Industry News

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google Search rankings are heated again...

Google's search ranking volatility continues and continues, it is weird at this point. Google Search Live with video is finally rolling out. Google AI Mode added file uploads...

Guess what - another story on Google Search volatility and how it is heated and the chatter within the SEO industry is pretty high right now. We reported about it a lot during the Google June 2025 core update and after that core update and nope - it is not calming down yet.

Fabrice Canel, long time Microsoft employee and the Bing Search Product Manager, said the way you optimize for AI Search is by following SEO guidelines. He echoed Google's statement that doing normal SEO works for AI Search.

Google has been outspoken about not being a fan of the LLMS.txt file. Now, Gary Illyes from Google said it is a lot like the keywords meta tag in the early days and we all know how that went.

Google has replaced the promotions section in the merchant local knowledge panel with a deals section. There are still clipable coupons but it is renamed "Deals" instead of it saying "Promotions." There is also a new green percentage icon next to each deal.

Google is testing a sort by button filter at the top right of the Google Shopping interface. This is instead of Google putting the sort by on the left-hand bar, with all the other filters.

I almost skipped this Michael Lopp piece, but I’m glad I didn’t. It’s one of his best in a long time, especially if you’re a manager. Reframing the act of working with AI as “making the robots dance” is so good. But there’s more to it than that. Just read it, ok?

Robots don’t lie. Lying requires intent to deceive, and when a robot provides you with plausible-sounding, but incorrect statements, it’s either following its programming or making an error. Or both. Humans lie. They boast, they...

In South Africa we call this game (where the goal is to keep the rally going as long as possible) “Beach Ball” so I immediately got it. And despite my aversion to “Here’s what X taught me about B2B Sales” posts this one actually got to me. Because Gabrielle is right. The communication goal—especially in big corporations—is not to win, it’s to keep talking until you have a better way forward:

In tennis, you win by hitting shots your opponent can’t return. In Frescobol, you win by setting...

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