Industry News

Google's John Mueller was asked if Google would penalize a site for old outbound links to a site that once hosted quality content and now changed ownership and hosts shady content. John said Google won't penalize such links; he said "no" and added, "the web is full of turmoil."

About a month ago, Google announced Tell Maps, a way for Google Maps contributors to use AI to tell Google Maps more about places. "You can suggest edits conversationally, right from Ask Maps and the Contribute tab," Google said about Tell Maps.

Google Ads is beta testing a new option during the campaign creation process for "Video Campaign Group." This option is for video or Demand Gen campaigns, and it features aggregated metrics and controls for reach and frequency across campaigns.

Google Ads has a new beta named Product Value Optimization that allows advertisers to configure value adjustments to guide automated bidding to optimize for the products that matter for your business goals.

Google is testing a blue background color on the "More" link within the product results in Google Search. The link is normally just a basic "more" link with no prominence or color that calls it out but in this test, Google is using a blue highlight color for the link.

Google has posted the date of when the Google Ads bidding update, the target-based bid strategies rolled out, completed globally. It started on yes, August 17, 2026 and completed on August 27, 2026.

Google announced new ad metrics that are being tested within the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX). These metrics include Ad Count, Ad Density, Ad Weight (Network) and Ad Weight (CPU).

Google has updated the understanding page experience in Google Search results help document to add the new CrUX ad metrics which launched last week. To be clear, Google did not say this is a specific ranking signal for search, the CrUX ad metrics line was added to the "Page experience resources" section of the document.

This week, Google announced yet another spam update, the fourth of the year, the September 2026 Google spam update. Prior to that, we reported on more Google Search ranking volatility. Google Search Console released multimodal search filters...

Google has officially appealed to the European Union to stop the European Commission's Digital Markets Act (DMA) mandate requiring it to share search history data with competitors. Google said, "We're appealing decisions that will force us to share people's private search history without sufficient anonymization and weaken vital security protections on Android."

This week, we covered the first impact felt by the Google September 2026 spam update. And then on Wednesday and Thursday we had the second impact of this spam update. Remember the AI contribution report...

Microsoft Bing is testing dropping favicons from Bing search result snippets. This makes the search results page look much less graphical.

Google seems to be successfully blocking enough of the attempts of scrapers from trying to scrape data from its search results page over the past few weeks than it has in a long time. We reported this a few weeks ago, and I am surprised to see that many tools still struggle with Google Search reporting.

The date picker in the performance reports in Google Search Console seems to be currently broken. The end date seems to be stuck in 1969 and when I try to change it, it says "Date can't be after 1969-12-31."

Google may show "certain pharmaceutical products" and pharmaceutical drugs within ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews. A Google spokesperson told Adweek it has "recently expanded to include certain pharmaceutical products" within these surfaces.

Some advertisers are starting to see the new AI dashboards within Google Ads. As a reminder, Google showed off these Gemini-powered Google Ads dashboards last May and then in August said they would roll out soon and I guess now some advertisers are seeing it.

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

Google has added local business query support to the aggregator and supplier units within Google Search. Google updated both the aggregator unit and supplier unit documentation to add "and local businesses" sprinkled throughout those documents.

Google is now sending out Google Business Profile email notifications when its spam systems detect a spike in spam reviews on your Business Profile. The email says, "Protecting your Business Profile from spam reviews," and adds, "Google has detected a spike in spam reviews on your Business Profile and removed them so they do not affect your Google rating."

Google has just pushed some updates to the reduce the Google crawl rate documentation. Most of the changes are just organizational to the content on the page but under the "Urgently reduce crawler traffic (for emergencies)" section, Google added new information on how to use Retry-After HTTP header.

Google Merchant Center is rolling out the UCP integration hub in the United States. The UCP integration hub allows you to onboard to UCP program from your Merchant Center account.

Google has made major updates to the Reader Revenue Manager homepage. It was a large redesign of the page, it also now lists AI Mode, AI Overviews, and Gemini, added a matrix to the page and moved things around as well.

Google is testing placing the left vertical sidebar you see in AI Mode results on the main Google web search results page. This places the small super G Google logo on the left, with the chat history lines, a way to start a chat with AI Mode and the settings icon all on the left side.

Google Ads is rolling out two new "controls" in the advertising platform named channel prioritization and budget allocation. These are rolling out globally across Google Search, Google Shopping, Performance Max, and soon Demand Gen.

For the past several hours, Google Dataset Search has not been able to return any search results or matches. Google Dataset Search returns a response that says "Your search - [keyword phrase here] - did not match any datasets."

Google is testing once again testing swipeable Google Ads sponsored results, where you can swipe a carousel of categories to potentially change the sponsored results listed below. We saw this for shopping ads in October 2024 and Google has continued to test this since.

Google has expanded access to Waze Ads beyond the United States and to a total of 42 countries. Google updated the PMax help documents in the Google Ads help center with this new information. It now says, "Waze Ads are currently available across select global markets..."

If you conduct a blank search on Google Search, you will get an AI Overview that says "...nuts? ð¥" It seems like one of those easter eggs dropped by Google within its search results.

Google Search has this beta opt-in feature named Web Guide, it is like a mix of its AI search results interface and web search interface - in one. That being said, there seems to be a bug where, when you click the button that says "Classic search," it does not take you out of Web Guide and into classic search.

Google has confirmed there are issues with Google Analytics loading the platform. Google updated its status report to say that it has "restored for some users" and Google expects "a resolution for all users in the near future."

Google seems to be showing more and more AI Overviews these days and even for many large brand names. It don't have a ton of data but Google does seems to be showing more and AI Overviews for almost every large brand name except for Google's own name and news publications.

Google Ads sent an email notifying some advertisers that it will automatically identify and extract high-quality promotions from your website and apply them directly to your campaigns starting on October 12, 2026. This is called automated promotions and only applies to Search and Performance Max campaigns with linked location assets.

Google Ads is testing displaying the advertiser's name within the click to call phone number call asset on the sponsored listings. Normally, Google will just show the phone number but in this test, Google is also adding the advertiser's name.

Google is now showing WhatsApp buttons, in place of chat or in addition to the other action buttons, in the local panel results within Google Search. Next to the call, directions. website, share buttons can be a WhatsApp button to let searchers chat with the store or company over WhatsApp.

OpenAI seems to have removed or replaced the UTM parameters it placed on links within the ChatGPT results. This makes it harder to know if a click came from ChatGPT versus some other platform. This seems to have started with the release of GPT''6, which was a week ago.

Google Ads has released version 26 of the Google Ads API. This is a major release of the Google Ads API updates including SMS messaging, local services, hotel center accounts, lift measurements, EU political items, conversion features, and so much more.

Google added the ability to add lead scoring by indicating answers that qualify a lead for your business to get higher-quality leads. You can add up to 12 answers per question and check off whether they qualify under the lead scoring section.

Google Business Profiles seems to be adding a fifth way to verify your business, this new method is by submitting a photo of your business location. The other methods are phone or text, email, live video call or a postcard in the mail.

Google has posted a new help document explaining the regional differences in the Google Search experience. This document includes information about search experiences available in certain countries, such as aggregator units, supplier units, and carousels.

Google continues to test new query expansion methods in AI Mode, beyond standard follow-up questions. Now Google is testing questions with multi-selection tools, a query refinement option and those recent paginated responses.

Google is now testing linking the product and shopping results within Google Search directly to the merchant or retailer website. This is instead of Google opening the side panel with more details about the product.

