Industry News

I am deeply sad to report that Alan Bleiweiss has passed away on August 22nd. Alan was a true friend to the search marketing industry; he always had a witty and funny response to make everyone smile, even during the most frustrating times. He cared deeply about the industry, the people within it and his friends and family.

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 won't be broken up, but they will have to share search data - it was a pretty big win for Google...

Google is testing a new top bar interface design for the search results page both in light and dark mode. The new design shades the top bar more, so it is more distinct to the search results section.

Did you know Google has a technology called FastSearch? No, not the one from the early 2000s, but its own Google FastSearch. Google said FastSearch is faster than Google Search, its main search results technology.

Google Ads has added new customization options for some of the graphing, charting and reporting. This change gives you "Conversion Delay," "Performance Anomaly Insights," and "Notes," and is enabled with adjusted notification icons.

Google has updated its Google Business Profiles links policies & guidelines. Google added new sections for dedicated landing pages, direct action completion, social media sites and a new business links crawability policy.

Google is testing new direction buttons in the local pack within the Google Search results. Normally, we see a "Directions" button, but now Google is testing "Map it," "Map," "Route," "Go," and "Get there," and maybe more.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled on the remedies for Google being declared a monopoly. In short, Google won't be broken up (will keep Chrome, Android and Ads), it will have to share search data and it is barred from making exclusive search deals.

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

We finally had a confirmed Google Search update this past month, the August 2025 spam update, which seems pretty intense and it is not done rolling out yet.