Industry News

Google has a special easter egg in its search results for the upcoming solar eclipse. When you search for solar eclipse, you are shown a sun that gets covered by the move, in an animation, just like you'd see it if you were in the path of the solar eclipse.

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 may charge for some AI features in its search results...

A report from the Financial Times (subscription required) says that Google is considering charging for some of its AI-related search features, such as the Search Generative Experience (SGE) and AI overviews. This is likely because of the cost to serve AI search results and because the SGE interface would severely impact ad revenue.

Google has posted yet another reporting and data logging issue with Google Search Console. This one occurred between March 28, 2024 through April 2, 2024 and impacted reporting on AMP pages and Web Stories in Google Images. This was just a reporting issue and did not impact real traffic.

Google is testing a new format for search ads, the ads go in a slider or carousel that let you swipe through various ads, instead of scrolling past them. I kind of like this but I assume advertisers will not like it.

Google is testing showing a label on some search ads that reads "Related to your search." I am not sure why Google needs to label the search ads as being related to your search, I mean, I'd hope the search ads shown from your query is related to your search. But yet Google is testing the label.

Google's John Mueller for the umpteenth time said that sharing IP addresses and/or having your site on a shared server and/or using a CDN that does all of that, is fine for Google Search, SEO and ranking. In fact, he said it is "normal" for sites to do this.

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

Fabrice Canel, the Principal Product Manager at Microsoft Bing, said, "Bing usage extends beyond what many search engine optimizers (SEOs) may realize." He is basically saying that Bing Search is more important than most of us are giving them and maybe we should consider Bing more when it comes to investing in our efforts

Google is testing an arrow to toggle to the next local pack listing in the search results. This next button or toggle shows up after you click on an individual local listing in the Google Search results. Then you can click to the next one or swipe to the next one if you are on mobile.