Industry News

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

After a few days of calm Google weather, we are now seeing a spike in volatility, fluctuations and SEO chatter around Google search ranking movement. It is somewhat early on but I am seeing both a spike in SEOs noticing ranking movement and many of the tools are showing a spike in volatility.

Google Marketing Live was yesterday, and the Google Ad team announced a ton of new AI formats, new ad tools, and changes to the Google Ads platform that are coming soon. The big items for me are ads in AI Overviews, new AI Shopping Ads, Brand Profile ads, and more AI tools to help you create your ads.

Google and Bing are recommending that those on WordPress to upgrade to version 6.5 because 6.5 now supports lastmod dates in the sitemap files natively. In fact, Fabrice Canel from Bing says this is a "game-changer."

Google Search Console may have another data bug, maybe, this time with product snippets. If you look at your Search Performance report, then filter by search appearance for product snippets, you will likely see a surge in impressions and clicks over the past few days.

Microsoft is testing a way to filter your Bing Search results based on tags. The tag filter is showing up for some searchers via a tab that you can click on via the right side of the page that will expand and show you tag filter options.

Did you know that Apple can mark a business listing within Appel Maps / Apple Business Connect, as permanently closed if that business listing is missing the business hours and business address and/or if the business hours and address do not match what is on the business's website or other local listings (like on Yelp, Google Maps, etc)?

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google's CEO, Sunda Pichai, spoke about AI Overviews killing the web, small publishers dying and not giving us Search Console data (well...

Just a PSA - the newish Google site reputation abuse policy not only applies to Google Search but also applies to Google Discover. Google updated the Discover content policies a while back to add a line that reads, "Publishers should be aware of the new site reputation abuse policy that becomes effective as of May 5, 2024."

Nilay Patel, Editor-In-Chief of The Verge interviewed Sunday Pichai, CEO of Google, at Google I/O and the 40 minute interview released yesterday dug into a lot of the concerns we have been covering here. This includes how AI Overviews may kill the web, how smaller/indepdent publishers are dying and if we can get data in Search Console.