Industry News

Bing added a new guideline to its Bing Webmaster Guidelines named Prompt Injection. A prompt injection is a type of cyberattack against large language models (LLMs). Hackers disguise malicious inputs as legitimate prompts, manipulating generative AI systems (GenAI) into leaking sensitive data, spreading misinformation, or worse, according to IBM.

On the heels of the completion of the June 2024 spam update this Thursday, June 27th, I am now seeing signs of an unconfirmed Google Search ranking algorithm update and volatility. It seems more heated than the week of this spam update rollout but less weak than you'd see with a Google core update.

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's June 2024 spam update is now completely rolled out...

This week, Google completed the rollout of the June 2024 spam update over a 7-day period. Google has dropped its continuous scroll interface for the search results. Google is testing placing link cards at the top of the AI...

Google has completed the rollout of the June 2024 spam update after a seven-day and one-hour period. This update started on June 20, 2024, and was completed on June 27, 2024. This was a broad spam update, not a link spam update, and it did not automate the site reputation abuse policy.

Elizabeth Tucker, Director, Product Management at Google Search was a guest on Google's Search Off the Record podcast where Lizzi Sassman and John Mueller of Google asked her about search quality, how Google measures it, and so much more. I will post my notes below but the two things that stood out to me are:

Google Product Studio, which is part of Google Merchant Center Next, now works in the UK, India, and Japan. Google also added file upload support to Product Studio and additional seasonal-themed templates.

Microsoft may now include AI generated content within the Bing Search people also ask sections. Bing is labeling some of the people also ask boxes with the disclaimer, "Includes Al generated content."

There is a new report out that says menu items and how busy you are during Google Maps popular times are both ranking factors and signals for Google's local ranking system. Claudia Tomina posted the details on her blog and told me she tested this across numerous businesses.

Google seems to be rolling out new WordPress specific conversion code for Google Ads. This seems like a Google Tag code with easier set up for WordPress sites.