Industry News

Google has updated its guide for optimizing for generative AI search help document to clarify that (1) LLMS.txt files don't help or hurt with search rankings and (2) AI files, markdown files, etc are not used in Google Search.

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 Ads released promotion mode beta...

Google Ads announced a number of updates and changes this morning including changes to bidding target optimization, expanding access to Smart Bidding Exploration and promotion mode beta rolling out. My biggest concern is with bidding target optimization, as Google said it will deliver more predictable performance campaigns with fixed spending limits.

Google is rolling out Information agents within Google Search AI Mode. Information agents was announced at Google I/O and is a search feature that you can pay for within Google AI Ultra subscription plans, allowing Google Search to perform tasks and seek out information for you, even when you are not actively using Google Search.

It looks like Google has removed the pagination feature within the Google Local Finder interface. When you scroll through the local business profiles, it keeps adding more and more but the pagination bar is no longer there. I suspect the pagination feature was removed and replaced with infinite scroll?

Google sent out an email notice to some advertisers saying, "Google will update its Limited Ad Serving policy to cover additional scenarios on Google Search." "Google may limit ad impressions from unqualified advertisers on searches that are more likely than others to result in negative ads experiences," Google explained.

There are reports of a bug with Google Business Profiles where using the feature to invite others with owner and/or manager access is not working. Supposedly, the invite emails are either not going out at all, or they are not being delivered; either way, it is making giving access to Google Business Profiles a bit of a hassle.

Google is showing a new label or extension on the Google Shopping product carousel named "Good price." Truth is, I am not sure if it is new, I mean, Google can show many different labels there but I've never seen "Good price" listed there before.

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 search ranking volatility has been superheated all week...

Google has finally fixed the link report within Google Search Console. It was broken for the past few weeks and all Google did back then was a temporary "fix" to revert the data to a previous state. But now that report is showing new, normal link data.