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 unleashed its first core update of 2026…

To fuel the debate in the SEO world of the topic of structured data and LLMs and AI engines, we are hearing that once again, AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity are not using structured data in any special way.

We covered how horrific the AI-based Frankenstein recipes can be in Google Search, where it mashes up recipe steps from various publishers and acts like it is a real recipe from a source. Well, Bing had something similar but Jordi Ribas from Microsoft said they are “unshipping” the feature after the feedback was received.

Last week, Google updated the design for the Google Partner Portal for advertisers. Google said the new look makes it “simpler to understand your goals and to track all your points activity.”

The Google Ads mixed campaign type experiment beta, which we covered the help document last month, seems to be going live for some advertisers. This feature allows advertisers to test multiple campaign types, budgets, and settings across campaigns in a single experiment.

We saw Google test follow up questions below the AI Mode responses back in July. Now Google is testing follow up search suggestions, not necessarily in question format, at the bottom of some AI Mode results.

This week, we covered the first core update of 2026, the February 2026 Discover core update. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing super-heated and volatile Google search rankings. Google has nothing to share about the recent unconfirmed ranking updates…

Google has released its first core update of 2026, which is focused on just Google Discover. Google named it the February 2026 Discover core update. This one is rolling over the next two weeks or so just English language users in the US and at some point will roll out beyond that to all countries […]

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

Microsoft Advertising is testing a new ad format within its newish Answer Card format called a magazine layout. These load ads in the card formats you see at the top of some of the Bing search results.

Google AdSense seems to be rolling out new metrics for the AdSense reports in the console. These include Browser breakdown, Hosting App breakdown and Operating system breakdown metrics.

Did you know that when Google AI Mode uses Personal Intelligence, Google will add icons of the various connected Google apps used to tailor your message. So you might see a Gmail icon, or Google Photos icon or Search or something else show up as a citation or source near the responses.

Google is testing labeling some photos in the local hotel listings with “Good to Know” AI-generated descriptions of some of those photos. These labels seem to summarize what the photo and reviews say about the specific area of that hotel.

Google has launched what it calls Multi-party approval for Google Ads. “Multi-party approval (MPA) is a security feature for Google Ads designed to protect your account from unauthorized activity by requiring a second account administrator to verify high-risk changes,” Google wrote.