Industry News

Google is bringing Gemini 3 Flash to AI Mode, bringing much of Gemini 3's power without waiting too long - hence the "Flash" part of the name. Robby Stein from Google said, "Starting today, we're rolling it out globally in Search as the default model in AI Mode."

Back in October, many businesses reported that reviews left on their Google Business Profiles were disappearing. It wasn't happening to every business, but it was widespread. Last night, I was told the bug had been fixed and that the reviews should be returning.

Microsoft is also testing underlining the text of the Bing Ads search snippets and descriptions. I am not sure if those underlined words are links or not but I assume so.

After almost a month delay with the page indexing report within Google Search Console, the report is now back to its normal timeframe. This morning it was reading that the last updated date was November 21st. Now, it is reading December 14th, which is a normal delay for this report.

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

Google Discover is testing and maybe rolling out an option to "Tailor your feed." This allows you to tailor the feed with "Say in your own words what you want to see," and Google will try to figure it out.

If you submitted a review appeal within Google Business Profiles it will likely take longer than normal to hear back. Google's review appeals are delayed and Google cannot provide a specific response timeframe for pending cases.

Google is testing extremely long and expandable search result snippet descriptions in the search results. These are also AI-generated snippets, which we've seen before, but not this long. This goes on for eight lines of text.

Google has updated its Manage customer reviews help documentation to expand and clarify the "Understand what happens to your replies" section. It now specifies why a business reply to a review may be hold, how long it takes and more.

Microsoft is testing the ability to upload an image directly within the Bing search bar. You click on a plus sign and Bing shows you "search with an image" and "make an image." I get the search with an image feature but why add generative AI features, like make an image, in this search bar?