Recent Comments on Search Engine Roundtable

DataDonkey commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 12

Google search is just dead and doesn't matter how they stir their toilet bowl. I haven't seen a sale from Facebook in a very long time, so I was poking around and found Meta hired a Trump insider yesterday. Happens in all admins, and these slithering politically connected snakes find their way into high paid executive positions. <b>Meta taps former Trump adviser to be president, vice chair</b> - <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/meta-taps-former-trump-adviser-155025849.html">https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/meta-taps-former-trump-adviser-155025849.html</a> <blockquote>Meta named former Trump adviser Dina Powell McCormick to serve as president and vice chair Monday, further cementing the company’s growing ties to Republicans and President Donald Trump’s White House. In addition to a long career on Wall Street, Powell McCormick served as Trump’s deputy national security adviser during his first term. She was also a member of the George W. Bush administration. She first joined Meta’s board last April, part of a broader play by the social media and artificial intelligence giant to hire Republicans following Trump’s election.</blockquote>

Comment ID #6822928474 01/13/2026 08:36 am

Habeeb commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 12

Facing issues due to it and also Rankings are fluctuating from 1st position to 8th and sometimes to 4th

Comment ID #6822927975 01/13/2026 08:34 am

Ziko commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 12

discover dead ... !

Comment ID #6822922795 01/13/2026 08:21 am

Golden Phoenix commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 12

the only trend is real traffic going down and bot traffic going up. I have spent 3 hours today already (it's barely 8 am) just blocking bot and AI Ips today. Real traffic? Ain't happening. haha.

Comment ID #6822915495 01/13/2026 08:00 am

Bender G commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

All of our stores have experienced a drop in the number of products in Google Merchant Center. On the same day and at the same time, the products literally disappeared. No changes of any kind were made on our side. We are asking whether this is happening to other users as well, or only to us. What you see in the image are the graphs showing the number of products published in Merchant Center. These are independent stores, with separate domains, selling different products. Some of our technicians believe this may be related to a server outage we experienced on Friday the 9th in the afternoon, which lasted for approximately three hours, and is only now being reflected in Merchant Center. We will continue to monitor the situation.

Comment ID #6822913043 01/13/2026 07:53 am

Dimitris Abrazis commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 12

With volatility and no volatility traffic is declining all the time. Something is very wrong.

Comment ID #6822908233 01/13/2026 07:38 am

Hunar commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

Seeing the same, yesterday was horrid. Today’s looking the same as well.

Comment ID #6822894308 01/13/2026 06:51 am

googleisjoke commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

i noticed big pattern with growing sites, google loves me as long as I have more stuff to offer and publish quickly, once i have nothing more to offer and stagnate, it start going down

Comment ID #6822888197 01/13/2026 06:29 am

Barry Schwartz commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

what is this?

Comment ID #6822881439 01/13/2026 06:03 am

Bender G commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/14fb7b22953a5b02ac462fc78c5b2dc35c3f43dbc4b4461039896051d9ff7950.png

Comment ID #6822865304 01/13/2026 04:52 am

Bender G commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

Are you seeing a decline in products in Merchant Center? I've been seeing it in all my stores since Monday the 12th. I don't know if it's something that only affects me or if it's widespread. I'm still investigating.

Comment ID #6822864274 01/13/2026 04:48 am

Vishvabodh Sharma commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility January 6th & AdSense Earnings Dropping

agree it was fine few days back

Comment ID #6822855124 01/13/2026 04:02 am

Ted (or Big T) commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

Shuffle is back. Traffic is very low...

Comment ID #6822842795 01/13/2026 02:54 am

Helga commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

I agree with you dear.

Comment ID #6822791784 01/12/2026 10:25 pm

ddddd15 commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

Again, another way to disrupt sales traffic. I am in e-comm USA, and this is the 3rd Monday that traffic is non-existent. And this is the worst of the 3 Mondays. I've had 1 sale eek through today so far. Not that I can boast about sales anyway, it's just that every time G makes adjustments, you can actually feel the sensation you're in a ghost town instead of on the internet.

Comment ID #6822757375 01/12/2026 08:24 pm

John A. User commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

Given their track record with AI, I can't disagree with you on that one. It's not just the US; the UK seems starry-eyed as well.

Comment ID #6822685669 01/12/2026 04:58 pm

Hunar commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

Seems like that's their goal isn't it? Just to take over the whole internet and become the monopoly on everything. Sadly enough, I think the government would let them too.

Comment ID #6822684775 01/12/2026 04:56 pm

Dimitris Abrazis commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility January 6th & AdSense Earnings Dropping

Same to many of us. No stability, the difference between months is huge. Still my numbers way lower than before the July update

Comment ID #6822642116 01/12/2026 03:29 pm

John A. User commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

Probably be a bit like what they do with App Payments, if you find something via them, you HAVE to pay via their service... Inch by inch, they're taking over the Internet.

