Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Volatility Continues, Preferred Sources, Site Hack Demolishes Traffic & Google On AI

Aug 15, 2025 - 8:01 am 0 by

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The Google search ranking volatility has not calmed down since the June core update and we are in mid-August and expecting another core update soon. Google launched the preferred sources feature for Top Stories in the US and India. Chartbeat says traffic from Google to publishers is stable with AI Overviews, supporting Google’s claims. Google’s Gary Illyes was interviewed on AI Search, AI content, and more SEO topics. Google’s John Mueller implied the hype around GEO, AEO, AIO and other AI SEO acronyms may be scammy and spammy. A site was hacked, saw its Google traffic drop 50%, fixed the issue but still did not recover. Google may be using a generic and undocumented Googlebot. Microsoft’s Fabrice Canel said search engines don’t have much visibility into conversions from AI Search and SEOs need to do studies that. Google Search is testing a new deep dive button. Google and Bing are testing title expansions, different colors and more user interface changes. Google is testing a loyalty benefits section in the merchant knowledge panels. Google is testing a horizontal line above the sponsored results. Google Ads has new AI to reduce invalid traffic by 40%. Google Ads PMax campaigns gain gender exclusions. Google Ads PMax has a new toggle for share of cost reporting. Google Ads updated 14 of its policy help center articles. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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