Industry News

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 is rethinking its search stack from the ground up due to LLMs...

Another Google court document from the DOJ trial showed that Google said it is currently rethinking its entire search stack, from the ground up, with LLMs playing a more fundamental role. The doc said:

The details from the DOJ and Google monopoly case hearing exhibits just keep on flowing and with that, we have another mention of how Google does look at clicks from the search results. This one talks about how the position of the link can be a bias towards the number of clicks that result gets, so Google had to develop an adjustment of sorts to counter that bias.

Earlier this month, Google updated its Ads Transparency policy to specify that it will display the payment profile name as the payer name for verified advertisers. Well, now we are starting to see a new section that says "Ads funded by" on the "My Ad Center" section of the search ads.

Google is rolling out device targeting controls and features within Google Ads Performance Max campaigns. We knew this was coming and now it seems to be rolling out to some (not all) advertisers. This allows you to target based on device type, such as computers, mobile phones, tablets and/or TV screens.

Google is testing showing the vertical search category a query belongs to in its autocomplete search suggestions. When you click into the Google Search box, even before you begin typing your query, Google shows search suggestions and some of those search suggestions have a label that says "short videos," "images," etc.

Google is testing a new sub or secondary menu under the search bar in Google Search. This secondary menu, or sub-menu, is below the main search vertical options and is missing the bubble format that we've seen Google use for this sub-menu.

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

Google is testing adding the ability for you to add your own annotations to the Google Search Console performance reports. This is one of the requests SEOs have been asking for from Google for a long time and now Google is testing this in Search Console.

Google is rolling out a new feature for Google Business Profiles named What's Happening. This feature is for bars or restaurants to better promote events, deals, and specials prominently at the top of their Google Business Profile.