Industry News

Google emailed advertisers who are leveraging message leads within Google Local Service Ads telling them about the new value-based pricing. Basically, when a seacher uses the "Request multiple opinions" within local results, those leads may result now in higher discounts than the previous 50% discount you would get on those messages.

Microsoft is testing placing site favicons at the top of the Bing search results page that when clicked on, anchor you down to the specific search result on the page. This is a test, it does not always show up, but I was able to replicate this in one of my browsers.

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 is not killing off schema...

Microsoft is now requiring all third-party publishers to have Microsoft Clarity in order to be paid out for impressions and clicks from Microsoft Advertising.

A month ago, we reported Google added a new form to report negative review extortion scams on your Google Business Profiles and local listings. Google also listed some tips on how to handle these extortion attempts. But I am glad to report that some local SEOs are saying this form is working and those extortion reviews are being removed by Google.

Google's John Mueller confirmed that Google is not killing off all forms of schema and structured data support for Google Search. The question came up in a Reddit thread after Google's announcement about more structured data support and search features going away.

There are reports that Google is showing more free product listings from Google Merchant Center in the Google AI Overview responses. I am told there are two variations of this AI Overview response: one where the favicon and price appear as an overlay, and another where the free listings look more like a map pack.

Google Ads is now showing summaries of your budget settings in the budget and bidding optimization setting. This will summarize what your settings are configured for, at a glance.

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.

Late last week, into this weekend...

Microsoft announced on Friday afternoon that Copilot now has its own dedicated search experience. Plus, because Microsoft knows how important publishers are to the ecosystem, it is making citations and links way more prominent and clickable.