Google Ads May Get Channel Reporting For PMax Campaigns

Google may be bringing channel reporting to the Google Ads Performance Max campaigns. I spotted this via Kirk Williams who posted a photo of a slide from Google Think event in Amsterdam where Arjan Schoorl attended. The slide says "Channel Reporting" will be coming to PMax and Demand Gen for increased transparency and controls.

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Google Drops The Horrid Page Annotations Feature

Google has shut down, turned off, and disabled, its new page annotations feature. The feature where Google hijacked your content, placed links in your content, links you didn't add yourself, and directed your content to Google Search. It is no longer, Google shut it down.

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Google Search Know Before You Go Section

Google has this new "Know before you go" section in the search results. I mean, it is new for search, not new for Google Maps and not new for local. But I've never seen a Know before you go box in the search results before.

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Microsoft Shows How Ads Are Chosen In Bing Search

Microsoft is now showing why it selects or chooses to show a specific ad directly in the Bing search results. When you click on the arrow down by the URL of the search ad snippet, you will get window dialog that may explain why the ad was shown.

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Official: Google AI Overviews Powered By Gemini 2.0

In December, Google told us they are testing powering AI Overviews using Gemini 2.0. We think we even saw Google testing this in the wild with deeper AI Overviews with tons of links. Well, now, in the U.S. AI Overviews are officially powered by Gemini 2.0, it is no longer a test.

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Google Search Liaison Gets An Assist

Rajan Patel, a VP, Engineering for Search at Google and the Co-founder of Google Lens, is now also offering an assist to Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liason. For the past several weeks, Rajan Patel's X profile also was tagged as being associated with the Google Search Liaison account.

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Google Search AI Overviews For Movie Reviews

Google is now showing AI Overviews within the movie review summaries in Google Search. Under the review summaries is a disclaimer that reads, "Al overviews are experimental."

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Google Shopping AI Vision Match, Try Out New Looks & Try On Expands

Google announced a number of updates to Google Shopping and Search with AI enhancements and expansions. Specifically rolling out vision match, a new try out new looks feature and expanding the try on feature to more clothing.

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Google: 10% Of Younger Google Searches Start With Circle To Search

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.

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Google Merchant Center Shipping Rates Bug Ongoing

Retailers have been complaining for the past several days that there is a bug in Google Merchant Center when trying to add the shipping rates and costs. Step four of that process just bugs out and it is preventing some merchants from completing their details and advertising with Google Ads or listing free listings in Google Shopping.

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Many Google Ads Accounts Not Serving Or Delivering Ads Since March 1

Since March 1st, there are many Google Ads accounts that are not serving ads. The Google Ads forum is filled with complaints about this and as far as I can tell, I cannot find a single response from an official Google Ads representative (as of yet).

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Google Emails Reminder About Business Profile Policies

A couple of days ago, Google sent out an email to owners of Google Business Profile listings. The email was a reminder about the Google Business Profile policies, and it highlighted policies around reviews.

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Google iOS App Drops Gemini Toggle

A year or more ago, Google added a toggle switch to use Gemini directly in the iOS Google Search app. Well, that was removed this week and you now need to go to the native Gemini app to use Gemini, you cannot use the Google app.

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Bing Tests Outlining Search Result Snippets

Microsoft is testing outlining the individual search result snippets within Bing Search. So when you look at a snippet, it has this outline around it, and then when you hover your cursor over it, it highlights more.

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Google Shopping Adds Search Google Button For Some Queries

If you go to Google Shopping and enter a query that is not shopping related, Google will add a button above the shopping results asking you to search Google for that query.

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Google Ads High Value New Customer Mode Live For Some

Google may be rolling out the high value new customer mode for Google Ads advertisers, after it has been in beta for some time. This setting lets you set different bidding priorities for high value new prospects, regular new customers and existing ones.

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Google Local Service Ads Booking Links Now Charges Like Calls Automatically

Google has sent out an email to its Google Local Service Ads advertisers, notifying them that they are now letting searchers use a booking link to schedule an appointment or service, when the booking link is detected on the Google Business Profile of that business.

