Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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

In this week’s recap, we covered that the Google December 2025 core update was unleashed. Google also said more core updates are definitely on their way and one should be…

Google announced that Gemini can now respond to your local questions with local results in a “rich, visual format.” Google will visually lay out the local results to include photos,…

Brad Geddes dug into how he felt “AI Max can trump your existing exact and phrase match keywords and then claim credit for the conversions and revenue.” And then Google’s…

Google Maps is updating its share buttons by removing the options to share on X and adding the options to share on Reddit and Facebook.

On Wednesday, Google announced a number of new AI features, which we covered (links below) but one other feature Google spoke about was “AI-powered article overviews.” This is an experiment…

Google is now sending email notifications for when Google Business Profiles has removed the restrictions on your reviews and ratings. The email says, “Restrictions on your reviews and ratings have…

Google officially announced the rollout of the December 2025 core update on Thursday at around 12:25 pm ET. This core update is expected to take about 3 weeks to roll…

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

Google announced it has updated the links in AI Mode to encourage searchers to click more. Google also introduced contextual introductions to embedded links in AI Mode responses.

Google announced that Preferred Sources is now rolling out globally, after launching just in the US and India in August, following its beta period in June. Plus, Google announced Spotlighting…

In June, Google moved Offerwall out of its AdSense beta, making it available to all. Now, if you are using Offerwall, Google will opt you into Offerwall optimization.

Microsoft is testing out the new Google Ads sponsored results label, ad grouping and hide button with its own Bing Search results ads. Microsoft Advertising search ads in Bing are…

Google has officially expanded the Web Guide to the “All” tab. Originally when it launched as a Search Labs beta, it was under the “Web” tab but as we saw,…

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 updated its…

Google has told us that core updates impact visibility within Google Discover, but that may have changed at some point. Andy Almeida from the Google Trust and Safety spoke about…

Google is testing incorporating Ads Advisor into the contact us page for Google Ads support. Google was doing this for policy disapproval support requests as well.

14 months ago, Google updated its documentation around its shopping related structured data warning not to generate your structured data dynamically through JavaScript. Yesterday, at the Search Central Live event…

Google updated its core update documentation to say it does smaller core updates and does not announce those updates. This is not new; Google told us this back in 2019….

Microsoft is testing moving the ad labels in the Bing Search results from the left side of the ad to the right side of the ad. I am not sure…

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

Google’s John Mueller said at the Google Search Central Live event in Zurich today that Google is still working on the next core update. This update should be out soon,…

OpenAI has updated its spider/crawler it uses for ChatGPT, OAI-SearchBot. The AI company updated the description and details of the crawler information removing that it is used for links and…

Google’s Vice President, Global Ads at Google, Dan Taylor, said that there are no plans to bring ads to the Gemini app. This comes after AdWeek reported based on sources…

With Google Ads releasing AI Max globally back in September, more and more advertisers are trying it out. While some of the early data can show it underperforms, some are…

Google has a bug with the Google Ads offline conversion uploads feature. Much, but not all, of the offline conversion data you upload is not being added to Google Ads….

Google rolled out Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor a few weeks ago and did you know that it can reference and cite third-party external sources, outside of just Google’s own…

Google announced today at the Search Central Live event in Zurich that Search Console is rolling out more granular data. Google launched weekly and monthly views in Search Console for…

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 testing…

Google announced it is adding social channels within the Google Search Console Insights report. This “lets you review Search performance of social channels associated with your website directly within Search…

Google is testing integrating Search Live (Gemini Live – voice search as you talk) in AI Mode. Plus, this version shows citation cards as part of the answer, as you…

It was a heated weekend, the Google Search ranking volatility was pretty heated and there was a lot of chatter within the SEO industry. Not all the tools are showing…

Business Insider posted a disclaimer about a new AI pilot where it will use “a custom GPT to help publish quick news stories.” This custom GPT was trained on the…

Google is testing an animation, where an image asset slides into the sponsored results listing. So it turns a pure search text ad into a text ad with an image…

Microsoft is testing expanding the favicons in the Bing Search results interface when you hover your mouse cursor over the search result listing and/or ad.

