March 10, 2025

Mystery Shopper Rating

Barry Schwartz discovered a new rating program! Since mid-2024, a website’s store rating dropped to 3.5 despite previously having high ratings from Google Customer Reviews. The drop seemed unexplained, and after months of back-and-forth with Google Support, it was finally revealed that a “Mystery Shopper Rating” was affecting the overall score. However, Google provided no

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Google Bug

Monday, Google confirmed the zero impression bug. Google said, “We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Ads. We will provide more information shortly. The affected users are able to access Google Ads, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.”The bug happened for users on March 1 and could be related

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Mid-roll

Starting May 12, 2025, YouTube is updating its mid-roll ad placement system to improve ad quality and reduce interruptions. Ads will now be placed at natural break points, like pauses and transitions, to minimize disruption and decrease viewer drop-off. Currently, creators can manually insert mid-roll ads or allow YouTube’s system to place them automatically. With

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