Industry News

A bunch of local SEOs are buzzing about a possible new local SEO Google ranking factor and are looking to confirm it. Darren Shaw posted on X that while setting the service area historically had no influence on your Google local rankings, that may now have changed.

Google AdSense planned on changing the minimum reporting thresholds for Custom Channels and Search Styles to 100 clicks per day on May 15th. But Google sent an email to AdSense publishers that it will not make those changes.

There are many searchers who have been using Google daily that are heading to the Google Web Search Help forums to ask how they can turn off the new AI Overviews within the Google Search results. As you know, AI Overviews started to roll out on Tuesday and some searchers simply do not want it.

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 AI Overviews (formerly SGE) is officially live in the US search results...

Google, as expected, has officially launched AI Overviews in the US and will expand the launch to other countries by the end of this year. AI Overviews were in Search Labs under the Search Generative Experience last year and has finally launched.

Google not only announced that AI Overviews are rolling out in the US this week but a number of new AI based search features coming out later in Google Search and in Google Search Labs. These features include the ability to adjust AI Overviews, muti-stepping reasoning, planning, AI-organized search results and Lens search with video.

In February, we caught Google testing a new search filter named "Web Results." Well, last night it went live under the name "Web." You can now filter search results to only show text links and weed out all the videos, images, and other non-text links.

Bloomberg reports that Google has downgraded/lowered the search rankings of Deepfake porn sites. Bloomberg wrote, The company is lowering such content in search rankings, a spokesperson said, adding Google is "continuing to decrease the visibility of involuntary synthetic pornography in search and develop more safeguards as this space evolves."

Google may be showing more review stars in the mobile search results, according to some reports. RankRanger six-point lift in how often review stars are showing in mobile search, while is also showing a lift but more modest lift.

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 I/O was today...