Industry News

Both Google and Microsoft reported its earnings today; Alphabet's Q3 2025 earnings and Microsoft's Q1 2026 earnings. Google reported ad revenues up by XX% with $ and Microsoft reported ad revenues up by XX%.

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 ranking volatility is heating up again...

There may have been another Google Search ranking algorithm tweak around October 28th or so. I am seeing some rumblings both within the SEO community chatter and the third-party Google tracking tools. It seems some are noticing big search ranking swings around October 28th.

We all knew it was coming and now Google is roll out early access to Gemini for Home voice assistant in the U.S. You can either say "Hey Google" to your speaker or display to request specific help or answers, or talk naturally with Gemini Live by saying "Hey Google, let's chat."

Google Merchant Center now lets some merchants and advertisers define an audience for a promotion. This allows you to restrict who sees the promotion in Google Search for your Merchant Center shopping listings.

A judge has ruled, giving Google a blow in its ad tech monopoly legal battle. This ruling should help the plaintiffs suing Google not get hung up in court as long as some expected, plus Google can't relitgate the core facts in that antitrust case.

Google is testing adding to the call and message button on Local Service Ads a reviews and sometimes overview button. Reviews takes you to the reviews but the overview button to the local listing for that business.

There may be an undocumented Google user agent named GeminiiOS. GeminiiOS is apparently used when a user clicks on a source link from the Gemini app on their iPhone.

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 Console has a new query grouping report...

Google added a very useful feature to the Google Search Console Insights report named query groups. It does what it is named, it groups similar queries together as one, so you can see how your site is performing for that specific topic, instead of individual queries.