Industry News

Google has updated the review snippet documentation to explain that site owners should avoid using multiple ways of indicating what's being reviewed, the search company announced. This is to make it clear about how nesting in reviews and aggregate ratings are interpreted and handled by Google Search.

Google has documented a new user agent, a user-triggered fetcher, named Google-Pinpoint. "The Google-Pinpoint fetcher requests individual URLs that Pinpoint users specified as sources for their personal collections of documents," Google posted in its updated documentation.

Google has confirmed it is testing a feature to import campaigns and assets from X and other social networks into your Google Ads campaign. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, confirmed this on LinkedIn yesterday.

Google will be updating its Unacceptable phone number policy on December 10, 2025 and that update is causing some anxiety for some advertisers. The policy update says that "phone numbers found to be associated with fraudulent activity or with a history of policy violations are unacceptable."

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 will fix its Google Discover fake AI news problem. Google is now showing search ads, not just shopping ads...

Google is testing showing normal search ads in an ad carousel at the top of the image search results on mobile. The ads take up a lot of the top real estate of the image results and can be scrolled from side to side.

Google is reportedly working on a "fix" for the AI spam that routinely shows up within users' Google Discover feed. Google issued a statement to the Press Gazette saying, "We're actively working on a fix" for the fake AI spam stories showing up in Google Discover.

Google is now embedding its AI chat feature within the Google Ads advertiser console, specifically in some screens. The "Guide me" button that triggers an AI chat feature was spotted in the policy disapprovals screen.

Google now lets you add your shipping and returns information within Google Search Console, even if you do not have a Google Merchant Center account. Previously, Google let you do this only if you had a Merchant Center account, that is no longer a requirement.

Google emailed advertisers who are leveraging message leads within Google Local Service Ads telling them about the new value-based pricing. Basically, when a seacher uses the "Request multiple opinions" within local results, those leads may result now in higher discounts than the previous 50% discount you would get on those messages.