Industry News

Google is now showing a "top search" definition box below the auto suggestions within Google Search for some searches. I guess it is a quick way for Google to give you a definition for a word.

Google may be rolling out the high value new customer mode for Google Ads advertisers, after it has been in beta for some time. This setting lets you set different bidding priorities for high value new prospects, regular new customers and existing ones.

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 Local Service Ads opts advertisers into booking links, by default...

Google Ads had a bug with the sitelinks creation page, where the prefill functionality was not working right. Google confirmed the issue and said it was "very limited and was not widespread."

Google has sent out an email to its Google Local Service Ads advertisers, notifying them that they are now letting searchers use a booking link to schedule an appointment or service, when the booking link is detected on the Google Business Profile of that business.

A few weeks ago, we saw Microsoft testing green colored sponsored URLs for the Bing search results. Now I am seeing reports of both underlined and bolded URLs and titles of the sponsored results, where the organic/free listings are not underlined or bolded.

Last April 2024, Gary Illyes from Google said he was on a mission to make web crawling more efficient, he wanted to "figure out how to crawl even less, and have fewer bytes on wire." Gary updated us saying "there's lots more in works" for this but implies some improvements have already been made.

Microsoft is testing another user interface and experience for the links they show within its AI Answers, the Copilot responses. These links show with a hyperlink icon and the domain name spelled out, and then when you mouse over it, it has a carousel you can flip through for more links.

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

Microsoft seems to be testing a more fully AI-powered search engine, which may be named Copilot Search. Copilot is the name of Microsoft's AI features, formerly known as Bing Chat.