Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Volatility Continues, Preferred Sources, Site Hack Demolishes Traffic & Google On AI
The Google search ranking volatility has not calmed down since the June core update and we are in mid-August and expecting another core update soon. Google launched the preferred sources feature for Top Stories…
Chartbeat: Traffic From Google To Publishers Stable Over Years
The studies we have thus seen from third parties have all said traffic from Google Search to websites has declined a lot since AI Overviews came out. But we have a new study from Chartbeat that says traffic to news publishers from Google (including Dis…
Google’s John Mueller Suggests AI SEO Acronyms May Lead To Scams & Spam
Google’s John Mueller replied to a lot of the hype around all GEO, AIO, AEO, etc topics floating around the SEO space. John said on Bluesky, “The higher the urgency, and the stronger the push of new acronyms, the more likely they’re just making spam a…
Google Search Age Verification: Asking To Confirm You’re An Adult
Google Search started to roll out the age verification that it said it would begin doing a couple of weeks ago. Yes, it is not just YouTube, it goes across Google Search ads too, as we reported back a couple of weeks ago.
Google Looking Into Adding Analytics For Preferred Sources
Google recently launched the preferred sources for top stories within Google Search. But there is no way for publishers to know how many of their readers selected their website as a preferred source. But Google said they are “looking into this” and m…
Google Tests Loyalty Benefits Section In Merchant Knowledge Panels
Google is testing adding a “loyalty benefits” section to the merchant/retailer knowledge panels. This would show on the right side of the page, under the description of the retailer.
Microsoft Copilot Links Local Reviews To Bing Competitor Google Maps
It looks like Microsoft Copilot, formerly Bing Chat, is using Google Maps reviews for its local AI results. It also links directly to the Google Maps business profile listing when you click on the review stars and ratings from Copilot.
Case Study – Ai SEO Content Strategy with Northampton Ecommerce SEO Jamie Irwin
Disclosure: Hobo Web uses generative AI when specifically writing about our own experiences, ideas, stories, concepts, tools, tool documentation or research. Our tool of choice for this process is Google Gemini Pro 2.5, as it took notes during a recent…
Daily Search Forum Recap: August 14, 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.
Microsoft says SEOs need to do the click studies to see if AI search clicks lead to conversions or not…
Microsoft: SEOs Need To Study Clicks To Conversions From AI Search
Fabrice Canel from the Microsoft Bing team said that search engines, like Bing, have “limited visibility” into the conversions after the click from AI search and it is up to the SEO community to conduct those studies.
Google Ads PMax Cost Toggle For Share Of Cost
Google Ads is reportedly rolling out a new cost toggle in the Performance Max reporting to show you the share of cost for each channel within your PMax campaigns.
Google Traffic Drops 50% After Site Hack; Recovery Can Take Time Says Google
An SEO consultant posted on LinkedIn that one of his websites saw a 50% decline in traffic in a two week period. This was due to the site being hacked, content being injected and Google indexing that hacked content, leading to the site not ranking well…
Google Traffic Drops 50% After Site Hack; Recovery Can Take Time Says Google
An SEO consultant posted on LinkedIn that one of his websites saw a 50% decline in traffic in a two week period. This was due to the site being hacked, content being injected and Google indexing that hacked content, leading to the site not ranking well…
ChatGPT App Lets You Pick Google Maps Instead Of Apple Maps
OpenAI updated its ChatGPT iOS app to let you select Google Maps instead of Apple Maps as the maps provider for local results. I am told this is new as of the past week or so.
ChatGPT App Lets You Pick Google Maps Instead Of Apple Maps
OpenAI updated its ChatGPT iOS app to let you select Google Maps instead of Apple Maps as the maps provider for local results. I am told this is new as of the past week or so.
Google AI Overviews Testing Keyboard Shortcuts
Google is now experimenting with keyboard shortcuts to the overlay menu in the AI Overviews within Google Search. Rajan Patel, VP, Engineering for Google Search, said this is just an experiment.
Google AI Overviews Testing Keyboard Shortcuts
Google is now experimenting with keyboard shortcuts to the overlay menu in the AI Overviews within Google Search. Rajan Patel, VP, Engineering for Google Search, said this is just an experiment.
Google Top Stories Preferred Sources Is Live In US & India
Google has launched the Preferred Sources top stories feature fully in the US and India, after testing it in Search Labs for a bit over six weeks. As I said then, this is a nice feature for publishers and hopefully will lead to more traffic from Google…
Google Ads Performance Max Campaigns Gain Gender Exclusion
Google Ads has added the gender exclusions feature for Performance Max campaigns. This was previously announced last week and is now showing up in the Google Ads interfaces for advertisers.
Google & Bing Tests Search Title Expansion, Colors & More
Google and Bing are busy testing changing the search results snippets title. In one case, Google is expanding the title of the search result on mouse hover. In another case, Google is testing changing the color of the title on hover. Bing is also testi…