Google SEO News
Google Faces £5 Billion UK Lawsuit Over Search Market Dominance
A landmark class action accuses Google of abusing its monopoly to overcharge advertisers.
A £5 billion lawsuit has been filed against Google in the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal, alleging the company abused its dominant market position to suppress competition and inflate search advertising costs. Led by competition law expert Or Brook and represented by Geradin Partners, the case represents all UK-based organizations that used Google’s ad services from 2011 onward. It follows findings by the CMA that Google earned 90% of all search ad revenue. Google denies wrongdoing, calling the case “speculative and opportunistic.”
Google Reaffirms: Structured Data Doesn’t Directly Improve Rankings
John Mueller clarifies structured data’s role in SEO—it's about eligibility, not ranking boosts.
Google’s John Mueller recently reiterated on Bluesky that structured data, specifically Schema.org markup, won’t improve a site’s ranking in organic search. While structured data helps Google better understand content and powers rich results like carousels and product listings, it doesn’t contribute to a “generic ranking boost.” Mueller emphasized that while structured data may aid targeting and relevance, it won’t produce visible ranking changes. This aligns with Google’s longstanding guidance from as early as 2018. However, structured data remains essential for eligibility in modern AI-powered search features.
SEO Recommendations by Jason
This is a controversial one, like chicken vs the egg: structured data isn’t the magic wand to rankings, but without structured data, your website cannot be properly interpreted by search engines and content indexing technologies.
Structured data or markup is an essential part of an SEO foundation and shouldn’t be overlooked, but to back up what John is saying, simply having optimized structured data isn’t going to automatically improve your rankings.
Google Confirms Discover Feed Coming to Desktop Search
At the Search Central Live event in Madrid, Google confirmed that its AI-powered Discover feed is coming to desktop search. This marks the first official announcement of the feature’s desktop expansion after limited testing. While no formal launch date has been set, some users already see Discover feeds when logged into Google on their desktops, indicating a phased rollout. Given Discover’s growing role—now a top traffic source for over half of news publishers—SEO teams are advised to optimize content accordingly and set up tracking using GA4 and Search Console. Discover favors high-quality, engaging, and interest-based content rather than hard news.
SEO Recommendations by Jason
This is exciting, as SEOs always want more visibility on their content. There is an extra opportunity for content to be featured in Discover on desktop. Over the past 12 months, we have seen some websites do exceptionally well with the Discover feature and others struggle. All in all, getting a “free” traffic spike from Discover is good in the short term, but shouldn’t be something a website depends on for long-term organic visibility.
Below is an example of one of our websites that got a huge discover spike a few months ago, that lasted for 2-3 days and then disappeared:
Google Maps Upgrades AI to Combat Fake Reviews and Risky Edits
Gemini AI now actively moderates Maps content to protect business credibility.
Google has upgraded its content moderation on Maps and Business Profiles by integrating Gemini AI to detect fraudulent reviews and suspicious profile changes. The system can now differentiate legitimate updates from deceptive modifications, such as category changes designed to mislead users. Gemini also tracks patterns in five-star reviews, identifying abuse even after publication. In 2024 alone, over 240 million fake reviews and 70 million risky edits were blocked. SEO professionals are urged to follow ethical practices, manage profiles carefully, and monitor for suspicious activity to stay compliant and competitive.
See an example of the alerts below:
SEO Recommendations by Jason
Beware of fake GMB reviews; there are services online that even promote this as a service, which is really crazy! This doesn’t mean you can’t invite your friends, family, and local customers to review your GMB page, just don’t go out and buy massive amounts of fake reviews from dubious vendors! This will harm your local SEO and potentially get you banned.
It is good to see Google focused on levelling the playing field and removing the bad actors who use this as a shortcut to success!
General Search Marketing News
Progress Planner Plugin Now Expands Yoast SEO Capabilities
The Progress Planner WordPress plugin has launched a powerful new integration with Yoast SEO, designed to help users optimize their site more effectively. Developed by the creators of Yoast, this update ensures seamless compatibility and introduces a smart assistant named Ravi, who offers actionable suggestions to improve SEO performance. Ravi checks Yoast SEO settings, highlights configuration gaps, and motivates users to improve their setup. This marks the first of several planned features aimed at helping WordPress users maintain high-performing, search-optimized websites.
