Latest SEO News & Tips From SE Roundtable Blog

Google AdSense announced a new feature to “Fill empty in-page ads” by showing “contextually-relevant suggestions related to your page and site inside unfilled ad spaces.” In short, if an ad…

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

Similarweb released a report shows that since the launch of Google AI Overviews in May 2024, zero-click search (as coined by Rand Fishkin) grew 13 percentage points, from 56% to…

Last November, Google began to power some of the peopel also ask results with AI Overviews. Historically the people also ask were featured snippets, but now they can be featured…

Google seems to be testing (or maybe it is a bug) the local panel sub-menu under the main search bar, under the search box. Normally, these sub-menu items would be…

Microsoft will be laying off about 4% of its workforce, which is about 9,000 employees. It is unclear if any of those jobs are across the Bing, Copilot or Microsoft…

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

Google announced the release of the June 2025 core update on June 30th at around 10:37 am ET. It seems as of July 2nd, we are starting to see the…

The past thirty days in the Google search and SEO universe was pretty hectic. We closed it out with the June 2025 core update after numerous unconfirmed Google ranking updates…

Google’s John Mueller said that he doesn’t think links play a role with how core updates work. He wrote on Bluesky, “I can’t think of how these links would play…

Microsoft has moved the Copilot search tab under the Bing Search box to the first position in that menu bar. With that change, it seems Microsoft renamed the “All” tab…

Google has these e-commerce or product cards that show up at the top of the search results. Now, Google is testing labeling them with not just the product category name…

Microsoft Advertising will soon retire Target CPA and Target ROAS as a standalone bidding strategies. Instead, those bidding strategies will be merged with Max Conversions and Max Conversion Value. This…

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

Google officially announced the rollout of the June 2025 core update yesterday at around 10:37 am ET. This core update is expected to take about three weeks to roll out….

Google has relaunched its Search Console Insights as a standalone tab and report within the main Google Search Console tool. Previously, Search Console Insights was its own sub-reporting tool and…

Cloudflare, a company that powers about 20% of all web pages on the web, has announced it is now blocking AI crawlers by default. Plus, it is offering a new…

Google AdSense has added new universal opt-out mechanisms and privacy controls due to new laws they must adhere to. These go across several US states.

Google is promoting AI Mode with an animated Google Doodle on its home page, in some countries. The Google home page logo, animated and clickable, takes you into a search…

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…

Microsoft released its Microsoft Advertising trust and safety report, which revealed it removed or restricted over one billion ads. The company also suspended over 475,000 advertiser accounts over the year.

Google is testing showing the ability to search in AI Mode within the Chrome search bar on desktop and Android devices. This is obviously being tested both in the US…

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been hearing buzz that some think that Google Search Console will show the “query fan-out” queries in Google Search Console. It does not,…

On Saturday, June 28th, it appears that another significant Google Search ranking update occurred, although Google has not confirmed it. There has been significant search ranking volatility and chatter within…

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…

Google is testing adding the site name next to the link icons in the AI Overviews within Google Search. This makes it much more likely for searchers to click on…

Another week and more Google search ranking volatility hits, this time on June 25 and June 26. Google promised more core updates, more often, but that did not happen. Google’s…

Liz Reid, the head of Google Search, spoke with Reed Albergotti of Semafor, on Google’s push towards AI Search. The interview was conducted weeks ago at Google I/O but was…

After over a year of being in beta, Google has announced the launch of Offerwall. “Offerwall messages allow your site visitors to choose alternative ways to support your site and…

Google Search is testing yet another way to indicate to Google that you prefer specific sources, news sources, and publications, so that Google can show you fresh content from those…

Both Google and Microsoft Bing are testing hover effects that will bold elements of the search results. Google is testing bolding the description of the snippet and Bing is 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 has not…

Over the past two days it has felt like there was some sort of ranking adjustment made in the Google Search organic results. Yea, I know, organic search doesn’t send…

A couple of years ago, we covered a report by the NY Times on the ongoing issues with review scams and blackmail. Well, the issue is not gone, despite Google…

Over 6 months ago, a Google search representative said we should all expect more core updates, more often. And in the past six months, we have had only one confirmed…

Google is now showing price tracking widgets at the top of the feed. We’ve seen products with price tracking markup notifications within the feed but these widget styles may be…

Google posted a new document on the topic of its AdSense for Search Restricted Access Features (RAFs). Google said, “Starting on August 25, 2025, certain AdSense for Search features have…

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

Google updated its service areas business guidelines help document to add “Do not add countries or states as a service area.” Google also updated numerous parts of the document.

