There was a lot of news this week with both Google I/O and Google Marketing Live. Google has launched a new search box called the Intelligent Search Box. Google also announced Gemini 3.5 Flash, which powers AI mode. Google is unveiling Information Agent in Search, expanding agent booking capabilities, showing agent coding directly in Google Search, expanding Personal Intelligence, and bringing the AI Mode experience fully up and running from Seamless AI Overview. Google also showed off its new Universal Cart, and it’s awesome. If it weren’t for the changes in Google rankings, it would have been like that since the morning of I/O. Google has posted new help documentation on how to optimize generative AI. Google has added markdown files to its help documentation, but says it’s not for search purposes. Google is testing preferred labels with AI mode results. Google has introduced two new ad formats within AI mode: Conversational Discovery Ads and Highlighted Answers. Google AI mode has acquired Shopping Ads, Business Agents for Prospects, and Direct Offers for Prospects. Google plans to integrate Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor into Ask Advisor. The Google Ads main conversion action may be used for enhanced conversions. Microsoft Advertising has an import center, cross-account portfolio bidding, and bid strategy reporting. Microsoft Clarity has added a new AI report, Citation Report. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has a web cache. OpenAI also released updates to ChatGPT Ad Manager, including daily budgets, geo-targeting, and new CTA experiments for ChatGPT ads. That was the search news at this week’s Search Engine Roundtable.
Sponsored: This week’s recap video is sponsored by Duda, a professional website builder that you can call your own.
Please note that this was recorded on Thursday and I was offline on Friday due to the holiday.
To get notified of these updates and download videos in the background, be sure to subscribe to our video feed or directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast player. The YouTube version of the feed is here. Click here for the original iTunes version.
Find discussion topics:
Be sure to subscribe on YouTube , iTunes or your favorite RSS reader. Don’t forget to comment below with the correct answer. Good luck.
