Industry News

Microsoft released Copilot Pro, a premium paid version of its Copilot service, formerly known as Bing Chat. But that doesn't mean Bing Search or Bing Chat is getting worse, Bing will stay the same, said Mikhail Parakhin from Microsoft.

Google Ads is either beta testing or slowly releasing a feature to let you add three campaign-level headlines and two campaign-level descriptions. You can also schedule the headlines and descriptions to run at certain times or stick them on specific positions.

Google is testing showing one more product in the product grid layout. Google is testing showing five products across, instead of four products across.

Google has this timeline view for some knowledge panels in the mobile search interface. It seems related to the notable moments card we saw years ago, but this is in a timeline view.

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

I love Paul Taylor’s perspective in Fix The System Problem, Not The People Problem. He points out that many managers look first at the people structure of an organization when it is struggling:

People often resort to blaming individuals rather than acknowledging systemic issues due to a psychological inclination for self-preservation. Additionally, societal and organizational cultures may emphasize individual accountability, discouraging a systemic analysis. Almost ALL of the leadership...

We just got back from an incredible 2.5 weeks in South Africa. I have a lot of processing to do… but what I will say for now is that the sunsets in Africa are still the best in the world. Don’t @ me, it’s just science.

Also, here’s a Spotify playlist of chill South African jams that I think you will enjoy. Give it a try!

It took me many years to rid myself of the commonly-held belief that Sales is the “enemy” of Product. Here’s a good reminder that (good) Sales teams are our allies:

Contrary to stereotypes, only part of sales actually involves convincing a customer to buy your product. The person selling your product spends a very large amount of time helping customers successfully navigate their own complex organizations, and purchase a product that they already want (yours).

I’ve always said that when I grow up I want to write like Paul Ford. Well, I’m all grown up now. I still don’t write like Paul Ford, and he still writes absolute gems like To Own the Future, Read Shakespeare—in my opinion the final word on the value of the humanities:

A programmer sneers at the white space in Python, a sociologist rolls their eyes at a geographer, a physicist stares at the ceiling while an undergraduate, high off internet forums, explains that Buddhism anticipated...

There has been a ton of chatter within the SEO community over the past couple of days related to extreme ranking volatility within the Google Search results. The Google tracking tools have also picked up the volatility over the past day or so. There is no way Google pushed out a confirmed update this week but hey, Google's search results live a life of their own.