Industry News

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

Google uses its search engine data and signals to help train its Gemini AI models, we learned from documents from the DOJ deposition testimony. Although, we kind of knew that when Google launched SGE, they told us they used Google Search's core ranking systems to help identify high-quality sites (although, it didn't seem like they did...).

Microsoft Bing is testing placing a "more videos" section in the Bing Copilot answers. Recently we covered how Bing placed images and video links but this implementation makes more sense.

Last December, we reported how Google was showing a payments option section in the retailer/merchant knowledge panel. Google is now testing a clearer version of it, while adding shipping and return information to the payments section.

Apple has made some updates to its Applebot documentation, primarily explaining the difference between the normal Applebot crawler and the Applebot-Extended crawler. To be clear, Applebot-Extended is not new, Apple introduced it about a year ago but Apple wanted to clarify how blocking Applebot-Extended impacts Applebot, if at all.

I am hearing reports that the Google Search Console API and tools that use the API, including Big Query exports, bulk exports and third party tools, are stuck with data from April 22nd but nothing sooner. It seems like there is something stuck in the data pipes within the API.

In my Friday video, I mentioned some more volatility heating up on Friday morning and I promised to cover it if I see more signs of that update. Well, many of the other tools noticed volatility around April 25th, this past Friday, in addition to the 22nd and 23rd volatility we covered earlier last week.

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 reported earnings last night and their ad revenue continues to grow...

This week, guess what, we saw more Google search ranking volatility heat up mid-week. Several new studies have come out showing that AI Overviews hurt click-through rates from search results. Google will stop supporting the...

Google's John Mueller pretty much said that using image streaming techniques will not result in an SEO friendly outcome. He actually said, "It's a great way to prevent your images from being found through search engines."