Industry News

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

This week in search, we gave a status update on the Google May 2026 core update. Google strongly warned against buying mentions for AI or manipulating mentions for AI. Google removed the indexing lag between....

Google Ads has expanded New Customer Acquisition with a new feature called Prospect Mode. Prospect mode also targets brand-unaware users, Google said. Those prospects who have not searched for, engaged with, or visited your site. Some call them cold prospects.

John Mueller from Google said that the Google Search Quality Raters guidelines are not a guide for search rankings. Meaning, the content in those guidelines is not a blueprint on how to rank your website in Google Search.

Over a year ago, we saw Google testing a "First order" label on shopping ads within search. Now, we are seeing Google test a variation of that named "1st order price" on those same ads. It basically tells the customer that if this is their first order with this retailer, it is a special discounted price.

Google is testing short URLs with @handles for the Google Discover publisher profile pages. Instead of those long URLs that go on forever, Google is testing a format that uses the publisher's handle.

Microsoft Bing is testing a new style of sitelinks for the search ads. These sitelinks differ in that they are narrower, use a smaller font, have a border and when you hover over them, they change from a blue font to a bold black font.

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 AI Mode and AI Overviews gain preferred sources...

Google is officially rolling out preferred source labels within AI Mode and AI Overviews and adding a new carousel to AI Mode and AI Overviews, as well. Plus, Google said the highly cited label is expanding to more search results (which is not specific to AI Mode and AI Overviews).

Gary Illyes from Google reportedly said at the Search Central Live Shanghai 2026 event on May 15th that he and Google strongly warns against buying or manipulating mentions brand mentions to try to show up in the AI responses, AI Overviews and AI Mode.