Google’s John Mueller said that if Google is not convinced that there are new and important content to index on your site, then it won’t use the sitemap file on your site. Just because you have a sitemap file, it does not mean Google will index all the pages in that file.

Some are wondering when the Google Search ranking volatility will begin to cool down a bit. While many of the tools continue to show heated volatility over the past weeks, some are starting to show signs of cooling.

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

As you know, OpenAI said they would release ads in ChatGPT and then about ten days ago, said the ads went live for a limited number of users. Since then, we have not seen reports of anyone seeing ads in the wild within ChatGPT until now.

Google sent out an email to some Google Ads advertisers about changes coming to Google Ads budget pacing for ad scheduling. These changes go into effect on March 1, 2026.

As I noted in my story yesterday about Google reviews dropping out, Google has updated the Google Business Profiles review policies, the Prohibited & restricted content section.

Google’s John Mueller said that he discourages large sites from force indexing its pages to Google Search. He said on a comment on LinkedIn, “I strongly recommend not relying on trying to force indexing.”

For the original iTunes version, click here. This week…

Google may be testing a new ad unit named Sponsored Places. I think this is new, I mean, have any of you seen this before in the search results? Instead of it saying “Sponsored results” or a local pack with sponsored listings.

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

Google is rolling out an update for Google Ads advertisers to certify for some cryptocurrency and complex speculative financial products. This is “incrementally to all advertisers over a period of time and not all advertisers and certification applications will be affected immediately,” Google wrote.

The other day, Google released the Google Search Console AI-powered configuration tool and we continued to wonder when the other features, like branded queries and the social channels would go live. Well, Google’s John Mueller confirmed Google is still testing those two features before they are more fully rolled out to more users.

There has been an uptick in complaints from businesses around Google local reviews disappearing or being removed. We had something similar last October and it was fixed in December and now I am seeing more complaints about reviews going missing.