It finally happened, we got a new core update, the Google August 2024 core update touched down on August 15th. It resulted in some movement with some sites hit by the September helpful content update and also many sad stories, including many sites that were hit.

Google is testing a new shape and maybe colors for the map pins they use in Google Search and Google Maps. The new shape is less of a pin/diamond shape and more of a circle shape.

Microsoft recently added an animation or highlight effect on its featured answers or knowledge panels at the top of its Bing Search results. When you hover your mouse over the table of content on the left side, the section it corresponds to in the answer, will expand.

Google will discontinue the Google Trends email subscription service on October 29, 2024. Google sent emails to those who had subscribed to Google Trends over email saying, “Google Trends trend notifications will no longer be supported and existing alerts will no longer be sent.”

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

Google is testing a new design for its mobile shopping search interface. The new design has a new Google logo, a gradient background theme, new headers, various sections and labels. It looks pretty cool but a bit less clean than the normal Google Search interface.

Google announced on Friday that they finally natively support AVIF image file types for Google Search, Google Images and anywhere Google Search uses images, such as Google News, Google Discover and more.

Google Analytics, GA4, seems to be rolling out benchmarking data, similar to Universal Analytics before it. This feature lets you compare your analytics data to others in your same industry – so you can benchmark how well or poorly you are doing.

Google is testing a new design and user experience for the “you visit often” labels. This time Google is giving you a way to see multiple sites you visit often in an accordion box user interface.

Google Ads has improved its ads reporting specifically, with the product reports now showing category-level insights. You can see the performance, demand trends, and actionable recommendations for your e-commerce campaigns.