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

Google is testing using a larger font in the desktop search bar where you type your query. Google was testing this on mobile recently and has been testing various font sizes over the years and Google is testing it again in the desktop search box.

Microsoft announced a new Microsoft Advertising format for Bing Search named Cruise Ads. It is like Microsoft is creating all these vertical ad formats that in a couple years from now will result in a big consolidation story where Microsoft announced they consolidated the vertical ad formats for simplicity purposes.

Google is still migrating aspects of the old Google Search Console to the new Google Search Console, even thought the process began back in 2017. The next thing to be fully migrated are the types of messages you would see in the message panel. Now “all messages” are visible in that message panel.

Yusuf Ozbay spotted Google Search testing bulleted descriptions in the Google Ads spot. So instead of a couple of sentences in the description, Google is testing them as bullet points.

Google has released version 10.0 of the Google Ads API. Keep in mind, the AdWords API will sunset on April 27, 2022, which is coming up soon. So what is new in version 10 of the Google Ads API? A lot, including smart campaigns, performance max campaign upgrades, local service ads changes and much more.

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

Joe Hall posted a Twitter poll asking the SEO community how the pandemic impacted their SEO business. The poll had 614 responses and most said that the pandemic has brought an increased demand in SEO.

We’ve seen Google legitimately test two ads in the local pack but what Iampk spotted on Twitter and some were able to replicate seems like Google placing an ad unit spot twice in the local pack. Like this is some bug where Google decided to not show two ads, but ads two ad features to the local pack – it is a subtle difference.

Microsoft Bing has moved the Bing News PubHub to within Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing News PubHub is a way for publishers to submit their site for approval in Bing News and also check on the status of their approval. It is no longer available at pubhub.bing.com – it has been moved to Bing Webmaster Tools.

John Mueller of Google has to say on Twitter that just because a link has UTM parameters on them, it doesn’t make it a paid link. He said “links with UTM parameters are just links.” “They’re definitely not considered paid links,” he added.

Back in October 2021 we reported that Google was testing in Chrome something called Journeys. Journeys will cluster all the pages you’ve visited related to your previous browsing history so you can easily view them without having to sift through your browsing history.

What the Mechanical Licensing Collective means for songwriters In official music biz terms, the MLC is a U.S.-based Mechanical Rights Organization (MRO) designated by the U.S. Copyright Office to issue and administer the digital audio mechanical blanket license in accordance with the Music Modernization Act to DSPs (digital service providers like Spotify and Apple Music) in the United States. What this means for you, the independent artist, is that the MLC was created to help songwriters in the U.S. collect mechanical royalties generated from streaming. Since these royalties can be difficult to collect on your own, the MLC is an […]

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

Google’s John Mueller and Gary Illyes both said in a Reddit thread that code to text ratios for SEO does not matter. John Mueller said it is not an SEO factor and Gary Illyes said “it doesn’t matter.” This is not new, Google has said this numerous times in the past but this is the 2022 version of, is code to text ratio and SEO factor.