Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Monopoly Ruling, Ranking Volatility, Million Dollar Ad Bugs, Search Console Recommendations & More
For the original iTunes version, click here.
This week, we covered the big ruling that Google is officially a monopoly, a federal judge ruled. Google search ranking volatility heated up the day after that ruling…
Google Search Team On Crawling & Improvements To Crawling
Google posted a new “Search Off The Record” podcast yesterday on the topic of crawling where John Mueller, Lizzi Sassman, and Gary Illyes spoke about how Google crawls, some ideas on how to make crawling more efficient and some misconceptions around cr…
Google: We Don’t Track How Expensive It Is To Crawl, Render, Index & Serve Pages
There has been some confusion around how Google handles pages that might be more costly for Google Search to crawl, render, index and serve – i.e. JavaScript pages. Google does not have a monetary budget per site, in terms of it will spend $X of crawl…
Google Featured Snippets With Emojis & Special Characters
It is not every day that you see a Google featured snippet with emojis and special Unicode characters. Here is an example of one spotted by Nick Churick (hat tip Patrick Stox) that he posted on X.
Google Lens Rolling Out Speak Now To Ask About This Image
Google seems to be rolling out a new Google Lens feature that lets you record with your camera and also speak with your voice on top of that video. Then Google Lens will match the video or image with your spoken text to give you a set of search results…
Bing Search Tests Opening Searches In New Window From Home & Pagination Bar
Microsoft is testing a weird change to the Bing Search results user experience. Bing is testing that when you do a search from the home page, that it opens the search results in a new window, instead of loading those results on the same tab you are on….
Daily Search Forum Recap: August 8, 2024
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 Ads issues credit notices of millions of dollars to individual advertiser by mistake…
Google Local Service Ads To Show Photos & They Improve Ad Rank
Google will begin showing photos in your Local Service Ads that come from your Local Service Ads profile. Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, wrote on X yesterday, “Starting today, we’ll begin selecting photos from your LSA profile to show in your ads.”
Google Tests More Videos To Short Videos Tab Instead Of Loading More Videos Below
Google is testing sending the searcher to the short videos tab after clicking on the more videos button, instead of dynamically loading videos underneath the videos you are currently looking at in the search results.
Google Ads API Version 17.1 Now Available
Google Ads has released an update it the Google Ads API, version 17.1. Version 17.1 includes shareable ad previews, removing specified automatically created assets linked to Responsive Search Ads, retrieving offline conversion diagnostics, offline dia…
Google Search Snippets You May Like Label
Google is testing a new label for its search results snippets, this one is named “you may like.” I am not sure how Google knows you may like this search result snippet, unless this is a variation of how Google names the “you visit often” label?
Google Ads Million Dollar Credits Bug For Local Service Ads
Google notified some advertisers last night that they are expected to receive $16 million dollars and $6 million dollars in credits. I am sure others got similar astronomical credit notices. Don’t retire anytime soon, it is a bug, and Google will fix…
Document: Apple Maintains A Search Index Of Billions Of Websites
As part of the DOJ ruling that Google is a monopoly, the document noted that Apple has its own search index and the index size is of billions of websites. The specific number was redacted but it said, “Apple maintains an index of about X billion websit…
Google Business Profiles Call Data Gone From Performance Report
Google Business Profiles performance report is no longer showing the “call” tab that shows you statistics and data on searchers who called you from Google Search and Google Maps. I suspect this might be related to the Google Business Profile call hist…
Google Ads Test: Call Extensions With Advertiser Name
Google is testing yet another call extension ad format, this one shows the advertiser’s name below the clickable phone number. This gives a lot more visibility to the phone number and the CTA for the call extension.
Google Ads To Transition Smart Campaigns To Performance Max
Google Ads will transition the functionality of Smart Campaign into Performance Max campaigns in the coming months. Google said “Performance Max provides all the same benefits of Smart campaigns and more,” in an email sent to one advertiser.
Google Ads Featured Options Search Interface
Google Ads may be testing a new search ad format named “featured options.” This shows ad listings in this thing card layouts that should be related to events.
Google Search Ranking Volatility Heats Up After DOJ Monopoly Ruling
It’s been about a week since the superheated and bursting Google Search ranking volatility, and since then, it did happen to calm down a bit, at least relatively speaking. But now I am seeing the Google search ranking volatility heat up again.
Google Search Console Recommendations (Experimental)
Google Search Console is rolling out a new recommendations feature where Google will show you site improvement recommendations. These recommendations are based on the data in Search Console and aim to help improve your site’s performance on Google Search.
SEO Scam Where You Pay Google To Fix Your Search Rankings
There is this SEO scam going around where scammers are saying you pay Google to fix your rankings in Google Search. All you need to do is prepay them and Google will fix your site. John Mueller from Google said “this is a scam,” that Google does not o…