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Bing Tests Underlined & Bold Sponsored Results

A few weeks ago, we saw Microsoft testing green colored sponsored URLs for the Bing search results. Now I am seeing reports of both underlined and bolded URLs and titles of the sponsored results, where the organic/free listings are not underlined or bolded.

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Google: There Is A Lot More Work To Do To Make Crawling More Efficient

Last April 2024, Gary Illyes from Google said he was on a mission to make web crawling more efficient, he wanted to "figure out how to crawl even less, and have fewer bytes on wire." Gary updated us saying "there's lots more in works" for this but implies some improvements have already been made.

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Bing Tests New Links UI For Copilot AI Answers

Microsoft is testing another user interface and experience for the links they show within its AI Answers, the Copilot responses. These links show with a hyperlink icon and the domain name spelled out, and then when you mouse over it, it has a carousel you can flip through for more links.

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Google Sued Over AI Overviews For Hurting Traffic & Revenue

18 year old, publicly traded education technology company, Chegg, has sued Google over its AI Overviews and how it has hurt their traffic and revenue. Chegg has "filed a complaint against Google, which has unjustly retained traffic that has historically come to Chegg, impacting our acquisitions, revenue and employees," said Nathan Schultz, CEO of Chegg.

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Google Merchant Center Next Physical Stores Section

Google seems to have added, for some merchants, a new section named Physical Stores to the Google Merchant Center Next console. In this section is random data from within the store's Google Business Profiles listing.

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Apple Intelligence With Google Gemini Integration Coming?

Apple seems like it may be preparing integration Google Gemini in Apple Intelligence as an option for its users to select. Aaron Perris from MacRumors spotted hints in the iOS 18.4 beta code that Google is listed alongside OpenAI as a "third party model."

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Google Ads To Stop Placing Your Ads On Parked Domains By Default

Google will soon stop placing your Google Ads on parked domain names by default. Instead, you will need to opt in to showing your ads on these parked domains.

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Google Sponsored Ads For People Also Consider?

Last week, Shameem Adhikarath spotted a sponsored label on top of the "People also consider" box within the Google Search results. I figured it was a bug with ads not loading but then Shay Harel spotted the same thing a week later. Is this another bug or is this a new ad unit?

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Google: Audio Version Of Page Does Not Benefit Your Google Rankings

Martin Split from Google said that having an audio version of a page or a blog post, does not impact your Google rankings. He said it is good for your users, but has no SEO impact.

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Google Business Profile Listings With Yandex Reviews

We know Google can show reviews from third-party sources in Google Business Profile listings. We've seen Google take reviews from Yelp, travel sites and other third-party websites. But these days, more often than not, you see reviews only from Google. But have you ever seen a review from Yandex on Google?

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Google Search Tests New Grid Boxed Design

Google is testing a new design for its search results that are more of a grid format, more of a boxed in design. They are not on all the search results elements but more of the search features.

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Google Search: Find Results Based On Images You've Viewed

Google has this feature in its search results that lets you find results based on the images you've view within Google Image Search. It places this button in the search results that reads, "Find results based on images you've viewed" with a link to "more like these."

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Google Tests All Results Vs All In Search Menu

Google is testing spelling out the search menu and instead of saying "All," Google is testing writing out "All results." I am not sure why Google is testing this, but Google is always testing these small changes.

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Google Search Testing Background Section

Google Search is testing a new section in the search results titled or named "Background." This includes articles from news publishers, with I guess, more background information than you would find from others.

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Google Ads Advanced Plans

Google Ads has this section (not sure if it is new) named Advanced Plans. This feature allows you to select a "mix of ad types based on goals" and Google will create conversion creation and capture plans for you.

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Bing Tests Knowledge Panels With Related Searches Box

Microsoft is testing adding a new box to the knowledge panels within Bing that show related searches. This is obviously to encourage searches to do more queries, to generate more ads and more revenue. Or maybe to help searchers find a more diverse set of topics to search for.

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Google Search Testing New Pagination Bar Without Numbers

Google is testing removing the numbers from the pagination menu at the footer of the Google Search results page. The normal pagination bar shows the page number you are on, the test just shows a next button.

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Google Business Profiles Verification Failure Email With Reasons

Google has upgraded the emails Google Business Profiles sends when your verification has failed. It now shows the reason(s) a verification has failed and what you need to do to become verified in Google Business Profiles.

