Just like with Christmas day every year, so to with New Year’s Day – Google’s John Mueller and often other Googlers, are out and looking to respond to some questions on Google Search and SEO. John Mueller so far posted a few times on Reddit this morning, January 1, 2026.

This is weird. It is 2026, and Google.com, the Google Search home page, is still showing yesterday’s New Year’s Eve doodle of 2025 going into 2026. But it is after 7 am ET here on January 1, 2026, and on all my devices, I see yesterday’s Google Doodle.

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. Google Business Profiles adds new help page for requesting reviews via links or QR codes. Google Ads search term report has quick filters…

Google has posted the New Year’s Eve Doodle and New Year’s Day Doodle on the Google.com home page for when it is New Year’s Eve for you and New Year’s Day for you.

The Search Engine Roundtable is made up of what you, the search community, are talking about. What are you, the search community, noticing in the search results, whether it be ranking changes, user interface changes, or beyond…

Here are the most popular articles on the Search Engine Roundtable by number of comments. In other words, these are the articles with the highest number of comments posted in 2025.

The Search terms report within Google Ads has this quick dropdown filter that lets you filter by search terms, search terms and landing pages from AI Max, search terms from Dynamic Search Ads and search terms and landing pages from Dynamic Search Ads.

Several months ago, back in March, Google added a screen to request reviews by sharing a link or QR code with your customers. Now, it seems Google has added a new help page on how to use this feature.

Google has rolled out fewer confirmed search ranking updates in 2025, then it did in all the past years where Google confirmed these updates. Google rolled out only four confirmed updates in 2025, before than seven in 2024, nine in 2023 and ten in 2022 and 2021.

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. The Google December 2025 core update is done rolling out…

Microsoft made a small update to the Microsoft Advertising console where there is now an “All accounts” tab. This lets you see all your accounts in one place with quick access to account summaries, recommendations and more.

Google Search is showing a carousel in the merchant / retailer panel that lets you scroll through the merchant’s delivery, return and payment options. This information has been in the Google Search results for a while, but this carousel feels new to me – is it?

Google has removed the visit website button from the first screen of the Google Maps hotel results. Instead, you first need to click on the “Check availability” to get to the visit website button.

Microsoft Bing is testing loading more people also ask options as you click on them. This is something Google has done for a long time now, but now when you click on an option under the people also ask section within Bing, Bing may load more beneath them – to show you more options.

Adam and Joanne Gallagher from the food recipe blog, Inspired Taste, has been documenting a lot of really painful and shameful tactics Google is using for its AI responses to some recipes. Adam calls its Google’s AI Frankenstein recipes, where it pulls parts of the recipes from recipe bloggers, says it is the brand’s recipe, […]