Daily Search Forum Recap: May 15, 2024

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 AI Overviews (formerly SGE) is officially live in the US search results, my article goes deeper on this than most. Google also is rolling out new AI features in search in the coming months. Google Search has a new filter to just show text links, it is called “web.” Google has lowered the search rankings for Deepfake **** sites. Google may be showing more review stars in the search results.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• 
  Google AI Overviews Launch In US Search Results
  
  
  Google, as expected, has officially launched AI Overviews in the US and will expand the launch to other countries by the end of this year. AI Overviews were in Search Labs under the Search Generative Experience last year and has finally launched.
• 
  New Google AI Search Features Coming Soon – From Google I/O
  
  
  Google not only announced that AI Overviews are rolling out in the US this week but a number of new AI based search features coming out later in Google Search and in Google Search Labs. These features include the ability to adjust AI Overviews, muti-stepping reasoning, planning, AI-organized search results and Lens search with video.
• 
  Google Web Filter Goes Live To Show Just Text Links
  
  
  In February, we caught Google testing a new search filter named “Web Results.” Well, last ***** it went live under the name “Web.” You can now filter search results to only show text links and weed out all the videos, images, and other non-text links.
• 
  Google Lowers Search Rankings Of Deepfake **** Sites
  
  
  Bloomberg reports that Google has downgraded/lowered the search rankings of Deepfake **** sites. Bloomberg wrote, The company is lowering such content in search rankings, a spokesperson said, adding Google is “continuing to decrease the visibility of involuntary synthetic pornography in search and develop more safeguards as this space evolves.”
• 
  Google Mobile Search Showing More Review Stars?
  
  
  Google may be showing more review stars in the mobile search results, according to some reports. RankRanger six-point lift in how often review stars are showing in mobile search, while is also showing a lift but more modest lift.





• 
  Sundar Pichai Shares Photo From Back Of Google I/O Stage
  
  
  Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, shared a photo right before he got on stage at the Google I/O event. You can see it is from the back of the I/O keynote stage and it shows the thousands of people in the stands at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California.
  

Other Great Search Threads:

• Adding the markup with JS is fine. IMO it makes it harder to debug on your side, and I wouldn’t over-do it & follow general JS-SEO best practices, but it can work. The difference is mor, John Mueller on X
• As a pre-Google I/O warm up we’ve just released web-vitals v4. See the below thread for all the improvements. And, later this week, check out @malchata ‘s talk for Google I/O where he’ll be explaining how to use some of these to, Barry Pollard on X
• I’m not aware of any changes there., John Mueller on X
• It has to be rendered to be seen. With a complex JS configuration (chained JS files, conditional API requests, etc), rendering gets harder. You can make it really hard to render pages for search, you can also make it easy. Valid JSON-LD in HTML is the eas, John Mueller on X
• Project Astra is a prototype from @GoogleDeepMind exploring how a universal AI agent can be truly helpful in everyday life. Watch our prototype in action in two parts, each captured in a single take, in real time, Google on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Content Marketing

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

Other Search

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