A lead Google spokesperson gave a surprising response to claims that the search engine stole content from a publisher without providing any benefit to the publisher’s website. 

Google’s rich search results have been controversial since their launch, as some feel that these results simply copy information from other websites instead of sending users to that content where it was originally posted. 

The search engine has largely ignored these criticisms by saying that rich results improve the search experience and include links to the original content. 

That’s what makes it so surprising that Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan recently publicly responded to one publisher’s complaints directly.

The Original Complaint

In several recent tweets, a representative for travel brand Travel Lemming posted:

“Google is now stealing Travel Lemming’s own brand searches (even via site search).

They take our list — INCLUDING MY ORIGINAL PHOTOS 📸 — and present it in a rich result so people don’t click through.

I am literally IN that Red Rocks photo!…”

They are doing this across all travel searches – unbranded and branded alike.

Example: “Mexico Travel Tips” – they have an AI answer & also a rich result that basically just re-creates an entire blog post, including our stolen photos.

Again, I am IN that Mexico packing photo!

Like how is it legal for Google to just essentially create entire blog posts from creators’ content and images?

I literally have a law degree from the top law school in the world, and even I can’t figure it out!

Fair use does NOT apply if you’re using the content to compete directly against the creator, which they clearly are.

I can’t sit outside a movie theatre, project the movie on a wall, earn money from it, and claim fair use.

I spent SO much time taking those photos in Denver.

It was 10+ full days worth of work for me and partner Clara, going around the city to photograph everything. $100s of money spent in attraction admission fees, gas, parking.

Now Google just gets to extract all that value?

How much does Google get to take before creators say “enough is enough”?

How hard does the water have to boil before the frog jumps?

The comments show it is a prisoner’s dilemma as long as Google has a monopoly on search …”

Google’s Response

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, provided a lengthy response that delves specifically into what is happening, why, and ways they are hoping to improve the situation. 

Not only does Sullivan give insight into the company’s perspective, but also their own opinions about the function. Importantly, Sullivan doesn’t disregard Travel Lemming’s complaints and is sympathetic to how rich search results impact publishers:

“Hey Nate, this got flagged to my attention. I’ll pass along the feedback to the team. Pretty sure this isn’t a new feature. Elsewhere in the thread, you talk about it being an AI answer, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, either. It’s a way to refine an initial query and browse into more results.

With the example you point out, when you expand the listing, your image is there with a credit. If you click, a preview with a larger view comes up, and that lets people visit the site. Personally, I’m not a fan of the preview-to-click.

I think it should click directly to the site (feedback I’ve shared internally before, and I’ll do this again). But it’s making use of how Google Images operates, where there’s a larger preview that helps people decide if an image is relevant to their search query. Your site is also listed there, too. Click on that, people get to your site.”

If you don’t want your images to appear in Google Search, this explains how to block them:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/prevent-images-on-your-page

I suspect you’d prefer an option to not have them appear as thumbnails in particular features. We don’t have that type of granular control, but I’ll also pass the feedback on. 

I appreciate your thoughts and concerns. I do. The intention overall is to make search better, which includes ensuring people do indeed continue to the open web — because we know for us to thrive, the open web needs to thrive.

But I can also appreciate that this might not seem obvious from how some of the features display.

I’m going to be sharing these concerns with the search team, because they’re important.

You and other creators that are producing good content (and when you’re ranking in the top results, that’s us saying it’s good content) should feel we are supporting you.

We need to look at how what we say and how our features operate ensure you feel that way.

I’ll be including your response as part of this.”

I doubt Sullivan is going to change many minds about Google’s rich search results, but this rare interaction is revealing to how Google sees the situation and is trying to walk a tightrope between providing a seamless search experience while sustaining the sites it relies on.

Meta’s Twitter replacement, Threads, has added a new way to sort and explore content called “topic tags”. 

Similar to hashtags, these topic tags improve search functionality and make it easier to find new voices and brands to follow on Threads. 

This can help brands connect with their audience and keep in touch with the latest content trends on the platform.

What’s The Difference Between Threads Topic Tags and Hashtags?

At first glance, topic tags might seem like a superficial twist on hashtags but there are some key differences that may make topic tags more intuitive and natural to use. 

These differences include:

  • Topic tags do not require the use of a # symbol when adding tags
  • Topic tags support the use of spaces in phrases
  • Topic tags can include special characters
  • Only one topic tag can be added to each post

In a message posted to Threads, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said topic tags are “a great way to connect with people who are interested in the topics that you are talking about.”