Google Maps now requires you to sign in to a Google account to see all the reviews on a Google Business Profile listing. It is also required in order to sort the reviews, leave a review, and more. I assume this was done to help prevent AI, bots, and third parties from scraping the Google reviews.

Around the same time Google updated its helpful content search documentation with defining main content and the new EOT/SA sections, Google also posted a warning to "avoid using deceptive authorship information."

Google is expanding the Search profiles feature to more countries. Starting today, those in India and Canada are now eligible for a Search profile in Google Search. And soon, Google will also support users in Brazil.

Google has updated the how leads work help documentation within Local Service Ads with a lot more detail. The changes are meaningful, including what counts as a billable phone lead and how Google handles lead quality/credits.

was a super busy week, so there is a lot more content in this recap compared to most. We start off with the Google September 2026 spam update completing, it had its third and final phase earlier in the week. Google may be issuing more manual action search penalties...

Google posted its first video in a series of what they are calling The Non-Canonical Cabinet. In this video, Cherry Prommawin and Gary Illyes discussed how Google Search deals with URLs. They discuss URLs as a ranking signal, hyphens versus underscores, emojis and much more.

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

Over the past few days, the IRS website (and other government sites) has tanked within Google's search results. My gut feeling is that the federal government implemented some bot-blocking that was too aggressive and blocked Google, among others, resulting in Google not fully showing the IRS website. I believe the IRS implemented some fixes, and the website is slowly coming back in Google Search.

Google Search is testing pushing searchers into AI Mode from the AI Overview by default, without having to click the "Show more" button. The new AI Overview experience that Google is testing shows a much fuller AI answer, like you'd get in AI Mode, and loads the follow up "Ask anything" box by default.

Google Ads added a new paragraph to the AI Max help documentation for AI Max keyword prioritization." It explains that when "disabling the broad match campaign setting or moving to AI Max, broad keywords are not treated as exact match keywords in prioritization." It then tells you how to handle this within AI Max.

Apple has updated its help documentation for Applebot over the weekend and added a single line at the end that reads, "Site rules for Applebot-Extended are not considered in ranking for Search." Applebot-Extended is not new; we covered it in April 2025, but here Apple is making it clear, like with Googlebot-Extended, that Applebot-Extended is separate from Search.

Google Ads has a new beta variable to test within its experiments area named "Budget or bidding targets for Search campaigns." This test different budget, target CPA or target ROAS amounts to find the optimal level of spending for your campaign, Google wrote.

Google Ads has been offering new and existing customers credits to encourage them to spend on the advertising platform. But sometimes, Google Ads will revoke a credit, a credit that was already spent within the Google Ads platform, leaving the client spending more than they budgeted for.

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

Google Ads updated its Recommended Investment Strategy tab on the Recommendations page with Strategic budget allocation using Holistic and Growth modes. Holistic mode reallocates spend from underperforming campaigns to top performers for maximum efficiency, while Growth mode adds fresh budget to top performers without cutting spend anywhere else.

Today is Google's 28th birthday and Google has a special Google Doodle to celebrate. The Doodle takes you back in time to an early Google logo. Plus, when you click on the Doodle, you are taken into AI Mode where you can take "a fun trivia quiz about Google's company lore, historical quirks, and birthday traditions."

OpenAI has pinned the Shopping tab to the left sidebar on ChatGPT. Clicking on it takes you to a landing page and a dedicated search page focused on shopping.

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 is making AI Overviews fully expanded for some queries, making it more like AI Mode and pushing the core search results down...

On Friday, Google pushed out a pretty big overhaul of the Performance Max documentation within the Google Ads support area. I've been waiting to compare the old and new documents, but the Wayback Machine has been down for about a week now.

Google Ads added a new section to the how asset groups work help documentation for pre-fill asset groups with generated assets. This section goes over new features like in-construction callout and automatic pre-fill.

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. John Mueller from Google said it is hard to map positions one through ten in search anymore...

Google Analytics is rolling out dashboards where you can create your own custom dashboards using Google Analytics data. Google explains that you can "create custom visualizations to quickly pull actionable insights from your Google Analytics data, all in a single, consolidated page."

Google Search Live is now powered by Google's latest AI model, Gemini 3.8 Live. Search Live has been around for a couple years now, both in audio only format and then video format. Search Live was released globally in March, and before that, it removed the opt-in requirements.

Last year, Google began to roll out Google Discover on the desktop interface of Google.com. But now, for the past several months, Discover on desktop is not been found. Google tested Discover on Desktop in 2023 and then, in 2025, said it was coming; it even started to roll it out, but again, it didn't last - Discover on Google.com desktop just does not exist.

New data shows that Google is showing far more external links in its AI Overviews than before. A jump from close to 0% of AI Overviews containing external links to over 25% of AI Overviews containing external links.

Google made several changes to the about merchant loyalty program within the Google Merchant Center help documentation. The key changes are that Loyalty Customer Match expanded to AI Mode and Gemini and to more regions, but there are even more changes noted in the help documentation.

Microsoft Bing is testing showing the local pack results without borders. Normally, the local pack has a small outline border around the results, but for some reason, Microsoft is testing not placing the outline around the local results.

Google is rolling out new dietary attributes for local restaurants within Google Business Profiles. Google added gluten-free, dairy-free, halal and kosher attributes, in addition to vegetarian and vegan attributes that were already there.

Google Business Profiles insights analytics report is missing data for the whole month of September 2026. Normally these reports can be a few days delayed but now we 8 days into the month and I still do not see any data.

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. I am seeing signs of a big update lurking with Google Search...

Earlier this month, we learned a judge ruled that Google won't be broken up over its monopoly ruling in its ad tech case. And now we have the full memo with the judge's proposed remedies, including Google making behavioral changes.

Google may be more successful in blocking AI scrapers, search scrapers and third-party tracking tools since around September 13th or so. This coincides with the September 4th and September 12th reversals we reported, and it also aligns with the methods Google has been using to block non-human behavior in its search results recently.

We are seeing significant volatility again within the Google Search rankings again, this time starting around September 23rd (maybe the 22nd) and throughout today. As we have been seeing, the chatter is generally slowing down as Google has been sending less and less traffic to sites, but I believe there are enough signals to say there was some sort of unconfirmed Google Search ranking update.

Pietro Valetto interviewed Nick Fox, Senior Vice President of Knowledge & Information at Google. Nick Fox shared a snippet from the full video about the DMA changes that led Google to say it had to make the biggest reduction in search quality in its 28-year history. Fox said doing so made him feel "terrible" and "sad."

Google seems to be testing adding tracking parameters to the link URLs within AI Overviews. If this rolls out fully, this will help you decipher when you get a click from an AI Overview in Google Search or just a click from the main Google Search web results.

OpenAI announced "new visual ad format in ChatGPT" that it will be testing "later this month in the US with an initial group of advertisers." The new visual ad format is an "ad format during image generation in ChatGPT." So if you ask ChatGPT to make an image for you, it will show a special ad for that process.

Google has added information to the Search generative AI control page in Search Console about when a child property overrides the parent setting for AI controls.

Google Ads is testing a new billing menu bar or tab that adds more options and links to the billing section. It looks like Google added double the amount of links in the menu.

Google, for the umpteenth time, has updated how it shows links and carousel link cards in AI Mode and AI Overviews. Google always says this is to encourage searchers to click from the AI response to the publisher or creator, but it feels as if those efforts to drive clicks from AI search continue to fail.

