Google is accepting applications from forums and social platforms for a UGC pipeline separate from crawling.

It has been a while since I reported on a Google Search ranking update. I blame the tools, but in all seriousness, I am seeing a spike in volatility and, now probably more importantly, a spike in chatter over the past 24 hours, related to Google Search ranking changes, referral traffic changes and overall disruption in the Google Search results.

Google Ads will allow some advertisers to apply for certification for the category of online gambling. This started this month, October 2026, and will gradually be available to some advertisers in Google Ads.

Microsoft is testing placing “read more” links within the Bing Search result snippets, like Google officially did a year or so ago.

Google added the ability to add lead scoring by indicating answers that qualify a lead for your business to get higher-quality leads. You can add up to 12 answers per question and check off whether they qualify under the lead scoring section.

Microsoft is testing adding the label “Popular Links” to the Bing search results sitelinks. This reminds me of the Google top pages test and variations of that.

Google Ads is planning on pushing twice as many Google Ads API updates for the remainder of this year and into 2027 compared to its previous schedule. Last year, Google said it would release an Ads API update monthly and now Google is switching that to two updates per month.

Google has updated the indexing API documentation; this includes three different pages within the documentation. I think the big takeaway is that Google removed the old approval process and initial testing explanation, the sitemap recommendation, and, most importantly, the default quota details.

For the past several hours, Google Dataset Search has not been able to return any search results or matches. Google Dataset Search returns a response that says “Your search – [keyword phrase here] – did not match any datasets.”

ChatGPT-attributed traffic fell sharply in several analytics datasets this month, and analysts tie the drop to ChatGPT links that open without tracking tags. The post ChatGPT Traffic Drop Appears To Be A Tracking Problem appeared first on Search Engine Journal .