Search, social and AI news that actually affects South African businesses — short, plain-English, every weekday.
Google Shopping ads are showing less often but converting better, and new data across 175 billion impressions explains why. Plus a warning from Google…
Read the brief →Google has quietly made exact and phrase match keywords eligible to serve inside AI Mode, reversing a rule that kept tight keyword targeting off…
Read the brief →Google put Gemini 3.8 Flash into AI Mode this week and the citations disappeared, which Google has now confirmed is a bug. A separate…
Read the brief →Google Analytics standard reports have shown zero traffic since 1 September, and Google has acknowledged the fault sits in its own reporting pipeline. Google…
Read the brief →Calls from Google listings fell 11.9 percent and website clicks 12.5 percent, while direction requests rose 21.1 percent. Google also switched on a site…
Read the brief →Google has confirmed that AI Overviews now expand into full answers for some searches, removing the Show more button and pushing your listings down…
Read the brief →From today Google stops applying its site reputation abuse penalty to anyone searching inside Europe, after pressure from the European Commission. Also this week:…
Read the brief →The IRS dropped out of Google search this week because its own bot protection blocked Googlebot, and Cloudflare's new defaults on 15 September will…
Read the brief →Google is routing search clicks through its own redirect links at close to full rollout, which will make rank tracking harder and more expensive.…
Read the brief →From 1 October, Google Local Services Ads will charge you for calls nobody answered, and for the follow up call as well. Google tag…
Read the brief →Search Console emailed thousands of site owners on Monday claiming a new owner had been added, and it was a bug. Google also admits…
Read the brief →Google confirmed on Sunday that the search favicon bug is fully fixed, and repaired the Search Console crawl stats gap over the same weekend.…
Read the brief →One short email each weekday: what changed in search, social and AI, and what it means for your business.