Robby Stein, Google's Vice President of Product at Google Search, asked on X, "If you could get one feature shipped right now in AI Mode, what would it be?" So now is your chance to reply on X with what you want.

Google is expanding the book button through Reserve with Google partner integration to Google Ads Search and Performance Max campaigns. Previously, I believe, this was only available on Google Local Service Ads and maps ads.

Did you know that Apple Siri handles 2.5 billion requests every single day? Lilian Rincon, Apple's Vice President of Product Management / Product Marketing for Artificial Intelligence, said that yesterday at the Apple Event on September 9, 2026.

Google is testing a new feature in Google Discover named "Dive deeper." When you click on it, it does not take you to a publisher's article, instead, it takes you to an AI-generated short topic overview with links to some other articles (which do take you to the publisher) and community reaction.

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

Google may be issuing more manual action penalties over the past few weeks than it has over the weeks before that. The increase in manual actions seems to have started several weeks ago, but more so recently, according to some SEOs.

There are reports of an error in Google Merchant Center with video uploads getting stuck in the "preview processing" status. This causes the videos to look static both in your product listings in Google Search and other surfaces.

I spotted a thread on Reddit that seemed off from an SEO perspective. A site owner said he switched to a new domain four months ago, Google indexed and served the new domain but then all of a sudden, Google started to show the old domain again four months after the migration.

Google posted on X that Ask Advisor, which is in Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Merchant Center and more Google tools, will soon "maintain shared memory across your Google marketing tools." When this rolls out, when you ask a question on Google Ads, and then ask a question on Google Analytics or Merchant Center, the previous chat history will be used to give you (hopefully) smarter answers on all those tools.

Google Analytics seems to have another bug, this time with data missing from the main charts. September 1, 2026 data is showing zero traffic to websites; I believe this is across every Google Analytics install.

Google Ads is showing under the status of your ads a label that says "Under Re-Review." It says the ad is eligible but limited and "this ad is serving to a limited audience." It then breaks down where the ad may not be serving.

Google's John Mueller responded to questions about how impressions are counted for Generative AI in Google Search Console. Google has a document that explains that, and John just reiterated that. But what he added was that "the old "position 1 - 10" is hard to map."

This week we covered how Google said it launched its biggest reduction in search quality in Europe over the DMA laws. Google also posted a document on the regional differences with the Google Search experiences. Google confirmed there was a temporary indexing reporting bug in Search Console...

The Google Ads August 17th bidding update happened about a month ago, and Google's various ad representatives spent a lot of time telling us that a lot won't change. It still caused a big stir in the community, but now we have some data to share.

Google updated the upload a product reviews data source to Merchant Center help document to now say that you can do this via the Merchant Center API. Previously, the document said, "API isn't currently supported for product reviews data sources." Now it says, "Add product reviews using API."

The crawl stats report is missing a day of data again, this time, the missing data is from September 15th (it might be a day later for some of you on different time zones). That being said, this has happened numerous times before and Google tends to always restore the data.

It looks like spammers are taking advantage of Gemini Notebook, public NotebookLM, pages to spam Google with all sorts of content. This includes pages on sex toys, porn, peptides, coupon codes and more.

Microsoft is testing replacing or renaming the Copilot search tab in Bing Search with the name AI Mode. AI Mode is the name Google uses for its AI search engine, Bing uses Copilot Search, but Microsoft is testing using Google's name here.

Google has added a new policy to the Google Business Profiles policies document. The new policy is named "Misuse of support channels."

Google Ads updated its destination not working policy document to "provide additional examples for destination issues for advertisers," the company said. But Google also added a new line that says "Make sure your campaign has at least one asset group configured. If an asset group is missing, you may receive an "invalid final URL" error during setup even if your destination URL is working correctly."

Google Ads will update its business name policy to allow some advertisers to use a business name that differs from the ad's destination domain. This is limited to certain cases, specifically three cases and it also excludes advertisers who are not the direct verified brand.

The search performance reports in Google Search Console is now over 64 hours delayed, which is incredibly unusual for this report. Generally, we see this report updated within a few hours but over the past few days, post-spam update, the report has been lagging.

Google Search seems like it is rolling out the google.com/goto URL as a passthrough URL within the search results that it began testing in July 2026. This seems like a way for Google to help prevent scraping of its search results by third-party tools and AI companies but Google has not yet commented on this goto URL paramter.

In early August, Google was testing requiring searchers to sign in to verify they are humans to continue to see search results. Now, Google is testing a similar feature without requiring you to sign in, but instead, Google is asking you to click a "Continue" button after a few seconds, after Google verifies your request.

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

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 is testing a way to pay publishers for using their content in AI Mode...

Google Image Search lets you save images to collections and folders. Well, now Google will suggest new folders or collections using AI - it says "suggested by AI" with a Gemini icon over a folder.

OpenAI is testing a new ad format in ChatGPT named Sponsored Agents. Sponsored Agents "let people start a conversation with a business-sponsored agent after clicking an ad in ChatGPT," OpenAI wrote.

We've seen Microsoft test variations of expanding sitelinks within the Bing search results before. But here is a different variation on that, one that expands and shows descriptions under the sitelinks after you hover your mouse cursor over the specific sitelink.

Google is testing replacing the "Show more" button under the AI Overviews with a "Loading..." button. Also, earlier this year, Google tested "Enter AI Mode" for the button text but that obviously did not stick.

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 Nick Fox was interviewed again and said the DMA changes make him sad and are terrible for searchers...

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 is only paying about 100 publishers in the AI contribution pilot...

OpenAI has humans who are reaching out to advertisers to help them manage their ChatGPT Ads. These ad representatives are called ChatGPT Ads Account Managers and I guess are real humans who help agencies manage ads for their customers?

Microsoft Bing is testing placing a large single ad unit at the top of the Bing Search results page. The sponsored ad has a gray background, with an image and call to action button, and of course, the url, title and ad description.

Google seems to be poisoning the third-party tracking tools with fake data and paywalls; this is wreaking havoc on keyword tracking. Google launched Gemini 4 Argon and it is in AI Mode. Google made several...

Google is rolling out three new travel features within AI Mode in Google Search. These features include track flight prices, view points or miles rates, and book hotels directly within AI Mode, through your conversational search.

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 has dodged being broken up for a second time on its monopoly ruling...

The Google Search Console link report has now not been updated for a month. The last time the report was updated with fresh link data was around August 8, 2026 - a month ago.

Google is testing a redesigned Local Service Ads design in the search results that have larger images and a highlight box under the listings. It makes the ads really stand out and in your face.

Microsoft Bing is testing adding an editable icon in two formats on images within Bing Search that can be edited using Bing's AI image feature.

Google has updated Google Search's "guidance on using generative AI content on your website" document to tell those who use AI-generated content to "manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing."

The Google September 2026 spam update is now done rolling out. It started on Thursday, September 28, 2026 at around 12:00 pm ET and completed on October 8, 2026 at 4:37 am ET. This was different from the previous few spam updates in that this one took two weeks to roll out whereas the others took only two days to roll out.

Bing is testing showing "Related searches based on your browsing" similar to how Google is/was showing this a few months ago. In Bing's test, this is below the Microsoft Ads in the search results.

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. A first, Google won't enforce a spam policy within the European region...

Google posted a note that it has made enhancements to the Merchant Center's Popular products reports. Specifically, the coverage and insights sections were improved back in June of this year, but Google just posted about this information on this past Friday afternoon.

