Search Engine Roundtable

6/29/2026

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

6/29/2026

Liz Reid, Google's Head of Search, was interviewed by Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis on the AI Inside podcast. In that interview, Liz Reid said Google wants great content to shine in its search results and AI experiences. She said, "we really do want great content to shine and continue to connect people to it."

6/29/2026

Google seems to be testing the rollout of top stories within the AI Overview section of the Google Search results. This was something Google pre-announced last month and it now seems to be rolling out to some searchers.

6/29/2026

Google has now specified exactly which regions local inventory ads and free local listings are available. Previously, Google would lump both together, but in reality, local inventory ads are accepted in more regions than free local listings within Google Merchant Center.

6/29/2026

OpenAI has dropped the "Sponsored" label on its ChatGPT Ads for an "Ad" label. The position of the label also moved from the top left of the ad box to the right side of the individual ad unit.

6/29/2026

Google Ads is adding new reporting to Performance Max campaigns for product reporting by asset group and also a report to view audience segments by spend. These reports should give you more clarity in your ad campaign spend and to understand the ROI of such spend.

6/26/2026

Bruce Clay, known as the Father of SEO, passed away in late May. Bruce Clay started his company before there was even an SEO industry and is known for helping it become a true professional industry. I never met an individual who has contributed more to the industry than Bruce, both in terms of his time, resources, and money.

6/26/2026

It only took about two days - the Google June 2026 spam update is now done rolling out. It started on Wednesday, June 24, 2026 at around noon and completed on June 26, 2026 at around 2pm ET. This update felt like it started earlier than it was announced, and felt more widespread than a typical Google spam update.

6/26/2026

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

6/26/2026

This week, Google released the June 2026 spam update, Google said it was a normal spam update but it does feel like this one started a bit earlier and was a big one. Yes, we covered on Sunday what we thought...

6/26/2026

Google Ads seems to be rolling out Maximize Conversion Value bidding within Standard Shopping campaigns. You might see under the Budget and bidding optimization setting for your Standard Shopping campaigns, the bid option for "Maximize conversion value."

6/26/2026

Google announced new security controls for Merchant Center for Agencies, specifically around user access controls for admins and standard roles. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, said that these changes are "to help streamline workflows and improve security."

6/26/2026

The Google Ads API will stop allowing advertisers to create Smart Campaigns on August 3, 2026. Google has been transitioning from Smart Campaigns to Performance Max campaigns for years now.

6/26/2026

Google has added the messages button back to the Google Business Profile dashboard within Google Search. Google use to have a feature like this but I believe removed it but now it is possibly coming back.

6/26/2026

Earlier this month, we covered Google's announcement of the Google-hosted lead form. Well, now it is going live for some advertisers in their Google Ads advertiser accounts.

6/25/2026

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 released the Google June 2026 spam update yesterday afternoon...

6/25/2026

Earlier this month, Google announced new ways to control how Google's general search AI features (like AI Mode and AI Overviews) can use your content and link to your content. Well, Google has released a super detailed help document explaining how it all works, including how to access it, the controls, what it does, the time it takes, the property inheritance, and how to submit feedback.

6/25/2026

Google is testing a button in the AI Overview within Google Search that takes you to the web only tab. As a reminder, the web only tab does not have any AI search features or other search verticles, it only has the web search results.

6/25/2026

Google has released version 24.2 of the Google Ads API, this is a minor release with dozens of updates. This update includes "critical security updates, new AI transparency features, reporting enhancements, and powerful planning insights," Google announced.

6/25/2026

Google's John Mueller explained when Google will count an impression for a web page within the generative AI features in Google Search. In short, there needs to be a link to your site being shown in AI Overviews / AI Mode for it to show as an impression in the new Google Search Console AI performance reports.

6/25/2026

Google is testing autocomplete within the Ask Anything follow-up box within Google Search's AI Mode. So when you start to type a follow-up question, Google will suggest autocomplete suggestions.

6/25/2026

The page indexing report within Google Search Console is now two weeks delayed. It is stuck at June 11, 2026, for me, and has not been updated in 14 days. Google has been reporting issues with Search Console often enough, so this is not unusual, but this delay is significant enough to cover, since we are now at the two-week mark.

6/24/2026

Google has just announced the release of the June 2026 spam update and said it should only take a few days to roll out. Truth is, we kind of saw this coming, although Google would say no, we did not.

6/24/2026

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

6/24/2026

Google is updating its Google Ads Destination Mismatch policy in early July 2026 to allow the final URL to redirect to a different domain in some cases, with prior approval from Google. This was previously not allowed, as ads generally should take you to the final destination URL, but in some cases, Google Ads will allow it.

6/24/2026

Google added a lot more detail to a Google help document on using broad search for Local Services Ads. Google added a section on the setting, how to disable broad search, how to view leads from broad search, some nuances and how to target multiple verticals.

