Google may be more successful in blocking AI scrapers, search scrapers and third-party tracking tools since around September 13th or so. This coincides with the September 4th and September 12th reversals we reported, and it also aligns with the methods Google has been using to block non-human behavior in its search results recently.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...
This week we covered the first week or so of Google’s unusual ranking volatility only to see things spike up in a big way this week as well - something is up. Google’s remedies are out for its ad tech monopoly ruling. Google has an AI contribution pilot for paying publishers...
Google is now testing adding the AI Mode button to the search bar when you are inside the search results page. Google has the AI Mode button almost everywhere else, but now we are seeing it added to the search bar, within the search results page, not just the home page.
Microsoft Bing is also asking some searchers to verify they are human before showing them search results. Google is doing this a lot, in various forms, and now Bing was spotted doing this.
Google has posted a new help document in the Google Ads help area named About commerce audience sharing through Google Ads. It explains that "Commerce audience sharing allows commerce partners, such as retailers or marketplaces, to share first-party data segments with their advertising partners, such as brands or sellers."
Google updated the upload a product reviews data source to Merchant Center help document to now say that you can do this via the Merchant Center API. Previously, the document said, "API isn’t currently supported for product reviews data sources." Now it says, "Add product reviews using API."
Google has updated its guidelines for sites with explicit content to now specify that ecommerce sites must "label adult products in ecommerce feeds or markup." There is also a new section at the bottom of the help document titled, "For Google Shopping features."