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. There is a Google Ads reporting outage that has been going on for a while now…

This week we covered how Google said the core update isn’t extremely far away. We also reported on super intense Google Search ranking volatility change later this week and then the ongoing volatility with Google Search over the past few weeks…

Here is the big monthly Google webmaster report, where I catch you up on what changes with Google Search related to Google updates, ranking volatility, SEO, Search Console, UI changes, local and much more. This month we had intense ranking volatility all month, we had autocomplete updates, deepfakes algorithm changes and a big search indexing bug.

A few weeks ago, Google announced it is doing away with how it does credits and disputes for Local Service Ads and is switching to an automated system. It seems like that system is now live, up and running.

Google notified advertisers in Canada they are charging a 2.5% surcharge on top of everything for buying ads on Google. This is on top of many of these advertisers losing the credit card payment option, which was as good as cash for many of them.

Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, said if you put similar keywords in separate ad groups that can essentially make both eligible to be considered for auction selection. It would essentially remove AI-theming (if that is a word) because they are in different ad groups.

Google seems to be encouraging searchers to search more for more types of queries with a new “Explore more with Search” carousel. It shows the searcher other topics, with photos, on what they can search on.

Google will update its Google Ads policy on September 3, 2024, to allow public hair grooming services to be advertised on the Google Ads network, including Display, YouTube, and Search.

Find out how Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) can affect your website and why it’s important to optimize for this Google ranking factor. The post Understanding & Optimizing Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) appeared first on Search Engine Journal

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