Category Archives: computers

All things computers/servers…

Google: Significant Differences With A/B Tests Can Show In Search Results

Google’s John Mueller noted that if your A/B tests are “significantly different” from one and the other, then that “could be visible in search results too.” He also said, “Depending on your setup, what might happen is that one or the other version is used for indexing.”

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 14, 2026

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

OpenAI Crawlers Can Update Its User Agent String

OpenAI made a number of clarification changes to its crawler help documentation to say that version number of the user-agent string may be updated and it may use a user-agent string with an additional robots.txt marker.

Google Merchant Center AI Performance Insights For AI Mode & AI Overviews

Google Merchant Center is rolling out a beta AI Performance report that shares how well your products are performing within AI Mode and AI Overviews. Google wrote this report “specifically revealing your performance on AI Mode and AI Overviews.”

ChatGPT Ads Manager Gains Attributed Sales Value & Sales ROAS & Products

OpenAI has added new metrics to the ChatGPT Ads manager advertiser control center. The new metrics include Attributed Sales Value and Sales ROAS.

Google Ads Expands Alcohol, Gambling & Games Policy

Google Ads has posted that it has (1) expanded its alcohol policy to expand the approved geographic locations and (2) updated the gambling and games policy to expand the certification requirements to all categories under this policy.

Google Ads Asks For Justification When Requesting Removal Of Access

Google Ads is now asking you to note a justification for when you request the removal of access for a user in your Google Ads account. Then that request is sent to another administrator for approval, with the justification you entered.

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 13, 2026

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

Google Ads Email Support Broke

Google Ads email support option seems broken right now, when you try to use it, you get a notice that reads in red, “Something went wrong. Please try again.”

Google Search Ranking Volatility Around 7-Eleven

We may have had another unconfirmed Google Search ranking update around July 11th, which I will call the 7-Eleven update. It has been an unusual time since the completion of the June 2026 spam update, where I was on the verge of covering a few unconfrimed updates but it seems the chatter in the SEO […]

Google Ads Previews For Assets, Text Customizations & Final URL Expansion

Google Ads now lets you see ad previews by filtering by assets, plus you can preview examples of text customizations and final URL expansion directly within the Google Ads advertiser console.

Bing: We Do Not Do One Off Indexing / Ranking Penalties, It’s Not Scalable

Krishna Madhavan, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft Bing, said that Bing does not do one-off search penalties because it is not scalable. Instead, Bing will build a spam algorithm to detect the type of spam it is and unleash it on its index to pick up on not just one site doing that, but as […]

Google Tests Sticky Sponsored Results With Gray Curved Borders, Again

Google is testing a slight update to the sticky sponsored results interface that it tested back in September 2024. Note: A version of this was launched in October 2025, but this interface has a thinner and smaller sponsored label and uses curved borders.

Google Ads Conversion Tracking Status: Awaiting Conversions & Misconfigured

Google Ads has updated the conversion actions overview statuses it shows in the Google Ads user interface. Now there is misconfigured, awaiting conversions and even removed as new statuses, that replaced inactive, no recent conversions and other.

Google Reaffirms Include Canonical On Canonical Page Itself

Google has updated its canonical help document to say “Do include a rel=”canonical” link on the canonical page itself (also known as a self-referential canonical).” The advice is not new to Google’s communication but it was just added to the help document.