Bloomberg reports that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating Google (and Amazon) on whether the companies misled advertisers by not properly disclosing the terms and pricing for ads on their websites.

Most of the third-party Google Search tracking tools are broken and not tracking properly. This seemed to start when Google turned off the ability to show 100 search results per page. So just keep in mind, when you are looking at your reporting with these tools, the data may be off since around September 11th […]

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

On Thursday, September 11, 2025, Google updated its search quality raters guidelines PDF document. The last time Google updated this document was on January 23, 2025, over seven months ago. This update gives minor clarification as it relates to rating YMYL content and adds a handful of additional examples for rating newer features like AI […]

Google Search seems to be testing dropping the ability to see 100 search results on a single page. When you add the results parameter to the end of your search results URL string, i.e. &num=100, it works about half the time.

This week, I covered the ongoing Google August 2025 spam update and how it heated up this week. Google got into hot water over saying the web is rapidly declining. Google AI Mode also said AI Mode would be the default…

Google may be starting to show AI Overviews when you ask for a currency exchange. I can’t seem to fully replicate this but others are starting to see this.

Google has updated the Google Merchant Center pricing policies for September. The changes include updates in the merchant fees, government charges, import and export costs, regional and installment pricing, price mismatches and automated updates.

Microsoft Advertising is testing using three dots, instead of the arrow down, for the sponsored ads URL in the Bing search results. We’ve seen Bing test three dots before but they were horizontal, the new test are vertical three dots.

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 Ads announced AI Max is rolling out to all as a beta…

Google is testing replacing the review stars at the top of the hotel knowledge panel with listing the hotel’s website URL and the hotel’s phone number.

Microsoft is testing putting link icons in the sitelinks carousel buttons within the Bing search ads from Microsoft Advertising. Normally, you’d just see the carousel of sitelinks below the search snippet but here Microsoft is testing adding a link icon to them.

Google is testing adding search refinement options in the sponsored ads in a carousel format. The test shows refinements named “fine-tune your search,” “search specific products” and “specify your search.” But I bet there are more.