Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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

Google’s Robby Stein reiterated that Google’s AI experience, such as AI Mode and AI Overviews, integrates Google’s core search signals. This helps Google provide more useful and helpful responses to…

In a rare Sunday launch, Google announced new AI Mode ads named Direct Offers. Google also announced branded AI agents and a new open standard for agentic commerce it calls…

Google Ads has a new experiment feature for Performance Max campaigns that lets you A/B-test assets. This allows you to compare the performance of 2 different sets of assets within…

Google announced new Business Agents, branded AI Agents, a “new way for shoppers to chat with brands, right on Search,” Google said. “It’s like a virtual sales associate that can…

Google Ads seems to be slowly rolling out a new Google Ads experimental feature in the Google Ads Lab section named Brand Linking. Brand linking lets you “Link customers to…

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

This week, yep, we had another story on Google Search ranking volatility. I posted the Google webmaster report for January 2026. Google Discover seems to be showing too many…

Google’s Danny Sullivan and John Mueller spoke on the Search Off the Record podcast about whether hiring an AEO/GEO or buying an AI-optimization tool is any different than hiring an…

Google’s Danny Sullivan said on the Search Off the Record podcast that was published yesterday that Google does not want you to turn your content into bite-sized chunks to rank…

Microsoft announced its AI-agents agentic experiences under the names of Copilot Checkout and Brand Agents. Copilot Checkout lets you shop and checkout directly in the Copilot chat experience and Brand…

In September, we posted about a number of local pack design tests from Microsoft Bing. But now, Bing might be testing a more retro, older-looking interface for the local pack…

Navah Hopkins, the Microsoft Ads Liaison, posted a reminder on LinkedIn, encouraging advertisers to ensure the email settings are all configured properly. You can get monthly invoices, billing alerts, account…

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

Microsoft is hiring a “very” Senior Product Manager who will initially work on fighting spam across Bing and Copilot. Fabrice Canel said this is a “very” senior PM role and…

Greg Gifford, a veteran automotive and local SEO, published a hard warning to vendors suggesting that they tell automotive dealerships to set up separate Google Business Profile department listings for…

John Mueller, a Google Search Analyst, responded to a question on Reddit named Is SEO still enough, or do we need to start thinking about GEO too? In short, John…

Adam Wathan the creator of Tailwind CSS posted that he had to let go of 75% of his engineering team because of AI. He said traffic to the Tailwind help…

Google seems to be testing showing call assets on Vehicle Ads within Google Search. So on the Vehicle Ads there is a way to call the dealer or seller, like…

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

There are a number of SEOs and site owners complaining that they saw a large drop in Google Search rankings yesterday, January 6, 2026. This unconfirmed Google update does not…

Google will update how it handles multi-channel products, products sold both online and locally in the store, to help with managing inventory. Google emailed merchants that this applies to and…

Microsoft is testing a much larger “Ask Copilot” button on the Bing home page. Normally, Bing only has a small Copilot logo on the right of the search box but…

Google’s Robby Stein confirmed (again) that Google is personalizing some of the AI experiences, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. He said this on the CNN, Terms of Service podcast…

Google is hiring a Chief of Staff on Search Intelligence, Strategy and Operations. This job is to “help architect the next era of Search with AI,” Rajan Patel, the Vice…

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

Google posted a new job listing looking to hire a new Senior Software Engineer, Search, AI Answers Quality. The job post says “Help the AI Answers Quality team deliver AI…

A month ago, Google added LLMs.txt files to many of its developer and documentation sites including the Search developer docs. As you know, Google pulled it off the Search developer…

Microsoft Bing is testing a new home page design where it promotes its AI-powered search and answer engine, Copilot. It seems to be a limited test and is not fully…

Last November, Google announced it was dropping support for a number of structured data types and search features. One of those was practice problem structured data types, and now, Google…

Google Ads will update its advertising policies to allow ads for Prediction Markets starting on January 21, 2026. This will be allowed in the United States, but only for federally…

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 Discover seems…

It is January 2026, and it is now time for the monthly Google Webmaster report, where I recap the most important Google organic stories of the past month. Obviously, the…