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Google Merchant Center AI-Generated Summaries

Google Merchant Center recently began showing AI-generated summaries for how well your performance is doing with Merchant Center in Google Search. These are labeled as "experimental" and "AI-generated."

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Google Search Results Snippets Tests Page Includes

Google is testing adding to the search results snippet a section that is named "page includes." To be honest, this reminds me of the tags we saw on the search result snippets in 2021, 2019 and 2017 - but I am not sure if they are the same.

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Google: Why Search Engines Don't Need To Do Anything Special For Pagination

In 2019, Google stopped using rel prev and next as a signal for its search engines to combine or understand paginated results on your site. Then Google offered up some other advice over the years on the topic. Now, John Mueller of Google explains why Google or other search engines don't need to do anything special for pagination or paginated results on your site.

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Google Ads New Performance Max Search Themes Indicator

Google Ads has added to Performance Max campaigns, the search themes, an indicator to tell you what is driving a specific change in your ad performance. This shows a trend icon near the campaign and then shows you why it is performing, as it is.

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Bing Shopping / E-Commerce Card With Ads

Remember the Bing shopping / e-commerce cards? Well, now it looks like Bing is putting an ad slot in them and labeled them as ads.

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Google: Google Reviews Count Bug Not Fully Fixed Yet

Google has posted an update on the reviews bug we first reported on a week ago, that it later confirmed this past Monday and we saw a fix rolling out starting on Tuesday. The short, it is not yet fully fixed but it should be in the coming few days.

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Yahoo Search AI Answers Now Showing Link Sources

Initially, when Yahoo Search launched AI-generated answers, they did not contain sources or links. Now it seems Yahoo is adding "Learn more" links to these AI answer boxes in Yahoo Search.

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Google Search Snippet Showing Future Date: Bug Or Feature?

Google Search is showing a snippet that has a date in the future. Normally the snippets have dates from the past; such as this content was found by Google X days or Y hours ago. But this one is now showing "in 7 days" from now.

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Bing Webmaster Tools Updates Date Selectors

Microsoft has updated Bing Webmaster Tools to make selecting the date ranges a lot easier in the performance reports. Now the date selectors are very quick to select, and not deeper inside a menu option.

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Google Ads Posts Notice For Brand Guidelines March 2025 Update

Google has posted a notice in the Google Ads console reminding advertisers about the upcoming brand guidelines changes that are now slotted for March 2025. This change was communicated numerous times and the deadline has been pushed off here and there.

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Google Tests Filters On Latest Posts Carousel

Google is testing adding filters to the latest post carousel. These filters can show recent posts, video posts, posts from Instagram, or Facebook.

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Google Review Count Bug Fix Rolling Out

The big Google review count bug, that we first reported on Friday and that later Google confirmed on Monday afternoon, is now being fixed. We can now see review counts climbing again and many small business owners and local SEOs are reporting improvements.

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Google Ads Gambling and Games Policy Update On April 14th

Google will update its advertising policy around gambling and gaming on April 14, 2025. Google posted a preview of the upcoming changes but said the final version may change, so this is just a draft.

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Google Confirms Review Count Issue - Working On Fix

On Friday, we reported that the Google local reviews seem to be disappearing or being counted wrong. Well, Google finally confirmed the issue, just minutes ago, in the Google Business Profiles Forums.

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Google AdSense Combines Marketing Email Preferences - Expect More Emails...

Google has combined the marketing email preferences within Google AdSense, which may lead to you getting more emails from the Google AdSense team. Google merged the "Customized help and performance suggestions" and "Periodic newsletters with tips and best practices" email lists into one.

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Search Bugs: Google Weird Snippet Spacing & Bing URLs Cut Off

One can always find weird bugs in the Google and Bing Search results but these two really caught my eye. Bing Search seems to have a bug for some searchers where the URL in the search result snippet is being cut off. And Google might have a bug that leads to way too much white space between search result snippets.

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Google Search Bitcoin Charts Gone - It's A Bug

Google is no longer showing the price of Bitcoin when you search for it in Google Search. Google's VP, Engineering for Search, Rajan Patel, said this is "Not intended" and he will investigate the issue.

