Industry News

Catch up on interesting new discussion and industry news.

    Most Commented Search Engine Roundtable Articles - 2025 Edition

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Dec 31, 2025
    Here are the most popular articles on the Search Engine Roundtable by number of comments. In other words, these are the articles with the highest number of comments posted in 2025.

    Google's New Year's Eve & New Year's Day Doodles

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Dec 31, 2025
    Google has posted the New Year's Eve Doodle and New Year's Day Doodle on the Google.com home page for when it is New Year's Eve for you and New Year's Day for you.

    What’s Actually Working with AI

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Dec 30, 2025
    Natalia Quintero wrote about what she’s learned from talking to more than 100 companies about AI implementation. This part about the problem with early adopters and isolated workflows stood out:

    AI doesn’t spread like other software. Think about Asana. If one person decides to organize their team’s tasks there, everyone benefits automatically because the work is more organized, and someone on the team has taken responsibility for that organization. You don’t need to learn the tool to get...

    Daily Search Forum Recap: December 30, 2025

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Dec 30, 2025
    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.

    The Google December 2025 core update is done rolling out...

    Humans make mistakes, and so does AI. It’s fine.

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Dec 30, 2025
    Will Larson has a good post about implementing “Agent Skills” in their internal agent framework at Imprint. The whole piece is worth reading, but I wanted to highlight this observation:

    Humans make mistakes all the time. For example, I’ve seen many dozens of JIRA tickets from humans that don’t explain the actual problem they are having. People are used to that, and when a human makes a mistake, they blame the human. However, when agents make a mistake, a surprising percentage of people...

    How My AI Product “Second Brain” Evolved

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Dec 30, 2025
    A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I use AI for product work—the basic setup of context files, prompts, and the @ mention system in Windsurf. Since then the system evolved quite a bit, so I figured it’s time for an update.

    The philosophy has shifted a bit. I still don’t use AI to do my core thinking—I write my own PRDs and strategy docs. But I’ve come to rely on it more as a helpful assistant for the work around the work: reviewing documents before I share them, researching technical...

    Google's AI Frankenstein Recipes Are A Horror

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Dec 30, 2025
    Adam and Joanne Gallagher from the food recipe blog, Inspired Taste, has been documenting a lot of really painful and shameful tactics Google is using for its AI responses to some recipes. Adam calls its Google's AI Frankenstein recipes, where it pulls parts of the recipes from recipe bloggers, says it is the brand's recipe, but changes it enough where the recipe is not real and tastes horrible.

    Bing Tests Expanding People Also Ask

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Dec 30, 2025
    Microsoft Bing is testing loading more people also ask options as you click on them. This is something Google has done for a long time now, but now when you click on an option under the people also ask section within Bing, Bing may load more beneath them - to show you more options.

    Google Merchant Panel With Delivery, Return & Payment Options Carousel

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Dec 30, 2025
    Google Search is showing a carousel in the merchant / retailer panel that lets you scroll through the merchant's delivery, return and payment options. This information has been in the Google Search results for a while, but this carousel feels new to me - is it?

    Google Maps Hotel Results Drop Visit Website Button

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Dec 30, 2025
    Google has removed the visit website button from the first screen of the Google Maps hotel results. Instead, you first need to click on the "Check availability" to get to the visit website button.