Google Trends now lets you plot the change of interest in keyword phrases over time and then compare those over the previous time. There is a new compare to previous time period button you can click on Google Trends to get the good looking chart to be drawn.

Google is testing the placement of AI-generated summaries in Google Ads sponsored results, right below the description. Google did add the disclaimer to the ad, “Google Al responses are generated independently and can make mistakes, so double-check responses.”

Fabrice Canel has announced he has retired from Microsoft as of today. This comes after almost 30 years of service at Microsoft. Fabrice was most well-known in our community for his work on Bing and all of Microsoft’s search services.

The Google Search Console Generative AI performance reports just launched recently and already Google has documented a data logging bug with the Discover and Generative AI in Discover search performance reports.

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

Yesterday, Google announced it was “renaming and updating the Default Ads Treatment policy to improve the clarity and transparency of the policy.” But it did one more thing, it removed “shocking content” from the list of categories of ads that would not be shown while Google was determining the user’s age.

Microsoft Bing is testing having the source favicons at the top of the search results page work as an overlay box with more links. Previously, when you clicked on an icon it would anchor you down to that specific search result on the page but instead, in this tests, there is an overlay with the […]

Google is testing adding an open in new window icon on sponsored results within the Google Search results. This icon appears at the end of the URL in the Google search ads.

Google’s John Mueller said that while it is useful for site owners to add meta descriptions to their web pages, it is “definitely not a requirement,” he added. The usefulness comes from sometimes writing a meta description, “helps you to figure out a clear focus for a page,” John wrote on Reddit.

We knew this was coming, Google Ads now allows you to upload your customer loyalty data, i.e. Customer Match data, via the Google Merchant API. Google told us this change was coming back in March and Google has finally updated its documentation to say this is possible.

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

Liz Reid, Google’s Head of Search, was interviewed by Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis on the AI Inside podcast. In that interview, Liz Reid said Google wants great content to shine in its search results and AI experiences. She said, “we really do want great content to shine and continue to connect people to it.”

OpenAI has dropped the “Sponsored” label on its ChatGPT Ads for an “Ad” label. The position of the label also moved from the top left of the ad box to the right side of the individual ad unit.