Daily Search Forum Recap: September 29, 2026

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.

Google's Nick Fox was interviewed again and said the DMA changes make him sad and are terrible for searchers, plus he said a lot more. Google officially appealed the DMA mandate to share search history with competitors. Google is testing showing citation cards at the bottom of AI Overview responses on desktop, instead of on the right side. Google is now rolling out monitoring capabilities in AI Mode in Google Search globally for everyone. Google is testing showing two rows of action buttons of the local panels within mobile search. A Google Maps bug places some business map pins in the middle of the ocean. Google Business Profiles has a new policy over misuse of support channels.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories: #

Google's Nick Fox Feels Sad & Terrible For European Searchers After DMA Pietro Valetto interviewed Nick Fox, Senior Vice President of Knowledge & Information at Google. Nick Fox shared a snippet from the full video about the DMA changes that led Google to say it had to make the biggest reduction in search quality in its 28-year history. Fox said doing so made him feel "terrible" and "sad." #

Google Appeals Europe's DMA Mandate To Share Search History Data Google has officially appealed to the European Union to stop the European Commission's Digital Markets Act (DMA) mandate requiring it to share search history data with competitors. Google said, "We're appealing decisions that will force us to share people's private search history without sufficient anonymization and weaken vital security protections on Android." #

Google Globally Rolls Out Monitoring Capabilities In AI Mode Google is now rolling out monitoring capabilities in AI Mode in Google Search globally for everyone. When Google first announced this feature, it was only available for Ultra and Pro paid subscribers, but now it is available to all Google users. #

Google Local Panel With Two Rows Of Buttons On Mobile Google is testing showing two rows of action buttons of the local panels within mobile search. Google has been testing showing a more + sign to load more or a scrollable carousel of buttons and now here it is with two rows. #

Google AI Overviews Testing Citations Cards At Bottom (Not Right Side) Again Google is testing showing citation cards at the bottom of AI Overview responses on desktop, instead of on the right side. Google tested variations of this at least twice before, once in March of 2026 and before that in September 2025. #

Google Maps Bug Places Map Pins In Middle Of Ocean A new bug with Google Business Profiles and Google Maps is placing some businesses' Google Maps pins in the middle of the ocean. This is reportedly happening for some service area businesses that do not list their address publicly on their Google local listings. #

Google Business Profiles Policies Adds Misuse Of Support Channels Google has added a new policy to the Google Business Profiles policies document. The new policy is named "Misuse of support channels." #

Mariachi Band On Rooftop At Google London Here is another photo of a different Mariachi band, this time on the rooftop of the Google offices in London.

Other Great Search Threads: #

• The other variant we see occasionally (too often!) is "domain registered/reserved/for sale" pages. If the pages are indexable, then it can quickly happen that they are all recognized as a group and are mutually canonicalized, because they usually all look the same. , John Mueller on LinkedIn
• Displays sizes can now be uploaded to Pmax Campaigns. , Bia Camrgo on LinkedIn
• ChatGPT is falling out of love with YouTube. YouTube has lost 91% of its share of ChatGPT citations compared to August. , David Konitzny on LinkedIn
• Claude's sign-up flow drew 21.4M visits from 12.0M unique users in Aug-26, +504% and +419% Y/Y. Read more about Claude's performance ahead of Anthropic's expected IPO in our full report , Similarweb on X
• Coordinated Fake Review Attack - How To Fix Review Bombing , Local Search Forum
• Two different subfolders (one blue, one orange) both with highly templated, programmatically scaled content on a major brand website (publicly traded) and also celebrated as an AI content scaling tool's major client , Lily Ray on X
• We’ve got a new look! From today, we’re bringing our suite of publisher & buyer tools together under one name: Publisher Connections. Same tools, same team, but with a new name for the full ecosystem we serve. Let’s go , Publisher Connections on X
• Strengthen your conversion signals with Event Quality Score , Menachem Ani on X

Search Engine Land Stories: #

Other Great Search Stories: #

AI & LLMs

• Google is officially killing Gemini Gems , Android Authority
• Google plans first test of AI chips in space under Project Suncatcher , Reuters