“For everyone, it’s a great way to dive deeper into your interests. This is just one step on a much longer path to building a space that really fosters healthy conversation.”

Google has released its annual Year in Search list of trends and popular searches, but this year’s list includes a special twist.

To celebrate 25 years as a search engine, this year’s Year In Search includes a ton of interesting fun facts, milestones, and a time capsule that helps users see how far we’ve come.

25 Years of Digital Search

To open the latest Year in Search report, Google included a film that highlights how our interests and technology have changed in the last two and a half decades.

The video includes all sorts of gigantic accomplishments from popular figures such as Taylor Swift and iconic brands like Pokemon, along with massive social and scientific developments like nuclear fusion, and the increasing acceptance of marriage equality.

The Time Capsule

The Google Trends Time Capsule shows the most popular searches for certain categories from each year.

For example, the graph below lets you see Pokemon’s gradual fall out of the top five card games and eventual return to popularity 17 years later.

You can explore the featured categories, gain a new perspective of the most powerful trends, and even take an interactive quiz to see which year’s search trends were most interesting to you.

Most Searched Playground

Another new part of the Year in Search report is the inclusion of an interactive Google Doodle/game that highlights many of the most popular places, people, and events from the past 25 years.

Zoom in and explore to find over 1,700 figures, easter eggs, and other surprising finds while touring Google’s history as a search engine.

The Year In Search Report

Of course, we have the annual search trends report itself. The Year in Search 2023 report highlights the most popular searches of the past year for several categories. You can explore the global trends that have shaped the world or filter the trends by country.

Local Year In Search

If you are looking for more localized trends, you can also explore the top trends from specific cities in Google’s Local Year in Search.

The section includes trends for each city including entertainment, “near me” searches, and relevant area-specific searches.

Even More

This year’s report includes even more cool trivia and interactive information, including Google Search Milestones, notable Facts About Google, and a statement from CEO Sundar Pichai’s view for Google’s future.

Google is giving advertisers the ability to opt out of showing ads across its Search Partner Network (SPN) following a concerning report that suggests ads may be being shown on controversial websites – even if you’ve placed those websites on a blocklist. 

The Claims

A report from Adalytics was recently published asserting that an unnamed Fortune 500 company had been upset and “surprised” after it learned that its ads were being served across several non-Google websites. 

Specifically, the report says that the company’s ads were being shown on Breitbart.com – a controversial right-wing news site that has been accused of racial bias, misleading articles, and incendiary perspectives. This is particularly problematic, as the company had added the domain to its exclusion list years before. 

As Adalytics stated:

“This raises the possibility that ads were served on websites and publishers despite the brand’s deliberate efforts to achieve brand safety and exercise control over their own media investments.”

In response, Google widely denied the claims in Adalytics’ report and suggested they ads shown were intentionally triggered. Still, the company announced it will allow brands to entirely opt-out of showing ads across the SPN if they desire. 

The company said:

“Though we take enormous issue with Adalytics’ methodology and conclusions, we always look to improve our products to meet our partners’ needs.”

Why It Matters

Having your ads shown alongside inappropriate or hateful content can be damaging to a brand’s reputation and develop negative associations for those who see it. Additionally, those who frequent problematic websites are unlikely to be your target market, so your ad budget is likely being wasted when this happens. 

Similar issues at X (formerly Twitter) have recently led to several large advertisers to publicly announce they were pulling ads from the social network following a report indicating X was displaying these ads alongside hate speech, racist, and white nationalist content. 

By giving advertisers the opportunity to opt-out, Google is ensuring that brands still can feel comfortable their ads aren’t being shown alongside objectionable content while the information from Adalytics’ report is further investigated. 

For more, read the full report here.

As the holiday shopping season is at its peak, Google has given retailers new generative AI tools to help advertise their products online. 

The company recently announced it was adding three new features that will help improve product visibility and help shoppers make informed purchases. These features are:

New Shopping Subcategories For Gifts

Shoppers can more easily explore products and brainstorm what to get their loved ones for gifts using AI-generated curated subcategories for highly specific gift ideas.

The announcement gives an example: 

“Let’s say you’re looking for a present for the budding chef in your life and don’t know where to start. Search “great gifts for home cooks”, and you’ll now see a wide variety of subcategories to explore — like specialty tools, artisanal ingredients, culinary subscriptions and even experiences like cooking classes — with options from brands large and small. Just tap into a category to browse shoppable gift options and select a product to buy.”

AI-generated Shopping Images

Online shoppers often begin with a very specific image of what they are looking for in their mind, but it isn’t always easy to translate that into search terms. 

