Industry News

Google had a lot of news out of Google I/O, as you would expect. The big item, which we predicted, was that AI Mode is now available to all US searchers without having to opt into it within Search Labs. Plus, Google is testing a number of new features in AI mode including Deep Search, Live Search, personal context, custom charts, AI shopping and yes - Agentic features.

Surprise, surprise, as I called it, Google is expanding AI Overviews into more regions. I mean, we saw this being leaked a couple of weeks ago, so it is not shocking news. But at I/O, Google said AI Overviews are "now available in more than 200 countries and territories and in more than 40 languages, with support added for Arabic, Chinese, Malay, Urdu and more."

Google Search seems to be super volatile today and yesterday, so I will call this the Google I/O 2025 Google unconfirmed update. I am seeing a spike in chatter within the SEO community along with many of the tools showing super heated volatility within the Google search results.

Google seems to be testing hiding the citations, link icons, for the AI Overviews default view. So when the AI Overview first loads in the Google Search results, the link icon is hidden.

For the past few weeks or so, Google has a bug where the right side knowledge panel goes missing for business owners when you try to bring up your business listing in Google Search. This is not impacting everyone and it can be random but Google is supposedly aware of the issue and is fixing it.

Google seems to be testing showing author names and website citations in the AI Overviews. I am honestly not sure if this is new but Christian Kunz said it was and posted about it on his blog and on X.

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

Google is testing a new link feature in the search results, it is in the form of a link box, in the search result snippet, that when you click on it, it anchors you down on the page to a specific portion of that text.

Google is testing removing the site names from the search result snippets and just showing the site's URL at the top - title link - position of the snippet.

Google is once again testing a light blue color, cyan, for its title links in the search results. Google tested this on and off quite a lot over the years, but Google is testing it again.