Google’s John Mueller said that when it comes to AI Search and the changes that come with that, Google’s core search algorithms, spam detection methods, spam policies, and other search systems do not fundamentally change.

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

Welcome to the Google Webmaster report, where I sum up all the more important Google organic search topics that occurred over the past month – just in case you (or I) missed it. January was an incredibly volatile month regarding unconfirmed Google search ranking movement. I posted about it several times.

Google seems to be showing more and more ads in the local pack, aka Local Pack Ads. Just a couple of months ago, Google had ads on the local pack for less than 3% of tracked keywords; now it’s up to about 22% of tracked keywords.

Google seems to be replacing its Google Ads support form with an AI agent, maybe from its Ads Advisor system. When you go to support.google.com/google-ads/gethelp you are redirected to the chat experience now. I am not sure if this is global, but I am seeing this myself across two Google Ads accounts I have access […]

John Mueller from Google dropped a very John-like hint that maybe, just maybe, Google Search Console will add AI visibility reporting. John was asked about it again and responded, saying, “While I have nothing to announce, I can say for sure that very few things online are permanent.”

As you know, January was an incredibly intense month of Google Search ranking volatility. It surprised me that Google has still not confirmed that a Google search ranking update took place. Now, John Mueller of Google was asked about it and said, “Unfortunately, I don’t have any insights / updates to share.”

If you look at the source code in some of the responses OpenAI’s ChatGPT gives you, you may now see references to ads. The response in the source code says, “InReply to user query using the following additional context of ads shown to the user.”

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

January has been an insane month with Google Search ranking volatility, and I guess it is no surprise to see the most heated time right now, as we end the month. I am seeing a significant spike in SEO chatter and many of the tools are showing very heated Google search ranking volatility over the […]

This week, we covered more ongoing Google search ranking volatility – January was a heated month. Google AI Overviews show more button officially flows to AI Mode…

Before the December holidays, Google posted a notice that review appeals for Google Business Profiles were delayed. Well, Google just removed the notice, which likely means the extended delays for review appeals are no longer an issue.