Google added a new button to the top stories section of Google Search named “Sign in to customize.” This leads users who are not logged into Google to sign in, so those users can configfure there preferred sources in Google Search.

I am seeing some early signs of yet another unconfirmed Google Search ranking update with more volatility touching down today, February 10th. The chatter within the SEO community is starting to spike, and some of the third-party tracking tools are showing volatility.

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

Google appears to be testing showing the citation favicon site icons at the bottom of the answer in AI Mode. This is in addition to where it normally shows those icons, at the top right of the card stack, on the side of the answer response.

OpenAI has officially launched ads in ChatGPT yesterday. The company announced, “Today, we’re beginning to test ads in ChatGPT in the U.S. The test will be for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education tiers will not have ads.”

There are some reports coming out that Grokipedia, the AI-based Wikipedia, is now showing a decline in search visibility in both Google and even ChatGPT. This comes after both an indexing and ranking surge in Google Search.

A month ago, we reported on a new help document on Google Ads for Performance Max optimization experiments: A/B testing assets beta. Well, now some are seeing this in the wild, where you can set up these A/B tests in a controlled environment.

Microsoft Bing is testing a dynamically loading results count under the search box. So when you enter your search phrase, the results count will dynamically count up from 0 to the number of results found.

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

Over the past week or so, Google has been testing a new format for link cards in the AI Overviews within Google Search. When you place your mouse cursor over a link clip icon, a new overlay will show you the page/site cards that line of text is being sourced from.

A thread at Reddit asked if a one-year-old website can beat a four-year-old website in SEO and perform better in Google Search. John Mueller from Google answered with his classic “it depends.”

On the Reddit Q4 2025 Earnings Call (see transcript here), Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, was asked about how he feels about how Google and OpenAI link or use citations to link to Reddit’s content. Overall, Steve made it sound like the interfaces are adapting quickly and he is hopeful they will drive traffic […]

Google announced on Friday that there is a delay with the Google Ads team reviewing and thus approving developer token access applications. This is because Google is “seeing significant interest in the developer community for Google Ads API access, and are receiving an increase in developer token access applications,” the company said.

The Google preferred sources deeplink button feature is broken and has been since at least last Wednesday. When you click on a button to make a site a preferred source, such as for this site, it does not pre-fill in the site’s URL in the box, as it should. You can retype it in the […]