Industry News

Google is testing a new ad label and interface that really make the ads way more noticeable in the Google Search results. The ad label still is a black sponsored label, but Google is testing it on a tall gray background, with subtitles like "promoted products" and "promoted results."

In March, Google announced a new verification process for its Local Service Ads program. Well, now, Google has started to email advertisers that need to take the steps to verify their advertising accounts.

Microsoft is testing adding the source of the reviews in the Bing Search local pack, instead of showing review stars. So if the Bing Search local pack is showing reviews from Yelp, it would show the Yelp logo, and if it is showing them from Facebook, it would show the Facebook logo.

Google is expanding AdSense's Auto ads to support French, Spanish, and Japanese languages. Previously, Auto ads were worked for English and German languages only.

Google Search now supports specifying where (which regions) a video is not allowed to be viewed in its video structured data and video SEO documentation. A new ineligibleRegion property was added to the Google video structured data documentation.

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.

Apple Visual Intelligence is Apple's version of Google Lens but it uses Google, ChatGPT...

Apple had its big event yesterday, and during the iPhone talk, they announced Apple Visual Intelligence. Where you can take photos of anything, and it will use Apple Intelligence for local search, shopping, homework help, and more.

Microsoft is testing, showing a notice at the bottom of the Bing search results that says, "Search by typing anything on the keyboard." This happens when you reach the footer of the Bing Search results. When you start typing, your characters appear in the search box for a new Bing Search session.

Google is bringing back shopping and product results in the AI Overviews for commercial queries. I'll be honest, I don't remember them going away but I am told they have now returned. Maybe they went away with the Ray update, when Google restricted how often AI Overviews showed.

A new Google AI Overview study says that about half of the links displayed in the AI Overviews overlap with the links shown in the traditional Google Search results. Plus, the most linked to sources are YouTube and Wikipedia, according to the new report.