Category Archives: computers

All things computers/servers…

Black Hat USA 2026: AI is racing ahead of cybersecurity controls

AI took center stage, but the clearest lesson was less about what AI can do than about who is accountable when something goes wrong

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 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 has amended its lawsuit against SerpApi…

Google Amends Lawsuit Against SerpApi Over Licensed Content

After Google’s lawsuit against SerpAPI, the Google Search scraper tool, was dismissed a month ago, Google has decided to amend the complaint. Google filed the amendment on August 10, 2026 as an “Amended Complaint.” Google is now taking an approach around protecting licensed content within its search results.

Google AI Overview Local Results Pulling From Low-Quality Listicles

Google will randomly show AI Overviews for local results, and when it does, It will often show AI-generated information about each local listing. The issue is that Google often cites low-quality and self-promotional listicle articles from across the web when showing those snippets in the local pack.

Google Merchant Center Performance Reporting Update Coming August 24th

Google announced several new updates to the Merchant Center performance report, starting on August 24, 2026. There are four updates: separating YouTube affiliate results from organic traffic, updating the YouTube organic traffic definitions, expanding product-level reporting for Google Ads, and adding new performance segmentation capabilities.

ChatGPT Ads With AI Descriptive Heading

OpenAI is testing placing descriptive headings above the ads within ChatGPT responses. I assume it is using AI to generate these headlines above the ChatGPT Ads.

Google Ads New Local Customer Optimization Help Doc

With Google migrating Local Service Ads to the main Google Ads platform, Google is already preparing new Google Ads help documents with more details about the change. A new document named About Local customer optimization within Performance Max campaign for store goals was just posted by Google.

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 11, 2026

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

Google Still Aggressively Poaching Agency Ads Accounts

I feel like a broken record and that Google simply does not care but again, I am seeing numerous reports from the PPC community about Google representatives attempting to poach their client accounts from them.

Google Ads Sponsored Results Tests Advertiser Name & Favicon Summary

Google is testing placing the list of advertisers in the group of sponsored results at the top of the ad block in the mobile search results. So if the sponsored results group has two advertisers in it, Google will show the favicon and domain name of the ads that will be shown below, all the […]

Google Travel Campaigns Migrating To Search Campaigns For Travel

Google will be migrating Travel campaigns to the new Search campaigns for Travel in Google Ads. This is happening sometime in the third quarter of 2026; we do not have a specific date.

Google Search Console Generative AI Performance Report Available For All

The Google Search Console generative AI performance reports seem to be live for everyone now. Google has not yet announced the full rollout of the generative AI performance reports but after checking all my profiles in Search Console, it seems to now be fully live.

Google Ads & Google Analytics Gain New AI Features

Google announced a number of new AI features for Google Ads and Google Analytics aimed to “simplify your workflow and expedite your path to business growth,” as Google wrote. Specifically, there are new AI Overviews at the top of the pages, new AI data dashboard tools, and a new nebcging AI feature.

SEOs Taking Over Expired Google X Accounts

It looks like we are seeing some Googler accounts being taken over by sites that sell SEO services, or dare I say it, spammy or low-quality SEO services. Martin Splitt from Google let his X account go during the whole Twitter to X Elon thing and eventually that account was picked up by a search […]

Are AI tutors safe for your kids?

AI tutors can offer useful support, but their quality and safeguards vary widely. Here’s what parents should check before handing one to a child.