Industry News

OpenAI is testing a new campaign type named Agent, which allows you to send ChatGPT searchers and users to a Business Agent conversation. So instead of just going to your website, you send them into a chat experience on your website?

Google has begun alerting some advertisers that it will soon require D-U-N-S numbers for businesses and users to be verified. Verification is required for select verticals and users in the US. And honestly, getting a D-U-N-S numbers for some businesses can be a pain.

Google has yet another bug with the Google Business Profiles platform. This one is with products being placed in "Pending" status, new products and old products, I believe. This started a couple of days ago and the issue still seems to be lingering, or pending, if you will. I have not seen Google respond to the complaints about this issue but it does seem widespread.

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

Google is now testing showing related searches based on your browsing. I suspect this is based on your browsing history on Chrome, beyond what you may search for in Google but based on what pages you browse.

Google is now testing AI-generated descriptions on shopping and product ads. We saw this with normal sponsored results earlier this month, Google confirmed it was a small test then, and now we are seeing it on shopping ads.

Doesn't it feel like you are always seeing AI Overviews at the top of all your Google Search results? Well, new data from Similarweb says that AI Overviews show up for about 43% of all queries. Meanwhile, Semrush data has it at about 48% of all queries. It depends on the query category because informational queries tend to be even higher.

Normally, I wouldn't cover political topics like this, but with Google trying to copyright its search results, including AI Overview responses, I thought it was appropriate. Google responded to complaints about a race-based AI Overview answer, blaming the websites it sourced, rather than taking credit for the AI-generated answer in Google Search.

Google has a new help document in the Google Ads support area on how to set up offline conversions using GBRAID. A GBRAID URL parameter (&gbraid=xyz) is a privacy-preserving identifier used to measure ad performance.

Google is testing a new carousel at the top of the Google home page on mobile for Google Discover. It is a carousel of content that is titled "Read Later Queue," and it comprises articles you saved to read later.