Daily Search Forum Recap: May 19, 2025

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.

We saw some intense search ranking volatility over the past few days. Google seems to be rolling out Google Discover on desktop. Google Merchant Center says add the products brand name to the title. There is a weird Google Search Console sitemap error for some five-character subdomains. Google Search seems to be starting to migrating off its ccTLDs. Google Ads has this spending bug with new customer acquisition. Google AI Mode seems to be much faster now, right before I/O.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Google Search Ranking Update Volatility May 16th
  As I mentioned in my Friday video, there seems to be a lot of Google search ranking volatility that kicked off on Friday, May 16th and throughout this weekend. The most heated day seems to have been on Friday but the chatter is pretty busy over the weekend within the SEO community.
• Google Begins Rolling Out Discover On Desktop
  Since the weekend, Google has started to roll out Google Discover on desktop in many countries and regions. I personally can trigger it in Google New Zealand and some other locations but I am not yet able to trigger it on Google.com in the United States.
• Google Speeds Up AI Mode
  Google AI Mode seems like it got a lot faster over the past day or so. Instead of going through the steps of saying thinking about this, searching for results, organizing results, it just now saying kicking off searches and then looking at sites and then quickly shows the AI Mode response.
• Google Merchant Center Now Recommends Product's Brand Name In Title
  Google has updated its title structured data help document for Google Merchant Center to now recommend you add the product's brand name to the title of the product when it's a differentiating factor.
• Google Sitemap Error For Some International 5 Character Subdomains
  Google has a weird and somewhat limited and rare issue with sitemap files within Google Search Console. These sitemap files cannot be fetched and retrieved by Google Search. The issue seems to be related to 5-character subdomains that are on a Polish ccTLD, .pl.
• Google Search Begins Migrating Off Country Specific ccTLDs
  A month ago, Google said it would soon redirect its ccTLD, country specific domains, for Google Search to its Google.com domain. So Google.de, as an example, would be redirected to Google.com. Well, that process seems to have kicked off on Friday, May 16th for some users.
• Google Ads Spending Bug With New Customer Acquisition Since May 15
  Google has a bug with Google Ads where for campaigns running on New Customer Acquisition they are not able to spend the set budget. This bug was confirmed with Google and has been an issue for advertisers since May 15th.
• Google Robot Massage
  Here is a video/photo of a robot giving a Googler a massage at the Google offices in Mountain View, California. I found it funny and I found it on Instagram.

Other Great Search Threads:

• Does Anyone know which bot this is?, Shopify Community
• Spam checkout abandonment and email submissions, Reddit
• We tackled nearly 50 questions on AI Max for Search campaigns! Here's just a sampling of the questions covered: Q: How does AI Max adapt to seasonal or tren, AdsLiaison on X
• An interesting look at Apple's failures with Siri and Apple Intelligence * Jobs discovering Siri * Some fighting to go with Google Gemini * AI Agents being many years away * Hundreds of bugs in Apple Intelligence * Apple's Privacy, Barry Schwartz on X
• The site is hacked, what you're seeing is just spam. Try the domain without the ?a= URL part, John Mueller on Bluesky
• Potential Ranking Impact from Excessive 410 Crawls, Reddit

Search Engine Land Stories:

• The latest jobs in search marketing
• Google AI Max for Search campaigns: New insights from Ginny Marvin
• Temu pulled its ads – here’s what happened next

Other Great Search Stories:

Industry & Business

• Conversations with Bill, Steve, & Satya, Microsoft Unlocked

Links & Content Marketing

• How To Grow A Coaching Practice: 10 Content Marketing Tips, Forbes
• How High-Performing B2B Teams Scale Content Marketing and Boost ROI, MarketingProfs
• SEO Myth Debunked: AI Content Will Get You Penalised!, Nikki Pilkington

Local & Maps

• Google Business Profile Metrics That Matter for Local SEO, Localogy
• Google Maps has stopped showing alternate routes for some, 9to5Google
• Thousands of people have embarked on a virtual road trip via Google Street View, TechCrunch

Mobile & Voice

• Google Can Put Siri to Shame and Fix the Biggest Problem with Voice Assistants, CNET
• EU iPhone users could soon replace Siri with other assistants, AppleInsider
• How Apple Intelligence and Siri AI Went So Wrong, Bloomberg
• SiriGPT: Apple's chiefs hope to add chatbot functionality to Siri, AppleInsider

SEO

• 15 AEO Tools That Will Help You Optimize for LLMs, Ahrefs
• Managing Hreflang During Website Migrations: A Critical Guide to Preserving International SEO Performance, International Web Mastery
• SEOs want the brand budget. But should they get it?, Jono Alderson
• Why Every Global Website Needs a Country-Language Targeting Matrix, International Web Mastery
• How to Own Page One in the Age of AI Overviews, Pure Visibility
• When to use robots.txt or noindex, Ilana Davis
• AI Search: Where Are We & What Can We Do About It?, Aleyda Solis
• How to Set Up Claude Desktop with Google Search Console MCP, Richard Baxter
• My 3-Year $200,000++ Google Helpful Content Recovery Journey Is A Quiet Warning For News Publishers Everywhere, Luc Wiesman
• How to Measure Brand Awareness with Google Search Console – Use Case: ESC Presenting Partner Moroccanoil, Corina Burri

PPC

• How AI is Changing Paid Search in 2025, Seer Interactive
• Local Services Ads: The Ultimate Guide to Getting Guaranteed by Google, PPC Live
• What is channel reporting in Performance Max?, Jyll Saskin Gales
• Performance Max Updates: Search Terms & Negative Keywords, Jyll Saskin Gales

Search Features

• AI travel agents planning future trip far beyond 'assistant' status, CNBC
• Circle to Search text search is now using your whole screen, 9to5Google
• Google Chief Scientist Predicts AI Could Perform at Junior Coder Level in Year, Business Insider
• LLM-Based Search Volume Prediction, DEJAN
• SEO lessons from publishers one year after Google’s AI Overviews, Digiday
• The semantics of search are changing amid the zero-click era, Digiday

Other Search

• Sam Altman’s goal for ChatGPT to remember 'your whole life’ is both exciting and disturbing, TechCrunch

Feedback:

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