Industry News

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

Over the past couple of days, especially since the Google August 2025 spam update officially completed, the Google search results have been rumbling. It is a bit hard to track due to the changes with the third-party rank checking tools, but there has been a lot of chatter within the SEO community over the past few days.

Cloudflare announced Content Signals Policy, a new addition to robots.txt that allows you to express your preferences for how your content can be used after it has been accessed. This aims to block Google from using your content in AI Overviews, but Google would have to comply, which they have not yet, for this to work.

Google is updating the Google Ads Misrepresentation policy concerning Dishonest Pricing Practices. This will require advertisers to disclose the payment model or full expense that a user will incur before and after purchase, and clarify any false or misleading impressions of the cost of a product or service.

Google announced that Search Live is now fully live in the US and no longer requires opt in to Search Labs. In July, Google released it on mobile in the U.S. for users enrolled in the AI Mode Labs experiment but now it is open to everyone in the US in English'"no Labs opt-in needed.

Google updated its Other restricted businesses: Government documents and services policy to say it may label some search ads to say, "Not a government website."

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

Microsoft Bing is testing colorful lines and separator sections in the Bing Search results. The colors are in blue, orange and gray (and maybe more).

Microsoft is testing showing text attributes that can say things like "Free Shipping on Qualified Orders" with an icon next to the search ads on Bing Search. This is not just the CTA buttons that these ads have supported for a while but additional text attributes.

Google is testing a new sponsored ads section in the search results named Featured Stores. This reminds me of the from online stores but that was organic/free, not ads.