6/24/2026

Google published new ways to remove and prevent Google Merchant Center from showing products "Found by Google" in your product feed. This is when Google finds products on your site by crawling your site, not through your feed.

6/24/2026

Google Ads is rolling out new data columns that show unique search categories with clicks, conversions and impressions. This is different from just the clicks column, which is also available in this report.

6/24/2026

Google Ads is rolling out a new section under the Conversions section labeled "Shop diagnostics." It says, "This report helps diagnose shop sales reporting and optimization eligibility."

6/24/2026

Google is making a change to how it reports on the Multiplex ads units, where starting on June 23, 2026 where Google will report every ad in the grid as its own ad request. Previously, ads in a Multiplex ad unit are counted as one ad request with multiple impressions for each slot within the grid.

6/23/2026

Google has confirmed it is rolling out a limited test in the search results to add labels to the sponsored results. The labels will say "Strongest match" and "Strong match," which represent how relevant those specific ads are to the query.

6/23/2026

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 Search Console is expanding access to the new generative AI reporting features...

6/23/2026

Google has updated the Google Ads help document on About reporting in AI Max for Search campaigns with a number of changes. The changes include documenting the DSA to AI Max deadline, more information on how to understand the report, a new section on navigating and interpreting Search Campaigns for Travel performance reports, and updates to focus on intent and getting regular reviews.

6/23/2026

Google seems to be expanding access to the new Search Console generative AI performance reports to more regions, outside of just the UK. I see a number of people in India who are now reporting seeing the new AI report. I personally do not see these new AI reports yet but maybe you do?

6/23/2026

Google has posted a new policy document for subscription linking for news publishers under the Google Publisher Center help area. Google wrote, "Any publisher using this service must adhere to these policies."

6/23/2026

Google added a new section to the about final URL expansion in Search document named "How the landing page logic works for Travel Promotion Ads & Booking Links within Search Campaigns for Travel." This explains the relationship between your targeting settings and your landing pages and how the final URL expansion is related to that.

6/23/2026

Google announced it has expanded its Financial Services Verification process to 24 new European Economic Area (EEA) markets. The verification requirements kicks in today, July 23, 2026. Google said they are doing this to "help stop scams before they start."

6/22/2026

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. We saw some significant Google search ranking volatility heat this weekend...

6/22/2026

Google's John Mueller warned a site owner from moving his domain name from a .ca to .com just for branding purposes.

6/22/2026

Google Ads updated its responsive search ads help document to expand on the tips section around pinning headlines and descriptions. It now warns against pinning identical or very similar text and suggests a hybrid strategy.

6/22/2026

Last month, Google announced that it is rolling out text disclaimers within Google Ads globally, in all languages. Well, it seems to have rolled out for many last week, as many are seeing it in their Google Ads accounts.

6/22/2026

Google Ads is updating how bidding strategies are labeled. Specifically, Target CPA and Target ROAS will show as standalone bidding strategy options, separating them from the "Maximize conversions" and 'Maximize conversion value' strategies.

6/22/2026

Google is adding a new feature to the Google Business Profiles actions named Collected Info. This is to confirm your business details and keep your Business Profile updated, Google wrote.

6/21/2026

Google may have quietly rolled out an update on Friday, June 19th, that seems to may have impacted more of the black hat SEO side of things. It is not 100% clear because most of the tools seem pretty stable and yes there is chatter also in the more "white hat" forums, but I see a much larger spike in chatter in the more "black hat" forums.

6/19/2026

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 spoke on stage about chunking, AI content, quality content, subscriptions, paywalls, site wide signals...

6/19/2026

This week, we covered the typical and ongoing Google Search ranking volatility. UK's CMA ordered Google to share its search ranking algorithm and enable data portability to some third-parties. Google Search rolled out its information...

6/19/2026

Microsoft Bing is testing a new updated design for the news section within Bing Search. The updated news box, honestly, is easier to understand and makes it clearer that these are news sources - so I kind of like it.

6/19/2026

Google held a Search Central Live event in Milan this week and spoke about several topics including chunking, site-wide signals, AI settings in Search Console, commondity versus non-commodity content, paywalled content, subscriptions for news sites, what clicks look like from AI Overviews and much more.

6/19/2026

Microsoft Bing is testing a color selector / viewer in the shopping and product results within Bing Search. This will show you what colors the product is available in, without having to click over to the website to see it.

6/19/2026

Google will be turning on conversion-based customer lists for Google Ads advertiser accounts beginning on Jun 17, 2026, with data processing to begin on August 18, 2026. This will happen to all advertisers who have already adopted both Enhanced Conversions and Customer Match but haven't yet enabled the conversion-based customer lists functionality, Google said.

