Industry News

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

This week, we, of course, covered the ongoing Google Search ranking volatility. Google is now blending AI Mode directly into AI Overviews. Google's home page search bar added a new upload feature to take you into AI Mode...

Over the years, we have written that service areas are not used as a local ranking factor by Google Search. Well, the API leak document also implies this to be true.

Google is testing a new AI-powered configuration tool, as it calls it, to help you build instant reports based on your natural language questions. So basically Ads and Analytics Advisor but for Search Console, plus this just builds reports and doesn't do actions - yet.

If you look at some of the profiles/sites in your Google Search Console performance reports, you may notice a significant increase in the average position being reported. This happened when Google removed the num=100 parameter and is likely due to scrapers not messing up your data.

Google Merchant Center is now beta testing regional member pricing, where you can offer different member prices based on the shopper's regions. This will essentially override the member price in the regional inventory feed.

Google Ads may be testing placing an ad extension button at the top right of the sponsored result on the desktop interface. This button, in this example, shows the text "Learn more."

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 Search rankings are volatile again and heating up. Plus...

I am seeing some signs of a Google Search ranking update and intense volatility that kicked in late yesterday. The SEO community started chattering about it over the past several hours and some of the tools are showing a spike in volatility with the Google search rankings.

Google Ads may be testing the ability to subscribe to support updates via WhatsApp. Google has rolled out a new option to get real-time support case updates directly on WhatsApp, at least some folks are seeing this.