Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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

This week, surprise – surprise, we covered more Google Search ranking volatility. OpenAI launched its web browser, ChatGPT Atlas – it uses Google. Google Search Console performance reports are stuck…

We covered Google testing using AI to generate snippet summaries and snippet descriptions, but all of those had a Gemini logo next to them, as to label them AI-generated. Now,…

I believe generally when you search Bing and get a Copilot answer at the top, Bing will just immediately show you the answer. Now, Microsoft is testing an animated response…

Google is testing showing a “Get Google QR” code button when you search for your business in Google Search. This button is with the Edit Profile, reviews, photos, posts, performance,…

We’ve seen at least two variations of Google local and Business Profiles showing related to your search boxes, but this new one looks a bit more tidy than the Q&A…

Google is testing showing the option ot track price changes for hotel results by email. We saw Google announce a similar feature back in March but now it is showing…

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 held the Search Central Live event in Dubai just a couple of days ago. It seems like the vast majority of what was presented at the event was presented…

Google has updated AI Mode for fantasy sports including adding in integration with FantasyPros. And OpenAI has improved the GPT-5 Instant model for signed-out users.

Google Business Profile performance reports seem to be missing a chunk of call data from last week. The call data is missing from October 14 through October 16, 2025.

The Google Search Console performance reports seem to be stuck and not updating since October 19/20th for all profiles and websites. The weird thing is that the 24 hour view…

Google Ads is celebrating its 25th birthday/anniversary today. Yes, Google launched AdWords 25 years ago today in 2000. In 2018, Google renamed AdWords to Google Ads and the ad labels…

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. OpenAI released its…

As you may have heard, the latest AI-powered web browser launched yesterday, the much-anticipated OpenAI ChatGPT web browser. OpenAI named its web browser Atlas. The built-in search features seem to…

Google is testing using different colored map pins in the map embed within Google AI Mode. The map pins can be in red, blue, yellow and maybe orange?

Google is testing showing an AI Mode history button within the local panel in Google Search. When you are viewing a specific business or organization, there may be an AI…

Google may be testing displaying different-sized cards for recipe results in the Google Search results. The cards show large and small graphics that make the results look misaligned.

Google AdSense added a new breakdown option named Confirmed Click status breakdown. This breakdown is available on all your reports under the “Breakdowns” dropdown selector at the top left.

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 told us…

Ten months ago, Google said on stage at Google Search Central Live event in the Google Zurich office that we should expect more core update, more update. We now have…

Google posted a new help document that says it will delete accounts without any campaigns after 6 months. “If an account does not have any campaigns, it’ll be permanently deleted…

Google added a new “sources” column to the AI Max search term report. This helps you understand where your traffic was matched from in AI Max searches.

Google is testing another variation of the AI-generated product summaries in Google AI Mode, this one is named “What to know.” It is made up of user reviews and web…

Google Ads seems to be experimenting with setting the New Customer Value within New Customer Acquisition campaigns without the consent of the advertiser. Technically, New Customer Value can be turned…

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

Five weeks ago, Google announced a new feature named “Text’¬’­ guidelines’¬’­” at the Think Retail event. Google said these would roll out “over time this Fall.” Well, some are now…

Google is testing the ability to highlight portions of the response, to do a follow-up question on what you highlighted. It is similar to past tests on the AI Overview,…

Google is testing the paperclip style icon in the search results, by the search result snippets and description. Clicking anywhere on the paperclip or the snippet will take you to…

Google has added price tracking data charts for each retailer within Google Search. On the right side, after you click on a product, Google may show a price chart with…

Google now supports Sitelinks for local search ads in the Google Maps interface. They show in the form of a carousel, under a sponsored ad listing in the Google Maps…

The crawl stats report in Google Search Console is missing a day of data again. The data gap is for October 14, 2025. If you look at the chart, you…

There may have been another unconfirmed Google search ranking update that occurred between October 15th and October 18th. The bulk of the volatility seemed to be around Thursday, the 16th.

