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 posted new data that says they answer over 5 trillion queries per year...

Google has posted some fresh data, saying they answer over 5 trillion searches per year. The last time we saw this data was in 2016, when Google was at 2 trillion searches per year and then 1.2 trillion in 2012.

A new report released by Rand Fishkin at Sparktoro with the help of Datos' panel measure web browser activity showed that about 1/3rd of active web users don't use Google all that much, by that much it means they only do 1-20X searches per month.

Google has made a number of updates to the product analytics section within Google Merchant Center Next. Organic conversions have been renamed to Purchases. Plus, Google lets you specify it's traffic to PDPsm instead of products, and labels.

Google added QR codes that you can give your customers to quickly leave you a review for your business on Google Search and Google Maps. This can be accessed in your Google Business Profiles under the reviews section.

Did you know that 10% of all searches on Google from a younger audience start with Google's new circle to search feature? That is what Roma Datta Chobey, the Managing Director at Google India, said 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 Ads stopped running for many advertisers over the weekend...

It is time for the monthly Google Webmaster Report. We are now in March as we continue to wait for the first Google core update of 2025. We did have a number of big unconfirmed Google updates, as documented below.

Have any of you heard of the Google Ads mystery shopping rating? Well, it may be used by Google for the overall store rating, which is calculated from customer reviews and a "Mystery Shopping Rating," according to a Google Ads rep.

Last December, Google confirmed they are testing double serving ads on the search results. Double serving ads is showing the same ad from the same advertiser more than once on the search results page. It was something against the Google Ads policy. Well, now Google is triple serving ads on the same page!