Googlebot Must Follow Redirects From Homepage To Favicon, Updated Doc Say

Google Search has just updated its favicon documentation to now specify that Googlebot must be able to follow redirects from the homepage to the page where the favicon is specified. The document also explicitly says that these URLs must not be blocked by robots.txt or other means.

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Google Ads Tests Dotted Underlined Links In Sponsored Results

Google is testing placing dotted underlined links in the sponsored results ad descriptions. When you click on them, you go to the ad destination's URL, like you would if you clicked on the title of the ad.

from Search Engine Roundtable https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-dotted-underlined-links-42290.html

Google Ads To Update Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (CSAE) Policy

Google Ads said it will update its Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (CSAE) ads policy this coming January. Google said this is being done as part of a "redesign of the policy, and to improve protections, clarity and transparency."

from Search Engine Roundtable https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-csae-ads-policy-42375.html

Google Warns Tools On User-Generated Spam Guidance & More

Google has updated its Prevent user-generated spam on your site and platform help document to specify "tools that let users publish shared pages, generated content, or web apps." The update explicitly includes platforms and tools that let users create shared pages, generated content, and web apps.

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ChatGPT Ads With Learn More Arrow Link; Some Served Through Amazon DSP

OpenAI seems to be rolling out a new ad format for some ChatGPT Ad units that have a Learn more link, that is dotted and underlined, and also with an arrow going upwards. And in some cases, ChatGPT Ads seem to be served with Amazon DSP.

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Google Ads 1-Click AI Max Experiment Recommendation

Google Ads updated its frequently asked questions page for AI Max search campaigns with a section on 1-click AI Max experiments. Google wrote in the document, "If your account is eligible, you may find a 1-click experiment recommendation on your Recommendations page."

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Google Search Ranking Volatility Gets Heated October 24th

This past Saturday, October 24th, we saw some significant ranking volatility captured by many of the third-party Google tracking tools. There was also some heavy chatter within the SEO industry about ranking movement and Google traffic changes over the past couple of days. The two together make me believe that there was some Google Search ranking adjustment released Friday and into Saturday.

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Google Ads Asset Optimization Sourced Videos On/Off Toggle

Google Ads has added a new "Sourced videos" on/off toggle setting to the asset optimization section. This uses Google AI to identify relevant videos from your approved sources and add them to your campaign automatically.

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3 New Studies Suggest AI Visibility & Search Not Worth Investing In

There are three new studies out over the past week that suggest that spending time, money and resources on AI visibility and AI search may not be worth it. In short, the studies all show that AI Search or AI services send a tiny fraction of traffic (and conversions) when compared to Google Search.

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Google Ads Sponsored Products Expand To Include Product Attributes

Google Ads is testing showing Sponsored Products results that dynamically expand to show product attributes at the bottom of the ad units in a gray background color.

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Google Pauses Ads For Russian Advertisers & Serving Ads To Russians

Back in 2022, Google paused showing ads to users in Russia. That still seems to be active, but Google just posted a new message in the Google Ads and Merchant Center help documentation that it has "also paused ads on Google properties and networks globally for advertisers based in Russia."

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Google On robots.txt Rules For AI Crawlers, Emojis, International URLs & More

Gary Illyes and Chery Prommawin released their second video in the Non-Canonical Cabinet series; this one is named What can you actually put in a robots.txt? Here they discuss what is, and is not, supported by robots.txt files. And while Google may support features or directives, other search engines or AI crawlers might not.

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Google Updated Its URL Structure Best Practices For Hyphens In URLs

Google has made a minor change to its URL structure best practices for Google Search help document. Specifically, the "Use hyphens to separate words" section. The overall meaning of the section really did not change but Google did update it, so I wanted to point out the update.

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OpenAI Auto Enabling Creative Enhancements In ChatGPT Ads

OpenAI sent out emails to advertisers, including me, telling me they have automatically enabled creative enhancements for my ChatGPT Ads. The email says this is starting on October 30, 2026 and I can opt out of creative enhancements or change your settings at any time in Ads Manager.

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Bing Tests Not Showing Sitelinks

Microsoft seems to be testing not showing sitelinks under the main Bing search result snippets. I am honestly not sure if this is new but I was able to replicate Bing showing sitelinks for the first search result snippet in one browser and for the same query, it not showing the sitelinks.

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Google Search Tests Removing Horizontal Rule Line Under Tabs

Google is testing removing the HR, thematic line break or horizontal rule line, that is found under the search tabs under the search box in the search results page.

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Google Ads Now In AI Mode With Personal Intelligence

Google confirmed it will now show ads in AI Mode results with Personal Intelligence enabled. Back in March, Google said AI Mode with Personal Intelligence turned on would be ad-free, but that is now changing.

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Google AI Mode Citations With Preferred Source Preferences

Google is testing letting users view and modify their preferred sources list directly from within the AI Mode citations sidebar. There is a new button named "Source preferences" and when you click on it, it opens up your preferred sources list where you can add or remove preferred sources.

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Google Ads To No Longer Show Featured Professionals, Headshots Are Optional

Google Ads posted a message to Local Service Ads advertisers saying that featured professionals will no longer show on your ads, and headshots will be optional and won't impact ad serving.

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Google Updated Indexing API Quota Details & More

Google has updated the indexing API documentation; this includes three different pages within the documentation. I think the big takeaway is that Google removed the old approval process and initial testing explanation, the sitemap recommendation, and, most importantly, the default quota details.

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Google Dataset Search Currently Not Returning Search Results

For the past several hours, Google Dataset Search has not been able to return any search results or matches. Google Dataset Search returns a response that says "Your search - [keyword phrase here] - did not match any datasets."

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Bing Tests Related Searches Based On Your Browsing

Bing is testing showing "Related searches based on your browsing" similar to how Google is/was showing this a few months ago. In Bing's test, this is below the Microsoft Ads in the search results.

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OpenAI Drops UTM Parameters From ChatGPT Results (GPT-6)

OpenAI seems to have removed or replaced the UTM parameters it placed on links within the ChatGPT results. This makes it harder to know if a click came from ChatGPT versus some other platform. This seems to have started with the release of GPT''6, which was a week ago.

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Google Search On PDFs: Conversion, Links, HTML, Ranking, Limits, Crawling...

Google's Martin Splitt and John Mueller just posted a Search Off the Record podcast on the topic of PDFs, it is named PDFs in Search: Indexing, AI & Pitfalls. It goes over how PDFs are converted for crawling and indexing, how Google processes links, images, what are the file limits and do they rank in search and AI search.

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Gemini 4 Argon In Google Search Via AI Mode

Google announced Gemini 4 Argon a couple of weeks ago and today announced that it is now an option in Google Search via AI Mode for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers globally.

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