Industry News

Google launched Search Profiles late last week, a way for creators and publishers to have a place on Google to highlight its content and platforms. And Google seems to be testing a new Insights section for Search profiles, where you can see how searchers are interacting with your Search profiles on Google.

Microsoft Bing announced a new way to disable the Copilot, Microsoft AI, responses from showing up in the Bing search results. There is a new browser extension available for Chrome and Edge that you can install to toggle off showing AI responses, or you can just add -ai to the end of your query.

Google has confirmed that the search company has no plans on making AI Mode the default search experience within Google Chrome. This comes after Chrome Canary added a new experimental flag that redirected searches from the address bar directly to AI Mode. According to Rajan Patel, a Google VP, that was an error.

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

This week, I recorded from Boston - sorry for the appearance. We covered the Google May 2026 core update rolling out. Google Search Console released to a few new AI performance reports and new AI controls. Bing...

After tons and tons of testing and tweaking, Google is officially announcing what it calls Search profiles and what I called Discover publisher pages. Google said Search profiles provide "a central place to showcase their latest articles, videos and social posts."

Microsoft emailed advertisers notifying them that Microsoft Advertising will update UTM auto-tagging beginning on September 2, 2026. Microsoft added that no action is required on your part, as the updated tags will be applied automatically.

Google will soon allow you to connect your Google Business Profile with Google Analytics. Google sent out an email to some businesses saying this is coming soon, within the next "few weeks."

With the rise of Google Ads accounts being hijacked, Google has updated its Account security and safety help document with more details on passkeys and the security agent feature. This is in addition to a number of changes Google made recently around ad account security.

About five months ago (I missed it), Google began asking searchers if the business location they are visited offers rewards in exchange for reviews. The prompt that comes up in the app asks, "Does this business offer rewards in exchange for reviews?"