Google has been showing social media posts in Google Discover, including posts from X for a while now, and Google may even show more posts from those you follow. But…

Google is working on fixing an issue where some searchers are seeing squished images within the Google Search knowledge panels. I personally cannot replicate this but it seems to be…

Google Search Console’s link report seems to be either missing data or is now showing fewer links. I suspect it is a bug but I also don’t think Google spends…

Google added a new button to the Google Ads Change history report that lets advertisers quickly jump to different campaigns and ad groups in this report. It should be a…

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

Google completed the December 2025 core update this week and it hit some news publishers incredibly hard. I posted the annual Google algorithm update infographic. Google’s Frankenstein AI-recipes are a…

Now that the December 2025 core update is officially done, some are looking at the damage it caused. A number of very visible news publishers saw some significant declines in…

For the past several years now, John Mueller of Google would come out with what he calls the “Mueller Report of SEO memes.” Well, here is his 2025 edition of…

Google is testing a blue “Send” button in the search query box on its home page. When you type in your query, you can click “Send” to search Google for…

Google has been saying that 404 error codes are a normal part of the web, that 404s are not a low quality signal and that they don’t use up your…

John Mueller, who works on the Google Search team, responded to a question that asks, “Does extensive Schema markup actually help Large Language Models (LLMs) understand your entity better, or…

Just like with Christmas day every year, so to with New Year’s Day – Google’s John Mueller and often other Googlers, are out and looking to respond to some questions…

This is weird. It is 2026, and Google.com, the Google Search home page, is still showing yesterday’s New Year’s Eve doodle of 2025 going into 2026. But it is after…

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 Business Profiles…

Google has rolled out fewer confirmed search ranking updates in 2025, then it did in all the past years where Google confirmed these updates. Google rolled out only four confirmed…

Several months ago, back in March, Google added a screen to request reviews by sharing a link or QR code with your customers. Now, it seems Google has added a…

The Search terms report within Google Ads has this quick dropdown filter that lets you filter by search terms, search terms and landing pages from AI Max, search terms from…

The Search Engine Roundtable is made up of what you, the search community, are talking about. What are you, the search community, noticing in the search results, whether it be…

Here are the most popular articles on the Search Engine Roundtable by number of comments. In other words, these are the articles with the highest number of comments posted in…

Google has posted the New Year’s Eve Doodle and New Year’s Day Doodle on the Google.com home page for when it is New Year’s Eve for you and New Year’s…

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. The Google December…

Adam and Joanne Gallagher from the food recipe blog, Inspired Taste, has been documenting a lot of really painful and shameful tactics Google is using for its AI responses to…

Microsoft Bing is testing loading more people also ask options as you click on them. This is something Google has done for a long time now, but now when you…

Google Search is showing a carousel in the merchant / retailer panel that lets you scroll through the merchant’s delivery, return and payment options. This information has been in the…

Google has removed the visit website button from the first screen of the Google Maps hotel results. Instead, you first need to click on the “Check availability” to get to…

Microsoft made a small update to the Microsoft Advertising console where there is now an “All accounts” tab. This lets you see all your accounts in one place with quick…

Google’s December 2025 core update is now done rolling out, it took 18 days and 2 hours to complete. The core update started on December 11, 2025 at around 12:25…

I am sad to report the passing of Andy Drinkwater, a super-experienced SEO and a friend to the search marketing industry. Andy was a UK-based SEO who loved educating his…

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 questions the…

Google’s John Mueller posted one of his one-liners, where he called some forms of SEO content as “digital mulch.” He wrote, “And let’s be honest’”most of that SEO content is…

Microsoft has added the ability to add custom columns to the Microsoft Advertising user interface and advertising console. But it doesn’t offer every metric, including missing the segment by conversion…

Google is testing an option to read aloud the AI Overviews by clicking on a speaker icon at the top of the AI Overview within Google Search. And the crazy…

Google is testing swapping out the Gemini button at the top right of the Chrome browser, with a “Browse with AI” button. The button is more colorful and in your…