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New Google Doc On Using Google Analytics & Search Console Data Together

Google added a new developer document and video explanation on how to use Google Analytics data and Google Search Console data together. One of the biggest confusions I see is when people try to compare the data between those two analytics tools - they measure different things in different ways.

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Google: Don't Update Lastmod Date With Copyright Date Changes

Gary Illyes from Google ranted on Bluesky about folks updating the lastmod date in their sitemap files when all they have changed was the date in their footers copyright line from 2024 to 2025. Gary said, don't do it, it is not enough of a change to the page's content to warrant a lastmod date update.

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ChatGPT Search More Open; Google Expands Gemini 2.0 & Microsoft Think Deeper in Copilot

OpenAI announced big news that its ChatGPT Search service is now open and no longer requires a login or an account. It comes the same day that Google expanded access to Gemini 2.0 to all users and where Microsoft said Think Deeper in Copilot is free for all users.

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Microsoft Advertising Lists Performance Max & Feature Updates

Microsoft published its new Microsoft Advertising features that it released over the past month. This goes across Performance Max tools, reporting, new values, targeting, and more.

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Google AI Overviews With Detailed Comparison Mode

Google AI Overviews are now able to show super detailed comparison within Google Search. If you search for two very specific models, Google may give you a ton of details directly in the AI Overview.

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Alphabet Google Ad Revenue Up 10% Again, Hitting $72.5 Billion

Google / Alphabet reported its Q4 2024 earnings last night, where its ad revenue hit $72.46 billion, up 10.6% from last year's quarter of $65.52 billion. Google's revenue was up 12% with $96.47 billion and its profit was up 30.7% to $30.9B. Search revenue specifically was up 12.5% to $54 billion.

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Report: Google AI Overviews Are Killing Click Through Rates

The folks at Seer put together a study looking at how the click-through rates of the Google organic and paid search results are impacted by having AI Overviews on the page. And the short answer is, AI Overviews seem to be hurting the click-through rates in a big way.

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Yahoo Search AI Features Powered By Microsoft Copilot?

Ever since we began seeing the new Yahoo Search AI features and AI Chat, we've been asking if they were powered by their own AI, by maybe OpenAI or maybe Microsoft Copilot. Well, it seems there is evidence that these features are powered by Microsoft Copilot.

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Google: Embedded Resources Are Cached For A While

If you embed resources on your pages, those embedded resources can be cached longer than other parts of the page in Google Search.

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Google Ads Prompt To Book A Tagging Appointment

Google Ads is offering some advertisers the option to book a tagging appointment with a Google Ads representation through the Google Ads console. This will help you set up an appointment to have a Google rep help you set up proper tracking of your campaigns.

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Google Search Related Places Carousel Map

Google has this new map unit that is titled "Related places" and shows a map with a carousel beneath it of related places. This actually comes up for brand name searches, which isn't great - why would you want Google to show competitor names when you search for a specific brand name.

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Google Tests Review Carousels & Blocks For Product Queries

Google is testing (I think again) review carousels and block units in its search results for product queries. A number of SEOs spotted these coming up over the past week or two, and they basically show product review content in a separate section within Google Search.

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Google Shopping Refinements With & Without Product Ratings

Google Search is now sometimes showing the ability to filter products in its search results by product rating. I am not sure if this is new or not, but I cannot replicate this but some are seeing the product rating filter/refinement option when searching.

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Google Tests New Shopping Search Filter On Mobile

Google is testing a new filter for its shopping results in the mobile search results. Instead of showing a single filter menu, Google is showing a product image carousel line first and then a filter menu for additional search filters.

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Google Ask For Me - Calls Businesses For Costs For You

Google has a new Search Labs feature named Ask for me. Ask for me will have Google call businesses for you, to figure out the cost of the service and when it can be scheduled for you. It is like that Duplex feature we saw years ago, where Google would try to schedule a restaurant reservation for you.

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Microsoft Bing Advertising Revenue Up 21%

Microsoft reported its second quarter 2025 earnings and it showed that its search and advertising revenue was up 21%. The previous quarter it was up 18%, then 19% but before than it was 12% and 8% - so things are looking more positive.