6/19/2026

Google is testing using a hot pink font for the live time for when a place is busy or not. This is part of the old popular times feature, but Google is testing or launching a hot pink font to make it really noticeable.

6/18/2026

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

6/18/2026

Bing may soon support more countries for the countries filter within Bing Webmaster Tools. Fabrice Canel from Microsoft wrote on X, "Well, we are now actively considering expanding this to show more individual countries."

6/18/2026

Google can show an "Activities" button in the Google Business Profiles dashboard within Google Search. I assume this button is reserved for venues that let you book activities including booking tickets or other activities.

6/18/2026

Google is testing attributing where the 3D models are from that Google shows within the product detail screen in Google Search. I can't replicate this but the test shows "3D mode from [retailer name]."

6/18/2026

Google seems to be showing content from publishers in the Google News Showcase more within the Google Discover feed. I don't have direct data to prove this but two people who follow Google Discover closely said this is to be true.

6/18/2026

Google has updated its site move and domain migrations help document to note that for domain migrations, you should make sure to submit Change of Address requests for all domain variations. Google said the "domain migrations work best when all variants of a site are migrated properly."

6/17/2026

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. We are seeing heated Google Search ranking volatility continue into this week...

6/17/2026

Bing Webmaster Tools is rolling out a preview release of those new AI reporting features demonstrated at SEO Week in late April. These include Intents, Topics, Citation Share, and Compare within the AI reporting section.

6/17/2026

I've been watching the chatter in the SEO industry, and honestly, it hasn't calmed down much since my last report for the period of June 8-12. The Google search results seem more heated today, and there appears to be an unconfirmed Google search ranking update underway.

6/17/2026

The Competition and Markets Authority in the UK has told Google it must be transparent on how it ranks search results in Google and it must enable users to port its data to other third-party search services. I can't imagine Google will ever share its full secret sauce on how it ranks its search results, and it is not the first time some political body has asked Google to do so, and it won't be the last.

6/17/2026

Google is rolling out a new look and feel for the Google Ads campaign status notifications and icons. The new statuses are no longer highlighted fully, instead they are just outlined in various colors. It makes it a bit less extreme to look at, and I am not sure if that is a good or bad change.

6/17/2026

Google added a new summary tab to the access and security section that shows the security tasks you completed and what tasks you have not completed. Google continues to add more and more security features to the Google Ads advertiser platform in the wake of more and more security threats, including hijacking Google Ads accounts.

6/16/2026

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 said that LLMS.txt files won't help or hurt your search rankings, Google just ignores it...

6/16/2026

Google's latest Off The Record podcast was titled Markdown vs HTML with John Mueller and Martin Splitt talking about the use cases for both. In short, both said that when it comes to SEO and Search...

6/16/2026

John Mueller from Google said that when it comes to having a multinational site, making a specific US folder structure won't give you any practical SEO difference. It might be easier for you to manage or for your to analyze with your analytics and data but from an SEO perspective, it won't matter.

6/16/2026

Google has been mixing sponsored ads within its organic free search listings since October 2023. Eventually, Google said this is called dynamic ad placement, and it has become the new Google Search. Google has been doing this with the image search results as well, at least for a year. But now it is being called about by the famous, educated and wealthy Paul Graham on X.

6/16/2026

Microsoft Advertising has rolled out a new feature named Product Explorer. This tool gives advertisers a searchable view of your entire product catalog, letting you quickly see which of your products are active, serving, and performing.

6/16/2026

Google has updated its guide for optimizing for generative AI search help document to clarify that (1) LLMS.txt files don't help or hurt with search rankings and (2) AI files, markdown files, etc are not used in Google Search.

6/15/2026

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 Ads released promotion mode beta...

6/15/2026

Google Ads announced a number of updates and changes this morning including changes to bidding target optimization, expanding access to Smart Bidding Exploration and promotion mode beta rolling out. My biggest concern is with bidding target optimization, as Google said it will deliver more predictable performance campaigns with fixed spending limits.

6/15/2026

Google is rolling out Information agents within Google Search AI Mode. Information agents was announced at Google I/O and is a search feature that you can pay for within Google AI Ultra subscription plans, allowing Google Search to perform tasks and seek out information for you, even when you are not actively using Google Search.

6/15/2026

It looks like Google has removed the pagination feature within the Google Local Finder interface. When you scroll through the local business profiles, it keeps adding more and more but the pagination bar is no longer there. I suspect the pagination feature was removed and replaced with infinite scroll?

6/15/2026

Google sent out an email notice to some advertisers saying, "Google will update its Limited Ad Serving policy to cover additional scenarios on Google Search." "Google may limit ad impressions from unqualified advertisers on searches that are more likely than others to result in negative ads experiences," Google explained.

6/15/2026

There are reports of a bug with Google Business Profiles where using the feature to invite others with owner and/or manager access is not working. Supposedly, the invite emails are either not going out at all, or they are not being delivered; either way, it is making giving access to Google Business Profiles a bit of a hassle.

