Industry News

There are reportedly at least five bugs within the Bing Webmaster Tools API and the corresponding documentation. The bugs range from setting country and regions to site move requests, plus bugs with the overall API documentation.

Google Ads has changed how Performance Max and regular Shopping campaigns work within the same account. In short, Performance Max won't take priority over Standard Shopping campaigns when they are both in the same ads account.

Microsoft is adding new AI features to Bing Search named AI-enhanced summaries. These can show up in the knowledge panel section, and say the "summary was generated by Al from multiple online sources. Find the source links used for this summary under "Based on sources."

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

Nope, Google won't let up with its Google Search ranking volatility. We are seeing sites that are showing better rankings one day, only to see those rankings jump back up the next day and continue to see this pattern over and over again. It is like Google cannot make up its mind and it is beyond unusual to see this happening for this long of a period of time.

Nick Fox is now the new head of Google Search, replacing Prabhakar Raghavan who is moving into Chief Technologist role at Google. Nick Fox has been with Google since July 2003 and is someone we have quoted here for 20 years on this site.

Google will temporarily pause ads related to the US elections after the polls close on November 5th. Google said this "is a temporary measure, and we will notify advertisers when this policy is lifted."

Google is at it again, double dipping on Local Service Ads clicks, by adding a "Request competitive quotes" button after you have already selected the business you want a quote from. Google is now showing you other competitive to get quotes from, even though you clicked on a specific business.

Google has been doing a lot with generative AI and I know some of you have seen featured snippets, some knowledge panels, local listings and other forms of generative AI in the search results. Here is an example of Google Search placing generative AI snippets and cards within the middle of the search results, in the featured snippets things to know like results.

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