Industry News

Yesterday we reported that despite Google saying they would shutdown and redirect the Google Business Profile websites on March 1st - they were still working. Well, as of this morning, March 5, 2024, these websites no longer work.

Google has updated the Google StoreBot user agent to use a placeholder version of Chrome. So instead of it using a specific Chrome version, it now can use a dynamic version of the Chrome version.

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 Business Profile websites are still working...

Here is the big Google Webmaster report for March 2024 and this past month was pretty calm relative to previous months. We had three unconfirmed Google ranking updates in February and zero confirmed ones - with Google again telling us search quality improvements are coming...

Google Ads announced it will automatically pause inactive ad groups. Google will pause ad groups created at least 13 months ago and have not had impressions in the past 13 months.

In January, Google told us that the Google Business Profiles websites will stop working on March 1, 2024. Google said the URLs will redirect from the website to the Google Business Profile listing for a couple of months and then eventually stop working altogether. Well, March 1st came and went and the Google Business Profiles websites still work.

Google may roll out a new verification process for its Local Service Ads program. Supposedly this verification process will reduce spam within the LSA program and lead to legit businesses having an easier time getting exposure in this space.

On Friday Google quietly released version 2.6 of the Google Ads Editor. This new version comes about four months after the previous version, version 2.5 of Google Ads Editor, was released.

Big +1 from me on James Whatley’s thoughts on leadership in the latest edition of his Five things on a Friday newsletter:

Demonstrating that you as a leader are imperfect, that you get things wrong; that you are fallible—and doing so in a way that shows that it’s safe to open up and be vulnerable—enables and creates the feeling of psychological safety. You’re saying “I, the person who is meant to be leading this team, can be vulnerable therefore this place, this team, that we all work...

I think this is a really insightful comment (LinkedIn) by Ben Erez about the realities of being a PM in a sales-led organization. It’s worth reading his whole argument because it’s definitely a spicy take. But the crux of it is that sales-led organizations cannot function with empowered product teams (I think everyone who reads this blog knows what I mean by that, but just in case, here’s a refresher).

Here’s a key part of Ben’s argument, and the really spicy part:

I think sales-led...