Google’s John Mueller questioned the need for all websites to use ccTLDs, different domain names, to take their websites international. He said on Reddit, “you both make things harder on…

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

This week in search, we covered an update on the Google December 2025 core update. Google Search traffic to news publishers continues to vanish, but there is Google Discover. A…

A report from The Information outlined a number of avenues OpenAI is looking at for ad formats in ChatGPT. The main one that is reportedly being thrown around at the…

Google has been publishing these videos from advertisers on the number one Google Ads launches of the year 2025. Bug Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, was asked and she…

Google is testing placing the search results in the center of the screen, instead of aligning it more to the left of the screen. This is an ongoing test we…

Google’s John Mueller said on Reddit that when picking a site name, make sure to pick something that you can reasonably expect to rank for. In short, don’t go online…

Navah Hopkins, the Ads Liaison for Microsoft Advertising, made it crystal clear that exact match is prioritized even over Ad Rank. Navah Hopkins wrote on X and LinkedIn, “Exact match…

Every year, for the past 18 or so years, Google’s John Mueller has been working on Christmas to provide support to those who need help with their Google Search ranking…

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

Earlier this year, Google lowered the size of your data segment customer lists to 100 active visitors for the Google Display Network. Now, Google updated that to also be 100…

Google has confirmed there is a bug with Google Ads dynamic remarketing tracking where the data is not flowing into the reporting. Adesh, from the Google team, responded that the…

For the past 15 or so years, Google would post holiday-specific decorations at the top of its search results for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. Well, this year Google did not….

Fabrice Canel and Krishna Madhavan from the Microsoft Bing team posted a useful blog post named Does Duplicate Content Hurt SEO and AI Search Visibility? The short answer is yes,…

Google is testing pushing advertisers to use Google Ads Advisor from within the Google Ads reporting section. Google Ads suggested questions and prompts at the top of the report, which…

Microsoft is testing a “more sources” section within the Bing Search results. This seems to load a different user interface, with long card-shaped search results that you can slide through…

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

Some Google Ads MCC, Manager Accounts, are seeing channel performance reporting. This does not seem to have been rolled out to all advertisers yet, but Mike Ryan noticed it was…

Google Ads added a new channel control for Demand Gen to show ads in Google Maps. Some advertisers see the ability to select Maps as a placement in Demand Gen.

Google Search has been sending 25 percentage points less traffic to news publishers over the past two years, according to the folks over at Newzdash. In 2023, Google Web Search…

Google is testing prefilling the search bar in a new Chrome tab, with teasers to encourage you to search deeper with AI Mode. Google is putting in the search box,…

Have you seen those Google Discover notifications that pop up and seem like news notifications from the Google app but what they do is drive you into Google AI Mode….

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. We had big…

Google is testing appending “learn more” links to the end of the Google search ads text. So the Google Ad will have its normal ad description and at the end,…

GMBapi posted data that looks at tens of thousands of Google Business Profiles across multiple countries and showed that review deletions have increased significantly over the year, compared to previous…

Google quietly updated its AI Overviews ad documentation to say that ads in AI Overviews are supported in Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore,…

Anish Kattukaran, CPO at Google Home & Nest announced in the Google Gemini forums that Gemini will not be replacing Google Assistant by the end of 2025. He wrote, “We’re…

OpenAI has added local knowledge panels to the ChatGPT results. When you ask for local information and then click on a business name, ChatGPT will load a local knowledge panel…

As you all know, Google announced the Google December 2025 core update on Thursday afternoon, December 11th, we saw some significant volatility hit early on December 13th and then it…

On Friday, Google announced it had filed a lawsuit against SerpApi for scraping the Google search results. Google alleges that SerpApi is running an “unlawful” operation that bypasses Google’s security…

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

This week, we have a status update on the ongoing Google December 2025 core update. Google also said it does not pre-announce core updates or quality updates. Gemini 3 Flash…

Google reportedly has a bug that displays incorrect product reviews in Google Search for a retailer. It is now pulling from text on the page that includes the Google Business…

Google is testing a number of new sports-related search features within Google Search. These include a “What’s new” section, “Discover more” section, a Play-by-play section, What people are saying and…