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

A federal judge in Virginia ruled against breaking up Google's ad tech business after Google was found to be a monopoly over its ad technology platforms. The judge ordered Google to end its practices that depress ad rates for web publishers, but declined to order divestiture of Google's ad exchange and other technology.

Since Google added AI Overviews to Google Search, many of us have been experiencing what some call the crocodile effect, also known as the great decoupling. But according to new data, the opposite may be happening with Google Shopping Ads.

Google is showing the number of sold items for a specific product in the Google Shopping Ads format. The ad has an extension added on it that says "200+ sold last," or whatever number it might be.

Microsoft Bing is testing adding product/shopping related filters on the left sidebar of the search results. This makes the Bing all search tab look more like Google's all tab, when you search for product or shopping related queries.

Google has posted a new help document in the Google Ads help area named About commerce audience sharing through Google Ads. It explains that "Commerce audience sharing allows commerce partners, such as retailers or marketplaces, to share first-party data segments with their advertising partners, such as brands or sellers."

Google Search is testing placing a title above the sitelinks for the sponsored results, the title says "more from [advertiser name goes here]." I think it makes it super clear where these sponsored links go to, but it may be a bit overkill.

Microsoft is testing placing favicons on the Bing shopping ads, product results, carousel. Normally, this ad unit just shows the site name but Bing is testing adding favicons in front of the site name.

Google Ads is showing some advertisers not just a recommendation with the ability to make a change on that recommendation but it is tied to the advertiser's forecast. It shows your projected weekly conversion value and adds that your campaign is limited by budget, and that you should spend more to hit the forecast.

Google is testing making the sponsored products search results block or grid look more like the organic products/shopping grid. Instead of showing a long carousel of products across the top or on the right, this shows a product grid format we are more accustomed to for the free product listings.

Google has updated the creating helpful, reliable, people-first content help document to primarily add two new sections. First, it added that the main content is super critical, added what is main content and then explained how Search Quality raters review content quality of the main content.

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

Google has updated the favicon search developer documentation to list out the supported favicon file formats. Google added this line that reads, "Google Search supports the following favicon file formats: BMP, GIF, ICO, PNG, JPEG, PPM, and TIFF."

Google AdSense will change how it counts impressions for display ads starting on February 17, 2027. Google will use what it calls the Begin-to-Render methodology and will only count the impression once the ad has successfully loaded and has started to render on the user's device.

We got a number of updates coming from OpenAI about ChatGPT Ads and the ChatGPT Ads Manager, we also suspect that the shopping results coming from ChatGPT only come from those who submit product feeds. The other updates include a plugin for integration with ChatGPT and/or Codex, custom audience improvements, conversion matching updates, ad unit formats, budget pacing, more conversion optimization options and expansion of the platform.

Google's John Mueller went off again on programmatic SEO, this time saying that programmatic SEO can "often leads to a site that's either spam, borderline spam, or low quality," he wrote. These tactics can often lead Google's "systems have possibly lost faith in your site providing good value to users based on the old pages."

Google is now answering nearly 100% of all people also asked questions with AI Overviews. 14 months ago, it was only at about 12% but now we are seeing thar nearly all People also ask sections are answered by AI Overviews.

Last month, Google Ads added a new customer retention option named Loyalty program members. Now Google Ads can segment reporting by Loyalty program members.

The Google Search Console page indexing report is now missing a huge chunk of data from June 2026. It seems something is super buggy with this report over the page several months or something weird is happening with indexing in Google Search. I am hoping it is just a reporting thing, but I am seeing a lot of indexing complaints this month.

As you know, Google has thousands of quality raters they use to help test and improve the search results and AI results. OpenAI does the same thing, with AI trainers according to a report by 404 Media.

As you know, Google has a small pilot named the AI contribution pilot, where they are paying some publishers for using their content in AI features like AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini. Well, according to The Information, it is about 100 publishers and those publishers are getting about "one-tenth of 1% of their advertising revenue."

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

Google has updated the Google Maps and Business Profiles Prohibited & restricted content policy's advertising and solicitation section to list what merchants and business owners cannot post on their listings and posts.

Google Ads is adding new AI Max related columns to the Google Ads reporting console. The columns include brand inclusions, locations of interest, commission and optimized targeting.

Google posted a new job posting to hire a Principal, UX, Search Discover who will lead efforts to transform Google Discover into a "proactive, hyper-personalized concierge experience."

Google has two, well, maybe three, features that are being confused as one. The preferred sources, the tailor your feed and also search profiles. All kind of customize what you see across Google Search features including Google Search, AI Mode, Discover and so on. But they are all different features.

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

Google posted another new help document on multi-source conversions (beta). Last month, Google reportedly renamed conversions with multiple data sources to multi-source conversions, but now there is this new help document as well.

OpenAI just sent out an email to advertisers about new ChatGPT Ads product updates that include several new features. The new features include bulk creation for product feed campaigns, product review status, report conversions beyond your campaign goal through the API, separate account, brand, and legal names and ChatGPT Ads are live in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

Google Ads may have a bug or maybe it is testing, not showing images on sponsored product results. You can see from the screenshot below, the images that are generally shown above the ad titles and descriptions are missing from the Sponsored products carousel in Google Search.

Google now lets you check off multiple countries within the Google Search Console country filter in the performance reports. This lets you group countries together, to see how your search performance is doing for multiple countries at once, instead of one country at a time.

Google has updated its Google Merchant Center low image quality help document to now say that poor image quality will not stop those products from showing in Google Search or Google Ads.

Microsoft Bing just announced a new addition to the AI performance reports in Bing Webmaster Tools named Topics Portfolio. Topics Portfolio shows you the "presence is distributed across themes, how much demand each theme represents, how competitive each theme is and where your site has room to grow."

Google is testing a redesigned search bar within the Google mobile app. The new search bar is now has the + sign in it, and instead of saying "Search," it says "Ask Google." The search bar is also white, as opposed to gray and is thinner and higher up on the page.

Google Ads is planning on pushing twice as many Google Ads API updates for the remainder of this year and into 2027 compared to its previous schedule. Last year, Google said it would release an Ads API update monthly and now Google is switching that to two updates per month.

Microsoft is testing placing "read more" links within the Bing Search result snippets, like Google officially did a year or so ago. I am able to replicate this on some browsers, where Bing adds a "Read more" link at the end of the search result snippet that links to the same place the main title links to.

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

Google will be updating its alcohol advertising policy on September 30, 2026. The update "revises country-specific guidelines, expands allowed advertising locations, and provides clearer details on specific advertiser requirements and responsibilities," Google wrote.

The Google Merchant Center AI Performance Insights which launched in July and has begun expanding to more regions earlier this month has also gained new metrics. AI Search intent, AI Search terms and AI attributes have been added to the Google Merchant Center AI Performance Insights report.

Google may have a bug with some of its search results formatting, where the sponsored results heading is sometimes not left-aligned. This does not seem intentional and it seems more like a formatting bug, but who knows.

Google Ads is running a "very early experiment" to show a new attribute in sponsored results in Google Search. This attribute shows how many days remain in a sale or deal on Shopping Ads.

Google Business Profiles is testing a new feature to let it set your business hours for you automatically by just asking you to describe your business hours in text. Google will then use AI to interpret them and make them into a structured format to list on your local panel in Google Search and Google Maps.

Google has just announced the release of the September 2026 spam update and said it should take a couple of weeks to roll out. This is a global update and is expected to impact all languages. This only impacts sites that spam, but with any update...