To help shoppers find exactly what they’re searching for, Google has introduced image generation technology that will create photorealistic images to match your search terms and allow you to search products based on these images. 

“Let’s say you want a new winter coat — a colorful, patterned puffer jacket — but you haven’t found quite what you’re looking for. With generative AI in Search, just look for that style and tap “Generate images” to see photorealistic images that match your vision. And if you want to make an adjustment, like if you’d prefer a colorful metallic jacket instead of a patterned one, just enter that refinement in the text box to see a new set of images. Once you’ve found one you like, scroll down to see similar shoppable products.”

Expanding Virtual Try-On To Men’s Tops

After seeing increased engagement and interactions with women’s tops after the launch of virtual try-on features for those products, Google has expanded the feature to product searches for men’s tops. 

The feature allows shoppers to visualize how clothes will look by showing the products on a variety of real models, including diverse skin tones, body shapes, heights, and sizes. 

These new features are available to all US users now. For more, you can read the full announcement here.

Google is making some big changes to how it ranks results that aim to deliver more personalized search results and increase the prevalence of “first-hand knowledge”.

The search engine announced the changes earlier this month while spotlighting two specific updates that have recently come to users. 

Cathy Edwards, Vice President of Search at Google, says these updates will better connect humans with the topics and content that are most relevant to their interests and needs:

“Search has always been about connecting human curiosity with the incredible expanse of human wisdom on the net. These advancements will help users find the most helpful information just for them, no matter how specific their questions may be. 

Bringing First-Hand Knowledge To The Surface

Google has made adjustments to its ranking algorithm to show more first-person perspectives higher in search results. While the company didn’t tell us exactly how it tweaked the algorithm, Edwards emphasizes that it will help people find new individual experiences, advice, and opinions when searching. 

With this change, the company says it will hopefully show fewer repetitive pieces of content that don’t bring new perspectives or opinions in the first pages of results. 

The announcement says:

“As part of this work, we’ve also rolled out a series of ranking improvements to show more first-person perspectives in results, so it’s easier to find this content across Search.”

Follow Topics For More Curated Results

Google is giving you the ability to curate your own search results by following topics that are important to you. 

By following topics in search results, such as a favorite football team, style of restaurant, or genre of music, you can stay in touch with these topics naturally while you are searching. 

Follows not only impact what you see in typical search results but help highlight important topics in Discover and other areas of Google.

You can see an example of how this can shape your search results below. The first image shows what search results looked like before this update rolled out, and after.

Like most changes to the search results, however, it is unclear exactly how this affects optimization strategies going forward. We will know more as we get more data in the coming weeks.

Personalization Is The Future

Google has been increasingly customizing search results for users based on numerous factors including location, age, gender, demographics, and more. These latest updates continue this effort to ensure that the search results you see aren’t just the most relevant sites for anyone. They are the most relevant search results for you.

Google is making it easier for shoppers to find small businesses and their products with a new filter for shopping search results. 

The new filter allows users to only see results from businesses with the “small business” attribute associated with their listing. 

Google recently added the attribute, which can be added to your business’s Google listings within your Google Business Profile manager or Merchant Center account. 

According to Google’s data, 84% of shoppers say that supporting local or small businesses.is important to them. This inspired the decision to add the recent attribute and filter. 

As the announcement says:

“We’ve added a “small business” filter to Search on desktop and mobile, and to Maps on mobile. Tap the filter to see products from merchants across the web that identify as small businesses, including e-commerce brands, local businesses and sellers from marketplaces like Etsy and eBay.”

Available Now

The filter is available for all users already, with many sighting it over the past weeks. This is the first time the company actually announced the small businesses filter, however 

You can see a screenshot of how it looks on mobile below:

Google Small Businesses Shopping Filter

Why This Is Important For You

If your small business has struggled to drive sales from Google Shopping, this may be the break you’ve been looking for. The new filter allows you to stand out without the usual competition from major retailers and lets shoppers find new small businesses to fall in love with.

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, raised some eyebrows over the weekend by saying that “major changes” are coming to Google’s search results. 

The statement came during a live talk, where Sullivan reportedly told the crowd to “buckle up” because major changes were on the way.

As the public voice for Google’s Search team, Sullivan is uniquely positioned to speak on what the search engine’s developers are working on behind the scenes. For businesses, this means that he is one of the only people who can give advance notice about upcoming shifts to search results that could impact your online visibility and sales. 

What Did Sullivan Say?

Since it wasn’t livestreamed or recorded, there’s been some discussion about exactly what Sullivan told the crowd. Posts on X agree on a few details though. 

