Industry News

Google added a new section to the "Understand available performance metrics" within the Google Business Profiles help documentation. The new section added a section on offer data and it shows the number of times customers viewed and clicked on offers on your Business Profile.

On March 17, 2026, Google retired some of its Google Ads policies on Ad format requirements. These are specific to "old ad formats that are no longer in use are also being retired," Ginny Marvin of Google.

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

Google was asked if Personal Intelligence in AI Mode will come to paid accounts across the world (not just the US - where it has hit non-paid accounts). Google replied... (Now is the point where you click on the article...)

Google is testing changing out some of the links within AI Mode to show as overlay cards, instead of take you directly to the website it is mentioning. This obviously will result in fewer direct clicks to those websites.

Google is testing encouraging business owners to reply to reviews using AI. There is a new option in the Google Business Profile dashboard that is showing for some businesses that says "Reply to reviews with AI."

In February, Bing rolled out new AI Performance reports within Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing announced a new feature for this report that connects the Grounding Queries and Pages views within the AI Performance report.

Apple is reportedly launching local ads within Apple Maps, as soon as this month. "Apple Inc. is preparing to introduce advertising in its Maps app, part of a broader push to generate more money from services," Bloomberg wrote.

Tracy Durnell explores non-visual negative space—what happens when writing leaves room for the reader to think:

The current design trend of business and self-help style books is to use tons of subheadings and callout boxes and always, a list of the key points at the end of the chapter. While this is a highly skimmable format and often nice visual design, it essentially sucks the negative space out of the text — the places in which the reader might step back and consider their own...

Simon Willison has a practical guide on manual testing with coding agents. Two tips I’ve already started using:

It’s still quick for an agent to write out a demo file and then compile and run it. I sometimes encourage it to use /tmp purely to avoid those files being accidentally committed to the repository later on.

And:

If an agent finds something that doesn’t work through their manual testing, I like to tell them to fix it with red/green TDD. This ensures the new case ends up...