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

This week, we, of course, covered the ongoing Google Search ranking volatility. Google is now blending AI Mode directly into AI Overviews. Google’s home page search bar added a new…

Over the years, we have written that service areas are not used as a local ranking factor by Google Search. Well, the API leak document also implies this to be…

Google is testing a new AI-powered configuration tool, as it calls it, to help you build instant reports based on your natural language questions. So basically Ads and Analytics Advisor…

If you look at some of the profiles/sites in your Google Search Console performance reports, you may notice a significant increase in the average position being reported. This happened when…

Google Merchant Center is now beta testing regional member pricing, where you can offer different member prices based on the shopper’s regions. This will essentially override the member price in…

Google Ads may be testing placing an ad extension button at the top right of the sponsored result on the desktop interface. This button, in this example, shows the text…

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 rankings…

I am seeing some signs of a Google Search ranking update and intense volatility that kicked in late yesterday. The SEO community started chattering about it over the past several…

Google Ads may be testing the ability to subscribe to support updates via WhatsApp. Google has rolled out a new option to get real-time support case updates directly on WhatsApp,…

Google is adding more AI features to Google Discover, specifically pushing people from articles in Google Discover into Google AI Mode. When you click on an article from Google Discover…

I know, we just reported the page indexing report within Google Search Console is very delayed, about two weeks. Well, it is still delayed two weeks, I thought it would…

Microsoft is testing a new search bar with a more powerful tools menu button. This tools menu is larger, has a plus sign and gives you options to click search…

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

Back in May, Google said it will be giving advertisers more visibility into the search partner network with channel reporting for Performance Max campaigns. Well, now some are seeing it…

Google has launched a new link on some search / sponsored ads named “Products at this location.” Google confirmed this “relatively new feature” and can show up on listings for…

Google is pushing even more ways directly into AI Mode from the main Google home page’s search bar. Now when you select to upload an image or file, it will…

Google has been saying that no one uses the LLMs.txt file, that Google won’t use it, that it can be useless, and you probably should noindex it if you do…

Microsoft Advertising reportedly made two updates to its ad platform recently. One on how ad disapprovals work and the other on the time it takes to see a conversion be…

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

Today marks the 22nd anniversary of when I started this site, the Search Engine Roundtable. I was 23 years old when I started this site, compiling what the search community…

It is already December, can you believe it and even crazier, I’ve been doing this for 22 years! Where does the time ago. In any event, we had some serious…

Google’s Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro is now available in AI Mode in 120 countries and territories in English. This expands it from Gemini 3 in AI Mode’s initial…

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 a…

We are seeing volatility in the Google search results this week, Thanksgiving week. Google Ads accounts are being hijacked and it is super concerning. Gemini 3 now powers Google AI…

OpenAI is reportedly scaling up its crawling infrastructure for the holiday shopping season. The folks at Vercel noticed OpenAI adding a lot of new IP ranges for its bots and…

The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, said he spends time on X on launch days to monitor how real people are using, interacting, and experiencing new Google product releases. He…

I know Google said on November 18th that Gemini 3 was “shipping in Search on day one.” But no, it shipped on November 26th instead. Nick Fox, SVP at Google,…

Google has updated how it shows events within AI Overviews. It can now show the direct display of events, instead of an event summary. It is also a bit buggy,…

Google rolled out Ads Advisor, its AI-based chatbot for Google Ads, a couple of weeks ago. But some are noticing that if you have an MCC account, where you manage…

Google’s John Mueller said that rewriting AI content by a human won’t change the site’s ranking in Google by default. Instead, he said, you need to rethink your whole content…

Google may have pushed out a Google search ranking update over the past couple of days. Although the chatter was somewhat quiet, it picked up today and some of the…

