I am seeing new signs of yet more Google Search ranking volatility and a possible tweak to the ranking search algorithm. Something kicked off yesterday, January 15th, that the third-party tools picked up on. With this update, there is limited chatter, unlike the previous unconfirmed Google Search ranking update.

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

Earlier this week, Google announced Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and it has a lot of the industry worried. Once SEO named Ramon Eijkemans said, “I hate to bring this, but SEOs: we’re gonna be f$@*ed.” John Mueller from Google responded on Bluesky and said, “I disagree.”

Google is rolling out what it calls “Personal Intelligence” in the Gemini app and it will soon also come to Google Search within AI Mode. Google announced that Personal Intelligence in Gemini “connects Gmail, Photos, YouTube and Search in a single tap.”

We have seen ads in AI Mode before but there may be a new Google Ads format coming to AI Mode results, not the just the Direct Offer ads, but Explore guides and article ads.

Google has added Gemini to the Google Trends Explore page to help you find new and fresh search terms. It will also compare those search terms automatically for you, all in a new design. This is rolling out now, but you might not see it just yet.

While a number of Google Search features are impacted by Google’s core update, favicons showing up or not is not one of them. Yes, your site can drop in the rankings, or not show up in Google Discover, or be removed from Top Stories and other features but favicons are not impacted by core updates.

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

For the past few weeks, Google Ads has been rolling out a new and faster way to set up an account by using an existing campaign. The option reads, “Create an account with campaign for faster setup.”

The Microsoft Advertising team released a new PDF guide named “From discovery to influence: AEO A guide to and GEO.” This guide offers “Practical data strategies to empower retailers for AI search, AI assistants and AI browsers.”

I am seeing a spike in complaints from Google AdSense publishers of earnings dropping again over the past 24-hours or so. This is similar to last week, and it also coincides with an unconfirmed Google search ranking update.

Google’s John Mueller was asked if it was acceptable to link your brand websites together on a brand page to communicate to your users that the company owns multiple brands. John said, it is pretty common to do so and if done as a reasonable scale, it is fine to do.

The other day, I saw the Google News channel on X respond to claims that Google is going to allow merchants to overcharge you for products sold through the new AI checkout protocol. I found it crazy because Google has checks and balances to ensure merchants can’t do this and Google responded as such.