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.
Saturday night, Google had a major search bug with its Google Android app. I posted a bunch of resources around the US vs Google monopoly trial. Google updated its crawler documentation in a big way. Google posted new local review restrictions and enforcements. Google is asking how you will use Gemini and AI for SEO. Google is testing a recent posts carousel in Google Search.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Google Search App Stopped Working Saturday Night
The Google Search App stopped working last night (Saturday night) for a few hours. Google was quick to fix it in the middle of the night but by then, hundreds, if not, thousands of complaints flooded the support forums and social media.
Google Updates Google Crawlers & Fetchers Docs With Affects & Snippets
Google has completely reorganized its crawlers and user-triggered fetchers documentation. It used to be all on one page and now it is in several pages. Most of the changes were just moving content around but Google did add sections for what product each crawler affects, and added a robots.txt snippet for each crawler to demonstrate how to use the user agent tokens.
Google Reviews Restrictions For Business Profile Policy Violations
Google has posted a new document about the way Google may apply restrictions to your Google Business Profiles over review or other policy violations. In the document, Google wrote that it takes “take fake and/or incentivized reviews and ratings on businesses very seriously.”
Google US DOJ Trial Exhibit Files, Documents & Responses
As many of you know, Google is now in court over its monopoly ruling by the Department of Justice before the court rules on the remedy for such a ruling. The ruling may not come for a year or so, and Google will be in court for some time.
Google Search Tests Recent Posts Carousel
Google Search is testing a new recent posts carousel in the desktop and mobile search results. This carousel can show YouTube videos, TikTok videos, Reddit or other “hidden gems” of sorts.
