Industry News

This week in search we covered more heated Google ranking volatility this morning, it seems big - so stay tuned. We also covered how Google spoke about how they try to isolate their AI systems because...

Many of the third-party tracking tools, not all, but many, are showing some heated volatility this morning around Google Search's ranking positions. I am also seeing some early chatter within the SEO industry about movement in their rankings. It is possible that there may have been an unconfirmed Google update in the past 24-hours or so.

Google Ads announced it is expanding both Smart Bidding Exploration and budget pacing. Smart Bidding Exploration beta for Performance Max with product feeds and Shopping campaigns will launch in few weeks and budget pacing in Search and Shopping campaigns is rolling out in the coming months.

Google proposed a number of changes to the EU in order to avoid fines from the European Union. One of those changes is around the site reputation abuse policy, which the EU watchdog said directly impacts a common and legitimate way for publishers to monetize their websites and content.

Google AdSense (and Ad Manager) will drop the browser back button trigger for vignette ads additional triggers due to the new Google search penalty for back button hijacking. Google AdSense will drop it on June 15, 2026, the day the search penalty goes into effect.

Google sent out emails to advertisers that starting July 15, 2026 the Google Ads system will require the use of passkeys for certain sensitive actions. This is likely due to the spike in Google Ads hijacks over the past year or so.

Microsoft Advertising custom columns now support all conversion metrics - instead of just specific conversion metrics. This gives advertisers more flexibility on tracking campaign performance.

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

Google announced five new ways in how it is improving linking to web pages from AI Mode and AI Overviews. Some of these we saw Google testing earlier, and I (we) were fans of these changes and I am glad to see Google officially roll them out.

The folks over at Microsoft Bing put together a blog post explaining the differences between indexing for Search versus indexing for Grounding (AI responses) and the differences. Krishna Madhavan, Knut Risvik, Meenaz Merchant from Microsoft wrote, "Indexing for grounded AI answers is not a reinvention of search '" it is a major evolution of it. Grounding commits to an answer."