In short: on September 30, 2026, Google opened its first Search Central Live Deep Dive in Europe, in Barcelona. According to four attendees who posted on LinkedIn the same day, the Day 1 message matches Bangkok 2025: AI Overviews and AI Mode run on the same crawling and indexing system as classic search. No product announcements. I am not attending: this article aggregates and cross-checks those reports, and will be updated after Days 2 and 3.

What happened in Barcelona on September 30?

The Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe 2026 runs from September 30 to October 2 in Barcelona. It is the first European edition of the Deep Dive format launched in Bangkok in July 2025 (the Search Central Live Paris 2026 recap covers the French edition). The event is free, application-based, and entirely in English. According to the official Google Search Central blog announcement, the program follows a page’s journey through Google Search:

• Day 1 (September 30): foundations and crawling, with Search Console to diagnose discovery issues.
• Day 2 (October 1): indexing, rendering, duplication and canonicalization, internationalization, the role of AI in indexing.
• Day 3 (October 2): serving, ranking, AI-powered search features, Google Trends.

On Google’s side, PPC Land names Cherry Prommawin, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt. One attendee also mentions John Mueller being present (LinkedIn post by La Teva Web). In the community speakers announcement, Gary Illyes and Cherry Prommawin state that much of the content is reused from Bangkok, with new topics that are “mostly AI focused”.

Which AI Mode figures did Google share?

Two attendees report data shown on stage. These figures come from LinkedIn posts, not from a Google document: treat them as reported, unverified data.

Reported data point	Source
AI Mode exceeds 1 billion monthly users	Victoria Y., Head of SEO & Content Production
92% of ChatGPT-type tool users still use Google	Victoria Y.
AI Mode searches double every quarter, queries about 3 times longer, 1 in 6 multimodal	George-Emanuel Cîță, SEO Specialist

Do AI Overviews and AI Mode use the same system as classic search?

Yes, according to three independent Day 1 reports. Victoria Y. writes that AI Overviews and AI Mode “run on the same crawling and indexing system as regular search”. John Campbell (Head of Innovation & AI, ROAST) notes that what powers AIO and AI Mode is “the same SEO stack”. George-Emanuel Cîță sums it up: “good SEO is good GEO, AEO, AIO”.

This is not new, and it lines up with Google’s GEO checklist. In Bangkok in 2025, Gary Illyes had already said that classic SEO is enough for AI Overviews and that Google does not support llms.txt, per a post by Kenichi Suzuki relayed by Search Engine Land. Barcelona confirms the line without nuancing it yet. To check on Days 2 and 3: what Google says about the role of AI in indexing.

What about crawl budget?

John Campbell reports one line: “You can buy crawl budget, get a better and faster server”. George-Emanuel Cîță confirms that sessions covered crawling, the impact of crawl errors, and the interpretation of robots.txt and crawl budgets. I do not have the exact context of the statement: it is consistent with Google’s documentation on crawl capacity (a fast server lets Googlebot crawl more), but it says nothing about any crawl demand criterion. I do not extrapolate.

Did Google announce anything?

No. John Campbell: “No new things to announce just yet”, with “teasers on new data points that could come in the future”. Consistent with the format: an educational curriculum, not a product event. Watch for possible announcements on Days 2 and 3 and on the Search Central blog.

What did community speakers say about AI and automation?

According to Victoria Y., the Day 1 community talks focused on automation and AI:

• James Powley: competitive analysis cut from 3 days to a few hours through AI automation.
• Rafael Kovashikawa: an AI error-prevention rule, “no source, no number”.
• Eduard Blacquière: most AI visibility tools tell you whether a brand is mentioned but not why; his framework measures each step upstream of the mention.
• Kira Breuer: a 7-minute lightning talk on her AI automations, per her own post.
• John McAlpin (LOCOMOTIVE): data analysis to detect technical SEO issues blocking AI visibility; write-up announced by his agency.

Eduard Blacquière’s point matches what we see in the field: a tracker that counts mentions does not diagnose (see the Profound vs Otterly vs Ahrefs Brand Radar comparison). A GEO audit has to walk back up the chain: crawlable, rendered, indexed, understood, selected. Christina Mantziou puts it this way: being available is not being understood, and being understood is not being selected.

What should you do right now?

These actions follow from the converging Day 1 message (same crawl and indexing stack). This is my interpretation, not Google guidance.

1. Check crawling before talking GEO. Search Console Crawl Stats report: server response time, 5xx errors, discovered but not crawled pages.
2. Audit robots.txt for Googlebot and AI crawlers separately. An unintended block removes the page from the whole chain.
3. Validate rendering of key content (URL Inspection, rendered HTML): what is not rendered is not indexed, hence not citable.
4. Use the Search Console Generative AI report to measure AI impressions, alongside citation trackers. Method and limits in my analysis of the Generative AI report.
5. Do not invest in llms.txt for Google. Position confirmed in Bangkok 2025, not yet revisited in Barcelona (full framing in the GEO checklist).

Who posted about the event on LinkedIn?

Primary sources for this article, published under #scldd2026 and #searchcentrallive. Non-exhaustive list, compiled on September 30, 2026.

• Victoria Y.: Head of SEO & Content Production: AI Mode figures, same crawling and indexing system, Day 1 community talks.
• John Campbell: Head of Innovation & AI, ROAST: Day 1 notes, crawl budget, no announcements.
• George-Emanuel Cîță: SEO Specialist: AI Mode data, slide photos, “good SEO is good GEO, AEO, AIO”.
• Christina Mantziou: takeaway on the available, understood, selected chain.
• Kira Breuer: 7-minute lightning talk on her AI automations.
• John McAlpin and LOCOMOTIVE Europe: talk on data analysis to detect technical issues blocking AI visibility, poster session, write-up announced.
• La Teva Web: attendance and John Mueller being present.
• Irene Cecotti (SEO/AEO Lead, PhantomBuster): pre-event post: announced talk on new AI features that can hurt organic performance.
• Dave Smart (Technical SEO, Tame the Bots): pre-event post, no factual content.

Limits of this article

• I am not attending the event. Everything about Day 1 comes from attendees’ LinkedIn posts published on September 30, 2026, which I read and captured the same day.
• The AI Mode figures (1 billion, 92%, quarterly doubling) do not appear in any Google document I reviewed. They need confirmation.
• A Dutch post claims Google said “natural” content is promoted better. Too vague and second-hand: not retained.
• Days 2 (indexing, rendering, canonicalization, AI in indexing) and 3 (ranking, AI features) are not covered. Update planned.

Sources

• Google Search Central Blog: Deep Dive Europe 2026 program
• Google Search Central Blog: community speakers
• PPC Land: Barcelona, format and speakers
• Search Engine Land: Bangkok 2025, classic SEO and llms.txt
• LinkedIn, September 30, 2026: Victoria Y.; John Campbell (ROAST); George-Emanuel Cîță; Christina Mantziou; Kira Breuer; LOCOMOTIVE Europe (John McAlpin); La Teva Web.