AI Lawyers Demanding Links, Google Not Stealing Content, Old Bingbot, Google URL Parameter Tool & AdWords API Gone & More

This week in search, a reporter uncovered that sketchy SEOs are making up fake lawyers using AI to send out fake DMCA requests demanding links to their sites. Google was accused of stealing content and not crediting this source for that content, well, it turned out, Google was the one being copied, not he other way around. Google Search Console’s URL parameter tool is officially offline now. Microsoft is fully retiring the old Bingbot user-agent in the Fall of 2022. Google Search Console had a bug where the average position metric went missing in the performance report, it was fixed but that bug caused a ton of fear. Google now lets your remove personally identifiable information from Google Search. Google will launch signed exchanges for desktop Google Search for some sites. Google video results can now show you your question as answered in a video. Microsoft Bing ethical shopping hub is now live in the US. Google Business profile added products to the performance metrics reports. Google reduced the visibility of the edits it makes to your business local listings. Google Maps is asking local guides to update their old reviews. Google Ads performance max gained customer acquisition goals, new insight reports and a one click upgrade tool. Google Ads API released version 10.1 and then officially killed off the old Google AdWords API. Google updated the Google Merchant Center product data specification for 2022. Google added nine policies to the Google Ads strike based system. Google Search is testing images on the left side of the search results. And an SEO built an AI based John Mueller named MuellerBot which is pretty good and definitely funny. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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