U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled on the remedies for Google being declared a monopoly. In short, Google won’t be broken up (will keep Chrome, Android and Ads), it will have to share search data and it is barred from making exclusive search deals.

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

Google Search is testing a new game in its search results to encourage searchers to search more. It is likely called the Google Search mini-game and it rewards searchers with badges when they “dive deeper into topics.”

Google Ads now lets you search Google Maps for setting up your location assets for your ad campaigns. You can select up to 10 locations from Google Maps to link with your Ads account

Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, responded to some data that suggests that AI Max is expansionary on SPN, the Search Partner Network. That using AI Max will more heavily target and show your ads on SPN more than other campaign types.

We finally had a confirmed Google Search update this past month, the August 2025 spam update, which seems pretty intense and it is not done rolling out yet.

Google Ads has reportedly added new checkboxes to the selector view within the Google Ads overviews of your campaigns. This lets you use the checkboxes, select the campaigns you want, so you can filter the view to only show those campaigns.

Navah Hopkins, the Microsoft Ads Liaison, posted on LinkedIn a bit of a refresher on how CPCs work with search ads and Microsoft Advertising. Specifically, why your bid may be over the configured max CPC you set within the platform.

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

Google now has the ability within AI Mode to compare listed products or local businesses by selecting the listing and having AI Mode compare the ones you selected. Then AI Mode will just compare the ones you selected in the follow-up query.

Google has supposedly updated the models that run AI Mode. Robby Stein from Google wrote on X, “We’re seeing big improvements for complex STEM questions.”

Danny Sullivan, the former Google Search Liaison, spoke at WordCamp on Friday on the topic of How and why Google Search keeps evolving. The video is up for anyone to watch, it is 45 minutes and doesn’t have much new in it but it is a good refresher.

Google’s John Mueller was asked again if a change in crawling patterns is related to Google algorithm updates. In which he said again, No, it is not.

Google may be testing a new format for AI Overviews in the search results. This one does not have the AI Overview label on the AI Overview, plus it seems to combine knowledge panel features.

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