Industry News

Google seems to be testing the ability to have a conversation with the Google Search app, where it Google Search continues to adapt and refine the search query, as you add follow up statements. It is like how Google Gemini or other AI Chat features work, but in Google Search.

Google's Gary Illyes and John Mueller, along with Bing's Fabrice Canel and probably other representatives from these search engines spent time in Dublin this week to attend the IETF 121 Dublin event with the goal of submitting ideas on how to improve the Robots Exclusion Protocol.

Microsoft Bing has these AI-powered buying guide that can show up at the top right section for some e-commerce related queries. Microsoft spoke about these buying guides back in June 2023 but they now seem to be rolling out more widely.

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

Google Ads is rolling out new brand guidelines for performance max campaigns, which was originally announced back at Google Marketing Live. Google said then, "advertisers can share their font and color guidelines in Performance Max, as well as provide helpful image reference points to generate new asset variations."

Google is testing showing AI Overviews and generative AI results directly in the people also ask section. People also ask generally are featured snippet powered but now Google is testing using AI Overviews instead of featured snippets.

Google Search can show who wrote the review directly in the search results snippet. Google has this "reviewed by" rich result element next to some search results that names the author of the review.

Google's John Mueller was asked about when it makes sense to host images or other content on separate subdomains or domains. John said it makes sense if Google is having trouble crawling as much as it wants to crawl.

Google has mixed its search ads between and throughout the organic (free) search results starting sometime mid-last year. Google calls it dynamic ad placement, and it is an ongoing tests. In fact, Google had to change its definition of top ads to make way for this historically very unGoogle-like move.

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...