Daily Search Forum Recap: August 21, 2026
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...
Search Engine Roundtable
A well-rounded view on search engines and search engine marketing from five segments of the Web population represented by senior members of the major SEO/SEM forums on the Internet.
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Google Search Console Crawl Stats Missing Two Days Of Data
The crawl stats report within Google Search Console has a data gap again. This time the crawl stats report is missing August 15 and 16th crawl data. Normally, Google can fix the data but Google has not yet fixed it.
Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Unleashed The August 2026 Spam Update, Gemini 3.7 Powers AI Mode, Google and Microsoft Ads News & More
Google has released its third spam update of the 2026 year, the August 2026 spam update this week and finished rolling out Friday morning at 4:50am. Google Search's AI Mode is now being powered sometimes by...
Google Preferred Source Button Improved For Publishers
Google has updated the Preferred Sources button that publishers have on their websites to make it so that the user is taken right back to the page they were originally on. There is new embed code that handles this process to make it easier for users to go back to where they were and stay on your website.
Microsoft Advertising Max CPC Won't Be Available For New Campaigns On Oct 1
Microsoft Advertising sent out emails yesterday announcing changes coming to Max CPC bidding. Microsoft wrote, "Max CPC will no longer be available when creating new non-portfolio campaigns" after October 1, 2026.
Google Ads & AI Max New Experimentation & Planning Features
Google announced it is rolling out new experimentation and planning capabilities in Google Ads and AI Max. There are new A/B test capabilities, brand and location parameters options and new Performance Planner predictions.
Google Local Service Ads Pre-Badge Ads & Expansion Of Verticals
Google has made some big updates to Local Service Ads. Even though LSAs are transitioning to Google Ads, Google is clearly still investing in the LSA product. Google added something called pre-badge ads, massively expanded the verticals and the verified ads badge updated its exclusions.
JSON-LD Extraction For Googlebot Now Does One Pass Of HTML Unescaping
Google's crawler now strictly enforces standard JSON formatting when reading your site's structured data, schema markup, instead of auto-correcting double-escaped HTML text. "To bring our parser up to JSON and other standards, we changed our JSON-LD extraction and are now only applying a single pass of HTML unescaping," Google posted on LinkedIn.
Google Discover Feed Can Be Tailored By Words
Google is rolling out the ability to tailor your Google Discover feed by using your words, in a conversational chat-like experience. You are taken to a screen that lets you enter your desired topics, then you can go back and forth with AI to really zone in on the topic you want your feed to look like.
Google Tag & Google Tag Manager Updated
Google updated the Google Tag and Google Tag Manager. Google said, "these changes are designed to streamline your measurement setup, improve performance and management, and provide a more unified experience across Google's tagging products."
Daily Search Forum Recap: August 20, 2026
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...
Why Google Announces Some Search Updates But Not All
As you know, Google does smaller core updates and algorithm search updates all the time without announcing them. So why does Google announce some of those updates and not the others. Well, as Google told us before, Google announces the larger, more impactful updates so we know it was a Google update that impacted our site, not a technical change we made.
Google Ads Can Find Sitelinks For You
Google Ads can now help you find sitelinks for your ad extensions. A new feature within the Google Ads advertiser console will now suggest new sitelinks to add to your ads.
Google Ads Enhanced Matching In Customer Match
Google Ads seems to be rolling out a new customer match option named "enhanced matching." Google writes this allows you to "Expand your audience reach with your consented user lists." Google will then "match your consented users with publishers' consented users where available."
Microsoft Advertising Rolling Out AI Max Globally
Microsoft Advertising is rolling out AI Max globally and to all advertisers. If you log in to your Microsoft Advertising account, you should be able to toggle on the AI Max setting for your search campaigns.
Google Bringing Back Google Posts Insights (People Viewed)
In 2018, Google launched Google Posts Insights, a way to see how many views and clicks a Google Post within Google Business Profiles received. Google discontinued and sunset that feature in January 2023. Now, it seems Google is testing bringing back the view count - it now calls "people viewed."
Spike In Complaints On Favicons Disappearing From Google Search
In the past couple of days, I have seen a spike in the number of complaints around favicons disappearing from the Google Search result snippets. The complaints started a couple of days before Google's August 2026 spam update, so I doubt they are related to that, but they have indeed spiked. It makes me think that Google changed something on its end, versus all these site owners making a technical…
Google Ads API Version 25.1 Now Available
Google has released version 25.1 of the Google Ads API, this is a minor release with several of updates. This update includes text disclaimer assets, AI Max tracking, Brand and Conversion Lift measurements, brand sentiment insights, and several more features and changes.
Daily Search Forum Recap: August 19, 2026
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...
ChatGPT Ads Expanding To 31 European Countries
OpenAI announced it is expanding its ChatGPT Ads service and product to 31 European countries. These countries include Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Austria.