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Google Ads Clarifies Docs Around Placement Exclusions After Confusion

Earlier this month, the Google Ads industry had a lot of confusion around if and in what cases the Google Ads API accept or support placement exclusions for Performance Max campaigns. Well, Google's Ginny Marvin clarified this the other day in an email to Navah Hopkins.

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Google AI Overviews Now Providing Programming Help

Google AI Overviews, even when not signed into a Google Labs project, is providing coding and programming examples and help. This started sometime yesterday, I believe, and before, I believe you had to opt into a Search Labs experiment to trigger this.

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Google: SEOs Can Spot Made For Search Engine Content Quickly

John Mueller from Google noted that he finds it "interesting" how those who spend time in our industry "can often recognize made-for-search-engine content fairly quickly." Meaning, we are good at seeing a piece of content on the web and knowing if it was created to perform well in search or written by a normal user trying to help others.

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Google Search Tests Frequently Saved Label On Local Results

Google Search is testing the frequently saved label not just in the main search results but also on the local results, the places section, of the Google Search results.

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Google Search Tests Jobs At Similar Employers

Google is testing a new job carousel in the search results titled "jobs at similar employers." This likely pulls from the Google Jobs postings schema and more but it can come up if you are just searching for products from that company.

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Google Ads To Drop Certification For Some Advertisers & Reorganizes Verification Docs

Google Ads has made two updates around advertiser verification recently. One, in some countries, Google will no longer require certification for some advertisers. Second, Google has updated and reorganized the Google Ads Advertiser Verification documentation.21

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Bing Tests New Local Pack Design With Blue Backgrounds

Microsoft is testing a new local pack design and layout for Bing Search local pack results. Bing is placing these blue boxes, either below the map, to the right side, including different numbered variations.

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Google AI Overviews Come To Circle To Search

Now when you use Circle To Search in Google, Google can now return AI Overviews to those results. Google said they are "expanding AI Overviews to more kinds of visual search results for places, trending images, unique objects and more."

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Google Tests Expandable Brand Store Panel

Google is testing an expandable brand store knowledge panel. So if you search for a brand like New Balance, Google will show a knowledge panel on the right with products, descriptions and so on but then if you click on the arrow button, it will expand and show you even more.

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Google Business Profiles Launches Chat With Text & WhatsApp In US

Google Business Profiles started to allow chat through texting and WhatsApp for businesses in international regions. Now, this feature seems to be rolling out to businesses based in the United States.

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Bing Adaptive Zoom Setting

Microsoft is testing a new search setting named Adaptive Zoom. I am not exactly sure what it does, I tried to toggle it on and off and see how clicking on results or links or pagination changes but I don't see any changes. So I am missing something here.

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Google Search Trending Products Carousel On Right Side

Google is testing placing a new products carousel, a trending products carousel, on the right side where the brand's knowledge panel would appear. So, instead of having details of that brand, it can show trending products from that brand.

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Google: Don't Dynamically Update Robots.txt File Multiple Times Per Day

Google's John Mueller said that since the robots.txt file is cached by Google for about 24-hours, it does not make much sense to dynamically update your robots.txt file throughout the day to control controlling. Google won't necessarily see that you don't want Google to crawl a page at 7am and then at 9am you do want Google to crawl that page.

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Google Testing AI Generated What People Are Saying

Google seems to be testing an AI-generated version of What People Are Saying in Google Search. This shows a similar video or social media type of search results but it says generative AI is experimental.

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Google Hotel Policies Updated On Availability & Rates

Google is updating its hotel prohibited practices policy to specify that (1) you are required to display final room availability and rates before requesting user information and (2) you are required to avoid price changes after users enter their personal information.

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Is Google Blocking SEO Rank Checking Tools As Search Volatility Continues

For the past week, we've been discussing how most of the third-party tracking tools have been showing much calmer and cooler search ranking volatility. This is all while the chatter within the SEO community still seems super heated. The reason may be that Google has been deploying new and more advanced blocking mechanisms towards these SEO tools.

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Google Tests Search Results Zooming In To Next Page Of Search Results

Google Search is testing a zoom animation/effect when you click to the next page of the search results. Previously, we saw Google testing sliding in the next page of results from the right side of the page, but this one is a zoom-in animation.

