Industry News

Krystal Taing, a Google local product expert in the Google Business Profiles forum and Vice President at Uberall, said she is seeing a rise in re-verifications from Google Business Profiles even after just making small changes or additions to your Google Business Profile.

Google is testing adding a new section named "About this place" to the local panel in the Google Business Profile listings within Google Search and Google Maps. This section shows you text and image reviews of this place in a stacked card format.

Microsoft is testing adding more details to the short video carousel it shows in Bing Search. Now it is showing video length, descriptions, a swipe to see more and other changes.

Google seemed to have removed/deleted a ton of reviews from Google Business Profiles within Google Maps and Local search last week, around September 17th. This came a day or so before Google updated its Google Business Profiles review restrictions policy.

Google has this setting some searchers can manage that lets them turn on or off seeing content in a language that is popular in their region. The searcher can either leave the content language suggestion on or turn it off.

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

Google Search still has not calmed its ranking shifts, volatility and movement. The search results remain incredibly volatile with rankings and traffic changing again in a big way over the past day or so. I know I sound like a broken record but even some of the tools are adjusting their volatility thresholds to counter the new higher volatility in the search results.

Google has refreshed and updated its web search policies documentation. The big change is Google added more language around the site reputation abuse policy, while expanding, simplifying and clarifying other sections of its search policies.

Google AI Overviews generally do not show up for branded or navigational queries. So if you are searching for a brand or company, generally, Google has not shown an AI Overview.

Google now can show movies you recently viewed as an "activity card." I am not sure if this is based on a movie you actually went to see in the theatres, watched online or just based on you clicking on movie listings within Google Search.