Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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

Google Ads may be introducing a new bidding type named Journey Aware bidding in 2026. This will be reportedly for search campaigns using Target CPA.

There have been several complaints over the past week about Google showing searchers its old Google Search design. Some of those search results seem to lead to a broken interface,…

Google added a carousel to the top of the image tab within some Google Search apps, I think it might be a test. The carousel lets you scroll through some…

We know Google has been using machine learning and more recently, AI, to generate search result snippets descriptions. Well, here is an example of Google getting a snippet not just…

Google Ads top combinations report now has a Top Combinations option for PMax campaigns. This report should be able to quickly show you your top performing assets including logos, headlines,…

Google seems to be rolling out the annotations feature within Google Search Console’s performance reports. This was a feature Google began testing in May and now it seems to be…

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

This week, we had a pretty big update touch down early on and it really continued throughout the whole week, I named it the Movember update. Google Opal tool encourages…

Google said it has made significant improvements to the Google Ads advertiser suspensions. Google said it reduced incorrect suspensions by 80%, appeals are addressed 70% faster and 99% of appeals…

Supposedly, there is this “hack” to “crack the code” to make your Local Service Ads work in Google Ads that is fake and not recommended. Folks are saying if your…

Google announced a bunch of AI-based search features for Google Shopping, AI Mode and Gemini for the holiday season. Google is rolling out the AI Mode comparison feature (we saw…

Google Ads is bringing brand controls, like brand inclusion support, to Standard Shopping campaigns. This was supported for PMax and AI Max camapigns but now are showing up for Standard…

Google has clearly documented how it tracks link clicks, impressions and positions for AI Overviews in this help document. But if you ever saw an AI Overview and interacted with…

Google proposed a number of changes in the ”¬2.95B EU antitrust fine over its ad technology. The changes include changes to Google Ad Manager and increasing the interoperability between its…

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

We are seeing some big movement and volatility in the Google Search results again, this one kicking up more yesterday, November 12th. This may be a continuation of the ongoing…

Google has been testing its AI advisor in Google Ads and Analytics since 2023, there were some bugs throughout that testing, promoted the test to the top menu and then…

Google has updated the review snippet documentation to explain that site owners should avoid using multiple ways of indicating what’s being reviewed, the search company announced. This is to make…

Google has documented a new user agent, a user-triggered fetcher, named Google-Pinpoint. “The Google-Pinpoint fetcher requests individual URLs that Pinpoint users specified as sources for their personal collections of documents,”…

Google has confirmed it is testing a feature to import campaigns and assets from X and other social networks into your Google Ads campaign. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison,…

Google will be updating its Unacceptable phone number policy on December 10, 2025 and that update is causing some anxiety for some advertisers. The policy update says that “phone numbers…

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 will fix…

Google is testing showing normal search ads in an ad carousel at the top of the image search results on mobile. The ads take up a lot of the top…

Google is reportedly working on a “fix” for the AI spam that routinely shows up within users’ Google Discover feed. Google issued a statement to the Press Gazette saying, “We’re…

Google is now embedding its AI chat feature within the Google Ads advertiser console, specifically in some screens. The “Guide me” button that triggers an AI chat feature was spotted…

Google now lets you add your shipping and returns information within Google Search Console, even if you do not have a Google Merchant Center account. Previously, Google let you do…

Google emailed advertisers who are leveraging message leads within Google Local Service Ads telling them about the new value-based pricing. Basically, when a seacher uses the “Request multiple opinions” within…

Microsoft is testing placing site favicons at the top of the Bing search results page that when clicked on, anchor you down to the specific search result on the page….

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 is not…

Microsoft is now requiring all third-party publishers to have Microsoft Clarity in order to be paid out for impressions and clicks from Microsoft Advertising.

A month ago, we reported Google added a new form to report negative review extortion scams on your Google Business Profiles and local listings. Google also listed some tips on…

Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Google is not killing off all forms of schema and structured data support for Google Search. The question came up in a Reddit thread after…

There are reports that Google is showing more free product listings from Google Merchant Center in the Google AI Overview responses. I am told there are two variations of this…

Google Ads is now showing summaries of your budget settings in the budget and bidding optimization setting. This will summarize what your settings are configured for, at a glance.

