Google has updated its site reputation abuse policy to expand what is included in abuse. It now includes third-party content that has first-party involvement or content oversight. Google also dropped a mention of the starkly different content algorithm but made no mention that site reputation abuse is enforced algorithmically—so it must still be only through manual actions.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...
Google announced new shopping features through Google Lens to help with in-store shopping and local shopping. Google said, "Google Lens can quickly show you product insights tailored to the store you're in. Just snap a photo to find product information, similar products in-stock, whether a store's price is competitive and shopper reviews."
Google has updated its guide to Google Search ranking systems to mention at the top of the page that it uses both page-level and site-wide signals for search rankings. There was a debate on this after the Google creator summit about Google possibly saying they only have page level signals, so this may clear things up a bit.
Is OpenAI, its ChatGPT service, taking market share from Google? Well, maybe. Rand Fishkin of Sparktoro posted his assumptions based on a mix of data from SimilarWeb and Datos that says ChatGPT's current market share is 4.33% - that is from October 2024 data.
Microsoft is testing categorizing the videos within its Bing video search results. Bing's video search interface can show at the top a featured video for the query, then trending videos related to the query, then short videos, then a related category of videos, followed by the normal video thumbnails.