There seems to be a bug with Google Local Service Ads showing ads from advertisers who are not targeting specific locations. With Local Service Ads, an advertiser can say they serve a specific city or location, but Google seems to be showing ads from advertisers who do not serve in those locations.

Google Search Console is sending out emails informing site owners how many people are subscribing or following them as a preferred source on Google. It says "people are choosing domain as a preferred source" and then lists the number of "Preferred source selections."

Google Ads will allow some advertisers to apply for certification for the category of online gambling. This started this month, October 2026, and will gradually be available to some advertisers in Google Ads.

Microsoft Advertising, with the release of AI Max globally, has rolled out a new Search term landing page reporting template. This report gives advertisers "full insights into all parts of AI Max's performance," said Navah Hopkins, the Microsoft Ads Liaison.

It is time for the monthly Google webmaster report, where I recap the larger stories from the past month, specifically related to Google SEO, search, and webmaster/site owner topics...

Google Ads is now pushing notifications to advertisers for recommendations they have previously dismissed. Google shows a message in the ads console that reads, "You still have dismissed recommendations for this campaign," which you can dismiss once again?

Microsoft is testing bolding the https portion of the URLs in the Bing Search results. We've seen Microsoft test HTTPS labels in various forms over the years, including using lock icons. But here, Microsoft Bing is being more subtle about it by just bolding the HTTPS portion of the URL.

Google Ads posted a new help document about automated promotions that describes how Google Ads can and does automatically identify and apply active promotional offers directly from your website.

Google's John Mueller said it is normal for Google Search to take a while to update image thumbnails in its search results with updated images from the website it pulls from. And it can take even longer if the image is still on the page, but was only moved down the page later, even if the image is within the recipe structured data as the primary.

Google Ads is rolling out an update to the Spend benchmarks report that now shows you how your spend is comparable to businesses like yours. In short, it shows you if you are spending more, less or the same as your competitors on Google Ads.

Google Search has dropped the free product listings and carousel formats from the European Economic Area (EEA). This change is part of what the European Commission forced Google to do in these regions under the Digital Markets Act.

Google Local Service Ads seems to hide the phone number until you hover your mouse over the ad. I am not sure if this is new or not, but there is a big button that says "Get phone number" which is not needed because the phone number does show up as soon as you move your mouse near the ad.

Google Ads now lets advertisers set up Conversion Lift measurement themselves. Google updated its help documentation to say that you no longer need a Google Ads representative to set up Conversion Lift measurement; you just need at least 1,000 observed conversions and a $5,000 budget.

Microsoft Advertising is previewing a new design and usability update for its ad platform. This update has a redesigned navigation and improved tables and layouts. This update should make managing your ad campaigns more efficient and intuitive.

As you know, Google rolled out Gemini 3.8 Flash for subscribers to AI Mode and some have started to play with it. And the early feedback is that AI Mode running Gemini 3.8 Flash is not link or citation friendly. Meaning, AI Mode with Google's latest AI model is less likely to cite sources and link to sources than previous models.

As you know, Google has new features in many European regions to promote vertical search services (VSS) by way of the Digital Markets Act. Many of those changes have been live for a while, but now the Ecosystem carousel seems to be live.

Google's John Mueller said that he expects the position and impression tracking for AI Mode, AI Overviews and Google Search to "evolve over time" as Google Search, AI Mode and AI Overviews "evolve too," he wrote.

Microsoft Bing is also asking some searchers to verify they are human before showing them search results. Google is doing this a lot, in various forms, and now Bing was spotted doing this.

Google is placing links, normal looking links, within the AI Overviews that take you into AI Mode instead of taking you to web pages and web sites. These links appear at the bottom of the AI Overview and prompt follow-up questions that take you into AI Mode.

Google Ads added new help documentation on how to test AI Max against Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) by using experiments. Google posted two options within Google Ads experiments including (1) custom experiments and (2) the experiment template.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has proposed new measures to force Google to make it easier for users of Google's Android and Chrome to use an alternative search engine or AI platform. This is "designed to give millions of Google Android and Google Chrome customers in the UK greater choice and more control over the search services they use," the CMA wrote.

Microsoft Advertising now shows "consumer review" ad extensions in the Bing search results sponsored results section. These are one-line snippets of text, added under the sponsored result, that come a "from consumer review."

Google spoke at the three-day Google Search Central Live Deep Dive event in Europe about why it has rolled out so many spam updates in 2026, according to John Campbell's recap at We Are Roast. He said that Google has been doing more spam updates because there is so much more new content than before. He also said Google is using AI to catch more spam.

Google's Martin Splitt and John Mueller just posted a Search Off the Record podcast on the topic of PDFs, it is named PDFs in Search: Indexing, AI & Pitfalls. It goes over how PDFs are converted for crawling and indexing, how Google processes links, images, what are the file limits and do they rank in search and AI search.

Google's John Mueller said the Google disavow tool "does have effects," adding, "but it has its place & time." This was in response a complaint about a site dropping in the search results after adding links to the disavow link tool.

Microsoft is testing adding new labels to the Bing Search product carousels. Labels include Top Picks, Price Drop, Sale and likely other labels on the Bing Search product listings, within the carousels.

Google Ads is expanding access to AI Briefs and also added new AI Max reporting. Google said AI Brief audience targeting works now in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. Plus, there is a new AI Max reporting feature for looking at the Search Ads journey.

Google continues to test variations of designs and user experiences for Sitelinks within its search results. The new design spotted has the Sitelinks listed line by line, with a horizontal line across the left side of the mobile search result snippet.

Google is testing showing citation cards at the bottom of AI Overview responses on desktop, instead of on the right side. Google tested variations of this at least twice before, once in March of 2026 and before that in September 2025.

Microsoft Advertising announced that optimization experiments is now generally available for Search, Shopping, Audience, and Performance Max campaigns. An Optimization experiment measures the impact of a campaign change through a controlled A/B test, Microsoft's help center explains.

Google seems to have a bug of sorts where sometimes it can show the three dots about this ad or search result button twice, instead of just once. I can replicate this for some queries but not all.

Microsoft is testing adding the label "Popular Links" to the Bing search results sitelinks. This reminds me of the Google top pages test and variations of that.

Google announced it will not enforce manual actions under the site reputation abuse policy in the European Economic Area (EEA) due to a mandate set by the European Commission, effective August 30, 2026. Google said searchers in the EEA will not benefit from Google's spam prevention for sites labeled for site reputation abuse.

Google is now showing shopping ads in a carousel format inline within AI Mode results. Plus, Google is also showing a similar ad unit at the bottom of the AI Mode results. We got a lot of ads in AI Mode now, and I guess Google is looking for more and more ways to monetize those ads.

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

Google has announced a number of updates to Google Merchant Center including the AI performance insights generally available, it has simplified Universal Commerce Protocol integration, and Google highlighted how using conversational and video attributes can help.

Google has updated the Search profiles with a new article design, a single login to manage multiple Search profiles and only 10,000 followers on social platforms are required.

This week we covered the first week or so of Google's unusual ranking volatility only to see things spike up in a big way this week as well - something is up. Google's remedies are out for its ad tech monopoly ruling. Google has an AI contribution pilot for paying publishers...

Google has updated its video structured data documentation to support creator property and it has updated the interactionStatistic in VideoObject structured data. Google said these updates are to "to document support for the creator and author properties, and clarify supported interaction types for interactionStatistic in VideoObject structured data."

Google Ads has a new AI campaign localization tool for Search campaigns (beta), at least according to a new help document I found late last week. "You can use the AI campaign localization tool to quickly localize entire Search campaigns for new languages and regions using generative AI," Google wrote in the help document.

