Industry News

Nilay Patel of The Verge had a great one-on-one conversation with Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO. Nilay did put on the pressure around how the changes with AI Overviews and AI Mode in Google Search are impacting publishers in a very negative way, but Sundar seemed unconvinced that web publishing is dead.

Google added a new type of data point to the Google Business Profiles performance reports named Chat Clicks. Chat clicks show you how many people are clicking over from your chat conversations in the local and maps results within Google Search and Maps.

With Google rolling out AI Mode in the US and calling it the future of Google Search, many SEOs are worried about how organic search will lead traffic and conversions for their business and their clients. Well, a small poll showed that most SEO are scared about AI Mode being the future of Google Search.

Google Search now lets you see the pricing history and pricing details, including more store details of a specific product, directly from the search results. When you click on the three dots in the product secondary overlay, you get this third-level overlay with those details.

Google needs even more queries, the 10% growth isn't enough, so Google AI Overviews is testing query expansion tabs at the top of the AI Overviews. We've seen variations of this within the AI Overviews, but now they are testing them at the top of the AI Overviews.

Google is testing a new design for the crawl stats section in Google Search Console. Instead of the more list view section below the main chart at the top, this new interface is much more visual with numerous charts. * Turns out this is not happening, it is "Advanced GSC Visualizer extension" causing this - leaving the rest of the story here to avoid confusion*

Google announced it will be removing the notifications and email archive section from Google Merchant Center into Google Merchant Center Next on June 25, 2025. After June 25th, Google Merchant Center will no longer have your email notifications archived there.

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

Microsoft is testing a sticky footer in the Bing Search results that show related searches. So the related searches section sticks to the footer, making these related searches way more in your face.

Google's John Mueller does not want you to lump programmatic SEO with technical SEO. He said they are different things and that while technical SEO "will definitely continue to be a thing," programmatic SEO is another story.