Google seems to be expanding the feature where they turn off the ability for some local listings, Google Business Profiles, to allow posting reviews. We covered this before during the…

I am not sure if this is new, to be honest, we saw something super similar in the normal local review summaries about fives years ago with “X people mention…

Google will be ending the ability for hotels to manage their hotel rates by themselves, instead they will need to partner with a central reservation system, Internet booking engine or…

Microsoft is testing placing a floating Copilot search box within the Bing Search results page. The aim is to encourage searchers to ask follow-up questions, not in Bing Search, but…

Google updated the directions interface within Google Search. Now the drive (car icon), trains (train icon) and buses (bus icon) are in expandable menus, as opposed to tabs at the…

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 URL…

Google’s John Mueller several years after posting a video named “Will removing ‘.html’ from my URLs help my site?” still says URL extensions do not matter for SEO. He said…

Google is testing a new feature to replace all those copy-and-paste emoji websites. You know, when you want to know what an emoji is for a specific emotion and you…

Google has made its first expansion of AI Mode outside of the US by announcing AI Mode is now available in Search Labs for those based in India. As you…

Google is testing moving the social profile links above the Google Posts section in the Google Business Profiles / local listings within Google Search. This seems to be being tested…

I am not sure what this is but Google is testing (or maybe it is a bug) an answer box of sorts, in a blue highlight background (grayish on dark…

Google is testing placing a light blue bar on the left side of the search results snippets title link. I am not sure why Google is doing this but it…

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

Jason Howell on the AI Inside podcast had Nick Fox, VP of Search at Google, on a few weeks ago. In that interview, he said that the methodologies used by…

Google’s Jeff Dean, the lead of Google AI and a Google veteran since 1999, highlighted Google’s index freshness as one of its key advantages in its AI services. On X,…

Google appears to be reintroducing the “product status change” report within Google Merchant Center. This displays the historical changes of your product statuses and is a feature that was greatly…

Microsoft is testing a new image carousel within the Bing Search results. This image carousel shows two rows of images, instead of one, has related searches with an arrow at…

It is with a heavy heart that I am reporting that one of the founding pillars of the SEO industry, one of the first female SEOs in our industry, and…

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 said larger…

This week we covered the ongoing Google search ranking volatility. Google is now officially counting AI Mode in Google Search Console’s performance reports, but good luck understanding it. Google is…

Google’s John Mueller said that for larger and longer issues, it can take Google longer for Google Search to reprocess it all. Meaning, the bigger the issue and the longer…

Google has quietly updated its AI features and your website help document, which it initially launched just under a month ago, with a new section on troubleshooting preview controls. In…

Google is testing placing a speaker icon next to the video snippets. The speaker icon includes a language label indicating what language the video is in.

Back in November 2021, it began sending some searchers to translated versions of webpages through the search results. Google then in May 2022 started to report on how often this…

Google is testing adding the text “background checked” to the local service ads listings in the Google local search results. This seems to be instead of the Google Screened or…

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 rolled out…

Google has begun rolling out the audio version, talk and listen version, of Search Live in the Google app to those who opt into the AI Mode experiment. This is…

Google is testing swapping the site name with the URL in the search result snippets. So instead of the site name being shown at the top of the search result…

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. There are new…

The term, The Great Decoupling has really been catching on over the past couple of weeks. It is being used to describe what we are seeing with impressions and clicks…

It’s been almost ten days since I last reported on a Google search ranking update. Well, I had to stop the streak and cover what I’ve seen over the last…

There has been a lot, I mean, a lot, of chatter around if one should add an LLMs.txt to their website. Many are starting to add it while others have…

Google has rolled out a new feature to automate the process of updating your inventory with Google Merchant Center. It is called Website-reported Autofeeds and it uses Google Tag Manager…

Microsoft is testing new hover effects and styles in the Bing Search results. Specifically, when you hover over the URL of a snippet, it will bold and underline the result….

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 has now officially confirmed that Google Search Console is counting AI Mode data. Google said, “AI Mode is now counting towards totals in Search Console.” We saw this when…

Google has rolled out a new interface to view your historical Google Posts within Google Business Profiles. Now the interface is a scrollable list view.

Google is investigating reports of a number of searchers seeing that all the links shown in the Google search results are marked as previously visited. When you click on a…

A few months ago, Google added big blue buttons to the knowledge panels within the Google Search results but now, some of those knowledge panels buttons are taking searchers to…

Just like Google had AI Overviews (also featured snippets) in the People also ask section of Google Search, Google is now testing AI Mode within People also ask. Plus, Google…

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 is…

Tired of all that reading in the Google Search results, is it too hard to read the AI Overviews? Well, Google has a solution for you, they are called “Audio…

Google has made some more minor changes to the Google Merchant Center user interface. Specifically, Google moved where the merchants access settings section is and also updated the sidebar with…

Microsoft is testing removing its own name from the Bing search results box at the top left of the page. So it just says Bing, with the Microsoft logo next…