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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