A search feature that used to appear on nearly a third of Google results now turns up on fewer than one in five. On brand name searches the fall is far steeper than that.
Google’s video carousel is disappearing, and it happened quickly. If any part of your marketing budget goes into making videos so that they show up in search, this is the week to check whether they still do.
Search and SEO
The video carousel has collapsed in Google search results
Semrush had the video carousel showing on just over 30% of tracked queries. It now shows on under 20%. Jonas Sickler, who watches 1,200 Fortune 1000 and Forbes List brand name searches every day, recorded something sharper: on 12 August the feature fell from over 30% of tracked brands to around 5%, an 85% decrease in a single step. Barry Schwartz picked it up on 19 August.
Google has said nothing. It dropped support for video carousel markup two years ago, but that never stopped the carousel appearing, so this is a separate decision.
Why this matters for your business: if you have been producing video mainly to win a slot in that carousel, the slot is mostly gone. The video itself still works, but the route to the customer changed. Put your videos where people actually watch them now, which means the YouTube search results, your own product and service pages, and your social feeds. Pull your Search Console data for the last month and compare impressions on your video pages against July. If they dropped around 12 August, you have found your cause and it was not your website.
Favicons are disappearing from search snippets
Complaints spiked this week. Site owners are watching the small icon beside their listing vanish from Google’s results. The reports began a couple of days before the August spam update started, so the two are probably unrelated. When a great many unconnected sites lose the same element on the same day, the change is nearly always on Google’s side rather than theirs.
Why this matters for your business: your favicon is the first piece of branding a searcher sees, and on mobile it sits right next to your name. Do not pay anyone to rebuild it this week. Do confirm the basics while you wait: the file needs to be a square at least 48 pixels, reachable by Googlebot, and referenced in the head of every page rather than only the home page. If those three are right, the problem is not yours to fix.
Google made its Preferred Sources button easy to add
Google updated its publisher documentation on 20 August. Two lines of code now render a Google styled button on your pages, translated automatically into the reader’s language. A reader clicks it, your site is added as one of their preferred sources, and they land straight back where they were on your page. Before this the click carried them off to Google.
Starred sources appear more often in Top Stories, and since June the preference carries into AI Overviews and AI Mode as well.
Why this matters for your business: this is one of the few visibility levers you can pull without waiting for an algorithm. It suits anyone publishing regularly, so news sites, industry blogs and busy company blogs all qualify. Add the button to your article template, not to every page, and mention it once in your newsletter. The readers who already like your work are the ones who will click, and their preference then follows them into the AI answers where ordinary links are getting squeezed.
Social
YouTube Analytics becomes Insights
YouTube is renaming the Analytics tab to Insights and regrouping the metrics so related numbers sit together. Clicking any chart opens a deeper Advanced Mode, and the date picker on the overview page is simpler. A limited group of creators is testing four AI cards: Channel Summary, Content Patterns, Audience Loyalty and Video Summary. The Trends tab is becoming Research. Over on Threads, private likes arrived this week, so your likes stay visible only to you and the person who posted.
Why this matters for your business: whoever runs your channel will open a screen they do not recognise. Tell them where Advanced Mode is before they conclude the data has gone missing. The Audience Loyalty card is the one worth reading, because for a business channel returning viewers matter far more than a spike of strangers who never come back.
Advertising and content
Microsoft switched AI Max on for every advertiser
Microsoft Advertising is rolling AI Max out globally to all advertisers. Log in and you should find the toggle on your search campaigns. It works the way Google’s version does, widening your keywords and rewriting your ads so they reach searches you never chose.
Google’s version has a track record now. Lunio studied more than 414 million clicks and found search campaigns running AI Max carried 72% more invalid traffic than campaigns without it.
Why this matters for your business: Microsoft search volumes in South Africa are small, which makes this a cheap place to run the test properly. Switch it on for one campaign only, leave a matched campaign alone, and compare cost per enquiry after three weeks rather than clicks after three days. Whatever you decide, check the search terms report weekly. A broadened match that brings the wrong people costs you twice, once for the click and again for the time spent answering them.
Automotive
Retention bidding and what it means for your service department
This one is a read across rather than automotive news, because nothing new landed in dealer marketing in the last two days. Google Ads has added a bidding option that treats loyalty programme members as their own group, separate from lapsed customers, and lets you show member only pricing on both free and paid listings. Google Ads API version 25.1 shipped on 20 August carrying the retention goal.
Why this matters for your dealership: the money in a dealership is not in the first sale, it is in the service bookings, the tyres, the trade in and the second car five years later. Retention bidding is built for exactly that shape of business, yet almost every dealer group spends its budget chasing strangers. Upload your service database as a customer list and bid it separately from cold traffic. Then check what those people actually land on, because a service customer sent to a generic showroom page will bounce, and a booking form that asks for a registration number the customer cannot remember will lose the appointment.
What to do this week
- Compare video page impressions in Search Console against July, using 12 August as the dividing line.
- Check your favicon file size, location and head reference, then leave it alone.
- Add the Preferred Sources button to your article template.
- Show whoever runs your YouTube channel where Advanced Mode lives.
- If you run Microsoft Ads, test AI Max on one campaign and keep a control.
If you want a hand working out which of these actually applies to your business, get in touch with us and we will look at it with you.
Sources
- Google Search Video Carousel Showing Less Often, Search Engine Roundtable
- Spike In Complaints On Favicons Disappearing From Google Search
- Google makes the Preferred Source button more seamless, Search Engine Land
- Guide to Preferred Sources in Google Search for Web Publishers
- Microsoft Advertising Rolling Out AI Max Globally
- Google Ads Bidding Option For Customer Retention Loyalty Program Members
- YouTube refreshes Studio and updates video guidance, Social Media Today