Industry News

Bloomberg reports that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating Google (and Amazon) on whether the companies misled advertisers by not properly disclosing the terms and pricing for ads on their websites.

No, Google Search Console did not add an AI Overviews filter to the Search Performance report. There was a ton of buzz this morning that Google added the ability to filter out AI Overview data in Search Console, but it was a fake and not a real screenshot.

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

This week, I covered the ongoing Google August 2025 spam update and how it heated up this week. Google got into hot water over saying the web is rapidly declining. Google AI Mode also said AI Mode would be the default...

On Thursday, September 11, 2025, Google updated its search quality raters guidelines PDF document. The last time Google updated this document was on January 23, 2025, over seven months ago. This update gives minor clarification as it relates to rating YMYL content and adds a handful of additional examples for rating newer features like AI Overviews. Google also posted fixes for typos and other minor clarifications.

Google Search seems to be testing dropping the ability to see 100 search results on a single page. When you add the results parameter to the end of your search results URL string, i.e. &num=100, it works about half the time.

Microsoft Advertising is testing using three dots, instead of the arrow down, for the sponsored ads URL in the Bing search results. We've seen Bing test three dots before but they were horizontal, the new test are vertical three dots.

Google may be starting to show AI Overviews when you ask for a currency exchange. I can't seem to fully replicate this but others are starting to see this.

Google has updated the Google Merchant Center pricing policies for September. The changes include updates in the merchant fees, government charges, import and export costs, regional and installment pricing, price mismatches and automated updates.

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 Ads announced AI Max is rolling out to all as a beta...