Google AI Overview Lawsuit Dismissed Over No Agreement With Publishers
About a year ago, Penske, which operates and owns Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Variety, and others, sued Google over its AI Overviews. Well, that case was dismissed because Penske failed to prove that Google entered into any formal…
Phase Two Of The Google September 2026 Spam Update Hits On 9/30
Google announced the Google September 2026 spam update a week ago today on September 24th. We most likely saw the first wave of sites getting hit on September 25th, 26th and into the 27th. Then things cooled a bit but it all heated back up yesterday, …
Google Local Service Ads Bug Serving Wrong Locations
There seems to be a bug with Google Local Service Ads showing ads from advertisers who are not targeting specific locations. With Local Service Ads, an advertiser can say they serve a specific city or location, but Google seems to be showing ads from a…
October 2026 Google Webmaster Report
Here is the big Google webmaster report for October 2026, where I recap the most important organic and webmaster-focused Google Search news for the past month. Clearly, the Google September 2026 spam update, which started off strong and is still rolli…
Google AI Overviews Invade Team Rosters
Google seems to be going after team rosters with the latest Google AI Overview to overtake website content for its own AI-generated version of that content. If you search for certain team rosters, Google will generate an AI answer, an AI Overview, wit…
Microsoft Advertising Optimization Experiments Now Generally Available
Microsoft Advertising announced that optimization experiments is now generally available for Search, Shopping, Audience, and Performance Max campaigns. An Optimization experiment measures the impact of a campaign change through a controlled A/B test, M…
Google Tests Dropping I’m Feeling Lucky Button From Search Bar
Google seems to be testing dropping the historic I’m feeling lucky button for the main Google Search bar. It is totally gone for some searchers when you start to type your query, and in other cases, it is supplemented with AI buttons.
Google Search Tests 3 Products In Grid That Expands To More
Google is testing showing three products in the more products grid within Google Search. In some tests, the grid can expand to show four or five or so products across or downsize to only show three.
Google Ads: Have At Least One Asset Group To Avoid Invalid Final URL Error
Google Ads updated its destination not working policy document to “provide additional examples for destination issues for advertisers,” the company said. But Google also added a new line that says “Make sure your campaign has at least one asset group …
Google AI Overviews Return For Many Large Brand Names
Google seems to be showing more and more AI Overviews these days and even for many large brand names. It don’t have a ton of data but Google does seems to be showing more and AI Overviews for almost every large brand name except for Google’s own name …
OpenAI ChatGPT Ads Gains Bulk Product Creation, Product Review Status & More
OpenAI just sent out an email to advertisers about new ChatGPT Ads product updates that include several new features. The new features include bulk creation for product feed campaigns, product review status, report conversions beyond your campaign goal…
Daily Search Forum Recap: September 30, 2026
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 only paying about 100 publishers in the AI contribution pilot…
Google Maps Now Requires Sign In To Read All Reviews & More
Google Maps now requires you to sign in to a Google account to see all the reviews on a Google Business Profile listing. It is also required in order to sort the reviews, leave a review, and more. I assume this was done to help prevent AI, bots, and th…
Google Paying ~100 Publishers 0.1% Of Ad Revenue In AI Contribution Pilot
As you know, Google has a small pilot named the AI contribution pilot, where they are paying some publishers for using their content in AI features like AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini. Well, according to The Information, it is about 100 publishers an…
Google Tests Sponsored Products Grid That Looks Like The Organic Product Grid
Google is testing making the sponsored products search results block or grid look more like the organic products/shopping grid. Instead of showing a long carousel of products across the top or on the right, this shows a product grid format we are more …
Bing Tests Product Features Labels On Product Listings
Microsoft Bing is testing adding product feature labels to product listings in the search results. This can add labels like “great for…,” “effective,” “performs well,” “lightweight”, and so on.
Bing Sponsored Ads With One-Line Consumer Review Extension
Microsoft Advertising now shows “consumer review” ad extensions in the Bing search results sponsored results section. These are one-line snippets of text, added under the sponsored result, that come a “from consumer review.”
Google Working To Restore Google Analytics
Google has confirmed there are issues with Google Analytics loading the platform. Google updated its status report to say that it has “restored for some users” and Google expects “a resolution for all users in the near future.”
Daily Search Forum Recap: September 29, 2026
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 Nick Fox was interviewed again and said the DMA changes make him sad and are terrible for search…
Google’s Nick Fox Feels Sad & Terrible For European Searchers After DMA
Pietro Valetto interviewed Nick Fox, Senior Vice President of Knowledge & Information at Google. Nick Fox shared a snippet from the full video about the DMA changes that led Google to say it had to make the biggest reduction in search quality in its 28…