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 Confirms Canonical URLs Are Case-Sensitive: SEOs Urged to Maintain Consistency
Google’s Gary Illyes clarified that canonical URLs are case-sensitive, meaning variations in letter casing (like /Page vs /page) can be treated as different URLs. This can cause indexing inconsistencies if canonicals don’t match exactly. SEOs are advised to keep consistent URL casing and ensure canonical tags use the correct, standardized format.
Google Clarifies: URL Path Case Sensitivity Still Matters for SEO
Google confirms that while the scheme and domain of a URL are case-insensitive, the path component is treated as case-sensitive by search systems — meaning /Page and /page can be seen as two different URLs. Google recommends consistency in internal linking and canonical tags to help avoid crawl inefficiencies and unintended canonicalization.
Google Business Profile’s “What’s Happening” Section Expands to Multi-Location Restaurants & Bars
Google has rolled out its new “What’s Happening” feature—initially for single-location food-and-drink venues—to multi-location restaurants and bars across the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The feature lets businesses highlight current events, deals or specials (e.g., “Live Music Tonight” or “Happy Hour 4-6PM”) right at the top of their business profile to increase visibility and attract foot-traffic.
Google Business Profile Testing Scheduler for Posts
Google is testing a new “Schedule this post” feature in the Google Business Profile post-creation interface, enabling businesses to set a future date/time for their updates. However, this capability isn’t yet fully live for all users and seems still in the testing phase.
John Mueller: “Any Modern CMS is Fine for SEO — It’s Not the Platform That Matters”
Google’s John Mueller states there’s no fundamental SEO advantage to using one mainstream CMS over another — as long as the site produces crawlable HTML, has good navigation, and avoids major technical SEO issues. He also highlights that while about 51% of websites use a CMS, only 8% of the top 1000 sites do, which shows platform choice is less important at the highest levels of web presence.
PPC Related News and Updates from Major Search Engine
Bing Adds Country and Region Selector to Customize Search Results Globally
Microsoft Bing has launched a country/region selector that allows users to manually choose the location they want search results to reflect, instead of relying solely on automatic geo-targeting. This feature helps users see how Bing results vary across countries, test localization efforts, and better understand international SERPs. The rollout enhances Bing’s global usability and provides greater transparency in region-specific indexing.
Google Merchant Center Next Adds Promotion Analytics
Google Merchant Center Next has introduced a new “Promotions” analytics section which includes summary cards like “Your promotions at a glance” and “Performance in the last 28 days” to help merchants track how their promotional offers are performing in Google Search. This update allows advertisers to monitor promo statuses and results more easily, offering clearer visibility into how deals influence shopping behavior.
