Google announced it is adding social channels within the Google Search Console Insights report. This “lets you review Search performance of social channels associated with your website directly within Search Console,” Google wrote.

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 is testing Search Live in AI Mode…

Google is testing an animation, where an image asset slides into the sponsored results listing. So it turns a pure search text ad into a text ad with an image that slides in from the right side of the screen.

Microsoft is testing expanding the favicons in the Bing Search results interface when you hover your mouse cursor over the search result listing and/or ad.

Business Insider posted a disclaimer about a new AI pilot where it will use “a custom GPT to help publish quick news stories.” This custom GPT was trained on the style of how Business Insider journalists write and will all be edited by an editor at Business Insider.

It was a heated weekend, the Google Search ranking volatility was pretty heated and there was a lot of chatter within the SEO industry. Not all the tools are showing big swings but many are. And everyone is asking, what happened with Google confirming core updates – is that over?

Google is testing integrating Search Live (Gemini Live – voice search as you talk) in AI Mode. Plus, this version shows citation cards as part of the answer, as you are having a conversational search with AI Mode.

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

This week, we, of course, covered the ongoing Google Search ranking volatility. Google is now blending AI Mode directly into AI Overviews. Google’s home page search bar added a new upload feature to take you into AI Mode…

Google Ads may be testing placing an ad extension button at the top right of the sponsored result on the desktop interface. This button, in this example, shows the text “Learn more.”

Google Merchant Center is now beta testing regional member pricing, where you can offer different member prices based on the shopper’s regions. This will essentially override the member price in the regional inventory feed.

Over the years, we have written that service areas are not used as a local ranking factor by Google Search. Well, the API leak document also implies this to be true.

Google is testing a new AI-powered configuration tool, as it calls it, to help you build instant reports based on your natural language questions. So basically Ads and Analytics Advisor but for Search Console, plus this just builds reports and doesn’t do actions – yet.

If you look at some of the profiles/sites in your Google Search Console performance reports, you may notice a significant increase in the average position being reported. This happened when Google removed the num=100 parameter and is likely due to scrapers not messing up your data.