Craig Hordlow

Over the past few days, the IRS website (and other government sites) has tanked within Google’s search results. My gut feeling is that the federal government implemented some bot-blocking that was too aggressive and blocked Google, among others, resulting in …

Google is rolling out three new travel features within AI Mode in Google Search. These features include track flight prices, view points or miles rates, and book hotels directly within AI Mode, through your conversational search.…

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

OpenAI has pinned the Shopping tab to the left sidebar on ChatGPT. Clicking on it takes you to a landing page and a dedicated search page focused on shopping.…

Google is testing once again testing swipeable Google Ads sponsored results, where you can swipe a carousel of categories to potentially change the sponsored results listed below. We saw this for shopping ads in October 2024 and Google has continued …

Google posted on X that Ask Advisor, which is in Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Merchant Center and more Google tools, will soon “maintain shared memory across your Google marketing tools.” When this rolls out, when you ask a question …

Microsoft Advertising, with the release of AI Max globally, has rolled out a new Search term landing page reporting template. This report gives advertisers “full insights into all parts of AI Max’s performance,” said Navah Hopkins, the Microsoft Ads Liaison.…

Microsoft is testing renaming the Copilot Search AI answer box at the top of the Bing Search results to AI Overviews. That is the name Google uses for its AI answer results in Google Search. Microsoft is still placing the …

Google Search seems like it is rolling out the google.com/goto URL as a passthrough URL within the search results that it began testing in July 2026. This seems like a way for Google to help prevent scraping of its search …

To commemorate the life of Dolly Parton, Google has released a new easter egg in its search results.

If you search for [Dolly Parton] within Google Search……

Robby Stein, Google’s Vice President of Product at Google Search, asked on X, “If you could get one feature shipped right now in AI Mode, what would it be?” So now is your chance to reply on X with what …

Back in June, Google released link carousels for top stories or developing topics to AI Overviews. I was happy. Now, Google is also releasing this for AI Mode queries, which adds carousels of web pages directly in the AI Mode …

Google has expanded the booking partners for Local Service Ads from about 20 partners to over 500 partners. That is about a 2,400 percent increase. “We’re vastly expanding booking capabilities for Local Services Ads to include more than 500 Reserve …

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

As you know, Google’s August 2026 spam update began on August 18th and concluded on August 21st. But the volatility has not calmed down since and I think it is time I document it. We’ve been seeing chatter within the …