I believe we are seeing the final phase of the Google September 2026 Spam update rolling out between October 4th and October 6th, today. The update should be done any day now, so there may be another spike in volatility, but I suspect this is it - we are pretty much done with this spam update.

It has been a while since I reported on a Google Search ranking update. I blame the tools, but in all seriousness, I am seeing a spike in volatility and, now probably more importantly, a spike in chatter over the past 24 hours, related to Google Search ranking changes, referral traffic changes and overall disruption in the Google Search results.

Google is testing asking searchers to sign in within the AI Mode response. Google shows a big Google super logo and a sign in button that says "Sign in to save your..."

Google Ads is releasing two new features for multi-location retailers including Local Customer Optimization and Store Sales in Data Manager. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, wrote on X, "Ahead of the holiday rush, we're introducing two features for multi-location retailers, restaurants and local services to drive and measure in-store sales with ease."

Google Merchant Center now lets you upload videos of your products through a new Product videos section. "Product videos offer a more engaging and immersive experience to customers," Google wrote on the "Add videos" page within Merchant Center.

Google Ads added a new option within your Performance Max campaigns to select "Where should people go after clicking your ads?" The two available options for that question are (1) Your website and (2) Google Business Profile (optimized for ads).

Google has released version 25.2 of the Google Ads API, this is a minor release with several of updates. This update includes competitive benchmarks percentile metrics, the ability to generate Performance Max drafts from Smart campaigns, asset group URL options, Search bid adjustment recommendations, and more.

A new bug with Google Business Profiles and Google Maps is placing some businesses' Google Maps pins in the middle of the ocean. This is reportedly happening for some service area businesses that do not list their address publicly on their Google local listings.

Google's John Mueller said Google "primarily" announces search updates to provide "transparency for site owners." He added that when Google publishes blog posts, updates policies, and help center documentation, that is an actionable announcement site owners could use.

Google has rolled out its Digital Markets Act changes in Europe and called it the "largest reduction in quality" in the life of Google Search. "The changes mark the largest reduction in quality of service 'at the world's most popular internet search engine in its 29-year search history," Google official told Reuters.

Google is testing a text-based link format for ads within AI Mode. So the ads look like normal AI Mode responses, with normal looking text links with anchor text, but they are labeled as "Sponsored" above the AI-generated response.

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

Microsoft Bing is testing a new'ish section labeled "Recommended by" followed by the company making the recommendations. The weird thing is, the specific product thumbnails link to various retailers and not the place that recommended it.

Google released Nano Banana 2.1 today, and it is already working within AI Mode in Google Search. Nano Banana 2.1 is Google's latest image generation and editing model.

Google has announced its UGC Fresh Data Program, which Google says "is an initiative designed to help platforms display fresh, high quality, and authentic user-generated content (UGC) across various features on Search." Basically, it seems like an API UCG sites like Reddit can use to push content to Google Search faster.

Yes, Google often shows AI Overviews when Google Search cannot match specific web pages or when it thinks your query is a typo. In fact, Google AI Overviews can respond by saying, "It looks like your message might have been a typo or random keyboard input."

I am sad to report that Nick Wilsdon has passed away yesterday, October 11, 2026. Nick Wilsdon has been in the SEO industry for over two decades and was a close friend to many in the search marketing industry.

Google Ads has released several new "Troubleshoot performance fluctuations and changes" across Google Ads, Performance Max, Search campaigns, Display, video, shopping, app, and more. At least I think these documents are new based on my tools, but the Wayback Machine has been offline, so I cannot double verify.

Google Search seems to be having indexing or serving issues in the past hour or so. New content from the past hour doesn't seem to be showing up in Google Search results. Content from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNN and other news sites that post content constantly are not showing much or any new pages in the Google search results.

Another week...

Google's Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google Search, said on X, "Gemini 3.8 Flash has landed in Search." This comes only a couple of weeks after Google brought Gemini 3.7 Flash to AI Mode within Google Search.

In July, Google began to roll out AI performance reports within Google Merchant Center to United States based merchants. Google said the AI reports are now available to merchants within Australia, Canada, India & New Zealand as well.

Google is sending out Google Business Profiles notifications to business owners asking if the user-suggested edit or update is correct or not. The email says, "Does this look right to you?" and then it shows the suggested update to your business, which you can mark as correct or incorrect.

John Mueller has one of his Google lines again, he said in response to someone trying to pick the right answer for an SEO question - he said, "Sometimes there is no absolute right answer -- but you can choose one, and make it the right answer."

Google is turning the local knowledge panels, your Google Business Profile, into an AI Overview listing. At the top of the local listing it says "AI Overview" and then there is a "Show more" button to expand, which brings you into the follow up AI Mode style chat interface.

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 has released a new algorithm update, not a core update, but a spam update and this spam update will take two weeks...

The first stage of the Google September 2026 Spam update seems to have been felt in a big way starting Friday, September 25th, with even more movement on Saturday, September 26th and then ending on Sunday, September 27th. There is more to come, since we are only five days into the two-week rollout.

50,000 is a big number, so I figured I'd document it here by letting you all know that this "story" is my 50,000th published story for the search industry. Yes, I've written 50,000 stories on search and on the search industry over the past almost 23 years.

Google is testing allowing AI Overviews to add items to your calendar with an add to calendar link on event dates. I can't replicate this and the truth is, every time i refresh the queries I am testing on, I get a slightly different AI Overview, so who knows.

Microsoft Bing is getting fancy and stylish with its line separators in Bing Search. Bing is testing fading the line separators at the end of the lines.

Google announced Gemini 4 Argon a couple of weeks ago and today announced that it is now an option in Google Search via AI Mode for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers globally.

Google added a section for prediction markets to the main Google Ads policies documentation last week. Google has posted updates and policies on advertising for prediction markets on Google Ads numerous times before, but now it has been added to the main policy document.

This week, we covered how Google for the second time dodged being broken up, this time over its ad tech monopoly. Google AI Overviews are expanding by default...

Google may have a bug with its job search feature because it is barely showing any new jobs within its search results. This has been happening for the past week and it is unclear why.

Google announced a delay in processing applications for access to the Google Business Profile API. This was posted by Victoria Kroll in multiple languages in the Google Business Profiles support forum.

Google seems to be going after team rosters with the latest Google AI Overview to overtake website content for its own AI-generated version of that content. If you search for certain team rosters, Google will generate an AI answer, an AI Overview, with the answer.

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

Google is testing using AI to come up with suggested goals and assets for your Google Ads campaigns. Google has confirmed this is a current test.

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

Google has updated the indexing API documentation; this includes three different pages within the documentation. I think the big takeaway is that Google removed the old approval process and initial testing explanation, the sitemap recommendation, and, most importantly, the default quota details.

Microsoft is testing renaming the Copilot Search AI answer box at the top of the Bing Search results to AI Overviews. That is the name Google uses for its AI answer results in Google Search. Microsoft is still placing the Copilot logo with the box but trying to use the name "AI Overview" instead of "Copilot Search."

Google has updated its Google European Search Dataset Licensing Program page with details on the program. Google has been designated as a "gatekeeper" under the DMA and is thus legally required to share its search data with competing search engines to foster fair competition.

Google Trends now lets you filter your results by category, either with or without a query. This can give you a more refined view of the trends for a specific query or zoom you out more on category level trends within Google Search.

Google is testing the Sponsored Places ads that expand when you hover over the ads within Google Search. Google has been testing expandable ads on hover for a while, but here is one with the Sponsored Places ads.

