Industry News

Google is testing (I think again) review carousels and block units in its search results for product queries. A number of SEOs spotted these coming up over the past week or two, and they basically show product review content in a separate section within Google Search.

Google Search is now sometimes showing the ability to filter products in its search results by product rating. I am not sure if this is new or not, but I cannot replicate this but some are seeing the product rating filter/refinement option when searching.

Google is testing a new filter for its shopping results in the mobile search results. Instead of showing a single filter menu, Google is showing a product image carousel line first and then a filter menu for additional search filters.

Google has a new Search Labs feature named Ask for me. Ask for me will have Google call businesses for you, to figure out the cost of the service and when it can be scheduled for you. It is like that Duplex feature we saw years ago, where Google would try to schedule a restaurant reservation for you.

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 search ranking volatility seems to be spiking once again...

Google Search ranking volatility spiked and heated again over the past 24-hours or so. I am seeing renewed chatter spike up yesterday, January 29th and continue through today. I am also seeing that some of the tracking tools are showing an increase in ranking volatility within Google Search over the past day.

Did you know there is a quick way to directly generate an access request for Service Area Businesses in Google Maps? This is apparently not so new but also not widely known.

Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, explained why Google is only letting you add up to 100 negative keywords to your campaign-level negative keywords within your Performance Max campaigns on Google Ads.

We recently covered how you can now drag and drop menu items for your restaurant in your Google Business Profiles. But Google also seemed to add the ability to move menu items between sections of your menu and the ability to batch edit pricing of menu items.

In early December, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, said Google is starting to test powering AI Overviews with Gemini 2.0. Well, we may be starting to see some of that in the wild, with much deeper and detailed AI Overviews and citations.