There are two interviews that is probably worth a listen of Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai and Google’s SVP of Knowledge & Information, out of Google I/O and Google Marketing Live. If you listen, you can see the direction Google Search is headed – and duh, it is AI.

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

New data out of Similarweb says that since OpenAI began surfacing more prominent links to brands in the ChatGPT answers, referral traffic is up 150%. Also pageviews per visit is up 24% and time on site is up 11%.

Google has confirmed another bug with the Search Console Discover performance report on May 21st. Google said there was another data logging issue that may cause a decrease in clicks and impressions for May 21, 2026.

Google is rolling out what it calls Real-Time Policy Reviews within Google Ads for Responsive Search Ads and rolling out to other campaign types later in the year. Google wrote, “this feature provides instant feedback during the ad creation process, significantly reducing the time it takes for your ads to begin serving.”

Google is testing letting searchers check for real-time stock, inventory, of products through the local pack in the search results. There is this new button being tested next to view “more places” in the local pack that says, “Check real-time stock.”

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

Google is testing Shopping ads that enlarge, grow and expand when you hover your mouse cursor over the ad unit. We saw something like this for another Google ad format in March and now we are seeing a variation of this for Google Shopping ads.

Part of Google Marketing Live was a small note about conversational attributes, a way to add more attributes to your product feeds within Google Merchant Center that can be used “to update their product descriptions to reflect the more conversational way people search.”

We know Google said it was expanding shopping ads into AI Mode and saw some examples of that. We also know about the new conversational discovery ads and highlighted answer ads. So I am not sure if this is another new format or part of those, but this one seems different.

The European Union may fine Google its largest fine for a breach of the ‘new Digital Markets Act (DMA). It would be in the triple millions of Euros and would be done because Google allegedly favors its own services in its own search results.

Google is now showing the number of times a photo or video was viewed and seen by users in the Google Business Profiles photos/videos section. So now, business owners can see if the images and videos that they are uploading are being seen by searchers and which are the most popular ones.

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