In Google Business Profiles, businesses can go in and mark their business as "Permanently closed." But it seems that option went missing a few days ago. I no longer see it as an option, along with the option to select "temporarily closed" and some others.

About a year ago, Penske, which operates and owns Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Variety, and others, sued Google over its AI Overviews. Well, that case was dismissed because Penske failed to prove that Google entered into any formal agreement with Penske to sell its content in exchange for any amount of traffic.

Microsoft announced Microsoft-Decision-1 last week and it is already being experimented with in both Bing Search and Copilot. Microsoft-Decision-1 is a "decision-scoring model delivers top performance in latency and quality on structured decision tasks to outperform both LLMs and other decision models," Microsoft said.

Google Ads has updated the sexual content policies to "provide additional examples and clearer information to advertisers," the company wrote. The main section that was updated was the "Sexually suggestive elements and themes" section.

Google has a new Google Ads beta format named automotive model feeds on search ads, also known as Vehicle Top Ads (Beta). This is a new search ad format designed specifically for vehicle manufacturers to showcase vehicles with rich visuals and key details in the search results.

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

Google Ads is testing another variation of expandable sitelinks, where sitelinks are collapsed by default and a number indicator shows how many more are available. You can then click to expand the sitelinks to show more.

Google is testing a thinner design for the citations/link panel on the right side of the AI Overview. The citations panel is noticeably thinner and may be less noticeable to searchers, maybe leading to fewer clicks?

Google seems to be testing dropping the historic I'm feeling lucky button for the main Google Search bar. It is totally gone for some searchers when you start to type your query, and in other cases, it is supplemented with AI buttons.

Google Ads now lets you preview the assets generated by Google AI for your Google Ads AI Max campaigns. Google added these details to the About text customization in Search campaigns help page under a new section named "Text customization asset previews."

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 launched a new UGC fresh data program document that Reddit...

Rajan Patel, VP of Engineering for Google Search, has confirmed that the Google Search team is still well-resourced in its fight against search spam. The spam team continues to update its spam algorithms, such as the latest Google August 2026 spam update, to help reduce spam in Google Search results.

Google is working on fixing a bug with Local Service Ads where it seems Local Service Ads are being unlinked from the associated Google Business Profiles. There are also complaints of instability and slowness on the Local Service Ads platform.

Google accidentally showed the prompts it uses for some of the insights reports within Google Merchant Center. Instead of providing an easy-to-digest summary of the top product that drove your performance within Merchant Center, it spit out the prompts and actions, like "thinking," "role," "Formatting," and so on.

Google AdSense announced two new privacy-focused features it is rolling out or has rolled out in European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom (UK), or Switzerland regions. Google Ads has "Maximize message coverage" and "Optimize my consent message" in Privacy & messaging.

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 said Search Console position reporting may change as Search, AI Mode, AI Overviews...

Google Ads will allow some gun accessory ads to run in the United States starting in October 2026 for six months. The "limited pilot" of gun accessories includes bipods, sights, slings, mounts, and braces.

Google updated two of its Google Posts help documents to allow phone numbers in Google Posts only if they are verified contact information, but if it is unverified, it is not allowed.

Google is testing showing two rows of action buttons of the local panels within mobile search. Google has been testing showing a more + sign to load more or a scrollable carousel of buttons and now here it is with two rows.

Google announced the Google September 2026 spam update a week ago today on September 24th. We most likely saw the first wave of sites getting hit on September 25th, 26th and into the 27th. Then things cooled a bit but it all heated back up yesterday, September 30th. September 30th may have been the second wave, the second phase of this Google spam update.

Google Ads show up a lot within AI Mode these days and with that, Google is testing various ad formats to see which formats get the highest click-through rate (unlike links in AI Mode). Here is a screenshot of what may be the Google Ads Sitelinks within AI Mode.

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

Google seems to no longer be showing review rich reviews in Google Search when review schema or structured data is added to healthcare web pages.

Google Discover has been having issues for the past hour or so. Some are reporting that Discover won't load articles, some are reporting that Discover is loading but only after a long waiting period. It seems Google Discover is having stability issues this morning.

Google's new DMA booking search widgets now carry a disclaimer to explain that the prices listed in that block are customized "based on factors such as your device type." It is unclear what other factors are being used outside of "device type," but you'd have to assume the users location, language and other factors.

Google Search seems to be heating up this morning, I am seeing a huge spike in chatter in the past few hours and the tools may be starting to heat up as well. We will know more tomorrow but I am suspecting we are seeing the start of a Google update, hopefully one Google will confirm soon but I doubt it.

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

Google has updated the localized versions of your page help document to change all the hreflang examples from lowercase codes to uppercase codes. It doesn't matter because the hreflang value is case-insensitive; Google accepts lowercase and uppercase codes.

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

Google seems to have removed the Follow button from the desktop search results page, but it is still on the mobile search results page. The follow button lets you quickly follow a Search profile for the individual or brand you searched for.

A couple of weeks ago, Google seemed to accidentally publish its Web Search Service API documentation, then pulled it down last week. Google doesn't offer a public Web Search Service API, so we really can't access it, but I assume it does have some partners with access, like Apple.

Microsoft Bing is testing adding product feature labels to product listings in the search results. This can add labels like "great for...," "effective," "performs well," "lightweight", and so on.

Gary Illyes from Google reportedly presented new data from Google Search on how long Google for crawling, indexing and serving on average. This is broken down by process, withing crawling, indexing and serving and shows the typical timeframe versus the slowest timeframe.

Google's John Mueller was asked why Google continues to crawl tons of pages on a large website but indexes only four of them, and why the home page isn't indexed. John categorized the site as a "large product aggregator."

Google has revamped its Data Strength Best Practices help document with much greater emphasis on sending more first-party data and identifiers, using Data Manager correctly, adopting AI-powered campaigns, and supporting its recommendations with performance statistics. It is a big update to the document.

Microsoft is testing removing the site names from the Bing search results and instead showing only the site's URL. Google tested this about a year ago, so I guess it makes sense for Bing to test as well.

Over the past several days, I have been hearing from some publishers that while their content is being crawled, indexed, and served in Google Search results, some of it is missing from the news tab. It may then later show up in the news tab, much later. I was able to replicate this but it seems completely random.

Google will now give you an interactive widget within AI Overviews for when you are looking for a simple character counter website. Websites that offer character counting service features are in trouble.

Did you know that Google AI Overviews can also quiz you on various knowledge topics? Google announced this with AI Mode a few weeks ago, but it is also available in Google Search.

Google is now testing adding the AI Mode button to the search bar when you are inside the search results page. Google has the AI Mode button almost everywhere else, but now we are seeing it added to the search bar, within the search results page, not just the home page.

Google has launched its Universal Cart today in Google Search and Gemini within the United States. This is powered by the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and it was launched right before the big holiday shopping season.

Google is doing a small test where it is paying publishers for using their content within the Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini and other AI search features. This is called the AI contribution pilot, something we actually spotted back in April 2026, but are now learning more about today.

Google is sending email notifications to Google Merchant Center users if their e-commerce platform supports Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and if so, telling them that "your products are now eligible for native checkout." This means that your eligible products are automatically included, so if you don't want people buying directly on Google, and you want them to buy on your site, then you need to turn it off.

Google is testing showing three products in the more products grid within Google Search. In some tests, the grid can expand to show four or five or so products across or downsize to only show three.

