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 big changes and swings with the Google Search results...

Yes, I reported Google Search ranking volatility over this past weekend, but I am seeing a large increase in the chatter within the SEO community over the past 24 hours or so. The chatter seems consistent with a big Google Search algorithm update that is underway but at this point, Google has not yet confirmed it and may never confirm it.

Google announced a number of big changes within its executive AI leadership ranks, including Jeff Dean leaving Google after 27 years, Demis Hassabis stepping down as Google DeepMind CEO to be its chair, and Koray Kavukcuoglu taking over many of his responsibilities. No matter how Google spun it, the stock was down about 4% yesterday from the news.

While the Google Search Console generative AI performance reports do not share query data, you can still try to figure out which queries are from AI Mode versus normal searches. The SEO community has been doing this for years now by looking for more conversational-style queries in your Search Console performance reports.

Microsoft Advertising is rolling out a new feature for advertisers to allow you to exclude Audience ads placements within Performance Max campaigns. There is a new setting named "Excluded content terms" within Audience Ads.

Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, posted a video Q&A on the upcoming bidding update coming on August 17th. As you know, these bidding changes are causing a big stir within the PPC industry and Ginny wanted to answer some questions in a video format.

Google has a new specialized feature within Product Listing Ads within Merchant Center named Deal Ends annotation. This is experimental now but works globally, except for EEA+, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It will add high-impact and real-time urgency signals, such as "3 days left" or "5 hours left" badges, directly below product prices.

Google Ads is testing a new security feature to disallow free domain email addresses (such as @gmail.com or @yahoo.com) from performing sensitive actions on a Google Ads advertiser account. Google will only allow those using corporate emails to perform such actions.

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

Google's communications representative, Jennifer Kutz, told The Verge that Reddit gets no preference in Google Search or Google's AI Search features. Kutz told The Verge that Reddit "gets no special preference" in Google's ranking systems.

We knew this day was coming, and now Google has sent out emails announcing the date when Google Assistant will be going away on mobile devices. The date is September 4, 2026, and Gemini will replace Google Assistant on WearOS, headphones and earbuds that are compatible, and Android Auto.

Google will be updating its Other restricted businesses: Government documents and services policy on October 5, 2026. There are a lot of changes coming to this policy, so if you are in the business that promote direct acquisition of government documents and services, then read on.

Microsoft is testing a "Top Source" section within the Bing Search results interface. This section shows the Top Source with various sections from the site or various news articles from the site.

Google has renamed the Local Services platform policies document to Local Services Ads requirements. I am not sure if this was renamed and reworded because the Google Local Service Ads platform is being migrated into the main Google Ads platform but it just seems weird to do this now?