Industry News

Here is our monthly Google Webmaster Report - the May 2025 edition - where I summarize the past 30 days or so of the big organic Google related news in one place. Google did not have any official Google ranking updates but we sure did see several days of intense ranking volatility.

Google AdSense has been testing serving and displaying ads within AI Chatbots. Bloomberg reported Google has already begun testing this within AI search apps iAsk and Liner and plans to allow other AI Chatbot providers to include AdSense ads in their chat responses.

Google has confirmed that Apple will be adding its Gemini AI service to Apple Intelligence by the end of 2025, reports are saying. We knew this would happen but we should also expect Apple to add not just Gemini but other AI services to Apple Intelligence.

In early March, it was leaked that Google Ads will be rolling out channel reporting for Performance Max campaigns. Well, now it is official, Google said they are introducing "'­new'¬'­ channel-level'¬'­ reporting'¬'­ in'¬'­ Performance'¬'­ Max" plus, "full'¬'­ search'¬'­ terms'¬'­ reporting'¬ and'¬'­ more'¬'­ detailed'¬'­ asset'¬'­ reporting'¬'­ that'¬'­ show'¬'­ you'¬'­ all'¬'­ the'¬'­ metrics'¬'­ for'¬'­ individual'¬'­ assets.'¬"

Google is testing showing favicons logos in its shopping ads, in the carousel of sponsored product results. Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, confirmed this with me on X last night.

Google is testing showing AI Overviews on the right hand side of the search results page. I am not sure if this is specific to local queries and a replacement of sorts for the local panel, I hope not.

Microsoft reported its third quarter 2025 earnings and it showed that its search and advertising revenue was up 21%, again. The previous quarter it was up 21% as well, then the quarter before that was up 18%, then 19% but before than it was 12% and 8%.

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 Console may be rolling out desktop versus mobile Discover performance data...

We know Google will be bringing Google Discover to the desktop interface, heck, we've seen Google testing it for a while now. But did you know that Google will also show the breakdown of mobile versus desktop performance of Google Discover in Google Search Console?

Back in February, I reported about this unusual Google Search ad format for people also considered sponsored results. They did not look like ads, but they were labeled sponsored. Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, confirmed these are a sponsored ads experiment, but clicking on them do not result in a charge. They are labeled as sponsored only because they go to more commercial queries.