Industry News

In February, we covered how Google's AI Overviews really hurt the click-through rate of the search results and paid ads. Well, several more recent studies have come out that back up this data.

Google Posts/Updates are starting to disappear from the local panels within Google Search. I saw complaints about this yesterday and tested it by adding a post myself on my business, it was there, until it wasn't. Now I see a huge number of complaints that posts or updates are missing from Google local panels.

Google has added video previews to the video verification within Google Business Profiles. Google's Lisa Landsman said this will help with "submitting, ensuring clarity and accuracy '" saving you valuable time and reducing the need for resubmissions."

Google sent emails to Google Ads advertisers about new Local Service Ads additions to its terms for its providers that they must accept by June 5, 2025 or else their ads will no longer serve in Google Search or Google Maps.

A week or so ago, Google Analytics made some updates to how it handles campaign data quality and attribution reporting. Many are now seeing a new label named "Data not available" show up in their GA4 reporting.

Google has just given up on a third-party cookie alternative. Google announced it will maintain its "current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome, and will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies."

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

Google Ads announced they will "now allow relevant Search ads from advertisers who showed amongst top ads to also participate in the bottom ads auction." Honestly, I thought this update happened last month when they started to allow double serving ads (well, Google now says it is not double serving, so maybe that is the announcement here...).

About a year ago, we covered numerous tests with shaded site name and favicon sections of the snippet. Google continues to test this, but we're now seeing a blue gradient version of the style.

Google is testing a newish section in the Google local panel to tell searchers how far that business is from your location. Google is testing adding either a "Get there" data point and/or a "From your location" data point.