Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. We are seeing Google volatility get heated again...

Danny Sullivan from Google spoke at the Google Search Central event in Toronto a couple of days ago and a few of his slides spoke about it is important to produce "unique, authentic and non-commodity content." And then Sullivan dug into what commodity content is.

Google may now hold your review replies for approval before showing them in Google Maps or Google Search. Previously, those replies were immediately shown but that may have changed.

I know it has been a while since I covered the Google Search ranking volatility and algorithm twitches but I am now seeing signs of the volatility heating up. These signs are mostly coming from the tools; the community seems busier with other things.

Google is experimenting with the new tab view in Chrome. This view brings more Gemini features to the forefront, such as Deep Search and Create Images.

Google recently posted a new job listing for a GEO Partner Manager. The position calls for you to be responsible for the "transition Google's engagement model from Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) discovery to formal ecosystem advocacy."

Google has released version 24 of the Google Ads API, this is a major release with dozens of updates. This update includes changes to Demand Gen, travel feeds, conversion types, shopping, reporting, videos, and much more.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

We've been keeping track of the bots, spiders, OpenAI has been releasing. OpenAI just posted about a new bot for ads, it is named OAI-AdsBot.

Here are some early screenshots and videos of the ChatGPT ad management interface that some OpenAI advertisers have access to. You can see that you can create campaigns, ad groups, budgets, CPC limits, conversions and much more.

Microsoft Advertising has announced the launch of several new AI features and upgrades across the ad platform. This is to "To help businesses succeed across all three eras of the human, LLM, and agentic web," Microsoft wrote.

Google Ads has a new help document on AI-Qualified Call Conversions. Google says AI-qualified call leads use Google AI to evaluate call recordings to determine the actual quality of the conversation.

Google Ads Advisor, which officially began rolling out last November, is rolling out three new features. These features include proactive troubleshooting, 24/7 security monitoring and instant certifications.