Google has updated the understanding page experience in Google Search results help document to add the new CrUX ad metrics which launched last week. To be clear, Google did not say this is a specific ranking signal for search, the CrUX ad metrics line was added to the “Page experience resources” section of the document.

Google is sending email notifications to Google Merchant Center users if their e-commerce platform supports Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and if so, telling them that “your products are now eligible for native checkout.” This means that your eligible products are automatically included, so if you don’t want people buying directly on Google, and you want […]

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

Google is now sending out Google Business Profile email notifications when its spam systems detect a spike in spam reviews on your Business Profile. The email says, “Protecting your Business Profile from spam reviews,” and adds, “Google has detected a spike in spam reviews on your Business Profile and removed them so they do not […]

Google is placing links, normal looking links, within the AI Overviews that take you into AI Mode instead of taking you to web pages and web sites. These links appear at the bottom of the AI Overview and prompt follow-up questions that take you into AI Mode.

Google added a new section to the Google Store ratings: An overview for Merchants within Google Merchant Center detailing the requirements for Google Store ratings. This was added a week or so ago, and it says you need at least 100 reviews, an average star rating of 3.5 to 5, a 24-hour timeframe and the […]

In Google Business Profiles, businesses can go in and mark their business as “Permanently closed.” But it seems that option went missing a few days ago. I no longer see it as an option, along with the option to select “temporarily closed” and some others.

It looks like spammers are taking advantage of Gemini Notebook, public NotebookLM, pages to spam Google with all sorts of content. This includes pages on sex toys, porn, peptides, coupon codes and more.

This is a programming note: I will be 100% offline from Sunday night (September 20th) through Monday night (September 21st) for Yom Kippur. I am not scheduling any stories tomorrow, Monday, Yom Kippur; nothing will be posted.

Google Search has this beta opt-in feature named Web Guide, it is like a mix of its AI search results interface and web search interface – in one. That being said, there seems to be a bug where, when you click the button that says “Classic search,” it does not take you out of Web […]

The crawl stats report is missing a day of data again, this time, the missing data is from September 15th (it might be a day later for some of you on different time zones). That being said, this has happened numerous times before and Google tends to always restore the data.

Google is testing a new feature in Google Discover named “Dive deeper.” When you click on it, it does not take you to a publisher’s article, instead, it takes you to an AI-generated short topic overview with links to some other articles (which do take you to the publisher) and community reaction.

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