- [Introducing Claude Sonnet 5.5](https://www.anthropic.com/claude-sonnet-5-5) , Anthropic
- [Nvidia launches new tool to keep AI agents from going rogue](https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/28/business/nvidia-ai-safety-system) , CNN Business
- [Gemini app replacing Gems with skills in November](https://9to5google.com/2026/09/27/gemini-gems-skills/) , 9To5Google
- [OpenAI Scraps Release of New AI Model Over Safety Concerns](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-chatgpt-model-release-cancel-safety-5a2f9f42?st=u6jQPM) , Wall Street Journal
- [Claude Sonnet 5.5 reaches #2 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index](https://artificialanalysis.ai/articles/claude-sonnet-5-5) , Artificial Analysis
- [The Future Is for Everyone: Muse for Small Business](https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse-small-business/) , Meta
- [Towards safety cases for frontier AI training](https://openai.com/index/towards-safety-cases-for-frontier-ai-training/) , OpenAI

Analytics

- [Suggested version summary](https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/4620708?hl=en) , Google Release notes - Tag Manager Help
- [The collapse of attribution](https://www.growth-memo.com/p/the-collapse-of-attribution) , Kevin Indig

Industry & Business

• Top AI Researchers Call for Urgent Oversight of Self-Improving Systems , Wall Street Journal

• EU should use Google fines to cut member state contributions to budget, France says , Reuters

• Anthropic warns of ‘existential risks to humanity’ in IPO prospectus , Financial Times (Sub)

• OpenAI to Help Australia on AI Defense After Government Hack , Bloomberg Links & Content Marketing

- [Why Digital PR is crucial for AI citations and visibility](https://hallam.agency/blog/why-digital-pr-is-crucial-for-ai-citations-and-visibility/) , Hallam
- [Creating News Content That Stands Out in AI and Multimodal Search](https://www.advancedwebranking.com/blog/news-content-ai-multimodal-search) , Advanced Web Ranking
- [B2B Creator Platforms and Tools for Influencer Marketing](https://www.toprankmarketing.com/blog/b2b-creator-platforms/) , TopRank Marketing

Local & Maps

- [Apple Maps are Becoming a Priority for MULO Brands](https://streetfightmag.com/2026/09/28/apple-maps-are-becoming-a-priority-for-mulo-brands/) , Street Fight
- [You Can Be Rewarded For Contributing To Google Maps - Here's How](https://www.bgr.com/2266651/how-to-get-google-maps-contribution-rewards/) , BGR

Other Search

PPC

- [Bing Copilot shows ads before users complete the verification](https://searchenginewatch.com/bing-copilot-shows-ads-before-users-complete-the-verification/) , Search Engine Watch
- [Display & Video 360 boosts reach by 24% with vertical video](https://blog.google/products/marketingplatform/360/vertical-video-unification/) , Google Blog

• Updates to Financial products and services policy (October 2026) Chile and Denmark , Google Advertising Policies Help

- [The Three Signals Every Google Ads Account Needs](https://hopskipmedia.com/three-google-ads-signals/) , Hop Skip Media
- [Florida Demands Google, Meta, TikTok Stop Sweepstakes Casino Ads](https://www.casino.org/news/florida-demands-google-meta-tiktok-stop-sweepstakes-casino-ads/) , Casino

Search Features

- [How AI Overviews Affect Online Retail Click-Through Rates](https://www.assertive-media.co.uk/blog/how-ai-overviews-affect-online-retail-click-through-rates/) , Assertive Media
- [Google tests new product carousel design with larger boxes](https://searchenginewatch.com/google-tests-new-product-carousel-design-with-larger-boxes/) , Search Engine Watch

SEO

- [Almost nobody gets XML sitemaps right](https://joost.blog/broken-sitemaps/) , Joost
- [Google AI Ranking Factors: What 130+ Experts Taught Us](https://signal.zyppy.com/p/google-ai-ranking-factors) , Zyppy
- [Google Patent: Task-Based AI Search Results Explained](https://patentlyze.com/patent/google-task-based-ai-search-results-explained/) , Patentlyze
- [3 Ways to Correct Incorrect and Outdated Answers in AI](https://www.adamriemer.me/ai-and-llms/ways-to-correct-incorrect-answers-in-ai/) , Adam Riemer

Feedback: #

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