Industry News

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 called the new Search Console impressions dip...

A week ago, Google posted a new job named Senior Engineering Analyst, Search, Anti-scraper and within the week it has already been closed out. The LinkedIn page says 49 people applied (through LinkedIn) - so it is weird to me Google closed it so quickly.

John Mueller from Google somewhat/kinda made a comment, finally on the impression decreasing with the average position increasing within the Search Console reports. This came after Google dropped the 100 results per page function, resulting in the third-party tools totally becoming a mess.

Previously, we noted a Google AI Mode feature to be able to compare items by checking them off, both for products and local results. Well, Google now has this dialog demonstrating how it works and it is titled "Ask about any item."

Google "announced" the store widget on its Search Central blog but the weird thing to me is that this store widget is not new, it has been around at least since last year, but is now being re-announced. The feature lets you embed a Google Store rating widget or generic store widget on your website, to drive confidence for your shoppers.

Google has made it official and announced updates to Google Discover. That follow feature we covered a few weeks ago is now rolling out officially to all and Google confirmed it is showing more creator content from X, Instagram and YouTube Shorts within your Discover feed.

Google is testing placing AI-generated search result snippet summaries. Under each Google search result, there is a thing bar, followed by the Gemini logo and then a short AI-generated summary of the page.

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

Google announced that the old Search Console achievements you would get in those emails for the past few years, well, now there is a dedicated report you can access in Search Console.

Did you know Google Search uses some sort of question fringe score? It is part of the Google search data leak from a year ago, but it seems no one spotted it. It is under the name question_fringe_score.