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 SchwartzThu, 13 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -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/recap-08-13-2026-41868.htmlThu, 13 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/recap-08-13-2026-41868.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-ranking-volatility-spikes-41869.htmlThu, 13 Aug 2026 07:51:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-volatility-spikes-41869.htmlWe saw a spike in volatility yesterday amongst the Google Search results rankings. There was a spike in ranking movement outside the day-to-day norm that seemed to start yesterday and maybe into today. The chatter is somewhat cool, but the tools showed a spike in the Google rank volatility.Google Updatesbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-profiles-lowers-subscriber-requirements-41866.htmlThu, 13 Aug 2026 07:41:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-profiles-lowers-subscriber-requirements-41866.htmlGoogle has dropped the minimum number of followers needed to be approved for a Search Profile on Google. Previously, it was 100,000 subscribers across YouTube, Instagram, X and Tiktok. Now it is 35,000 subscribers across YouTube, Instagram, and X but still 100,000 on TikTok.Googlebarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/openai-chatgpt-sources-less-visible-41864.htmlThu, 13 Aug 2026 07:31:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/openai-chatgpt-sources-less-visible-41864.htmlOpenAI is testing or rolling out a change to how you can click to see the sources from the ChatGPT responses. It used to be a button named "Sources" in the footer of the response, but now sometimes it is showing up within the three-dot "More actions" menu, requiring you to click more to find those sources - which very few will do.ChatGPTbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/misconfigure-cloudflare-seo-41865.htmlThu, 13 Aug 2026 07:21:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/misconfigure-cloudflare-seo-41865.htmlThis is just a random tip, make sure not to misconfigure Cloudflare, your content delivery network and/or your hosting server. I see way too many cases of this popping up and causing such a pain for SEOs to fix. All of a sudden, you might notice your rankings drop off a cliff on Google Search and your pages begin to drop out of the Google index. It is likely because you are blocking Google from crawling your site.Google Search Engine Optimizationbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/spammy-google-selected-canonical-41863.htmlThu, 13 Aug 2026 07:11:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/spammy-google-selected-canonical-41863.htmlWhen you use the Google Search Console URL inspection tool, Google will show you what it calls the "Google-selected canonical." Sometimes that URL will look off, weird and even scary, because sometimes it might be a URL for a spammy site. Google Search Engine Optimizationbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/recap-08-12-2026-41861.htmlWed, 12 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/recap-08-12-2026-41861.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 amended its lawsuit against SerpApi...Search Forum Recapbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-new-local-customer-optimization-41862.htmlWed, 12 Aug 2026 07:51:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-new-local-customer-optimization-41862.htmlWith Google migrating Local Service Ads to the main Google Ads platform, Google is already preparing new Google Ads help documents with more details about the change. A new document named About Local customer optimization within Performance Max campaign for store goals was just posted by Google.Google Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-amends-lawsuit-against-serpapi-41860.htmlWed, 12 Aug 2026 07:41:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-amends-lawsuit-against-serpapi-41860.htmlAfter Google's lawsuit against SerpAPI, the Google Search scraper tool, was dismissed a month ago, Google has decided to amend the complaint. Google filed the amendment on August 10, 2026 as an "Amended Complaint." Google is now taking an approach around protecting licensed content within its search results.Legal Search Issuesbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-overview-local-results-listicles-41854.htmlWed, 12 Aug 2026 07:31:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-overview-local-results-listicles-41854.htmlGoogle will randomly show AI Overviews for local results, and when it does, It will often show AI-generated information about each local listing. The issue is that Google often cites low-quality and self-promotional listicle articles from across the web when showing those snippets in the local pack.Google Mapsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-merchant-center-performance-report-update-41859.htmlWed, 12 Aug 2026 07:21:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-merchant-center-performance-report-update-41859.htmlGoogle announced several new updates to the Merchant Center performance report, starting on August 24, 2026. There are four updates: separating YouTube affiliate results from organic traffic, updating the YouTube organic traffic definitions, expanding product-level reporting for Google Ads, and adding new performance segmentation capabilities.Google Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/chatgpt-ads-descriptive-heading-41853.htmlWed, 12 Aug 2026 07:11:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/chatgpt-ads-descriptive-heading-41853.htmlOpenAI is testing placing descriptive headings above the ads within ChatGPT responses. I assume it is using AI to generate these headlines above the ChatGPT Ads.ChatGPT Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/recap-08-11-2026-41852.htmlTue, 11 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/recap-08-11-2026-41852.htmlHere is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...Search Forum Recapbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-sponsored-results-ad-summary-header-41851.htmlTue, 11 Aug 2026 07:51:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-sponsored-results-ad-summary-header-41851.htmlGoogle is testing placing the list of advertisers in the group of sponsored results at the top of the ad block in the mobile search results. So if the sponsored results group has two advertisers in it, Google will show the favicon and domain name of the ads that will be shown below, all the way at the top, directly under the "Sponsored results" header and directly above the actual ads.Google Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)https://www.seroundtable.com/google-travel-campaigns-migrating-41849.htmlTue, 11 Aug 2026 07:41:00 -0400https://www.seroundtable.com/google-travel-campaigns-migrating-41849.htmlGoogle will be migrating Travel campaigns to the new Search campaigns for Travel in Google Ads. This is happening sometime in the third quarter of 2026; we do not have a specific date.Google Adsbarry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)