Industry News

Google has uploaded a new logo for Google Search Console. The logo looks like a variation of an analytics logo with a magnifying glass, with blue, green, yellow and a smidge of red in the logo.

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

Jordi Ribas, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Search and AI, posted a comparison of Microsoft's Copilot to Google's AI Mode on LinkedIn. He said, "They're both excellent AI search products but we're taking a different approach for some query segments."

Google is testing moving the "Ask" button to one of the main buttons on some Google local listings. I cannot replicate this but the Ask button in this example below comes right after the directions and start buttons, and before the call button.

Google Ads is letting some advertisers add negative keyword lists to their Performance Max campaigns. This is despite Google's very own help documentation specifically saying, "Negative keyword lists aren't available to use in your Performance Max campaigns."

After months of testing, it seems Google is rolling out a button for AI Mode directly in the search box on Google's home page - on Google.com. This seems like a big deal to me, and goes along with AI Mode being the first tab in the main search results.

Google Ads is adding a tips icon in the Optimization Score column within the Google Ads reporting. Clicking on the icon will bring up tips and recommendations that Google thinks will help improve your campaign optimization scores.

Google posted a new policy on Friday, July 18, 2025, that immediately prohibits advertising of Daily Fantasy Sports on Google Ads within California. This is based on a new law by the California attorney general that says daily fantasy is illegal in the state.

Don’t let the clickbait title put you off. Related to my link about AI killing jobs in tech, here Cal Newport produces some compelling “both sides” receipts about how AI is helping + hurting software development. His conclusions are solid:

My advice, for the moment: Tune out both the most heated and the most dismissive rhetoric. Focus on tangible changes in areas that you care about that really do seem connected to AI—read widely and ask people you trust about what they’re seeing....

I think we’ve all seen the internal Shopify memo on requiring teams to use AI. This is a great article on what happened next. I especially love the internal tools Shopify built to make adoption easier:

Employees can use the LLM proxy to build the workflows they need. They can select from different models, which are updated with the latest versions as soon as they’re released. There’s a collection of MCPs, and all it takes is asking the proxy (or another tool like Cursor) to access them....