6/15/2026

Google is showing a new label or extension on the Google Shopping product carousel named "Good price." Truth is, I am not sure if it is new, I mean, Google can show many different labels there but I've never seen "Good price" listed there before.

6/12/2026

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 search ranking volatility has been superheated all week...

6/12/2026

Google has finally fixed the link report within Google Search Console. It was broken for the past few weeks and all Google did back then was a temporary "fix" to revert the data to a previous state. But now that report is showing new, normal link data.

6/12/2026

This week, we covered the post-Google core update volatility that hit some folks hard. An updated zero click study shows Google Search is sending less and less traffic to the open web. Apple announced the all new Apple Intelligence and Siri AI. Bing gave searchers...

6/12/2026

Google is adding home listings to Google Local Service throughout the United States. Google mentioned this is in partnership with HouseCanary's rich data platform.

6/12/2026

Google has pushed off its deadline and timeline for the transition from Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) to AI Max for Search campaigns. Previously, the deadline was this coming September, and now it is February 2027.

6/12/2026

Google has a new help document in the Google Search Console tools and reporting section named Platform property tooltips. I don't see any other information about this document but it does imply that a new report or tool is coming to Search Console.

6/12/2026

This week has been weird, in terms of Google Search ranking volatility. The volatility seems to have extended from this past weekend, throughout most, if not all, of this week. But again, like this past weekend, the tools are really not showing much heat and volatility. But I am seeing significant chatter in the SEO community about ranking fluctuations.

6/12/2026

Google sent an email to some searchers notifying them that changes are coming to how to control your saved history and personalization within Google Search. Google added that "You'll see this change in your Google Account in the next few days."

6/11/2026

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 Search was unaffected by yesterday's Gemini outage...

6/11/2026

Google will soon allow you to connect Google Business Profiles with Gemini. This will allow you to ask questions about your reviews, your local listing and performance within Google Maps and Google Search.

6/11/2026

Google seems to have added WhatsApp phone numbers to tons of Google Business Profiles automatically over the past week. Google has sent email notifications to some of those businesses, and in some cases, the numbers are wrong or they are not reachable.

6/11/2026

Google Merchant Center has API issues, causing a temporary delay in product submissions. Google posted the notice in the Merchant Center portal and on its status page.

6/11/2026

Google is testing using a dotted underline and a shaded URL for the search result snippet's URL. Yesterday, we covered how Google was testing a blue dotted underline for sitelinks within the sponsored results. But now we are seeing dotted underlines and shaded URLs for organic search result snippets.

6/11/2026

OpenAI has upgraded its ChatGPT Ads Manager tool to allow advertisers to upload product feeds that automatically create ads for each uploaded product. This obviously makes it easier to have ads on ChatGPT for retailers.

6/11/2026

Google Ads is testing showing images within the sitelinks portion of the ad unit. I've seen plenty of images in the main portion of the sponsored search results but I don't believe I've seen images in the sitelinks area of the sponsored results.

6/11/2026

Google Search and its search generative features like AI Mode and AI Overviews were unaffected by yesterday's Gemini outage. Gemini, which is Google's AI product, had several outages throughout yesterday and we know that Gemini powers some of Google Search, so I was curious if the outage had any impact on Google Search.

6/10/2026

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

6/10/2026

A new study has been released that looks at the review replies that have been rejected by Google. Business owners take the time to reply to customer reviews and then Google deletes them, and often, the business owner has no idea the reply was deleted because Google does not notify anyone - Google just removes the review.

6/10/2026

Google is testing a new format for sitelinks within the search ads, sponsored listings. This format has the sitelinks underlined with blue dots. So these are blue dotted underlined sitelinks for Google Ads.

6/10/2026

Rand Fishkin and friends (Sparktoro and Similarweb) released an ongoing Google zero-click study that showed zero-click searches from Google Search have been sending less and less traffic to the open web and are declining at an even faster rate. In fact, the report says 68.01% of Google searches ended without a click and if you look at AI responses, it is more like only 27.6% of clicks go to the open web.

6/10/2026

The folks over at Schema.org have added usage statistics to each schema type. So if you want to see which schema type is used more, you can just check Schema.org. For example, author schema is used on over 10 million domains but event schema is used on under 1 million domains.

6/10/2026

Apple has made changes to its documentation for AppleBot to include crawling and usage for its AI efforts. There were other changes made to the document on June 08, 2026 as well.

6/9/2026

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. Apple announced the new Apple Intelligence and Siri AI...

6/9/2026

Apple had its big annual developer conference, WWDC, and as expected, they spent a lot of time showing off the new Apple Intelligence and what they are calling Siri AI. Apple says Siri AI is "an entirely new version of Siri, powered by Apple Intelligence."