Google is now showing WhatsApp buttons, in place of chat or in addition to the other action buttons, in the local panel results within Google Search. Next to the call, directions. website, share buttons can be a WhatsApp button to let searchers chat with the store or company over WhatsApp.

Google seems to no longer be showing review rich reviews in Google Search when review schema or structured data is added to healthcare web pages.

Google is testing allowing AI Overviews to add items to your calendar with an add to calendar link on event dates. I can’t replicate this and the truth is, every time i refresh the queries I am testing on, I get a slightly different AI Overview, so who knows.

Google Ads is testing a new billing menu bar or tab that adds more options and links to the billing section. It looks like Google added double the amount of links in the menu.

50,000 is a big number, so I figured I’d document it here by letting you all know that this “story” is my 50,000th published story for the search industry. Yes, I’ve written 50,000 stories on search and on the search industry over the past almost 23 years.

Google has just pushed some updates to the reduce the Google crawl rate documentation. Most of the changes are just organizational to the content on the page but under the “Urgently reduce crawler traffic (for emergencies)” section, Google added new information on how to use Retry-After HTTP header.

Google is expanding the Search profiles feature to more countries. Starting today, those in India and Canada are now eligible for a Search profile in Google Search. And soon, Google will also support users in Brazil.

Google Search Console is sending out emails informing site owners how many people are subscribing or following them as a preferred source on Google. It says “people are choosing domain as a preferred source” and then lists the number of “Preferred source selections.”

Google released Nano Banana 2.1 today, and it is already working within AI Mode in Google Search. Nano Banana 2.1 is Google’s latest image generation and editing model.

Google has updated the Google Maps and Business Profiles Prohibited & restricted content policy’s advertising and solicitation section to list what merchants and business owners cannot post on their listings and posts.

Google has added information to the Search generative AI control page in Search Console about when a child property overrides the parent setting for AI controls.

Google Ads is testing displaying the advertiser’s name within the click to call phone number call asset on the sponsored listings. Normally, Google will just show the phone number but in this test, Google is also adding the advertiser’s name.

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

I believe we are seeing the final phase of the Google September 2026 Spam update rolling out between October 4th and October 6th, today. The update should be done any day now, so there may be another spike in volatility, but I suspect this is it – we are pretty much done with this spam […]