Industry News

Typically, when Google highlights phrases in a featured snippet or AI Overview within Google Search, the highlighter color is blue. We've seen Google test other colors before, but here is a new one - a pink highlight.

Google has updated the Google Ads help document for About Maximize conversion value bidding with a number of changes. The change that stood out the most was Google lowering the conversion cycles requirement from three cycles to one or two conversion cycles.

Many of you may have woken up this morning to emails from Google Search Console notifying you of a new owner on your Search Console accounts. I received a couple, as did many of you. I was a bit alarmed when I saw it but the notifications were about someone who already had access, which I found weird but relieving.

Google has fixed two bugs this weekend related to Google Search. The first is the bug with many favicons not showing up in the Google Search result snippets. The second is the bug with two days of data missing from the Google Search Console crawl stats report.

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

The crawl stats report within Google Search Console has a data gap again. This time the crawl stats report is missing August 15 and 16th crawl data. Normally, Google can fix the data but Google has not yet fixed it.

Google has released its third spam update of the 2026 year, the August 2026 spam update this week and finished rolling out Friday morning at 4:50am. Google Search's AI Mode is now being powered sometimes by...

Google has updated the Preferred Sources button that publishers have on their websites to make it so that the user is taken right back to the page they were originally on. There is new embed code that handles this process to make it easier for users to go back to where they were and stay on your website.

Microsoft Advertising sent out emails yesterday announcing changes coming to Max CPC bidding. Microsoft wrote, "Max CPC will no longer be available when creating new non-portfolio campaigns" after October 1, 2026.

Google announced it is rolling out new experimentation and planning capabilities in Google Ads and AI Max. There are new A/B test capabilities, brand and location parameters options and new Performance Planner predictions.