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 reported earnings last night and their ad revenue continues to grow...

This week, guess what, we saw more Google search ranking volatility heat up mid-week. Several new studies have come out showing that AI Overviews hurt click-through rates from search results. Google will stop supporting the...

Google's John Mueller pretty much said that using image streaming techniques will not result in an SEO friendly outcome. He actually said, "It's a great way to prevent your images from being found through search engines."

Google is testing a new version of the mobile search results snippets where the URL is now blue, still clickable. Also, a variation where they are switching the placement of the URL and the site name.

Microsoft Advertising has temporarily suspended the ability for agencies to send out client connection requests. Instead, the agency needs to reach out to Microsoft support and wait 5-7 days to hear back to be able to manage their client's ad campaigns on Microsoft.

Google seems to have added a new section to music knowledge panels named "Behind the music." It seems that this is generated using Google's Gemini AI and gives you a bit of background on the song.

Microsoft is now showing two rows of shopping ads at the top of the Bing Search results. There is even an option to expand them to show more ads.

Google reported earnings and their ad revenue is up again year-over-year, with an increase of 8.5%, and overall revenue is also up 12%. I should note, it is down from Q4 because Q4 is always Google's best performing quarter, which is why you don't really compare the it to the last quarter, but rather the same quarter from a year ago.

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

Over the past few days, I've noticed signs of increased Google Search ranking volatility. I held off reporting on it until now because I wanted to see how things settled, but it does seem like Google is testing ranking algorithm updates, on and off, over the past few days.

Google AdSense has updated its policy center by adding three new issue labels; policy issue, regulatory issue, and advertiser preference and also adding new filters. Google said this is to "help you better understand, prioritize, and resolve your issues."

Google updated its Google Merchant Center merchant listing structured data documentation to removed the EnergyConsumptionDetails properties and added an alternative solution to the certificationIdentification property. But keep in mind that the hasEnergyConsumptionDetails is backwards compatible for those who have already implemented it.

Google's Lisa Landsman interviewed Google's Google Business Profiles Verification Product Manager, Sheerna. They discussed a lot of the concerns many local SEOs and small businesses are dealing with around GBPs and also the challenges they have with managing the service.

Google Ads is rolling out a new way to view some of your reports in a tree table view. "Instead of flat tables, you now get a hierarchical layout where dimensions are stacked visually," explained Thomas Eccel who posted about this on LinkedIn.

Google is relaxing its photo guidelines for Local Service Ads. This may result in photos that were not previously allowed, may be allowed after May 22, 2025. I am not sure if these photos will automatically show up in your Local Service Ads or if you need to manually approve them after May 22nd.