Industry News

Google has expanded AI Mode to 180 countries, up from being available in the US, UK and India. Google also announced new agentic capabilities and personalized responses, and a new way to share AI Mode responses.

A month ago, Google announced the Google Trends API and allowed folks to apply to gain access to the API as an alpha release. Google then told us that SEOs should not expect to be part of the first group of applicants accepted. Well, now Google is saying they will begin going through those applications and onboard the "very small" number of those they approve "around mid-September."

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

Google Ads seems to be rolling out full placement reporting for the Search Partner Network (SPN). This is a feature advertisers have been begging and praying for, for probably 20 years now. You will be able to see exactly where your ads are appearing on with a list of all SPN sites your campaigns served on, along with impression data for each site.

Google seems to have launched a more toned down version of the clippable coupons within the search result snippets. Now it just says "copy code" next to the percentage off, at the bottom of the search result snippet.

Google will be updating the Google Ads Child Sexual Abuse Imagery policy (CSAI)on October 22, 2025. The update will "improve clarity and transparency," according to Google.

A new tool from Tim Souo and Ahrefs at chatgpt-vs-google.com aims to show the growth rate of ChatGPT's referral traffic compared to Google Search. Tim said the chart shows that OpenAI's ChatGPT "doesn't seem enough to catch up with Google anytime soon, given their respective traffic shares."

Microsoft has updated the Bing Search Copilot AI answer design to move the sources section under a "read more" tab, which I assume Microsoft is testing to see if it drives more or fewer clicks to publishers.

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

Google AI Overviews has this feature where you can select the text in the AI Overview and an overlay with explain this, related images and copy text (sometimes other features) overlay as buttons for you to do more with. Google even tested keyboard shortcuts for it. But now Google is testing this in a bottom tray design.