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Google Updates Child & Teen Ads Policies Around Transparency

Google has said it has updated its child and teen ads policies to increase transparency and make it easier for advertisers to understand these policies. Google added there are no changes to enforcement with these updates.

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Google Search Generative AI For People Also Search For

Google is testing using its generative AI, Gemini, for the "people also search for" section within Google Search. I mean, Google is testing AI all over search, so I guess it makes sense for Google to use it here too.

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Bing Ads - See More Links (Sitelinks)

Microsoft is testing a new ad format where you can click "see more links" to show even more sitelinks on the search ads shown in the Bing search results. These are powered by Microsoft Advertising and seem to load even more links below the links already displayed in the search ad, in the search results.

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Google Search Tests Sitelinks Carousels On Desktop

Google is testing the sitelinks carousel on the desktop search results interface. We saw this on the mobile results in December 2023 and all the way back in 2017 but now Google is testing them on desktop search.

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Google Search Video Tab With Continuous Scroll

In June 2024, Google dropped continuous scroll (infinite scroll) on desktop search and then mobile search. But if you click on the video tab within Google Search, continuous scroll is there.

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Google Ads Adds Legal Waiver For Images

Google has added a new checkbox for you to comply with when you upload images to Google Ads. This is Google having you sign a waiver that "own all legal rights to the images on the landing pages."

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Google Search Result Snippets Related Reviews Carousel

Google Search has these search results snippets that show a related reviews carousel under the snippet. You can swipe through the related reviews and then click on them to reveal a YouTube video or other format of a review.

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Bing Testing Bold Sponsored Labels

Microsoft is testing using bold sponsored labels in the Bing Search results. So instead of the very hard to see sponsored labels in Bing Search, Microsoft is testing bolding those sponsored labels.

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Bing Tests Updated AI Copilot Answer Which Is More Publisher Friendly

Microsoft is testing an updated Bing Search AI answer box powered by Copilot is testing an updated interface, that seems to promote links to publishers more. The links are more publisher-friendly, including showing the full domain name of the publisher and includes the site's favicon, which helps with branding.

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Google Manual Actions For News & Discover Policy Violations Updated

A few months ago, Google quietly updated the manual action policy violations list for News and Discover policy violations. Google removed the adult-theme and artificial freshening sections and then added a slew of deceptive practices sections, while also updating the hateful content section.

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Google Search Ranking Volatility Tools Cool Down

For the first time in forever (see what I did there?) the third-party Google Search volatility tools have cooled down to normal volatility levels. The chatter has been somewhat more typical levels over the past week, that is not to say some have not seen decreases or increases in their search visibility, but as a whole, it seems things have calmed down a bit.

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Google Local Services Ads For Tax Specialist Drops Auto Credits & Features

Google has turned down some features for the tax specialist vertical in Google Local Service Ads. The big one is that there is no auto-crediting for this vertical. Also, Google removed message leads, booking and all recording for the Tax Specialist vertical in Google LSAs.

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Google Ads Updates Political Content Policy For CA Residents For Deepfakes

Google has announced it has updated its Google Ads political content policy this month for to include a form related to California restrictions. "California residents may use this form to report ads that may violate California Elections Code Division 20, Chapter 7," Google said.

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Google Search Product Detail View Tests Share Icons

Google is testing adding a share icon to the product detail view within the search results. This comes up at the top of the panel, after you click on a product from the popular products section of the search results. And as you scroll, the share and other icons stick to the top.

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Google Tests Super Long Cookie Notice On Home Page

Google is testing writing out a 57 words, 364 characters, notice on its home page, about its cookie usage and data usage. It is super weird to see three lines of legal text right below the Google search box on its home page.

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Google Daily Listen Labs - Audio Version Of Google Discover

Did you ever want to listen to a summary of your Google Discover feed? Well, now you can. Google has a new Search Labs experiment called "Daily Listen" that puts together a five-minute or less audio overview of the top stories you'd be interested in for the day.

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Google Grays Out Logo On National Day of Mourning for President Jimmy Carter

If you go to the Google home page today, you will see a gray Google logo. Google does this on somber days and since today is the national day of mourning for President Jimmy Carter, Google has grayed out the logo.

