Daily Search Forum Recap: May 16, 2025
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 confirmed ads with AI Overviews make as much as ads without AI Overviews on the page…
Google Maps 2024: 999 Million Reviews & 752 Million Photos / Videos Published
Last month we shared the spam efforts the Google Maps team announced – but did you know that in 2024 Google had almost one billion reviews published within Google Maps? That is 999 million reviews, 752 million photos and videos and 94 million place ed…
Apple Maps Adds Insights, Ratings & Reviews From More Sources
Apple announced this week that it partnered with MICHELIN Guide; The Infatuation and Golf Digest to provide “insights, ratings, and reviews from expert sources” within Apple Maps.
Google Working To Make It Easier To Share AI Overviews & AI Mode
Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google Search, confirmed Google is working on making it easier to share AI Overviews within Google Search and AI Mode responses.
Bing Shopping Tests Shading Site Names
Microsoft is testing shading the site names, the brand names, of retailers in the Bing Shopping search results. So the name Amazon is in a blue shaded background color as opposed to just saying Amazon.com.
Google Search AI Shuffle Button
Google is testing a “Shuffle” button in some of its AI generated answers within the Google Search results. When you click the shuffle button, it seems to redo or change up the response Google’s AI gives you.
A Declining Internet
For as broad and difficult of a problem running a search engine is and how many competing interests are involved, when Matt Cutts was at Google they ran a pretty clean show. Some of what they did before the algorithms could catch up was of course fearm…
Google’s Hyung-Jin Kim Shares Google Search Ranking Signals
On February 18, 2025 Google’s Hyung-Jin Kim was interviewed about Google’s ranking signals. Below are notes from that interview.
“Hand Crafting” of Signals
Almost every signal, aside from RankBrain and DeepRank (which are LLM-based) are hand-crafted an…
Daily Search Forum Recap: May 15, 2025
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 rethinking its search stack from the ground up due to LLMs…
Google Rethinking Search Stack From Ground Up With LLMs
Another Google court document from the DOJ trial showed that Google said it is currently rethinking its entire search stack, from the ground up, with LLMs playing a more fundamental role. The doc said:
Google Doc: Link Position & Click Bias Ranking Bias Adjustment
The details from the DOJ and Google monopoly case hearing exhibits just keep on flowing and with that, we have another mention of how Google does look at clicks from the search results. This one talks about how the position of the link can be a bias to…
Google Ads New Ads Funded By Details
Earlier this month, Google updated its Ads Transparency policy to specify that it will display the payment profile name as the payer name for verified advertisers. Well, now we are starting to see a new section that says “Ads funded by” on the “My Ad C…
Google Ads Device Targeting Controls For Performance Max Campaigns
Google is rolling out device targeting controls and features within Google Ads Performance Max campaigns. We knew this was coming and now it seems to be rolling out to some (not all) advertisers. This allows you to target based on device type, such as…
Google Search Tests Vertical Search Labels In Autocomplete
Google is testing showing the vertical search category a query belongs to in its autocomplete search suggestions. When you click into the Google Search box, even before you begin typing your query, Google shows search suggestions and some of those sear…
Google Search Testing New Sub/Second Menu
Google is testing a new sub or secondary menu under the search bar in Google Search. This secondary menu, or sub-menu, is below the main search vertical options and is missing the bubble format that we’ve seen Google use for this sub-menu.
Google Search Console Tests Add Annotation In Performance Reports
Google is testing adding the ability for you to add your own annotations to the Google Search Console performance reports. This is one of the requests SEOs have been asking for from Google for a long time and now Google is testing this in Search Console.
Google Business Profiles What’s Happening Feature
Google is rolling out a new feature for Google Business Profiles named What’s Happening. This feature is for bars or restaurants to better promote events, deals, and specials prominently at the top of their Google Business Profile.
Bing Search APIs To Retire August 11, 2025
Microsoft is going to do away with the Bing Search and Bing Custom Search APIs as of August 11, 2025. Microsoft posted a notice on its API documentation pages with this news.
Google Internal Emails On Google Marketing Live 2024 (Last Year)
Remember the Power Pair from Google Marketing Live 2024? Well, that and several other items of discussion were found in internal emails at Google about the GML 2024 event. It discussed how advertisers were not excited about PMax, there is frustration…
Google Tests New Pagination Bar On Mobile
Google is also testing a new pagination bar with page numbers and previous and next icons, instead of the “more search results” button. Bing was recently just testing this too and now I see Google testing it.