Industry News

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.

Liz Reid, Google's head of search...

Alex Heath and Ellis Hamburger interviewed Google's head of Search, Liz Reid, on Google's progression of AI into Search. It felt like a very candid interview that is worth listening to. In short, Liz is still not sure if Gemini and Google Search will ever fully converge or not.

Google is testing a new widget for the Google Discover feed where you can follow news publishers and/or topics. It is called the "home follow widget."

Google added "Trending posts & discussions" title under What People Are Saying section within Google Search results. It also has those favicons at the top, which I don't think is new but it is all part of the package.

There are a number of complaints that the Google Search Console bulk data export to BigQuery is not working. The issue seemed to have started several days ago and is still not working today.

Google has sent notices to some advertisers asking them to confirm whether their campaigns contain European Union political content. The deadline to confirm is by March 31, 2026.

Derek Thompson wrote a wonderful essay on what happens when you become a parent:

The baby you bring home from the hospital is not the baby you rock to sleep at two weeks, and the baby at three months is a complete stranger to both. In a phenomenological sense, parenting a newborn is not at all like parenting "a" singular newborn, but rather like parenting hundreds of babies, each one replacing the previous week’s child, yet retaining her basic facial structure. "Parenthood abruptly...

Carson Gross has a good essay on whether junior programmers should still learn to code given how capable AI has become. His core warning to students:

Yes, AI can generate the code for this assignment. Don’t let it. You have to write the code. I explain that, if they don’t write the code, they will not be able to effectively read the code. The ability to read code is certainly going to be valuable, maybe more valuable, in an AI-based coding future. If you can’t read the code you are going...

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

This week...