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’s head of…

For the original iTunes version, click here. This week we covered the new Google Ads label, which Google says improves navigation but in my opinion…

Liz Reid VP, head of Search at Google, was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal’s Bold Names podcast. They spoke about AI, AI Search, how ads are impacted by AI…

Now if you manage multiple Google Business Profiles, when you add a Google Post, Google will let you quickly add that same Google Post to other Google Business Profiles that…

Google is now sending push notifications to some users that direct that user to a search within AI Mode. Yes, Google is pushing users to do queries in AI Mode…

Google Ads will be updating the Google Ads Healthcare and Medicines policy to reflect the changes it will require to the approach to advertiser use of prescription drug terms.

Google has updated its Google Merchant Center policies to now allow for the sale of physical goods subscriptions. Google said this “will be available to all eligible Shopping ad merchants…

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. Bing now supports…

Microsoft has added support for the data-nosnippet HTML Attribute for Bing Search. This was previously not supported but yesterday, Microsoft announced it is “introducing the data-nosnippet HTML attribute.”

New data from AlsoAsked put AI-generated people also ask in Google Search at 38%. These are people also ask responses labeled as AI generated and that number jumped from 17.8%…

Google added Nano Banana Gemini image features to Google Search through Google Lens. There is a new option named Create mode that unlocks the Nano Banana feature.

Google has released version 22 of the Google Ads API, this is a major release with dozens of updates. Updates include smart bidding exploration expansion, improvements to DemandGen, PMax campaigns,…

Google has updated the list of Google products and services that use the Google Read Aloud user agent. The updated page also says that the “service provides an audio version…

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

Google was spotted showing a “Campaign Type” selection option in the Google Ads Channel Performance report attributes section. This showed up for some advertisers, without Google announcing it.

Microsoft is testing placing search refinement tabs or buttons above the shopping ads within the Bing Search results. And when you click on those refinements, you are taken into Bing…

Google’s John Mueller said that there was no change to how fast and frequently the Google Search Console API sends data. This comes after some are questioning the speed of…

When you go to the Google AI Mode home screen, the quick way to do that is to go to google.com/ai. You may see a small disclaimer under the search…

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

There is a report coming out of a Google event named Google Access that has a Googler saying that ads are coming to AI Mode very soon in the EU….

Google has updated its Misrepresentation policy for both Shopping ads and free listings within Google Merchant Center. Google said the “update provides additional examples of what the policy covers, more…

Google is testing a new optimization insights layer or recommendation interface for Google Ads. This has three columns named (1) build a foundation, (2) drive performance and (3) expand and…

Google is looking to hire a software engineer with the responsibility of improving the quality of User Generated Content (UGC) contents in Google Discover.

Google has officially launched the new grouped sponsored label in the search results. This is where Google groups multiple ads under one larger sponsored label, and then places a “hide”…

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 local results…

This is a programming note that Tuesday and Wednesday are Simchat Torah and I will be offline the next two days. I will be offline on Tuesday and Wednesday, October…

Over the past few days, the local SEO community is pretty upset that Google appears to be testing removing the call button from the local results. I am not sure…

Lenny Rachitsky interviewed Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google, who we cited here numerous times over the past couple of years. The interview covers how AI is not replacing…

Have you heard of the Google Goldmine Scoring System? It supposedly looks at your page, your content, and Google gives it a goldminePageScore, title tag factor, body factor, anchor factor,…

A couple of weeks ago, Google added a new help page titled Discover feed source overview. This page discusses those cards in the Google Discover feed and when Google gets…

Google has updated its Auto-Apply Recommendations setting within the Google Ads interface. The button moved to just above the regular recommendations section.

