We hope you are in good health. Here are some of the major SEO news updates of the week that you need to know:
Search Related News and Updates from Major Search Engine
Google Clarifies Why Resource Hints Don’t Impact Crawling or Indexing
Google explained that resource hints such as preload, prefetch, and preconnect are meant to improve browser performance, not influence Googlebot’s crawling or indexing. Since Googlebot operates within Google’s own infrastructure, it doesn’t rely on these latency-reducing signals. Website owners should instead focus on crawlable HTML, proper metadata, and overall technical SEO best practices for search visibility.
Google Explains Why It May Not Use Your Sitemap
Google’s John Mueller said that even if a sitemap is technically valid and fetchable, Google might not use it if the site doesn’t have enough new or important content that the crawler finds worth indexing. In other words, having a sitemap alone doesn’t guarantee Google will crawl all listed URLs — the quality and relevance of the site’s content play a key role.
Google Enhances Circle to Search with Multi-Object Image Recognition
Google updated its Circle to Search feature so it no longer just analyzes the single part of an image you circle — it now considers the whole image to identify multiple objects and provide richer results. Powered by Gemini 3’s multi-object visual search and reasoning, this change enables users to get more comprehensive answers and visual results from one image, including improved shopping and discovery opportunities.
Bing Updates Its Webmaster Guidelines (Minor Refresh)
Microsoft has updated the Bing Webmaster Guidelines, mainly refreshing the design and wording to match the newer Bing Webmaster Tools interface and modernize how guidance is presented. The intro now emphasizes how Bing discovers, crawls, indexes, and evaluates content across search, Copilot, and grounding API results, and warns that not following the guidelines may reduce visibility or eligibility in Bing experiences. Overall, these are smaller wording and structural tweaks rather than major content changes to the core guidance.
Google Says a Spike in Search Console Impressions Doesn’t Cause Problems for Search
Google’s John Mueller clarified that seeing a spike in impressions in Google Search Console — even without a corresponding increase in clicks — doesn’t mean there’s an issue with your site or that it causes problems for Google Search. Such spikes can happen for many reasons (e.g., increased visibility in certain search features like AI overviews), and impressions alone aren’t a signal of search quality problems.
PPC Related News and Updates from Major Search Engine
Microsoft Advertising Tests Multi-Image Shopping Carousel in Bing Results
Microsoft Advertising is experimenting with a shopping ads carousel that can display multiple product images within a single card, effectively creating a carousel within a carousel for Bing Shopping ads. This makes shopping ads more visually engaging by showing several angles or product variations at once, potentially improving user interaction and retailer visibility in search results.
Google Ads API Version 23.1 Now Available
Google has released a minor update to the Google Ads API — version 23.1 — which includes refinements across account management, campaigns, conversions, planning, reporting, and more for advertisers and developers. To use the new features, you must upgrade your client libraries and client code, and Google also published minor versions (like v20.2, v21.1, and v22.1) to support compliance with EU political ads regulations.
