Industry News

Google is testing adding product tags to photos within Google Local carousel's photos. These tags are overlayed on the "explore through photos" unit.

Google has confirmed an issue with Google Ads this morning, saying, "We're investigating reports of an issue with Google Ads. We will provide more information shortly."

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

Normally, when I see a lot of chatter within the SEO community, I also see the third-party Google search ranking volatility tools heat up. Now I am seeing the tools heat up in a very big way over the weekend but the SEO chatter within the SEO community being super calm - which is super unusual.

Lex Fridman had a really great interview with Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai. In that interview, Sundar explained that the "current plan is AI mode" will remain in a separate tab but over time, Google will "keep migrating it to the main page." Meaning, Google will move AI Mode features into AI Overviews and the main search experience.

Over the past week I've been hearing that some Google Business Profiles are vanishing or disappearing. I am told that Google is aware of the complaints and are investigating, but that was last week.

Ever want to find query data in Google Search Console where the query is a conversational query style? The long long queries that give you insight into how people may be finding your content via AI search engines, the ones where people talk their query and not type them?

Google recently rolled out the Live Search feature in the Gemini app. But now Google was caught testing that Live Search feature directly in the main Google Search app, the Google App.

Bing PubHub is being retired, exactly when, I am not sure, but it is going away. Microsoft posted the notice in Bing Webmaster Tools and it links to a document that says "PubHub will no longer be accepting new publisher applications effective immediately" but doesn't say when it will completely go away.

It seems the Google Search Console performance report for Google Discover has reported zero impressions and clicks starting Thursday, June 5th, or has underreported impressions and clicks significantly since that date. I am seeing a lot of complaints about this, and I am able to replicate this for several publishers I have GSC access with.