Industry News

Google Ads has made the Campaign total budgets officially live as an open beta for any advertiser to sign up and use. Campaign total budgets are now available in Search, Performance Max and Shopping campaigns within Google Ads.

Google Ads has reportedly streamlined the selection capability of Manual CPC bidding during the campaign setup. Now the option can be found under the "Conversions" goal, labeled as "Manually set bids."

Google Ads is doing a limited test with some advertisers to allow them to run A/B tests with different product titles and images in Shopping Ads. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, said it is "currently being tested with a small number of merchants."

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

Google is rolling out what it calls "Personal Intelligence" in the Gemini app and it will soon also come to Google Search within AI Mode. Google announced that Personal Intelligence in Gemini "connects Gmail, Photos, YouTube and Search in a single tap."

Earlier this week, Google announced Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and it has a lot of the industry worried. Once SEO named Ramon Eijkemans said, "I hate to bring this, but SEOs: we're gonna be f$@*ed." John Mueller from Google responded on Bluesky and said, "I disagree."

While a number of Google Search features are impacted by Google's core update, favicons showing up or not is not one of them. Yes, your site can drop in the rankings, or not show up in Google Discover, or be removed from Top Stories and other features but favicons are not impacted by core updates.

We have seen ads in AI Mode before but there may be a new Google Ads format coming to AI Mode results, not the just the Direct Offer ads, but Explore guides and article ads.

Google has added Gemini to the Google Trends Explore page to help you find new and fresh search terms. It will also compare those search terms automatically for you, all in a new design. This is rolling out now, but you might not see it just yet.

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