Industry News

Google seems to be adding a "menu" button to the Google Business Profiles, the local panels, in the web search results. I think Google has tested this one and off over the years, but as Marcin Karwowski noted, it seems to be rolling out now to some businesses.

Google has begun rolling out a new privacy and messaging feature for AdSense ads in some US states. This is to comply with California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and Utah privacy laws. The feature allows the site to communicate to the user about opting out of the sale or sharing of their personal information.

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 reports with # signs in them are not related to canonicalization in Google Search...

There is a lot of talk in the wider SEO community around pound signs, #, in the Google Search Console reports, meaning something about canonicalization. John Mueller from Google, along with a number of SEOs, said it has nothing to do with canonicalization. Instead, it has to do with Google tracking on-page sitelinks from the Google Search results.

Google has added an "edit" and "post" button more prominently as big buttons to Google Business Profiles within the Google Maps interface. Previously, these buttons were not as accessible in the Google Maps interface.

Google's John Mueller said in the last SEO Google Office Hours video that Google's "search results are not an indication of what Google's systems consider to be the original source." This means that just because Google ranks a piece of content, it does not necessarily mean that the content is the original source.

Did you ever sort the Bing Webmaster Tools clickthrough-rate column from highest to lowest and notice that you can see a CTR higher than 100%, I even see 300%. Well, Fabrice Canel from Microsoft said this is possible when a searcher clicks on your listing more than once from the same search result set.

Google is testing another variation of its sitelinks design, this one uses black font colors for the sitelinks. Of course, Google generally uses blue for those links, because links are generally in blue underlined font.

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

Google launched AI overviews in the SERPs in the United States officially on May 14th at I/O. This follows the launch of Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE) in May of 2023...