It's been about two weeks since we reported on a Google Search ranking update, whether confirmed or unconfirmed. But the truth is, the October 27th update lingered on for like a full week. Since then, ranking volatility has been relatively calm, but that may be changing over the past 24 hours.
Yahoo announced updates across Yahoo Search and Yahoo Scout including that Yahoo Scout is now out of beta and Yahoo Search added Pivot Search. Plus, Scout has now processed over 3 billion answers since it launched earlier this year.
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. Google said it can take time for search to understand the unique value of new websites...
Google's John Mueller said it can take Google Search some time to understand a new site's "unique value" and then rank it accordingly. He said on Bluesky in response to a new site not being fully indexed quickly enough, "It's a fairly new site, and you've been busy with content - it can take time for the systems to understand the unique value of it all."
Google is testing removing the action buttons, reviews, photos, etc from the AI Overview version of the local pack. This makes it harder for searchers to visit your website, call your business, get directions and so on, from Google Search.
Google Ads is rolling out a new option named "Ads with pay-per-lead goals terms." Advertisers must opt into this setting to activate it.
Microsoft Bing is testing asking searchers questions to personalize the shopping search results. In a test, Bing will show you questions and say, "Let's personalize your results," then ask you a number of questions to fine-tune your shopping search results.
You can now filter your product results to show non-incentivized reviews only. When you click on a product in the search results, either normal search or AI Mode, the product listing detail panel will show up on the right, and for there, you can filter the reviews to show "Non-incentivized only."