Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

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…

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 released Gemini…

Semrush will be acquired by Adobe, the two companies announced today. “Adobe and Semrush announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Adobe will acquire Semrush, a…

Google released Gemini 3, its latest AI model, and it is already powering AI Mode in Google Search today. Sundar Pichai wrote Google is shipping Gemini 3 and that includes…

Google Ads is testing a share icon and button for hotel ads in the Google search results. When you click on the share icon, it lets you share the result…

Last month, we covered how we saw an “Incentivized” label on some product reviews within Google Search. Now, Google is emailing merchants and advertisers notifying them that they must properly…

Microsoft announced a number of new Microsoft Advertising features including Asset-level editorial review, Conversion Delay insights, callouts for Hotel Price Ads expansion and Microsoft Curate updates.

Google Ads may be rolling out a new metric named “Original Conversion Value.” This shows the raw data before Google does anything with it.

Business Insider interviewed both SEOs and representatives from Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity on what it calls the “GEO rush.” The rush for SEO companies or other companies to sell GEO…

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

Cloudflare, which is used by around 20% of all websites (including this one), is having major outages this morning. Lots of site owners are concerned with how this may impact…

For a decade now, Google’s John Mueller has been saying consistency is the most important SEO advice you can give someone. In 2025, he said it again, posting on Bluesky,…

Google Ads has rolled out the “Campaign total budget” feature for Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. This was available for other match types and is now available for PMax.

Microsoft is testing a new ad label for the Bing Search ads labeled “Ads related to” followed by the query the ads are related to. In the example below, it…

Google confirmed a new search algorithm update – well, this is just a weather feature – but it is a stormy one. Well, maybe not. Google said Google Search’s weather…

Google added new features to AI Mode including agentic booking for travel and Canvas for helping you build your vacation. The agentic booking works with dinner reservations and Google previewed…

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….