An update about two weeks ago to GMB caused listings to disappear after short-names were added to accounts. The bug was fixed after a week and a half but if you are still not showing up, it likely due to policy violations on your account. In other news, the childhood game Simon Says is now Google Says. 

These select companies in the retail, auto and e-commerce industry can opt in to have their *relevant* ads placed in relevant search results. The only differences in this and your run of the mill SEM is that the result depends on the relevance of the ad to the search intent and you cannot select keywords or phrases for the search ads. Maybe they are shrinking their ad space because they are adding them into your search and marketplace feeds...

The settlement with FTC also r equires a $5 billion fine , the addition of stricter privacy requirements, and implementing an independent board privacy committee. There will also be an independent assessor reviewing the privacy program every two years… for two decades. Sorry but I am not applying to that job.  

The image search results still look the same but when you click on a photo, there is a snippet of the website’s header that you can swipe up to see the image’s corresponding web page. Honestly, genius.