Industry News

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

Over the past few days, some Google users are complaining that the Google Discover news feed is not loading. It seems many of these users are on Pixel devices but I am not sure if this is only impacting Pixel users.

Google will be removing the call history reports and the Chat feature within Google Business Profiles on July 31, 2024. Google said, "We acknowledge this may be difficult news," but added, "We occasionally have to make difficult decisions."

There have been a number of complaints that when you search for a query and the site name, Google doesn't always show results from the site you mentioned in the query. But Google's Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said the Google Search team is working on adjusting that so the site mentioned in the query is surfaced higher in the search results.

In the past couple of weeks, we had two blog posts published on the topic of the click through rates from the new Google AI Overviews to publishers compared to those clicks to publishers prior to the AI Overviews going live. And guess what - the studies conflict with each other.

Google Business Profiles can now show you why your uploaded products were rejected by the system. I guess previously Google did not do this but now Google can show you the reason why your products were not processed properly by Google Business Profiles.

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.

A Google data leak revealed 14,000+ ranking features...

While I highly doubt Google pushed an algorithmic change over Memorial Day, there was a significant spike in chatter in the SEO community and the third-party Google Search tracking tools are showing volatility. Yes, traffic can be weird and lower on Memorial Day - I get that - but there seems to be more movement than normal.

John Mueller, a Google Search Analyst at Google, wrote a response to a site owner who saw their site tank in September 2023 and hired SEO, and there has been no improvement. John's response was that it was likely not one thing but many things and that even possibly the site had a good run and it is time to move on to something new.

Google has sent some Google Ads advertisers email notices that any of their Google Ads experiments without an end date will now be assigned a default end date of August 23, 2024.