Industry News

I’ve been thinking about engineering estimates a lot and need to write about it. But for now, Adam Keys sums it up nicely:

Everyone knows surprises will happen. The estimate should help the team make better decisions when they do, not box them into promises they can’t keep. The best estimates I’ve given weren’t the most accurate—they were the ones that helped teams navigate uncertainty instead of pretending it away.

→ On estimates as navigation, not promises

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's head of search, Liz Reid...

Google is testing adding the site name next to the link icons in the AI Overviews within Google Search. This makes it much more likely for searchers to click on the links and click over to the source of the information.

Another week and more Google search ranking volatility hits, this time on June 25 and June 26. Google promised more core updates, more often, but that did not happen. Google's Nick Fox says he questions the AI Overview click studies and says the web is thriving...

Liz Reid, the head of Google Search, spoke with Reed Albergotti of Semafor, on Google's push towards AI Search. The interview was conducted weeks ago at Google I/O but was just published this week. It is worth a read but I wanted to highlight the SEO comments and ads comments in that article.

After over a year of being in beta, Google has announced the launch of Offerwall. "Offerwall messages allow your site visitors to choose alternative ways to support your site and gain access to your content, such as viewing a rewarded ad or paying a fee," Google wrote.

Google Search is testing yet another way to indicate to Google that you prefer specific sources, news sources, and publications, so that Google can show you fresh content from those sources. It is a Search Labs feature called "Preferred Sources" and is available for English in the US and India.

Google seems to be rolling out an update to its Ad Preview tool within Google Ads. The ad preview tool also shows a preview of a Google search result page for a specific term. This helps you view which ads and assets are appearing for your keyword, Google explained.

Both Google and Microsoft Bing are testing hover effects that will bold elements of the search results. Google is testing bolding the description of the snippet and Bing is testing bolding the title of the snippet.

Ok I love this story.

I’ve been reading a lot of Robin Wall Kimmerer lately. She tells a story in The Serviceberry that’s become a sort of guiding star for me, about the experience of a linguist who was studying a hunter-gatherer community in the Brazilian rainforest.

“He observes that a hunter had brought home a sizable kill, far too much to be eaten by his family. The researcher asked how he would store the excess. Smoking and drying technologies were well known; storing was...