SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: December 8, 2022
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Subscribe with Google sites may see an increase in impressions and clicks in the performance report in Search Console. Google said using explicit and extreme curse words can trigger your site to be filtered by SafeSearch. Google is testing “where to stop along the way” for some queries. Google is testing removing the estimated number of results. SEOs are split on if Google is getting worse or if the web is to blame.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Poll Shows SEOs Split On If Google Or The Web Is Getting Worse
There have been a lot of complaints about the quality of Google search results – the truth is, there are always complaints. Assuming you believe the results are indeed getting worse (which not everyone would agree with), is Google to blame, or is it the fault of the web in general to blame? - Google Tests Removing Estimated Number Of Search Results Again
Seems Google is once again testing removing the estimated number of search results under the search bar. You know, the line that says “About X results in Y seconds” Google is testing removing that again. - Google Search Console: Sites Using Subscribe With Google May See Increase In Impressions & Clicks
Google added a new annotation to the Google Search Console performance reports on December 5th, saying that sites that use Subscribe with Google may see an increase in clicks and impressions. I’ll be honest, I am a bit confused by the annotation was added this week and not in 2018 when the feature was added. - Google SafeSearch Can Be Triggered By Use Of Explicit & Extreme Cursing
A couple of years ago, Gary Illyes of Google noted that using many more X-rated curse words can trigger Google to think your site is adult oriented and thus be filtered out by SafeSearch. But how much, how often, and how explicit do those words need to be on your site to trigger it? - Google Search Tests “Where To Stop Along The Way”
Let’s say you are going on a road trip from one location to the next. One thing I expect some of those who do such entertainment would want to know is where are good places to stop along the way. Google is answering that now, I think, in a new test, with a carousel of locations you can stop along the route. - Teddy Bear Hardly Working At The GooglePlex
Here is a random photo I found posted by a Googler of his massive teddy bear hardly working at the Google office, the GooglePlex. The bear’s feet are up on the desk and he sits back and looks at the
Other Great Search Threads:
- Google has updated the Multi-location dashboard so that 1- there are no more hacks to get to the old dashboard 2- You can now easily have multiple locations open from the dashboard 3- the web editor has been moved to the n, Mike Blumenthal on Twitter
- LSAs will show at the top of the page, but they don’t preclude other ad formats from showing., AdsLiaison on Twitter
- We’ve just added 20 more videos explaining Publisher Policies (https://t.co/kthfMcQKxi) & Restrictions (https://t.co/58ZfgrItay). These aim to help pubs understand Google’s policies better, contextualizing them in the adver, Aurora Morales on Twitter
- GA4 – Configure settings has moved to Admin. As of now Events, Conversions, Audiences, Custom definitions and DebugView are now under property settings in Admin, Shameem Adhikarath on Twitter
- Google merchant center links are using up my crawl budget, WebmasterWorld
- In the end, these are all just tools, how you use them is up to you. Not every tool needs to be used to build a house, not every house needs to be a skyscraper. Build what you need, use what works for you & which you have experience with., John Mueller on Mastodon
- Introducing the 2022 Guiding Stars, Local Guides Connect
- Probably just because tracking them takes resources, and most people don’t dig into those details., John Mueller on Mastodon
- I don’t think there’s an issue with crawl budget, at least it would surprise me., John Mueller on Mastodon
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Industry & Business
- Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle get $9 billion Pentagon cloud deals, CNBC
- Google Faces a Serious Threat From ChatGPT, Washington Post
- Google Offices: You Won’t Believe Work Gets Done at These Three Spaces, Architectural Digest
- Google must delete search results about you if they’re fake, EU court rules, POLITICO
- Google must remove ‘manifestly inaccurate’ data, EU top court says, Reuters
- US Sides Against Alphabet’s Google in Social Media Case, Bloomberg
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
Search Features
Other Search
Feedback:
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Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Google Search People Cards Visible In US

Back in 2020, Google Search introduced a feature named people cards. It was only available in India but now it seems like it might be expanding, as I can now see it in the United States.
Brian Freiesleben’s card, which he created when it was first announced by spoofing his location to be in India, is now showing up as a people card for searchers in the United States. Personally, I was able to bring it up on my mobile device in New York.
Here is a screenshot he shared of this on Twitter:
He said, “I found my name now triggers a ‘people card’. This was introduced in Google India back in 2020. I spoofed my location back then to create the card and now (finally) it’s appearing.”
Glenn Gabe was able to replicate it as well:
Thanks!
Man, I have tried to kill that flickr page so many times…it pops back like a weed every time. This is new motivation to try to unlock that account and delete it haha.
— Brian Freiesleben (@type_SEO) February 3, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Search Bard, It’s ChatGPT Feature, To Trusted Testers

Well, we knew it was coming and here it is, Bard – Google’s answer to ChatGPT. Google is now having its trusted testers test out Bard and will soon roll it out more widely to users in Google Search and others products in the coming weeks, Google announced. It is not called Apprectice Bard but rather Bard.
I covered this when the news broke at Search Engine Land and as I pointed out, right now, Google does not have an answer for how to attribute or link to answers Bard generates – yet. But I do suspect Google will have some answer for it. I also mentioned that Google has been writing knowledge panels using AI and other methods since 2018 and said then it is not stealing. So it will be interesting to see what Google ends up doing here.