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…

For the original iTunes version…

Google has published a new help document on the topic of Google Business Profile negative review extortion scams. The document explains what they are, how to report the scam, what…

Google is testing a new section within the Google Ads advertising console named “Missed Growth Opportunities.” This section shows you the “performance you could’ve achieved in the last year if…

There are a nice number of reports of GA4, Google Analytics, showing a huge surge in organic search traffic over the past couple of days, but Google Search Console is…

Google has updated its Voice Search models to be powered by Speech-to-Retrieval (S2R). Google said this allows it to “gets answers straight from your spoken query without having to convert…

The Microsoft Advertising blog posted about how to optimize for AI Search Answers. I thought it was weird to see this on the Microsoft Advertising blog and not on the…

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

While I was offline, it seems the chatter within the SEO industry spiked around the topic of search ranking volatility. It is harder to confirm the volatility, now with the…

Google announced it will replace the “Ad networks” blocking control from Brand safety within in AdSense with a new “Authorized Buyers” blocking control. This will start on November 6, 2025,…

Google AI Mode is now available in over 200 countries and territories. Google said they are expanding AI Mode to “more than 35 new languages and over 40 new countries…

Google upgraded the Try On feature to now support shoes, in addition to other forms of clothing. Plus, Try on will soon also work in Australia, Canada and Japan, Google…

Google seems to be testing a new Insights feature for Google Business Profiles. The new insights section shows you profile suggestions, like tips on getting more reviews, what to update…

Google added Google NotebookLM to the list of Google crawlers, under the list of user-triggered fetchers. Google said they added this user-agent “based on feedback.”

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

Google has added a new promotion option to Google Merchant Center. The new option is Google Wallet. Google doesn’t detail what this promotion does but it likely lets you promote…

Microsoft is telling Bing Search users when it is using history for some of its search features. Bing will show section named “History” and then say what history is knows…

Google is testing a new, more publisher-friendly version of the AI Overviews for recipe results. The new design has the recipe cards at the top, citations at the bottom and…

Google is testing using the italic font type for the links in AI Mode. So the links have a bit of a slant to them, compared to the other text…

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

Microsoft is testing a new and updated layout for its Copilot product box/section within the Bing search results. It looks like they just swap the answer and product listing sections…

Google had a bug in Google Discover that showed the publisher’s name and logo twice on a story. The publisher’s name showed once at the top and once at the…

Google Search is testing a new carousel to promote AI Mode named “Ask AI Mode anything.” It gives you ideas on how to “Explore” new or related topics in AI…

Google updated the wording in the title documentation for Merchant Center, now suggesting you can use your own brand or company name in the short title of your products. That…

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

This is a programming note that Tuesday and Wednesday are Sukkot and I will be offline the next two days. I will be offline on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 7th…

If you search for [events near me], Google may not show you any events near you. It seems like Google is not serving that events carousel right now. I suspect…

Google is testing having the “Show More” button within AI Overviews jump you directly into AI Mode as opposed to loading more of the AI Overview beneath it. This appears…

As we reported earlier, Microsoft said a new Bing Places update is coming soon. Well, now it is rolling out to businesses in Bing Places for Business.

Google was previously testing placing AI-generated snippet summaries below each search result snippet. Now, Google is testing replacing the search result snippet’s description with its own AI-generated description.

Microsoft will be shutting down its Microsoft Advertising Ads for Social Impact ad grant program. It will officially be discontinued in December 2025.

A year ago, we learned that Google would transition from Google call ads, call-only ads, to using call assets within responsive search ads (RSAs) but we didn’t know the dates….

Google has confirmed a Google Search serving issue that is currently ongoing and impacting serving “some pages in some locales.” This is a large enough issue that Google posted about…

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

This week we covered the Google AI Mode news that it is more visual for many queries, including shopping queries. Google AI Mode agentic capabilities can now be opted into….

Barry Pollard from Google did a long explanation on Bluesky on why Google Search Console says an LCP is bad but the individual URLs are fine. I don’t want to…