Author name: Mike SEO

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 Search rankings are heated again…

In this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Tom introduces us to Google’s AI Mode, a new tab in Search that offers a conversational, ChatGPT-like experience with longer-form AI-generated responses and the ability to ask follow-up questions. Learn how the “query fan-out" technology works, its current limitations, and what it could mean for the future of search and content visibility.

Google has replaced the promotions section in the merchant local knowledge panel with a deals section. There are still clipable coupons but it is renamed “Deals" instead of it saying "Promotions." There is also a new green percentage icon next to each deal.

Google has been outspoken about not being a fan of the LLMS.txt file. Now, Gary Illyes from Google said it is a lot like the keywords meta tag in the early days and we all know how that went.

Fabrice Canel, long time Microsoft employee and the Bing Search Product Manager, said the way you optimize for AI Search is by following SEO guidelines. He echoed Google’s statement that doing normal SEO works for AI Search.