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 you do not need a blog in 2025...

It's the new year and why should that mean that Google Search calm down at all, in fact, it has been heated all holiday season, through New Years. I posted the 2024 Google algorithm update infographic. I also posted the January 2025 Google webmaster report...

We've seen various flavors of the what people are saying sections in the search results before. We've even see Google use AI to return results within them. But it seems this expandable carousel format is live in the mobile Google search results now.

The Google Ads API currently does not accept or support placement exclusions for Performance Max campaigns. This is also the case even if specified at the account level, Michael Cloonan, a Google Ads API specialist, wrote.

Google's John Mueller said that simply adding country codes to your URLs won't result in "any change at all" for regional ranking reasons. He added, changing your URLs will result in "temporary fluctuations" because of the URL change but it won't help you in the long run with ranking well in those regions.

A Redditor posted a question asking if startups in 2025 need a blog. This was posted in the SEO section of Reddit, so John Mueller replied by just saying "no." I guess a startup does not "need" a blog for SEO purposes, it is not a requirement.

Bing is now testing placing these arrow buttons, in a circle button format, next to the sitelinks. This is something Google has been testing on and off for some time in their search results as well.

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. I posted the big Google webmaster report for January 2025, the past month was so insane...

Talk about a busy month - the last 30 days has been pretty wild. We had the November 2024 core update finish in December, then we had a new December 2024 core update start and finish, while also having the December 2024 spam update start and finish in December as well.

Google's John Mueller was asked if the Google Search Console screenshot feature in the URL Inspection Tool is what Google Search sees. John responded saying, "For the most part, yes" and then added some caveats.

Google seems to be testing a new local search feature that is categorized as "Places people are talking about." It shows you local restaurants with social media information, like posts from Instagram and Facebook, in a carousel format.

Google Ads launched a new beta to let you edit existing images in your Google Ads asset library. This was previously in Product Studio but according to Menachem Ani, a Google Ads professional, this is new to the Google Ads asset library.

Google Ads has a new conversion goal that is in beta named "leads from messages." Conversion goals labeled as account default will use data from all of your campaigns to improve your bid strategy and campaign performance, even if they don't seem directly related to sales, Google says.