Industry News

Rand Fishkin along with Mike King may have published one of the biggest data leaks outside of the Department of Justice data reveal around Google Search and its internal ranking features and signals. The document was from an anonymous source but verified by Rand Fishkin and contains a ton of details on how Google Search reportedly works.

Last November or so, Google started to roll out the "shop deals" search bar on both desktop and mobile, this was from the shop deals banner in the middle of the search results page. Now, Google is testing a thinner version of the shop deals search bar.

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

Google has updated its help documentation page on AI Overviews to tell searchers how to show only web results in its search results (not show AI Overviews, videos, image, etc), plus how to give feedback on the AI Overviews Google provides. This obviously comes based on the backlash Google has received on some of these AI Overviews.

Google's John Mueller once again blasted the "concept of toxic links," he wrote on Reddit, "The concept of toxic links is made up by SEO tools so that you pay them regularly." As you know, John is not a fan of link selling, buying and removal services - including tools that tell you what to remove.

I am hearing numerous reports from SEOs that the link report within Google Search Console is showing drastically fewer links than it did a month prior. I am not sure if this is impacting all SEO, but there are a number of SEOs complaining about this.

Google Images lets you upload an image, and then it may show you an option to "see exact matches." This essentially will show you all the locations where the image is found by Google across the web. Obviously, this can help you find out who stole your image, and then you can have fun trying to get them to take it down.

Google is testing a large blue visit button on its mobile search results interface. The button is hard to miss and shows up under the sitelinks for some searchers. Again, it is a test, so many of you will likely not be able to replicate it.

Google has grayed out, muted, its logo, for Memorial Day, again this year. It also applied an American flag under the search box with the message, "Honoring those who sacrificed." That links to the search results for [Memorial Day] on Google Search.

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

We had more Google search ranking volatility in the middle of the week after some calming for a few days. Google Ads will soon show within the Google AI Overview, plus we covered a lot more ad news. Sundar Pichai was interviewed...