Industry News

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

This week...

The Google Search team and the Google Ads team released two different videos this week that I thought you should all listen to, at least in the background. In short, Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes from the Google Search team spoke about how browsers parse HTML. Ginny Marvin and Ads UI Product Manager Abby Butler and Search Ads UX Lead Adam Bullock spoke about search experiences with search ads.

Microsoft Advertising has now rolled out the self-serve negative keyword lists. This launched a couple of days ago and was announced by Navah Hopkins, the Microsoft Ads Liaison.

Google Ads is rolling out text guidelines for all advertisers globally in AI Max. We thought the rollout started more broadly last October, after it was announced last September, but now it is really fully rolling out.

Google is testing adding "web mentions" to the retailer store page under the reviews section. I cannot replicate this yet, but web mentions shows what people are saying about the retailer on sites like Reddit and other social platforms, whereas reviews are reviews left on Google.

Microsoft Bing Search is testing a new layout for videos within the search results. Instead of a list view, Bing is testing a two-by-two grid layout.

Google's February 2026 Google Discover Core Update has officially completed rolling out after just over 3 weeks. This update started on February 5, 2026, and was completed on February 27, 2026.

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

Google announced updates to Circle to Search where it now doesn't just look at the part you circles but apparently the whole image, so it can get more context. "New multi-object image search helps you find more items from one picture at the same time in Circle to Search," Google explained.