As you know, Google rolled out Gemini 3.8 Flash for subscribers to AI Mode and some have started to play with it. And the early feedback is that AI Mode running Gemini 3.8 Flash is not link or citation friendly. Meaning, AI Mode with Google’s latest AI model is less likely to cite sources and […]

Google’s Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google Search, said on X, “Gemini 3.8 Flash has landed in Search.” This comes only a couple of weeks after Google brought Gemini 3.7 Flash to AI Mode within Google Search.

A federal judge in Virginia ruled against breaking up Google’s ad tech business after Google was found to be a monopoly over its ad technology platforms. The judge ordered Google to end its practices that depress ad rates for web publishers, but declined to order divestiture of Google’s ad exchange and other technology.

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

Google Trends now lets you filter your results by category, either with or without a query. This can give you a more refined view of the trends for a specific query or zoom you out more on category level trends within Google Search.

Microsoft is testing removing the site names from the Bing search results and instead showing only the site’s URL. Google tested this about a year ago, so I guess it makes sense for Bing to test as well.

Google AdSense will change how it counts impressions for display ads starting on February 17, 2027. Google will use what it calls the Begin-to-Render methodology and will only count the impression once the ad has successfully loaded and has started to render on the user’s device.

About a month ago, Google announced Tell Maps, a way for Google Maps contributors to use AI to tell Google Maps more about places. “You can suggest edits conversationally, right from Ask Maps and the Contribute tab,” Google said about Tell Maps.

Google Ads added a new section to the how asset groups work help documentation for pre-fill asset groups with generated assets. This section goes over new features like in-construction callout and automatic pre-fill.

Google’s John Mueller said the Google disavow tool “does have effects,” adding, “but it has its place & time.” This was in response a complaint about a site dropping in the search results after adding links to the disavow link tool.

Google Analytics seems to have another bug, this time with data missing from the main charts. September 1, 2026 data is showing zero traffic to websites; I believe this is across every Google Analytics install.

Google is working on fixing a bug with Local Service Ads where it seems Local Service Ads are being unlinked from the associated Google Business Profiles. There are also complaints of instability and slowness on the Local Service Ads platform.

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

In early August, Google was testing requiring searchers to sign in to verify they are humans to continue to see search results. Now, Google is testing a similar feature without requiring you to sign in, but instead, Google is asking you to click a “Continue” button after a few seconds, after Google verifies your request.

Google Ads added a new paragraph to the AI Max help documentation for AI Max keyword prioritization.” It explains that when “disabling the broad match campaign setting or moving to AI Max, broad keywords are not treated as exact match keywords in prioritization.” It then tells you how to handle this within AI Max.