Daily Search Forum Recap: October 20, 2026

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 seems to not show AI Overview labels for all AI Overviews in Search. Google may have had issues handling URLs with brackets in them. Google Business Profiles testing verification with government IDs. Google Business Profiles has a delay with review appeals. The Google Ads team posted a new help document that talks about the length of booking bid adjustment in legacy Hotel campaigns versus Search campaigns for travel. Google is testing removing the HR, thematic line break or horizontal rule line, that is found under the search tabs under the search box in the search results page. Microsoft seems to be testing not showing sitelinks under the main Bing search result snippets.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Removes AI Overviews Labels On Some AI Overviews
Google seems to be removing the AI Overviews label from some of the search results that are AI Overviews. The desktop version is missing the AI Overview label, while the mobile version has the AI Overview label.
Google Business Profiles Verification With Government ID
Google is testing a new way to verify your Google Business Profiles, the method is by uploading a photo of your government ID. This is in addition ot the phone/text, email, live video call or snail mail verification methods.
Google Hotel Ads Legacy Length Of Booking Bid Adjustment Doc
The Google Ads team posted a new help document that talks about the length of booking bid adjustment in legacy Hotel campaigns versus Search campaigns for travel. Hotel campaigns multiply your base bid by the traveler's itinerary length of stay (LoS) but Search campaigns for travel (SCT) don't.
Google Search Internal Issues With Square Brackets [] Punctuations In URLs
Google Search had some issues handling square brackets punctuation marks (i.e. [ ]) within URLs. John Mueller from Google responded to former Googler, Vanessa Fox, saying that he is "seeing some of the issues internally that came up with these kinds of characters in the URL."
Bing Tests Not Showing Sitelinks
Microsoft seems to be testing not showing sitelinks under the main Bing search result snippets. I am honestly not sure if this is new but I was able to replicate Bing showing sitelinks for the first search result snippet in one browser and for the same query, it not showing the sitelinks.
Google Business Profiles Review Appeals Are Delayed Again
Google Business Profiles review appeals are delayed again. Dan Boguslavsky from the Google team posted about the delay last Friday saying, "Due to high volume of review related appeals, processing times are currently extended."
Google Search Tests Removing Horizontal Rule Line Under Tabs
Google is testing removing the HR, thematic line break or horizontal rule line, that is found under the search tabs under the search box in the search results page.
Latin Heritage Month at Google with Bachata Training
Here is a photo from the GooglePlex, the main Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, of a celebration of Latin Heritage Month at Google. You can see, they even have Bachata training.