Craig Hordlow

Google may be issuing more manual action penalties over the past few weeks than it has over the weeks before that. The increase in manual actions seems to have started several weeks ago, but more so recently, according to some …

Google has updated the how leads work help documentation within Local Service Ads with a lot more detail. The changes are meaningful, including what counts as a billable phone lead and how Google handles lead quality/credits.…

The Google September 2026 spam update is now done rolling out. It started on Thursday, September 28, 2026 at around 12:00 pm ET and completed on October 8, 2026 at 4:37 am ET. This was different from the previous few …

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

Google is now showing WhatsApp buttons, in place of chat or in addition to the other action buttons, in the local panel results within Google Search. Next to the call, directions. website, share buttons can be a WhatsApp button to …

Google Ads is testing a new billing menu bar or tab that adds more options and links to the billing section. It looks like Google added double the amount of links in the menu.…

Google Merchant Center is rolling out the UCP integration hub in the United States. The UCP integration hub allows you to onboard to UCP program from your Merchant Center account.…

Google is testing allowing AI Overviews to add items to your calendar with an add to calendar link on event dates. I can’t replicate this and the truth is, every time i refresh the queries I am testing on, I …

Google seems to no longer be showing review rich reviews in Google Search when review schema or structured data is added to healthcare web pages.…

50,000 is a big number, so I figured I’d document it here by letting you all know that this “story” is my 50,000th published story for the search industry. Yes, I’ve written 50,000 stories on search and on the search …

Google has just pushed some updates to the reduce the Google crawl rate documentation. Most of the changes are just organizational to the content on the page but under the “Urgently reduce crawler traffic (for emergencies)” section, Google added new …

Google Search Console is sending out emails informing site owners how many people are subscribing or following them as a preferred source on Google. It says “people are choosing domain as a preferred source” and then lists the number of …

Google is expanding the Search profiles feature to more countries. Starting today, those in India and Canada are now eligible for a Search profile in Google Search. And soon, Google will also support users in Brazil.…

Google released Nano Banana 2.1 today, and it is already working within AI Mode in Google Search. Nano Banana 2.1 is Google’s latest image generation and editing model.…

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