Industry News

Google is losing one of its main sources of information for its Knowledge Graph, the CIA World Factbook. This was a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency between 1962 and 2026 with almanac-style information about the countries of the world.

There is a bug impacting a number of Google AdSense publishers where the anchor and vignette ads won't close for users. This has been an issue since February 13th and Google is reportedly working on a fix for the issue.

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

A few weeks ago, we reported Google was exploring ways to allow sites to opt out of showing up in Google's AI features, like AI Mode and AI Overviews. Google's Sulina Connal said at the FT Strategies News in the Digital Age conference that this is a "huge engineering project."

There is a new Google Ads help document named About the Results tab in Google Ads Recommendations. It explains that in the Results tab, you can now view the performance impact after you apply them.

Google AI Mode has this feature where you can ask about a specific product, it is called "Ask about." Now when you hover over a product, the "Ask about" will overlay so you can more easily trigger the feature.

Google seems to be testing links in AI Overviews, that link to more AI Overview responses. These recipe AI Overviews linked to entities that then load a hybrid knowledge panel with an AI Overviews.

Did you know that the Google AI Overviews link citation paperclip icons are blue before you click to see more of the overviews and then after you click on them, that icon turns to a gray color.

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

There is some new data out that shows that yes, Google's AI Overviews are causing a huge decline in clicks to websites organically but it is also showing that for e-commerce queries, there is a massive increase in clicks on search ads and product/shopping ads.