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.

Google search is heating up again...

I've been wondering how the majority of sites hit by Google's September 2023 helpful content update are doing. Glenn Gabe is tracking about 400 of them, so he provided an update saying 88 (or 22% of them) have seen a 20% increase since the August 2024 core update. Some had full recoveries but most did not, and most saw no lifts at all.

Microsoft announced its monthly Microsoft Advertising updates and while we covered some of these before, we did not cover the changes to Shopping Audience campaigns. Microsoft made a couple of changes to Shopping Audience campaigns.

Google has been rolling out a new Google Shopping interface, we've covered it numerous times, and I think it is now rolled out. But Google is now promoting the new Google Shopping by placing a "new" label on the Shopping tab link at the top of the Google Search interface.

Google can show a bag icon on some of the sponsored search shopping ads. This can show next to the "Shop now" text, where you can either go to the retailers site to buy or click the bag icon to likely check out with Google (I am guessing).

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 seems to be testing removing the results count from the search results...

Google may be pushing out a new Search Console feature where for the partial data, the most recent data it has, which was not yet finalized, shows up as dotted lines. Google always put a disclaimer on the most recent data that says, "Partial data point (fresh data) - does not cover the entire date" but the dotted line design in the chart may be new.

In April, Google moved the search results estimated count (the about X results) section to only display it after you click on the "tools" search option. Well, now, in some browsers, for some people, that results count is completely missing since last week.

Google Ads has this optimization score card that shows you how well your Google Ads account is set to perform. It seems Google is testing adding if there was a change to that score because of "competitive pressure" and might even list the competitor that is causing such pressure.

After a month or so of testing, it seems like the "sponsored" labels are rolling out across Bing's search ads. I am now seeing them across all browsers and searches in my tests. This may be a test but it seems like it is fully rolled out based on what I am seeing.