Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Volatility X2, Spam Updates, AI Overviews Everywhere, Blending Ads & Organic, Google & Microsoft Earnings
This week, we reported on Google Search volatility not once but twice this week. Google warned tools on user-generated spam guidelines. Google downplayed the importance of fresh indexing reporting. Google explained…
Google AI Overviews & AI Mode 0.9% Click-Through Rate, Opt Out Study Says
Everyone has been asking, what is the click-through rate you get from Google Search AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. Well, a new small study says the click-through rate is about 0.9%. The study also showed that when you opt out of showing…
Bing Showing Ads Within AI Overviews
Microsoft is now showing ads within the Bing AI Overviews powered by Copilot. I don’t think I’ve seen ads within the AI responses in Bing Search and I personally still cannot trigger them, but Khushal Bherwani shared a screenshot of an ad within an AI…
Google Search May Be Bringing Back 100 Search Results Parameter
Google Search may be bringing back the ability to see 100 search results per page by bringing back the num=100 parameter. As a reminder, Google dropped this feature in September 2025 as one of many methods to prevent crawlers from scraping its search …
OpenAI rewrites its AI rules to give you more say in how it responds
OpenAI loosens style rules and expands guidance on remembering preferences and acting on your behalf.
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Reddit wants you to log in as traffic from search keeps shrinking
Tests start outside the U.S., while Reddit weighs how much visitors can see without an account.
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Mistral lets you download its biggest AI model and run it on your own servers
Mistral opens its largest model for self-hosting, with a licensing exception for model providers.
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Microsoft Ads can track more of the sales your browser tag misses
Microsoft opens its direct sales-data connection, with duplicate counting and consent settings to check.
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Google says AI Mode is holding back growth in its search ad business
Search revenue rose 12%, but Google says AI Mode’s lower monetization weighed on its growth.
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Google’s John Mueller: Eventually Systems Will Catch The AI Spam & Tricks
Google’s John Mueller was interviewed by David Iwanow, where he shared information on AI-generated content, the future of SEO, technical SEO, the crawl stats report, redirect chains, ecommerce product data and much more. John was asked about tactics, s…
Google: Ads In AI Mode Earning Less Than Traditional Search Ads
Google announced earnings yesterday, and during the earnings call, Philipp Schindler, Google’s senior vice president and chief business officer, said that ads in AI Mode have a “lower monetization” than ads in traditional search.
Google expands AI Mode ads to 10 new countries
Google is expanding AI Mode ads to 10 additional countries, including India, Canada and Australia, while launching multiturn ads in the US. Brazil, Mexico and the UK are expected to follow in Q4 2026.
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Google tests query bubbles at the top of AI Overviews
Google is testing query bubbles at the top of AI Overviews in some languages, and clicking one opens AI Mode with the bubble text as the prompt,
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Google Does Not Show All Spammy Links In Search Console
Google does not show all links, and not all spammy links, within the Search Console links report. This is not new, Google has long said that the link report only shows a sampling of links.
Google AI Overviews With Query Refinement Bubbles
Google is testing query refinement bubbles at the top of the AI Overviews in Google Search. But clicking the refinement bubble does not change the query, instead, it takes you into AI Mode for that query set.
Google AI Mode Tests Blending All Products With Sponsored Products
Google seems to be testing mixing sponsored products, ads, within the organic product results in AI Mode. Google has this line above the product results that can say “Sponsored” and “All products.” Even as I look at screenshots of this, I am not sure i…
Google Merchant API With New October 2026 Updates
Google has released several updates to the Merchant API for October 26. The update expands YouTube Shopping and AI-commerce reporting, adds product attributes for videos and warranties, improves disapproval diagnostics, and introduces API integration e…
Is Google Testing Dropping Citations Cards From AI Overviews?
Google may be testing removing the citations card on the Google AI Overviews section. So when you do a search on desktop and see an AI Overview, Google generally shows a citations card that has links to the sources you can click on. Google is reportedl…
Google Tag Manager adds verbose logging to Preview mode
Google Tag Manager’s Preview mode now has an ‘Enable verbose logging’ option that shows Google tag logs in Tag Assistant’s Console tab, though logs can’t yet be exported or filtered.
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Google publishes a help doc on AI review summaries in search ads
Google’s new help doc says AI review summaries in search ads are positive only, meaning a business with poor reviews could still get a glowing summary.
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