On July 1, 2024, Reddit updated its robots.txt file to prohibit most search engine and AI crawlers from accessing its content – including blocking Microsoft Bing. Reddit did not block Google Search, which we covered here a few weeks ago.

Apple has launched a public beta version of Apple Maps on the web after launching the mobile app back almost 12 years ago on September 19, 2012. “Apple Maps on the web is available in public beta, allowing users around the world to access Maps directly from their browser,” Apple wrote.

Google said it again, it will soon test ads within its AI Overviews. Philipp Schindler, senior vice president and chief business officer for Google, said this in the earnings call on Tuesday night. He said, “soon we’ll actually start testing search and shopping ads in AI Overviews for users in the U.S.”

Microsoft announced yesterday it has begun testing its new Bing generative search experience – so Bing GSE (versus Google SGE). “By combining the power of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) with the search results page, Bing’s generative search creates a bespoke and dynamic response to a user’s query,” Microsoft wrote.

Google Local Service Ads can now show the business’s phone number in the ad unit when you hover over your mouse cursor over the ad. It will then dynamically expand the ad to show the advertiser’s phone number.

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

Google / Alphabet reported its Q2 2024 earnings last night, where its ad revenue hit $64.62 billion, up 11% from last year’s quarter of $58.14 billion. Clearly, Google’s advertising business continues to grow despite any economic downturn we may have seen.

Google seems to have changed how it shows large videos in the search results. I am now seeing them show these gray lines, outlining the video box, in the Google Search results.

I probably should have covered this yesterday but I have been seeing more ranking volatility starting late on Monday, July 22nd, through yesterday, July 23rd and into today July 24th. This may be a continuation from what we saw last week or maybe something new – it is hard to tell.

Aleyda Solis posted the results of a poll she ran, which showed 54% say their sites have seen mostly a positive effect from Google Updates in the last couple of years. John Mueller from Google replied to that poll saying, “While there are exceptions, life as an SEO or when working on the web is not about doom & gloom.”

Google has added new ad budget options and features to Local Service Ads. You can now set a maximum monthly ad spend limit for the month for some accounts.

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 will not deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome…

Google Ads has a new sitelinks interface, and functionality, for Performance Max campaigns. The new recommended sitelinks features are rolling out, plus there is a new numbered layout for the sitelinks.

Google has released version 2.7 of the Google Ads Editor. This new update brings a number of new features and also deprecates a number of features. New features include AI-generated assets, account level content label exclusions, account-level negative keywords and more.

Google has decided not to deprecate, do away with, third-party cookies in Chrome. This is something Google has been planning and testing for a while, delaying the efforts numerous times, and now ultimately deciding to scrap those efforts.

Google is testing larger sitenames and favicons again. You can see a considerably larger font used for the sitename (the link in the Google search result snippets) and a larger favicon being tested in the search results.

Google Search is testing using AI Overviews to provide video descriptions in the Google Search results. When you click to expand some videos, Google may overlay the video and its description directly in the search results. And that description may read, “AI overviews are experimental,” which means the description was adapted by Google Gemini.