss. Check weekly that your highest-traffic pages are still indexed, and if a legitimate page is removed because of a DMCA claim, file a counter-notice the same day.
Google began testing a Top Stories carousel inside AI Overviews that surfaces Preferred Sources on developing topics
Announced but still a test. Google pre-announced this in May, saying a prominent carousel would surface timely articles and highlight Preferred Sources for questions on developing topics. The tested carousel showed sources including The New York Times and Yahoo. It appears for some searchers and some queries, but not everyone. Lily Ray first spotted the carousel and posted about it on X, and Barry Schwartz replicated it in some browser sessions but not all.
What does the Carousel inside AI overviews mean for B2B, ITES, and SaaS?
B2B companies publishing timely, newsworthy content, including funding news, product launches, and category commentary, stand to gain a placement here. This is a news surface, so evergreen how-to and product pages are not directly affected by it. For companies that have built a Preferred Sources following, the carousel is a new route into AI Overviews for timely posts. The direction is to keep publishing genuinely timely content and to prompt your audience to add you as a Preferred Source.
Google fixed and updated the Search Console page indexing report after another two-week delay
The Search Console page indexing report was frozen on 11 June data for nearly three weeks. On 1 July, Google’s John Mueller publicly acknowledged the delay on Bluesky, apologising and saying the team was working to get the report back up to speed but had no ETA. Mueller had separately said the delay was not linked to the June 2026 spam update. The report was restored on Friday, 3 July, updated to show data through 29 June, per Search Engine Roundtable. The report is a diagnostic reference, not a ranking factor, so the practical implication is limited to when you can trust the data. If you use this report to confirm indexing, re-pull your data after 3 July rather than relying on last month’s export.
On Our Radar for Next Week
Google Ads bidding change for budget-limited campaigns (effective 17 August): Google confirmed that budget-limited Target CPA and Target ROAS campaigns will bid to full target from 17 August, which raises cost per lead for any campaign currently overperforming. A Bid Target Adjustment Tool goes live on 6 July to reset targets before then.
Post-spam-update volatility: The June 2026 spam update finished rolling out on 26 June. We broke down its confirmation and completion in last week’s edition on the June 2026 spam update. Watch tracking tools for any unconfirmed follow-on movement as it settles into July.
White Bunnie Observation
In our client accounts this week, 90% of the sites are finally recovering. These websites lost positions in the March & May 2026 core updates and dropped further after the June 2026 spam update. It was then held flat for a week. This week the trend turned up, with a 10-20% recovery in the average ranking of priority keywords.
Here is the honest part. We had already done the work this recovery needed: original research, named authors, cited data, and consolidated thin pages. But the site did not move until Google’s own update cycle released the change. The practices set the site up to recover; the timing was Google’s. That is how core and spam recoveries usually work; the fix is banked earlier, and a later Google update is what surfaces it. If your rankings dropped in May or June and you have since done the structural work, the more useful question is not “why hasn’t it recovered yet” but “is the site ready for when the next update lands?”
