Industry News

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

There is some new data out that shows that yes, Google's AI Overviews are causing a huge decline in clicks to websites organically but it is also showing that for e-commerce queries, there is a massive increase in clicks on search ads and product/shopping ads.

Google's John Mueller warned one site owner not to load "not available" in the JavaScript before the actual content that loads is available. It can lead Google to believe the page does not exist, preventing indexing and ranking in Google Search.

Google Ads has this new feature that lets advertisers calculate your conversion value for new customers. It says, "Select a lower target ROAS to adjust the incremental conversion value used to bid for new customers."

We covered the topic of markdown files before but now we have more commentary from official representatives from Google and Bing on the topic. In short, they call markdown files messy, it can cause issues with finding errors, cause more crawl load and either way, the search engines use what people/humans can see over what bots can see.

Google AdSense has ended its Parked Domains (AFD) as an ad surface within the Search Partner Network effective February 10, 2026. Google wrote, "Parked Domains (AFD) will cease to be an ad surface within the Search Partner Network effective February 10, 2026."

On February 10th, we reported the beginning of yet another unconfirmed Google Search ranking update. The volatility has not cooled yet and it seems it may have even heated up through the weekend.

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

This week in search we have more ongoing Google search ranking volatility. Bing Webmaster Tools rolled out new AI Performance reports with a new design. Google AI Overviews tests new overlay cards. Grokipedia is seeing a decline in visibility in Google Search and ChatGPT...

Last November and December, Google announced a slew of new features for Google Search Console. But it seems like most of us still do not have access to those features.