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

Google uploaded its Thanksgiving Doodle to the Google Search home page, google.com. It is a typical and expected cute Google Doodle – more on that later. But when you click…

Google’s John Mueller made a joke about how next year, SEO companies will be offering GEO-Detox services as a billable line item after many of the SEO companies already billed…

Google Ads has supported adding WhatsApp Messenger for a while to your ad extensions. Now, it seems Google is also rolling out support for more messaging apps, including Facebook Messenger…

The Google local pack within the Google Search results changes, I think. When you click on the “More businesses” button at the bottom of the local pack, you aren’t taken…

Google Ads now lets you create up to five custom views on the Overview tab. The Overview now supports custom views and you can add up to five tabs and…

Google Ads is testing two new sections in the Overview tab. There is a new trends section and a new performance by stage section.

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

OpenAI announced shopping research within ChatGPT, “a new experience in ChatGPT that does the research for you to help you find the right products,” as OpenAI put it. This is…

Google announced that it will be reinstating the suspended hotels in Hotel Center and removing the Suspended Hotels” tab in the “Properties” page of your Hotel Center account.

Google is now showing the “What to know” section within web search, not just AI Mode, within the product summary bar on the right side. This shows up when you…

Can you imagine you manage hundreds of clients in your Google Ads Manager Accounts (MCC) gets hijacked. Or your Google Account and your ad campaigns gets hijacked due to an…

Google is testing removing the “more” results button for Local Service Ads within the web search results. Instead, you are given the option to expand the results to 8 in…

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

Gary Illyes from Google said that even for him “the change is hard to accept” when it comes to how search is changing and evolving with the new AI features….

Back in July, Google announced Web Guide, an AI-organized search results page that experiments with how we find, surface and organize results from across the web. Well, it has been…

For the past week or so, a number of local SEOs and local business owners have been unable to see the admin panel, also known as NMX, when they search…

Microsoft sent emails to some advertising announcing the retirement of the Microsoft Advertising mobile app. The app will stop working as of January 2026 and will be removed from the…

Google has officially launched scheduling and multi-location publishing for Google Posts in Google Business Profiles. This was a feature Google tested last month and is now fully live.

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 Nano Banana…

Google AI Mode is now powered by the new Gemini 3 models. There may have been a Google search update this week, but what was it. Nano Banana is now…

Google released an update to Nano Banana yesterday named Nano Banana Pro and it is super impressive as an image generation tool. But it is also incorporated into Google Search…

Google has updated the list of countries where using Google Ads for offline gambling advertising is prohibited. Google updated the list on November 19, 2025 to match countries where offline…

In April, we saw a small disclaimer on the Google AI Overviews within Google Search to “Check important info.” Well, Google is testing a much larger disclaimer, at the bottom…

As you know, Google has been testing a way to click a button to message multiple businesses through the Local Service Ads. Google now calls that message fan out. That…

More and more people are starting to see Google Ads within the Google AI Mode results. Google told us these ads were being tested on desktop AI Mode results back…

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 thought about…

I am seeing some signs of a Google search ranking update over the past day or so but the chatter is super limited right now. Many of the tools spike…

A court document from the Department of Justice Google monopoly case shows Google internally discussed six different options for giving (or not giving) publishers control over AI usage. The options…

Google announced some new features for Google Maps including a big one for reviews, where reviewers can now use nicknames instead of their real names when leaving reviews. Plus, Google…

Only two months ago, Google officially rolled out the follow feature on Google Discover. Now, that feature is no longer active and Google has removed the documentation associated with it.

Google’s Daniel Waisberg announced today at the Google Search Central event in Tel Aviv that Search Console will be gaining brand query filters. Plus, these filters will be AI-assisted, I…

Google is testing shading the background color behind the search ads, sponsored results, and the local pack in the Google Search results. I do like that Google is testing differentiating…