Industry News

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 seems to be testing removing the results count from the search results...

Google may be pushing out a new Search Console feature where for the partial data, the most recent data it has, which was not yet finalized, shows up as dotted lines. Google always put a disclaimer on the most recent data that says, "Partial data point (fresh data) - does not cover the entire date" but the dotted line design in the chart may be new.

In April, Google moved the search results estimated count (the about X results) section to only display it after you click on the "tools" search option. Well, now, in some browsers, for some people, that results count is completely missing since last week.

Google Ads has this optimization score card that shows you how well your Google Ads account is set to perform. It seems Google is testing adding if there was a change to that score because of "competitive pressure" and might even list the competitor that is causing such pressure.

After a month or so of testing, it seems like the "sponsored" labels are rolling out across Bing's search ads. I am now seeing them across all browsers and searches in my tests. This may be a test but it seems like it is fully rolled out based on what I am seeing.

A couple of weeks ago, Google created a proposal on the schema Github proposing expanding and enhancing shipping data in schema.org. One of the enhancements is a new schema type named ShippingService, that groups shipping constraints such as delivery locations, time, weight and size limits and shipping rate.

Google Search is testing orange links, instead of blue links, in dark mode. This is more like a muted orange color, but it seems orange nevertheless.

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.

There is discussion that Google said you should stop hiring SEOs and buying SEO audits...

In Rutledge Daugette's write up from the Web Creator summit that got a lot of attention last week, he wrote a line that struck a cord with the SEO community. In short, some are taking it to mean that Google does not want site owners, or at least, content creators, to hire SEO agencies or have to purchase SEO audits.

As many of you know, OpenAI launched Search within ChatGPT last week. And as many suspected, the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI seems to still be strong, because it seems that the ChatGPT Search index comes from Bing - for now at least. That is not to say, ChatGPT Search does not rely on other partners, they do.