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.https://www.seroundtable.comen-usBarry SchwartzWed, 14 Oct 2026 11:00:00 -0400en-usnoSearch Engine Roundtablesearch,search,engines,google,yahoo,ask,com,microsoft,live,com,adcenter,adwords,adsense,ypn,barry,schwartz,search,engine,roundtableThe Pulse with Barry Schwartz and co-hosts Ben Pfeiffer and Chris Boggs covers search topics that receive the most buzz from within the search community. Each Tuesday, The Pulse will recap those important search topics in a roundtable style format, allowing the hosts to debate and argue some of the latest trends and stories in the search industry.Search Pulse from the Search Engine RoundtableBarry Schwartzbarry@rustybrick.comBarry Schwartzhttps://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-channel-prioritization-budget-allocation-42297.htmlWed, 14 Oct 2026 11:00:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-channel-prioritization-budget-allocation-42297.htmlGoogle Ads is rolling out two new "controls" in the advertising platform named channel prioritization and budget allocation. These are rolling out globally across Google Search, Google Shopping, Performance Max, and soon Demand Gen.Google Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-urls-42305.htmlWed, 14 Oct 2026 10:57:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-urls-42305.htmlGoogle posted its first video in a series of what they are calling The Non-Canonical Cabinet. In this video, Cherry Prommawin and Gary Illyes discussed how Google Search deals with URLs. They discuss URLs as a ranking signal, hyphens versus underscores, emojis and much more.Google Search Engine Optimizationbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/recap-10-14-2026-42300.htmlWed, 14 Oct 2026 10:00:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/recap-10-14-2026-42300.htmlHere 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. Google has rolled out its latest Gemini model, Argon 4...Search Forum Recapbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-search-terms-and-ad-combinations-report-42287.htmlWed, 14 Oct 2026 07:51:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-search-terms-and-ad-combinations-report-42287.htmlGoogle Ads seems to be testing a new report named the Search terms and ad combinations report. This report shows how search queries, ad creatives, and landing pages work together.Google Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-mode-left-sidebar-42298.htmlWed, 14 Oct 2026 07:41:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-mode-left-sidebar-42298.htmlGoogle is testing placing the left vertical sidebar you see in AI Mode results on the main Google web search results page. This places the small super G Google logo on the left, with the chat history lines, a way to start a chat with AI Mode and the settings icon all on the left side. Googlebarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/bing-large-single-sponsored-ad-42283.htmlWed, 14 Oct 2026 07:31:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/bing-large-single-sponsored-ad-42283.htmlMicrosoft Bing is testing placing a large single ad unit at the top of the Bing Search results page. The sponsored ad has a gray background, with an image and call to action button, and of course, the url, title and ad description.Bing Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/openai-chatgpt-ads-account-manager-42278.htmlWed, 14 Oct 2026 07:21:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/openai-chatgpt-ads-account-manager-42278.htmlOpenAI has humans who are reaching out to advertisers to help them manage their ChatGPT Ads. These ad representatives are called ChatGPT Ads Account Managers and I guess are real humans who help agencies manage ads for their customers?ChatGPT Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-policies-prediction-markets-section-42268.htmlWed, 14 Oct 2026 07:11:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-policies-prediction-markets-section-42268.htmlGoogle added a section for prediction markets to the main Google Ads policies documentation last week. Google has posted updates and policies on advertising for prediction markets on Google Ads numerous times before, but now it has been added to the main policy document.Google Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/utm-parameters-missing-chatgpt-42299.htmlWed, 14 Oct 2026 07:05:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/utm-parameters-missing-chatgpt-42299.htmlOpenAI seems to have removed or replaced the UTM parameters it placed on links within the ChatGPT results. This makes it harder to know if a click came from ChatGPT versus some other platform. This seems to have started with the release of GPT''6, which was a week ago.ChatGPTbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-on-pdfs-42291.htmlTue, 13 Oct 2026 15:27:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-on-pdfs-42291.htmlGoogle's Martin Splitt and John Mueller just posted a Search Off the Record podcast on the topic of PDFs, it is named PDFs in Search: Indexing, AI & Pitfalls. It goes over how PDFs are converted for crawling and indexing, how Google processes links, images, what are the file limits and do they rank in search and AI search.Google Search Engine Optimizationbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-mode-gemini-4-argon-42289.htmlTue, 13 Oct 2026 12:13:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-mode-gemini-4-argon-42289.htmlGoogle announced Gemini 4 Argon a couple of weeks ago and today announced that it is now an option in Google Search via AI Mode for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers globally.Googlebarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/topics-portfolio-bing-webmaster-tools-42288.htmlTue, 13 Oct 2026 11:59:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/topics-portfolio-bing-webmaster-tools-42288.htmlMicrosoft Bing just announced a new addition to the AI performance reports in Bing Webmaster Tools named Topics Portfolio. Topics Portfolio shows you the "presence is distributed across themes, how much demand each theme represents, how competitive each theme is and where your site has room to grow."Bing SEObarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/recap-10-13-2026-42284.htmlTue, 13 Oct 2026 10:00:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/recap-10-13-2026-42284.htmlHere is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...Search Forum Recapbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-old-domain-42279.htmlTue, 13 Oct 2026 07:43:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-old-domain-42279.htmlI spotted a thread on Reddit that seemed off from an SEO perspective. A site owner said he switched to a new domain four months ago, Google indexed and served the new domain but then all of a sudden, Google started to show the old domain again four months after the migration.Google Search Engine Optimizationbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-drugs-ai-mode-ai-overviews-42277.htmlTue, 13 Oct 2026 07:41:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-drugs-ai-mode-ai-overviews-42277.htmlGoogle may show "certain pharmaceutical products" and pharmaceutical drugs within ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews. A Google spokesperson told Adweek it has "recently expanded to include certain pharmaceutical products" within these surfaces. Google Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)