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. Late last week,…

Microsoft announced on Friday afternoon that Copilot now has its own dedicated search experience. Plus, because Microsoft knows how important publishers are to the ecosystem, it is making citations and…

There have been a number of threads on LinkedIn over the past week about how poorly Google Ads AI Max is performing compared to other match types. The conversions or…

Google’s John Mueller responded with SEO advice on how a company can use two different TLDs for its company. The company wants to use the .co.uk for normal search and…

Last week, Google announced Opal, a Google Labs project, expanded to more regions. Well, it also explained how you can use this tool to create optimized content in a scalable…

Google seems to have fixed a bug with inviting others to access your Google Ads account. This bug appeared about a week ago and it Google seemed to start to…

Starting maybe late Thursday, into Friday, November 7th, I started to feel a Google Search ranking update and volatility brewing. Like I’ve been saying since the num=100 parameter change, it…

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

Google dropped a number of search features and structured data types. Google is testing a new version of AI Mode. Google AI Mode gained three new agentic capabilities. Google AI…

Google added a new promotion targeting option to Google Merchant Center for audience targeting. The option is labeled “preferred audience” and is available when setting up a promotion.

Google announced it has added Waze ads inventory to Performance Max for store goals campaigns and Channel performance reporting is now available in all Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads.

Google has been adding AI features to Google Finance – like what can go wrong? Recently Google’s Rose Yao announced Google Finance added live audio, instant transcripts and AI insights.

Google added a new navigation button to Google Merchant Center labeled “Creative Content.” I believe this is where you access Product Studio, and all your videos and assets for your…

As VP of Engineering for Search at Google, Rajan Patel said months ago – “We’re experimenting with various approaches to X in Discover.” Google has been super busy with testing…

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 dropped a…

Google’s John Mueller announced Google is “simplify the search results page” by removing “some features that aren’t being used very often and aren’t adding significant value to users.” This means…

Google is testing a tinted brownish/yellowish background color for the search results page. It turns the white background into a brownish/grayish/yellowish background and then the gray boxes into a darker…

Google updated its Circumventing systems policy to add a new section for Advertiser verification. In short, and as Google wrote, “Providing false or fraudulent information as part of our Advertiser…

Google is testing replacing the definitions box in the search results with AI Overviews. I am personally able to replicate this but this was posted in Reddit a couple of…

Google has released version 2.11 of the Google Ads Editor, which includes over 15 new features and removes a couple of older features.

Google Maps is getting an update from Gemini where you can ask Google Maps questions about locations, where Google Maps can give you more human directions and Google Maps with…

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 AI Overviews…

Earlier this year, we covered that Google’s AI Overviews are killing click-through rates from the Google Search results. Well, Seer Interactive updated the numbers and that CTR decline has continued…

Google is testing a new version of AI Mode responses in the wild, directly in the Google Search AI Mode interface. Google even tells the searcher, “You’re giving feedback on…

Google added a new promotion method in Google Merchant Center for Top-performing products. This lets you just promote your best performing products in Google Shopping and Google Search.

Google is testing an update to the reviews services summary box. We know Google does ask for services attributes and other attributes from both the business owner and reviewers but…

Google’s Robby Stein announced three new agentic capabilities within AI Mode – (1) booking event tickets (2) booking beauty appointments and (3) wellness appointments.

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 added a…

Google is supposedly testing an endless, infinite scroll for Google Discover. When I scroll through Google Discover, it eventually just stops and doesn’t keep going. But Gagan Ghotra said he…

Did you know that Google Merchant Center will automatically crop your product images in Google Shopping if it thinks it will look better in Google Search? Did you know that…

We had a few unconfirmed but big Google search ranking updates but we are still waiting on an official core update…

Google Search Console has a bug with its API when filtering on the searchAppearance dimension. This bug occurs when using the notEquals or notContains operators, it will only return rows…

Google added a new user agent to the Googlebot’s user-triggered fetchers documentation. The new user agent is for the Chrome Web Store named Google-CWS.