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Google Ad Scheduling & Smart Bidding Campaigns Doc Update Confuses

Google has updated one of its help documents to specifically say that ad scheduling isn't compatible campaigns that use Smart Bidding. The previous version of that page said, "Ad scheduling is not compatible with both Smart Shopping campaigns and App campaigns." This change to the help document is causing a lot of confusion but in all honesty, likely means nothing has changed.

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Google Ads PMax Pause/Enable/Remove Conversion Actions On Asset Group Level

Google Ads is testing allowing advertisers to pause, enable and/or remove conversion assets on the asset group level for Performance Max campaigns. Some advertisers are able to enable/pause/remove individual conversions within their Google Ads accounts.

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Google Tests People Also Ask & People Also Search For Refinements

Google is testing new search refinement options to let users expand their queries for the people also ask and people also search sections of the search results. We've seen numerous variations of this over the years but here are new ones.

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Microsoft Tricking Bing Users To Thinking They Are On Google

About a month ago, a reader sent me a screenshot of Bing showing this weird search box on its page after you search for Google. I thought it was some weird Microsoft Rewards promotion and took it at that and moved on. I was wrong, tons of publications are now saying this is Microsoft's way of tricking Bing users to thinking they are using Google Search.

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Google Discover Feed Showing More Sources For Stories Within Cards

Google is showing now sometimes showing more than one source for a story in the Google home page, Google Discover, feed. This can show up in a carousel format or a stacked format, just beneath the main story in your Discover feed.

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Google: URLs Provide Minimal Additional Signals For Search Engines

The topic of URLs for SEO and ranking is one that has been around since search engines first existed and 25+ years later, it is still a popular topic. Google has said time and time again that keywords in URLs don't offer a significant ranking boost for SEO and ranking purposes and Google said it again in 2025.

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Google: Core Updates Do Not Impact Site Name Changes

Google said that core updates should have no impact on a site name in the Google Search results being updated or changed. When asked, John Mueller of Google wrote, "That shouldn't be related to a core update."

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Blank Screenshot In Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool May Be Fine

Did you ever run the Google Search Console URL inspection tool, and click on the view crawled page link, and then see a blank screenshot under the screenshot tab? It might not be an issue, says Gary Illyes of Google. As long as you see the HTML you want Google to see in the HTML tab, you are fine.

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Google: Adding Country Codes To URLs Won't Help For SEO

Google's John Mueller said that simply adding country codes to your URLs won't result in "any change at all" for regional ranking reasons. He added, changing your URLs will result in "temporary fluctuations" because of the URL change but it won't help you in the long run with ranking well in those regions.

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Bing Tests Arrow Buttons For Sitelinks Like Google

Bing is now testing placing these arrow buttons, in a circle button format, next to the sitelinks. This is something Google has been testing on and off for some time in their search results as well.

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Google Search Console Screenshot Is What Google Search Sees

Google's John Mueller was asked if the Google Search Console screenshot feature in the URL Inspection Tool is what Google Search sees. John responded saying, "For the most part, yes" and then added some caveats.

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Google Local: Places People Are Talking About

Google seems to be testing a new local search feature that is categorized as "Places people are talking about." It shows you local restaurants with social media information, like posts from Instagram and Facebook, in a carousel format.

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Edit Images With AI In Google Ads Asset Library

Google Ads launched a new beta to let you edit existing images in your Google Ads asset library. This was previously in Product Studio but according to Menachem Ani, a Google Ads professional, this is new to the Google Ads asset library.

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Google Ads Leads From Messages Beta Conversion Goals

Google Ads has a new conversion goal that is in beta named "leads from messages." Conversion goals labeled as account default will use data from all of your campaigns to improve your bid strategy and campaign performance, even if they don't seem directly related to sales, Google says.

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Google & Bing Search Team Activity On New Years 2025

Every year I report on how some Google representatives are active within the SEO communities, offering SEO support and encouragement of sorts, to the SEO community. This year is no different and we have numerous Googlers and Microsoft Bing representatives active on New Years Eve and New Years Day (the day is not over) online and active in the SEO communities.

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