Industry News

Google has this new "Know before you go" section in the search results. I mean, it is new for search, not new for Google Maps and not new for local. But I've never seen a Know before you go box in the search results before.

Microsoft is now showing why it selects or chooses to show a specific ad directly in the Bing search results. When you click on the arrow down by the URL of the search ad snippet, you will get window dialog that may explain why the ad was shown.

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 launched its AI mode, but it is in beta and you need to be added to a waitlist...

Google has officially announced Google AI Mode, after hearing rumors about it for months and then seeing leaked screenshots of it a few weeks ago. Google said AI mode gives you more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities so you can get help with even your toughest questions.

In December, Google told us they are testing powering AI Overviews using Gemini 2.0. We think we even saw Google testing this in the wild with deeper AI Overviews with tons of links. Well, now, in the U.S. AI Overviews are officially powered by Gemini 2.0, it is no longer a test.

Google is testing more favicon designs within Google Search. I mean, we cover these way too often but hey, I like favicons, don't you?

It looks like Microsoft is testing search ads that auto expand to reveal sitelinks under those ads within the Bing Search results. You don't need to click or do anything and the ad will dynamically expand to show more sitelinks underneath the search ad unit.

Rajan Patel, a VP, Engineering for Search at Google and the Co-founder of Google Lens, is now also offering an assist to Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liason. For the past several weeks, Rajan Patel's X profile also was tagged as being associated with the Google Search Liaison account.

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

I've been watching the volatility ever since the unconfirmed February 26th or so ranking volatility when the tools didn't show much of a spike but the chatter was super high. Well, the tools started to show the spike around March 1st and the chatter is still heated.