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 Search new…

Grokipedia, an AI-generated online encyclopedia launched a week ago with over 800,000 AI-generated pages, and both Google and Bing have already indexed hundreds, if not thousands, of those AI-generated pages.

A few weeks ago, Google launched a new ad layout with the large “Sponsored results” label that groups numerous ads under that one label, and then sticks a “Hide sponsored…

Google’s John Mueller posted a PSA yesterday, reminding SEOs and developers to verify the host name of cloud providers they are using to host images, videos, and other content. Specifically,…

Raptive, an advertising-sales company representing thousands of websites (content publishers), filed a 93-page complaint against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit…

Reddit announced earnings late last week and it boggles me how people love this stock. I am not a financial expert of analysis but Reddit has been saying for some…

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 says Google…

This week, we covered more Google Search ranking volatility mid-week. Google Search Console launched query groups reports. Disney’s sitelinks in Google Search seemed to have been hacked. Google reminded us…

Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, was interviewed on the Silicon Valley Girl channel by Marina Mogilko about AI Search at Google. He explained how to do SEO…

Google may have a new chart in the Google Ads overview tab named cross campaign metrics. It seems similar to the Cross-Media Reach Measurement but this is shown in the…

Google seems to have added a download option to the Google Merchant Center promotions section. when creating promotions in Google Merchant Center, the download button will be on the bottom…

Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, was interviewed on the Silicon Valley Girl channel by Marina Mogilko about AI Search at Google. And one of the questions she…

Microsoft is testing a “see more” link within the Bing Search image carousel on search result snippets. Sometimes Microsoft will show an image carousel below a search result snippet, sometimes…

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…

About a week ago, if you searched for [disney account] and looked at the Disney search result listing in Google Search, you’d see a sitelink that reads, “Black hat SEO…

Google Merchant Center Next added new analytics data to the Promotions tab/section. This shows you two new analytics charts including “Your promotions at a glance” and “Performance in the last…

Google updated the Google Ads Gambling and Games policy this week to define that sweepstake casinos are not social casino games. Google said this update was added on October 28,…

Google’s John Mueller reminded us about when case sensitivity matters for Google Search and SEO when it comes to your URLs. In short, Google will probably figure it out based…

Microsoft is testing a way to change the country and region you are in when doing searches on Bing. There is a new country/region selector for this, similar to how…

Microsoft Advertising advertiser web interface is down and Microsoft’s Navah Hopkins said the “engineering team is investigating this issue with priority.” This only impacts the web interface, according to Hopkins…

Both Google and Microsoft reported its earnings today; Alphabet’s Q3 2025 earnings and Microsoft’s Q1 2026 earnings. Google reported ad revenues up by XX% with $ and Microsoft reported ad…

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 Search ranking…

There may have been another Google Search ranking algorithm tweak around October 28th or so. I am seeing some rumblings both within the SEO community chatter and the third-party Google…

We all knew it was coming and now Google is roll out early access to Gemini for Home voice assistant in the U.S. You can either say “Hey Google” to…

Google Merchant Center now lets some merchants and advertisers define an audience for a promotion. This allows you to restrict who sees the promotion in Google Search for your Merchant…

A judge has ruled, giving Google a blow in its ad tech monopoly legal battle. This ruling should help the plaintiffs suing Google not get hung up in court as…

Google is testing adding to the call and message button on Local Service Ads a reviews and sometimes overview button. Reviews takes you to the reviews but the overview button…

There may be an undocumented Google user agent named GeminiiOS. GeminiiOS is apparently used when a user clicks on a source link from the Gemini app on their iPhone.

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 Search Console…

Google added a very useful feature to the Google Search Console Insights report named query groups. It does what it is named, it groups similar queries together as one, so…

Google has expanded access to the Google Business Profiles’ what’s happening feature to multi-location restaurants and bars in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. When…

Google Ads has supposedly added more integration between the main Google Ads platform and reporting and the niche Local Service Ads platform. Some can now see conversion tracking actions in…