Daily Search Forum Recap: March 7, 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 dropped the horrid page annotations feature, thankfully…
Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google AI Mode, Gemini 2.0 Powered AI Overviews, Ranking Volatility & New Search Data
Google released its much anticipated AI Mode, which is in beta now, but it super cool. Google AI Overviews are now powered by Gemini 2.0. Google had more search ranking volatility this week. Google said they answered…
Google Business Profile Now Associated With Local Service Ads
Google sent out emails to Local Service Ads advertisers notifying them that their Google Business Profile accounts are not affiliated to your Local Service Ads account. That means your reviews will only be accepted through your Google Business Profile…
Google Ads Location Targeting New Add Locations In Bulk
Google Ads has updated its interface for when you select when you want your ads running in specific regions/locations. Now, it has a button to “add locations in bulk,” which should help you add locations faster.
Google Ads May Get Channel Reporting For PMax Campaigns
Google may be bringing channel reporting to the Google Ads Performance Max campaigns. I spotted this via Kirk Williams who posted a photo of a slide from Google Think event in Amsterdam where Arjan Schoorl attended. The slide says “Channel Reporting” …
Google Drops The Horrid Page Annotations Feature
Google has shut down, turned off, and disabled, its new page annotations feature. The feature where Google hijacked your content, placed links in your content, links you didn’t add yourself, and directed your content to Google Search. It is no longer, …
Google Search Know Before You Go Section
Google has this new “Know before you go” section in the search results. I mean, it is new for search, not new for Google Maps and not new for local. But I’ve never seen a Know before you go box in the search results before.
Microsoft Shows How Ads Are Chosen In Bing Search
Microsoft is now showing why it selects or chooses to show a specific ad directly in the Bing search results. When you click on the arrow down by the URL of the search ad snippet, you will get window dialog that may explain why the ad was shown.
Robots Refresher: robots.txt — a flexible way to control how machines explore your website
A long-standing tool for website owners, robots.txt has been in active use for over 30 years and
is broadly supported by crawler operators (such as tools for site owners, services, and search
engines). In this edition of the r…
How fast does Google re-index de-indexed pages in 2025? – Part 1
When I started in SEO over 20 years ago, getting your pages into Google was simple. Google prided itself on indexing pages fast. Three months after de-indexing my site (with almost 100% pages indexed) to test how fast Google will re-index de-indexed pa…
Daily Search Forum Recap: March 6, 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 launched its AI mode, but it is in beta and you need to be added to a waitlist…
Google AI Mode – It’s Here – Here Is How To Access It
Google has officially announced Google AI Mode, after hearing rumors about it for months and then seeing leaked screenshots of it a few weeks ago. Google said AI mode gives you more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities so you can ge…
Official: Google AI Overviews Powered By Gemini 2.0
In December, Google told us they are testing powering AI Overviews using Gemini 2.0. We think we even saw Google testing this in the wild with deeper AI Overviews with tons of links. Well, now, in the U.S. AI Overviews are officially powered by Gemini…
Google Search Tests More Favicon Designs
Google is testing more favicon designs within Google Search. I mean, we cover these way too often but hey, I like favicons, don’t you?
Bing Ads Auto Expanding Sitelinks
It looks like Microsoft is testing search ads that auto expand to reveal sitelinks under those ads within the Bing Search results. You don’t need to click or do anything and the ad will dynamically expand to show more sitelinks underneath the search a…
Google Search Liaison Gets An Assist
Rajan Patel, a VP, Engineering for Search at Google and the Co-founder of Google Lens, is now also offering an assist to Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liason. For the past several weeks, Rajan Patel’s X profile also was tagged as being associated w…
Early March Google Search Ranking Volatility
I’ve been watching the volatility ever since the unconfirmed February 26th or so ranking volatility when the tools didn’t show much of a spike but the chatter was super high. Well, the tools started to show the spike around March 1st and the chatter i…
Google Products Top Insights Using Generative AI
Google is now using generative AI, and labeling it as such, within the Google Search product details overlay. When you click on a product listing in Google Search, the overlay window has a section called top insights. That section can be generated us…
Google Business Reviews Gain Expressive Reactions
Google now supports expressive reactions for Google reviews on mobile search and maps. This shows up when viewing a Google Business Profile’s reviews on mobile.
Google Search AI Overviews For Movie Reviews
Google is now showing AI Overviews within the movie review summaries in Google Search. Under the review summaries is a disclaimer that reads, “Al overviews are experimental.”