SE Roundtable

Google is adopting new AI training controls, under consideration by the IETF, that should simplify and streamline AI training controls for publishers and site owners. seroundtable.com/google-ai-t…

Microsoft just announced new Bing AI content controls "offering newer, simpler, and clearer preferences that allow you to make choices about training, grounding, or both while remaining eligible for Bing search results," Krishna Madhavan, Principal… seroundtable.com/microsoft-b…

OpenAI just sent its weekly email update to advertisers announcing the ChatGPT Ads are live in 26 more countries, a new wider standard ad unit format, Multi-image ads are now available in open beta to all advertisers, Shopify integration is now… seroundtable.com/chatgpt-ads…

SEO Video Recap covering Google Search volatility X2, spam guidelines, AI Overviews are everywhere, blending ads and organic in AI Mode, Google and Microsoft earnings are out and more youtube.com/watch?v=X_P4QkOD…

This week, we reported on Google Search volatility not once but twice this week. Google warned tools on user-generated spam guidelines. Google downplayed the importance of fresh indexing reporting. Google explained... seroundtable.com/video-10-30…

Everyone has been asking, what is the click-through rate you get from Google Search AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. Well, a new small study says the click-through rate is about 0.9%. The study also showed that when you opt out of showing… seroundtable.com/google-ai-o…

Microsoft is now showing ads within the Bing AI Overviews powered by Copilot. I don't think I've seen ads within the AI responses in Bing Search and I personally still cannot trigger them, but Khushal Bherwani shared a screenshot of an ad within an AI… seroundtable.com/bing-ads-co…

Halloween is tonight/tomorrow and to celebrate both Google and Bing has special easter eggs (or should I call them pumpkins) for its search results. Google asks you to find a costume using AI Mode, which is boring. But Bing has a floating ghost that… seroundtable.com/google-bing…

Gary Illyes from Google was recently interviewed by Aneta Samkoff, host of the Odys Podcast. The topic was all about bots and crawlers and they covered a lot of ground. Gary said bot impersonation is more of a problem now because of AI. Bot… seroundtable.com/google-ai-m…

Google seems to have stopped appending UTM parameters on Gemini links, the cited URLs in Gemini's AI responses. Google started adding UTM parameters to links in Gemini in early September, but then, around September 28th, Google stopped. seroundtable.com/gemini-utm-…

Here is a photo from the Google Kirkland office cafe. You can see there are some pumpkins on the table there for the Halloween season. seroundtable.com/photos/pump…

Google Search may be bringing back the ability to see 100 search results per page by bringing back the num=100 parameter. As a reminder, Google dropped this feature in September 2025 as one of many methods to prevent crawlers from scraping its search… seroundtable.com/google-sear…

Google's John Mueller was interviewed by David Iwanow, where he shared information on AI-generated content, the future of SEO, technical SEO, the crawl stats report, redirect chains, ecommerce product data and much more. John was asked about tactics,… seroundtable.com/john-muelle…

Google seems to be rolling out access to the Google Business Profile AI-powered messaging feature to more businesses. I believe we covered this in June of this year, but since then, Google made some updates to the feature. seroundtable.com/google-busi…

Google announced earnings yesterday, and during the earnings call, Philipp Schindler, Google's senior vice president and chief business officer, said that ads in AI Mode have a "lower monetization" than ads in traditional search. seroundtable.com/google-ai-m…

Google does not show all links, and not all spammy links, within the Search Console links report. This is not new, Google has long said that the link report only shows a sampling of links. seroundtable.com/google-sear…

Google is testing query refinement bubbles at the top of the AI Overviews in Google Search. But clicking the refinement bubble does not change the query, instead, it takes you into AI Mode for that query set. seroundtable.com/google-ai-o…

Google seems to be testing mixing sponsored products, ads, within the organic product results in AI Mode. Google has this line above the product results that can say "Sponsored" and "All products." Even as I look at screenshots of this, I am not sure if… seroundtable.com/google-ai-m…

Google has released several updates to the Merchant API for October 26. The update expands YouTube Shopping and AI-commerce reporting, adds product attributes for videos and warranties, improves disapproval diagnostics, and introduces API integration… seroundtable.com/google-merc…

Google may be testing removing the citations card on the Google AI Overviews section. So when you do a search on desktop and see an AI Overview, Google generally shows a citations card that has links to the sources you can click on. Google is reportedly… seroundtable.com/citations-c…