Barry Schwartz

This week, I posted the monthly Google Webmaster report and we had more search ranking volatility over the weekend. Google Search Console had huge delays, which started to be fixed on July 3rd and seems to have caught up late last night. Google also said these delays have nothing to do with core updates and they are not documented on its Search Status Dashboard. Rand Fishkin posted an updated zero-click data study on Google. Reddit is not blocking Google Search, despite what you see in its rob…

Google seems to be testing a new user experience for the “from sources across the web” search feature. Instead of showing a carousel or content on the search results page, Google is testing popping up an overlay that you can scroll through with more details.I cannot replicate this but Gagan Ghotra shared a video of this in action on X. Here is a GIF of part of that video:Compare that to what I see:Here is the full video:(NEW) “From sources across the web” test screenshot that I shared recently…

Google loves their ski lifts and we’ve covered that many offices have them. Here is one at the GooglePlex at some event, it seems like a stationary one just so Googlers can take photos on it.I found this on Instagram.This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search industry and share them with our readers.

Here is a photo the Life at Google channel shared of a cute dog where a Google bandana, at a laptop, drinking from a New York mug at the Google office. Dogs at Google are Dooglers, by the way.This was shared on X.This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search industry and share them with our readers.

Google now enables broad match by default when you create new search campaigns within Google Ads. Previously, this was not on by default, but now it is, according to Thomas Eccel, a Google Ads consultant.Thomas posted this on X, he wrote, “Broad match enabled by default when creating a new search campaign!” He added that this is specifically “about that this setting is now by default enabled when creating a new search campaign.“Here is a screenshot of that setting:Here is the video of this in a…

Google seems to be testing a new ad format with two rows of shopping ads in the search results in a carousel format, so you can scroll through more shopping ads at the same time. I don’t believe I’ve seen this format before - have you?Saad AK spotted this and posted some videos of it on X - here is a GIF of one of those videos so you can see it in action:Here is a static image showing the ads stacked on top of each other:I am not sure this ad format is that bad from a searchers perspective? But…

For the original iTunes version, click here.This week, guess what, we had more volatility over the weekend and also a blip in the middle of the week. Google also had another indexing bug that lasted only about an hour. Google Search Console had a bug with new owner notifications. Google Search Console now lets you enter your shipping and return policies in settings. Google said it found the feedback it collected on the last core update really helpful. Google updated its URL best practices d…

Schema.org has a new design, it seems like the design went live this week. The Schema.org validator also looks fresh and new. It is unclear if there were any other changes made, outside of the design update.Here is the new design of the validator page:Here is the old design:Less red, more light pink/red - and overall a much cleaner and modern look.Forum discussion at X.

This is just a reminder that Google has discontinued Google Business Profile chat yesterday and call history is going away.

I don’t know what this is, but I spotted this photo at the Google office in Kirkland, Seattle. It looks like some sort of wooden art, maybe of a tree, maybe of some hive, I am not sure.Any ideas?I saw this on Instagram.This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search industry and share them with our readers.