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

Microsoft is now forcing all users to log in before using Copilot, but this currently does not apply to Copilot Search answers within Bing Search. When you try to go directly to Copilot, even by clicking on the Copilot button on Bing's home page, you are asked to sign into your account.

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

Yesterday, for a short period of time, Google Search Console was reporting pages as not being indexed and in the status of "Crawled - currently not indexed." The issue seemed to have been resolved within an hour or so and now John Mueller from Google confirmed what we all saw and called it a "short blip."

Google has updated its location asset requirements for Google Ads. Google said it made these updates to "improve terminology, enhance readability, and include troubleshooting steps applicable to advertisers using location assets."

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 said with SEO...

There is a new Google ranking factor survey out for 2026. It has been a while since we had one, and it is here. This one was done by Cyrus Shepard and Dawn Shepard and posted at Zyppy. It says content relevance, backlinks, and content quality are the most important factors, according to the experts who were surveyed.

I've been pretty quiet on posting reports Google updates recently, in fact, I have not posted about one since late August. But while most sites seem calm in the Google rankings, there was definitely some sort of ranking blip around September 4th, and in some cases, the September 4th impact reverted on September 13th. It is super weird.

Google left one thing out of the announcement around the new Search profiles features announced today, you can now add a Search profile badge to your website. This allows users/searchers to follow you directly from your website.

Google has completely revamped the Google Merchant Center API help document page. It was previously named "API access to Merchant Center" and was renamed to "Google Merchant Center API." Plus, the content on the page has been completely rewritten and expanded.

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. The Google September spam update had a big impact this weekend...

OpenAI announced that it is rolling out virtual try-on for clothing and accessories for ChatGPT on the mobile and web interfaces. This also includes saving these to your ChatGPT Library.

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

Google Ads seems to be testing a new report named the Search terms and ad combinations report. This report shows how search queries, ad creatives, and landing pages work together.

For real this time, Google has released the Google Search Console generative AI performance reports and Search generative AI controls to everyone globally. This follows a slow rollout that began in the first week of June and expanded access to the features over the past few months.

Google Ads has been testing AI-generated snippets and summaries in the sponsored results within Google Search for some time. But now Google is labeling a new section named "What customers love" as "AI-generated from the store rating reviews."

Google is testing a new form of responses in AI Mode that offers paginated follow-up questions and responses, with a skip button to skip them.

This is a programming note: I will be 100% offline from Sunday night (September 20th) through Monday night (September 21st) for Yom Kippur. I am not scheduling any stories tomorrow, Monday, Yom Kippur; nothing will be posted.

Google AdSense has lowered the identity verification threshold from $10 to $0, according to an update to the help documentation.

Google is testing moving the AI Overviews from the top of the page to the bottom-right location for hotel searches. So when you bring up a hotel knowledge panel, you may see an AI Overview at the bottom of the page.

Google is rolling out a new Search Console performance report filter for the web results named Multimodal. Some may see it now, when you select the Search type filter in the performance report, under the "Web" option it now shows "Text-based" and "Multimodal."

Did you know that you cannot edit your Target ROAS while promotion mode is active in Google Ads? Google will display a notification that reads, "You can't edit your Target ROAS while promotion mode is active" and then gives you the option to edit the ROAS tolerance instead.

Google has updated several Google Merchant Center policy documents late last week. The documents include Products that enable dishonest behavior, Dangerous products, Counterfeit products, Sexual content, Editorial & professional requirements, the overarching Shopping ads policies overview and probably more.

Google is now rolling out monitoring capabilities in AI Mode in Google Search globally for everyone. When Google first announced this feature, it was only available for Ultra and Pro paid subscribers, but now it is available to all Google users.

Google will soon support dark mode in Google Search Console. Ariel Kroszynski, a Senior Software Engineer at Google, announced this at the Google Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe 2026 in Barcelona last week.

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

Google updated its help document in Merchant Center to say that if a product changes more than once per day, it may be "disapproved instead of updated if we detect a mismatch."

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 has rolled out its latest Gemini model, Argon 4...

Google added some new nuggets to its Google Ads help documentation on about conversion measurement, specifically on phone call conversions and offline conversions.

Google has confirmed it has recently begun running a "small experiment" where it is serving regular pure Search campaigns with restrictive match types in AI Mode. Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, told me, "This is a small experiment that recently kicked off."

Scammers are using the Google Maps contributor program to upload AI-generated photos with phone numbers, tricking users into calling the number in the photo instead of the number on the Google Business Profile listing. These scammers are doing this across dozens, if not, hundreds of Google Business Profile listings and reporting them to Google seems to be doing nothing.

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 page indexing report is missing a chunk of data from June...

Google has updated its guidelines for sites with explicit content to now specify that ecommerce sites must "label adult products in ecommerce feeds or markup." There is also a new section at the bottom of the help document titled, "For Google Shopping features."

Google added a new section to the Google Store ratings: An overview for Merchants within Google Merchant Center detailing the requirements for Google Store ratings. This was added a week or so ago, and it says you need at least 100 reviews, an average star rating of 3.5 to 5, a 24-hour timeframe and the ratings are geo-segmented.

Google updated its help document to clarify that you have four days to reject a user suggested edit to your Google Business Profile. If you do not reject the edit within four days, Google may apply that edit to your Google local listing.

Google seems to have made a change in which phone number they use for tracking calls, even when you tell Google to use the Google Ads number, it is still using the Google Business Profiles phone number. I am told this is a confirmed change and Google still has not changed it back, and it is unclear if Google will change it back.

Here is the big Google webmaster report for October 2026, where I recap the most important organic and webmaster-focused Google Search news for the past month. Clearly, the Google September 2026 spam update, which started off strong and is still rolling out, is the big ticker. But we also have other unconfirmed Google updates to cover.

OpenAI is testing new labels appended to the ChatGPT product results. These labels can add information about the product it is displaying, such as "best all-rounder," "best for beginners," "best cushioning," and so on.

As you know, Google's August 2026 spam update began on August 18th and concluded on August 21st. But the volatility has not calmed down since and I think it is time I document it. We've been seeing chatter within the SEO community, in addition to the third-party Google tracking tools pick up on volatility within the Google Search results after the conclusion of the August spam update.

Google has expanded the booking partners for Local Service Ads from about 20 partners to over 500 partners. That is about a 2,400 percent increase. "We're vastly expanding booking capabilities for Local Services Ads to include more than 500 Reserve with Google booking partners '" up from just 20," Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison said.

Back in June, Google released link carousels for top stories or developing topics to AI Overviews. I was happy. Now, Google is also releasing this for AI Mode queries, which adds carousels of web pages directly in the AI Mode response.

Google Ads has placed Customer Lifecycle Optimization directly within the conversion goals section of the Google Ads platform.

Microsoft Bing is testing a new "Shorts" tab in the search menu on Bing Search. This should filter the results by short videos across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and so on. The tab is called "Shorts" and looks like a video play icon in vertical format.

Google is beta testing a new Product title report within Google Ads. This is a special product title report for Al-created product titles. The report should show in your ads when they're more relevant than your original titles, Google wrote.

Google is testing a new "Channels" slider that lets you adjust how much you prioritize conversions from your Google Ads channels, such as Google Search, Google Partners, Discover, Maps, YouTube, the Display Network and Gmail.

Google seems to be showing fewer and fewer PDF files, and when it does show PDF files, it seems not to show them from some pretty important sites, like IRS.gov, New York State, and some others. But in some cases we are seeing Google show PDF documents, without you having to explicitly filter for PDF file types.

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