While attendees agree Sullivan specifically used the phrase “buckle up”, a few users provided longer versions of the quote that paint a slightly different picture. 

One person, Andy Simpson, says the entire quote was “There’s so much coming that I don’t want to say to buckle up because that makes you freak out because if you’re doing good stuff, it’s not going to be an issue for you.”

This is likely the case, as Sullivan has since clarified:

“I was talking about various things people have raised where they want to see our results improve, or where they think ‘sure, you fixed this but what about….’ And that these things all correspond to improvements we have in the works. That there’s so much coming that I don’t want to say buckle up, because those who are making good, people-first content should be fine. But that said, there’s a lot of improvements on the way.”

Either way, it is important for businesses to take note of these statements and watch their site’s search results performance for any signs of major shifts in the near future. 

Think using blogs to get to the top of the search engines is a thing of the past? Don’t be so quick to ditch your brand’s blog because a new study suggests that blog posts are the most common type of content found in the top 5 Google search results (excluding homepages). 

Even with low-quality AI-generated blog content on the rise, BrightEdge says that blogs are the leading type of content returned by Google – a strong indication that blogs with well-crafted content are one of the strongest search engine optimization tools available to brands today. 

About The Study

For the study, BrightEdge analyzed results for a dataset of 10,000 keywords of varying intent across 10 specific industries:

  • Banking
  • Insurance
  • Retail
  • Software
  • Higher Education
  • Real Estate
  • Advertising and Marketing
  • Manufacturing
  • Travel and Hospitality
  • Industrial

Using data collected during August of this year, the study then analyzed the content types of 23,785 pages ranking in the top 10 search positions. 

While the leading type of page found in the top search results were homepages, these were excluded because these are essentially the default type of page Google returns when it believes a site may be relevant but it does not know which specific page to recommend.

Once homepages have been accounted for and excluded, the leading type of content in top search results was blog posts – accounting for 19% of the top 10 search results. When you narrow the focus to just the top 5 search results, that climbs to 23% of search results. 

The Takeaway

Many brands have been moving away from traditional brand blogs because of a misguided notion that blogs were becoming irrelevant compared to more interactive or visual media like videos or user-generated content. This trend has only accelerated with the recent surge in lower-quality content pumped out by generative AI systems. 

As Jim Yu, founder of BrightEdge and executive chairman says, however, well-maintained blogs are still an essential tool for raising the visibility of your brand and educating consumers:

“The future is not just AI – it’s AI and human symbiosis. AI can inform and assist, but human creativity, expertise and skill sets are necessary to add the voice and trust of your brand. Success lies in the fusion of AI and human expertise throughout any content creation process,” 

Brands struggling to make progress in this area should likely re-evaluate their content and ensure their strategy is focused on delivering relevant, useful, and interesting information to your target market. 

Does anyone actually enjoy using social media? 

According to a new survey conducted collaboratively by the University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, Bocconi University, and the University of Cologne, the majority of users (particularly among young people) believe they would be happier if social platforms like Instagram and TikTok weren’t in their lives. 

However, the students also said they continue to keep using the sites because they are afraid of missing out on what’s popular with their peers.

About The Study

The study surveyed over 1,000 college students across the U.S. on their social media habits, focusing primarily on Instagram and TikTok use. 

The survey first asked students how much they would need to be paid to deactivate their Instagram or TikTok accounts for four weeks while their friends and peers continued using the platform. 

From there, the students were asked how much money it would take to have their entire university network (including themselves) deactivate their accounts on the platform for four weeks. 

Lastly, the survey asked how much people value the platform when everyone else is on it compared to when no one else is. 

The Results

According to the findings, students said they would need to be paid $59 a month on average to deactivate their TikTok accounts, and $47 on average to deactivate Instagram for one month – assuming their peers remained online. 

Notably, those numbers both dropped if the students and their peers were all to deactivate their accounts. In fact, students said they would be willing to pay $28 on average to delete TikTok and $10 to remove Instagram. 

As the authors of the study wrote in their findings:

“Taken together, these results imply the existence of a ‘social media trap’ for a large share of consumers, whose utility from the platforms is negative but would have been even more negative if they didn’t use social media.”

In other words, the only thing keeping many people on the most popular social networks is the fact that their friends and peers are also on these platforms but the platforms themselves are viewed overwhelmingly negatively. It is purely fear of missing out which is keeping people coming back. 

These findings highlight how toxic many people see social media as, and suggest there is a large opportunity for a radically different form of social media. The trick is establishing such a platform and drawing enough of a user base without falling into any of the pitfalls other platforms have trapped themselves in.