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. OpenAI will be testing ads in ChatGPT very soon. Google’s Gemini 3 Pro now powers some AI Overviews…

Google is appealing the ruling that it is an illegal search monopoly – which surprises no one. Plus, Google asked the court to pause the remedies during the appeal phase.

Google’s John Mueller once again warned about hosting your website on free subdomain hosting service because they are magnets for a “lot of spam & low-effort content.”

Google announced late on Friday that Gemini 3 Pro is now powered Google AI Overviews for complex queries. Google actually said this last November, but then edited its story to say it was just AI Mode that was powered by Gemini 3 Pro and not AI Overviews. Now both AI Overviews and AI Mode can […]

OpenAI announced on Friday it will begin testing ads in the ChatGPT responses in the coming weeks. The ads will show on the free product and low-cost subscription tier, ChatGPT Go. The ads will show under the main response and not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you. Advertisers will not get conversations with ChatGPT. The […]

Google’s John Mueller said that link spam left in the comments section have no effect on Google Search or SEO, (and maybe even your website’s performance in Google Search?). He wrote on Bluesky, “These links all have no effect – they’re from spammers dropping links into comments. These would not have any effect, positive nor […]

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

Google Ads is doing a limited test with some advertisers to allow them to run A/B tests with different product titles and images in Shopping Ads. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, said it is “currently being tested with a small number of merchants.”

Google Ads has made the Campaign total budgets officially live as an open beta for any advertiser to sign up and use. Campaign total budgets are now available in Search, Performance Max and Shopping campaigns within Google Ads.

Google Ads has reportedly streamlined the selection capability of Manual CPC bidding during the campaign setup. Now the option can be found under the “Conversions” goal, labeled as “Manually set bids.”

Microsoft Advertising announced a slew of new features including new customer acquisition goals as an open beta, Share of voice (SOV) metrics, Asset group-level URL options and tracking templates, increased Search Theme limit, enhanced asset group import, Content Targeting now generally available, Location targeting improvements and Autogenerated assets in Responsive Search ads.

Over the past few weeks, Google has been showing AI Overviews for local packs, leading some businesses to see huge drops in visibility for their Google Business Profile and local listings. Some businesses are seeing 50% declines or more because of the local pack change.

It is another week and more Google Search ranking volatility but this was a weird one. Google launched Personal Intelligence in the Gemini app and it is coming to AI Mode in Google Search. Google AI Mode new ad format…

Rajan Patel, the VP of Engineering for Search, said on X that Google is making “changes to ranking” to remove prediction content from showing up in the Google Search top stories and news sections. This comes after some sites are posting “prediction” content, predicting that some sports trades may happen, that have not happened yet, […]