Comment ID #6822604707 01/12/2026 02:17 pm

John A. User commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

I hadn't seen it, thx. I guess Google will pay $10 billion (arguments sake) and make $20 Billion back from the new monopoly where they get commission on this new marketplace feature to compete with Amazon.

Comment ID #6822548103 01/12/2026 12:31 pm

UncleKrusty commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

Wish I had seen your post before I posted above because you're spot on about Google creating another monopoly. Did you see in the news today Apple will use Gemini to power Siri? I know this was expected by many, but now it's official. <b>Apple picks Google’s Gemini to run AI-powered Siri coming this year</b> <blockquote>Apple is joining forces with Google to power its artificial intelligence features, including a major Siri upgrade later this year, the tech giants said on Monday. The multi-year partnership will lean on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology for future Apple foundational models, according to a statement obtained by CNBC’s Jim Cramer.</blockquote>Full story: <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/12/apple-google-ai-siri-gemini.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/12/apple-google-ai-siri-gemini.html</a>

Comment ID #6822540307 01/12/2026 12:17 pm

Sensei commented on Google Says Don't Turn Your Content Into Bite-Sized Chunks

Yeah it's still worth calling him out over his lie either way.

Comment ID #6822527420 01/12/2026 11:52 am

UncleKrusty commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

<blockquote>I saw gbot interacting with our shopping cart (directly adding products to the cart with a URL and passing referrer info)</blockquote>Same. Google doesn't pass the referrer (Google) in StoreBot because it has no intent to complete a sale. When Gbot is hitting the direct product add to cart URL, it's passing Google off as the referrer as if Google wants credit for the sale if it occurs.

Comment ID #6822523116 01/12/2026 11:44 am

UncleKrusty commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

Here we go with another Google imposed standard that gives them more control over the industry. Some of us sell products that have safety considerations and bypassing the product detail pages would leave some customers clueless to these considerations. Also purchasing, without agreeing to our terms, increases our liability exposure. Is there an opt-out option or must stores disable their product feeds to avoid the headaches these purchasing agents pose? How long will it be before Google becomes their own payment processor and processes the transactions themselves? Or will Google demand these processors share a percentage of each sale with them or get booted out? As with anything Google is involved with, at a minimum I expect this to increase their revenue by dipping into processor's revenue which they will recover by increasing the fees they charge us.

Comment ID #6822515270 01/12/2026 11:30 am

PMB Brent commented on Google Says Don't Turn Your Content Into Bite-Sized Chunks

Maybe not. Worth a shot anyway.

Comment ID #6822500703 01/12/2026 11:02 am

racefan01 commented on Google Search Ranking Volatility January 6th & AdSense Earnings Dropping

Something's happening again. After a few days of recovery, everything is going down the drain again. Discover traffic is practically dead.

Comment ID #6822498280 01/12/2026 10:57 am

FF222 commented on Google Says Don't Turn Your Content Into Bite-Sized Chunks

In other words: Google is now trying to manipulate publishers into making their raw content even less user-friendly, by telling them to size up their content, even if the nature of the content doesn't demand or justify that. This will make in turn users want less and less read their over-lengthy articles, and will more and more push them towards consumption of content through AI, which will be either able to create a summary on the fly, or integrate and present the content wholly and exclusively through AI mode and chatbots, in a digested form. Also, publishers themselves will also obviously use AI to make the articles longer (or those who will use AI will be more profitable than those who use human writers to do that), which will degrade the overall quality of their articles and speed up the way to model collapse.

Comment ID #6822488883 01/12/2026 10:38 am

ExposeTruth commented on Google Introduces Agentic Commerce Protocol & Direct Offers Ads In AI Mode

Google: do this, don't do that. keep creating original, never seen before content. also Google: can you believe these morons train our ai for free?

Comment ID #6822478638 01/12/2026 10:16 am

Sensei commented on Google Says Don't Turn Your Content Into Bite-Sized Chunks

Google has moved Danny boy to another position since he made his false statements about potential HCU recoveries. Now he has an easy out to hide from any accountability. Definitely don't expect him to do the honorable thing by still giving a response anyway.

Comment ID #6822472032 01/12/2026 10:01 am

PMB Brent commented on Google Says Don't Turn Your Content Into Bite-Sized Chunks

Ok, if you don't get a response, then if you ever have him in an interview situation or during a Q&A or live event or whatever. If the opportunity arises, plz ask. Tyvm!

Comment ID #6822467747 01/12/2026 09:52 am

Recent Comments

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

Most Recent Articles

Official: Apple Intelligence & Siri To Be Powered By Google Gemini

Microsoft Advertising Now Allows Up To 50 Search Themes In PMax Campaigns

Possible Google Search Ranking Volatility Around January 12

Google Shopping Promotions Support Subscription Fees & Abbreviations

Google Hotel Knowledge Panels Posting Currently Turned Off Bug

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 12, 2026