After testing the blue verification icons and labels for ads in the Google Search results, now Google seems to be testing them on the free organic search results. Oh, and Google also tested them in gold, and Microsoft tested verification labels in organic free listings too.

Google has confirmed another bug with Google Ads where it accidentally attributed traffic to a match type that should not exist anymore – smart matching. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ad Liaison, confirmed the issue and said, “Advertisers will not be charged for these clicks, and we’ve reverted the change.”

Martin Splitt from Google said that having unanswered comments on your site or webpages does not negatively hurt your rankings in Google Search and is not a bad SEO thing. He said Google Search does not look to see of your comments get answered or do not get answered.

Do you want to get links in the new Google AI Overviews that show up in Google Search? Well, a new report says all you need to do is rank well in Google Search organically and you are incredibly likely to have links in the AI Overviews.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Google told us to wait until the August core update is done rolling out to see how we were impacted…

Google’s Martin Splitt posted a video in his SEO Made Easy series on the topic of the Google Search Console “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed” page indexing report status note. In short, there are three primary reasons you’d see pages in this category, they are:

As you know, Google released its August 2024 core update on Thursday, August 15th, followed shortly after by a large search ranking bug hours later. SEOs and site owners are asking how we can differentiate between the two. Google’s John Mueller explained that you should not fully judge the effect of the current core update until it is fully done rolling out.

Google Search has a new design for the embedded map you see for both local pack maps and knowledge panel maps. The new map has a more subtle design, with blue roads, not yellow roads and other design differences.

Google is testing a new search feature named “your related searches” that seems to be pinned to the sidebar of the Google Search results. It reminds me of the Chrome Journeys but this seems to be baked right into Google Search.

Google core updates, such as the August 2024 core update, seem to directly impact if a site shows in the Google AI Overviews or not. Google did say quality is a benchmark for showing in the AI Overviews, plus we know featured snippets and many other search features are all impacted by Google core algorithmic updates.

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