Google Says It Makes No Sense To Block Disclaimer and Privacy Policy Pages

Google's John Mueller said, "It makes no sense to block" privacy, disclaimers, or other legal types of pages from your site. He added on Reddit, "They don't cause a 'duplicate content issue'."

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Google Merchant Center Now Lets You Select Your Payment Methods

Google Merchant Center now lets merchants specify which payment methods and options they offer customers. Google would normally handle this in an automated way but now Google is letting you override those payment options, in case Google is getting it wrong.

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Google Ads Tests Double Serving Ads From Same Advertiser On Same Page

Google has confirmed it is testing allowing showing the same ad, from the same advertiser, on the same search results page. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison said, "We're conducting a small experiment testing different ad configurations" in regards to this test being spotted.

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Google: Disavowing Toxic Links Is A Billable Waste Of Time

Google's John Mueller reiterated in a big way that SEOs and site owners should not spend time disavowing "toxic" links. He said it is a "billable waste of time" to disavow toxic links, as provided in some of these SEO toolsets.

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New Google Merchant Center Promotion For First Order Discount

Google Merchant Center added a new field in the "Promotion conditions" section for "first order" discount. This seems to be for shopping ads set up in Merchant Center.

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OpenAI Opens ChatGPT Search To All Logged In Users

When OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search several weeks ago, it was just available to paid users. Now, anyone who logs into ChatGPT should have access to the Search the Web button on ChatGPT.com.

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Google Search Tests New Favicon Design With Backgrounds

Google is testing yet another design for favicons in the search result snippets. This one has these backgrounds, grayish backgrounds added behind the favicons in the search results.

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Google Search Research More Articles Section

Google is testing a "Research more" section in its search results that shows articles on the topic you queried. This looks like the list articles section we covered in October, but renamed to research more...

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Google Business Profile Emails Asking To Add Social Profiles

Google is sending out emails asking business owners to add their social profiles to their Google Business Profiles. The email says, "Link your social profiles so customers can see your posts from Instagram, X, Facebook, and more when they search for your business."

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Google Search Tests Attach File To Ask About A File

Google Search is testing adding a paper clip icon to the search bar, next to the voice search icon, next to the lens icon and the search button. This seems to also you to search a file you upload and says, "ask anything about a file."

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Google December 2024 Core Update Landed & It's Big

As you know, the December 2024 core update was announced on December 12, 2024 at around 10:46 am ET and Google said it would take about two weeks to complete. Well, this update seemed to have touched down, landed, over this weekend. There is a lot of volatility reported in the Google search results and with that, a lot of chatter within the SEO community.

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Google Hanukkah Decorations Are Live For 2024

Hanukkah (aka Chanukah) starts pretty late this year, compared to other years. The holiday starts Wednesday, December 25th. And Google has already added its Hanukkah decorations for his year, while Christmas starts the day before and Kwanzaa the day after - but both Christmas and Kwanzaa decorations are not live on Google yet.

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Google: Campaign-Level Negative Keywords For Performance Max In Beta

Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, confirmed that campaign-level negative keywords are now in beta for Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads. She added that this will expand in 2025 to more accounts.

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Google Completes DMA Hotel Tests In Search

Several weeks ago, Google announced it would test changes to the search results for hotels in order to see how the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in Europe would impact hotels. Well, that test is wrapped and the results were not good for hotels, says Google.

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Google Tests Sitelinks With Arrow Down To Show More

We've seen our share of Sitelinks tests in Google Search. Including a number of variations around expandable sitelinks. But here is a version where you can click an arrow down to expand and show more sitelinks.

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Google Business Profiles Adds More Hours Categories

Google now supports even more categories for more types of hours for your business listing. Google added a number of new hour types for religious institutions and restaurants.

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Google Tests New Search Tools Design

Google Search is testing a new design and user interface for the search tools menu. Instead of it showing below the search bar, it now shows right under the tools button, with a new interface.

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Google Search Having Indexing Issues Again

Google Search is once again having indexing issues where new content is not showing in the index for all sites. Google wrote this is about a "delayed indexing in Google Search" that is "affecting a small number of sites."

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Google Showing Fewer AI Overviews In Search?

Google may have dialed back how often they show AI Overviews in Google Search, especially in some verticals like health and finance (YMYL). Ziptie, a toolset that tracks Google AI Overviews, shows that overall, Google is showing 4 percentage points fewer AI Overviews today than it did a week ago.

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Google Search Difference Between Clustering & Canonicalization

Google's John Mueller explained the difference between clustering and canonicalization within Google Search. He said, "Clustering is basically taking the pages that we think are the same. And then canonicalization is, from those pages, which one is the best one."

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Google Shopping Card Replaced Popular Stores With Where To Buy

As Google continues to test its shopping / e-commerce card format, Google is now testing replacing the "popular stores" section with a "Where to buy" section. I mean, it seems super similar to the other format, but who knows...

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Google Shopping Results Tests View All Buttons

Google is testing "view all" buttons in the Google Search results, maybe shopping oriented results, next to search result listings that lead to shopping category landing pages. The view all button is at the right side of the snippet, and when clicked, takes you to the category landing page on the e-commerce site.

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Google Search Console Refreshes Email Templates

Google announced that it has modernized and refreshed the emails that are sent out from Google Search Console. Google wrote, "Starting today your Search Console emails are looking more modern and refreshed."

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Bing See Results Only From...

Bing Search can now place a button under a search result snippet that triggers a site command to restrict the search results to only show results from that domain. The button reads, "See results only from [domain]."

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Google Web Rendering Service Cache Lasts For Up To 30 Days

We knew Google's web rendering service (WRS) does its own thing with caching but now a new post from Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt of Google said the "WRS caches everything for up to 30 days." This is done to help "preserve the site's crawl budget for other crawl tasks," Google wrote.

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