Industry News

The first week of January, we reported on an interesting local update we named the January 2025 local search update. Well, this might be more of a diversity update, where Google removes the URL for the core organic results, when that URL is also present in the local pack results.

If you try to access your Google Business Profile page right now, you likely won't be able to. It seems Google Business Profile edit section within Google Search is broken and serves a 500 error when you try to do anything.

Google Business Profiles support team is currently a bit delayed, with a backlog of support requests, video verification delays, and reinstatement request backlogs.

We know Google can show reviews from third-party sources in Google Business Profile listings. We've seen Google take reviews from Yelp, travel sites and other third-party websites. But these days, more often than not, you see reviews only from Google. But have you ever seen a review from Yandex on Google?

Google is testing a new design for its search results that are more of a grid format, more of a boxed in design. They are not on all the search results elements but more of the search features.

Google has this feature in its search results that lets you find results based on the images you've view within Google Image Search. It places this button in the search results that reads, "Find results based on images you've viewed" with a link to "more like these."

Google is testing spelling out the search menu and instead of saying "All," Google is testing writing out "All results." I am not sure why Google is testing this, but Google is always testing these small changes.

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

Google's John Mueller said that there is no persistent shortcut to faster crawling. Yes, you can expedite crawling for specific situations and times, but there is no way to just tell Google you want them to crawl you faster, all the time.

Google Search is testing a new section in the search results titled or named "Background." This includes articles from news publishers, with I guess, more background information than you would find from others.