Daily Search Forum Recap: November 5, 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 AI Overviews continue to shift click-through rates down…
Report: Google AI Overviews Continue To Drive CTR Downwards
Earlier this year, we covered that Google’s AI Overviews are killing click-through rates from the Google Search results. Well, Seer Interactive updated the numbers and that CTR decline has continued to decline and get even worse.
Google Tests A New Version Of AI Mode
Google is testing a new version of AI Mode responses in the wild, directly in the Google Search AI Mode interface. Google even tells the searcher, “You’re giving feedback on a new version of Al Mode. Which response do you prefer?”
Google Merchant Center Adds Promotions For Top Performing Products
Google added a new promotion method in Google Merchant Center for Top-performing products. This lets you just promote your best performing products in Google Shopping and Google Search.
Google Reviews Updates Services Summary Box
Google is testing an update to the reviews services summary box. We know Google does ask for services attributes and other attributes from both the business owner and reviewers but this review box seems newish.
Google AI Mode Gains 3 New Agentic Capabilities
Google’s Robby Stein announced three new agentic capabilities within AI Mode – (1) booking event tickets (2) booking beauty appointments and (3) wellness appointments.
Daily Search Forum Recap: November 4, 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 added a new user agent to the list…
Google Discover Tests Infinite Endless Scroll
Google is supposedly testing an endless, infinite scroll for Google Discover. When I scroll through Google Discover, it eventually just stops and doesn’t keep going. But Gagan Ghotra said he is seeing it go on and on forever.
Google Merchant Center Smart Cropping – You Can Opt Out
Did you know that Google Merchant Center will automatically crop your product images in Google Shopping if it thinks it will look better in Google Search? Did you know that you can also opt out of what they call “Smart Cropping”?
November 2025 Google Webmaster Report
We had a few unconfirmed but big Google search ranking updates but we are still waiting on an official core update…
Ongoing Google Search Console API Bug Impacts Search Appearance Filter
Google Search Console has a bug with its API when filtering on the searchAppearance dimension. This bug occurs when using the notEquals or notContains operators, it will only return rows with the excluded value, instead of excluding those rows.
Google Adds Chrome Web Store Google-CWS User Agent To Docs
Google added a new user agent to the Googlebot’s user-triggered fetchers documentation. The new user agent is for the Chrome Web Store named Google-CWS.
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Daily Search Forum Recap: November 3, 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 Search new ad layout is driving accidental clicks on search ads…
Google & Bing Are Indexing Grokipedia – AI Generated Wikipedia / Encyclopedia
Grokipedia, an AI-generated online encyclopedia launched a week ago with over 800,000 AI-generated pages, and both Google and Bing have already indexed hundreds, if not thousands, of those AI-generated pages.
The New Google Search Ad Layout Is Causing Accidentally Clicks
A few weeks ago, Google launched a new ad layout with the large “Sponsored results” label that groups numerous ads under that one label, and then sticks a “Hide sponsored results” button after you have already seen the ads. Well, it is leading to acci…
Google PSA: Verify Your Hosted Cloud Provider Host In Search Console
Google’s John Mueller posted a PSA yesterday, reminding SEOs and developers to verify the host name of cloud providers they are using to host images, videos, and other content. Specifically, you should use a DNS CNAME to the bucket, then verify with DN…
Publishers Say Google Used Their Data to Cheat Them, Raptive Lawsuit
Raptive, an advertising-sales company representing thousands of websites (content publishers), filed a 93-page complaint against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit says “Google has carried out a sophistica…
Reddit: Search Traffic Flat, AI Not Traffic Driver & 50% Of Traffic Is From Google
Reddit announced earnings late last week and it boggles me how people love this stock. I am not a financial expert of analysis but Reddit has been saying for some time that 50% of its traffic comes from Google Search. Reddit also said on this Q3 earnin…
Daily Search Forum Recap: October 31, 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 says Google Ads is not going away…