Bard is Google’s experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, where Google can answer questions that might not have one right answer. Google said they will roll this out more widely in the coming weeks but for now, only trusted testers (who is outsourced to a third-party company) will be able to play with it.
Google said, “Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web: whether that’s seeking out additional perspectives, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner. These new AI features will begin rolling out on Google Search soon.”
Here is a screenshot they shared of how it might look in Google Search:
This is how it might look like in Google Search (without the attribution part…).
This is the Bard direct interface, not in search:
I am super excited to see how this evolves at Google, Bing and others.
It is not too far off from the leaks of the Bing ChatGPT interface.
Here is Sundar Pichai’s tweets:
2/ Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Today we’re opening Bard up to trusted external testers. pic.twitter.com/QPy5BcERd6
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) February 6, 2023
4/ As people turn to Google for deeper insights and understanding, AI can help us get to the heart of what they’re looking for. We’re starting with AI-powered features in Search that distill complex info into easy-to-digest formats so you can see the big picture then explore more pic.twitter.com/BxSsoTZsrp
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) February 6, 2023
5/ Developers can soon try our Generative Language API, initially powered by LaMDA with a range of models to follow. Over time, our goal is to create a set of tools and APIs that will make it easy for others to build more innovative applications with AI.
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) February 6, 2023
Here is some of the SEO community reaction:
Yeah you would think that making statements like “some say this” and “others say that” would be substantiated with, IDK, a link to the source. Just an idea. https://t.co/P5xvGvAv1V
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) February 6, 2023
Bard sounds like 🤮
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) February 6, 2023
Bard: What you get when you let AI name itself. https://t.co/todOZBbnCE
— Greg Finn (@gregfinn) February 6, 2023
Oh, bizarre. When the ChatGPT buzz began, I remarked that we’ll never get the Irish bards again with robots doing the thinking for us. How glib is Google naming this after humans who spent 7 years training to recite hundreds of poems + stories? And how weird for me to see it.
— Miriam Ellis (@Miriam_Ellis_) February 6, 2023
Attribution is a must – I hope this is not where Google is heading – this is not the way https://t.co/PRH2LSKjR7
— Mordy Oberstein 🇺🇦 (@MordyOberstein) February 6, 2023
ESPECIALLY if the AI model charges for its services.
No, you can’t have my written work to use as you see fit for your paid service.
Or even to train your models. It’s my work? My written words?
The tech moves so fast this stuff takes time to catch up, but it’s important.
— Julie F Bacchini (@NeptuneMoon) February 6, 2023
It’s a little concerning to see that the screenshots Google shared do not show websites as sources used for the AI generated answer.
This is likely because the answer is generated from “the breath of the world’s knowledge.”
Drawing from the knowledge graph perhaps? pic.twitter.com/OVwuWScnDt
— Dr. Marie Haynes🐼 (@Marie_Haynes) February 6, 2023
Content creators that monetise via page views might be the biggest losers
— @[email protected] (@davidiwanow) February 6, 2023
Feel sorry for the dude who wrote the great in-depth article on what’s the easiest to learn, the guitar or the piano!
— Matthew Marley👨🏻💻 (@matthewmarley) February 6, 2023
Why would anyone want to publish blogs after that?
What’s the point of publishing original articles ?
Google will crawl my article, learn from it , serve the solution to its customers as its own. https://t.co/wSwTld3qRJ— Fardun (@FardunRahman) February 6, 2023
In a world of AI search engine wars, the brand, unique perspective and insights & quality fact checking with references are becoming key to survive. Structured data & information have now become a commodity https://t.co/IpcRQFy56e
— Dennis Goedegebuure (@TheNextCorner) February 6, 2023
Google Bard – a rival to ChatGPT
The end of SEO websites maybe. https://t.co/ZWowpV5DUg
— Liaqat Hussain 🇵🇰 (@Edwardian842) February 6, 2023
And from now on, whenever I hear “Google Bard,” I’ll think of the OG. #LegendOfVoxMachina #Criticalrole https://t.co/PuYfJaHaAE pic.twitter.com/SCr1YWsUZO
— Ian Lurie 🇺🇦 @[email protected] (@IanLurie) February 6, 2023
Going to be a busy few months… #GoogleBard https://t.co/aEKFLlmMeF
— Will O’Hara 👨🏽💻 (@willohara) February 6, 2023
I think Bard is just an iteration of Lambda and at last year’s Google product expert summit the product manager of Google brain did a presentation of lambda and it was awesome. It was like Google maps times 10
— Molly Youngblood (@mygeigermeister) February 6, 2023
Brain buzzing with all the search news and announcements this week! SEOs cannot sleep. What a time to be alive! The future is bright 🚀
— Fabrice Canel (@facan) February 7, 2023
It’s too early to say, and your feedback can help to shape the next steps. What would you find useful and appropriate?
— johnmu is a ranking factor and so are you 🐀 (@JohnMu) February 7, 2023
Make sure to send feedback. With bigger changes like this, it’ll probably take a few iterations before things settle down.
— johnmu is a ranking factor and so are you 🐀 (@JohnMu) February 7, 2023
Also, make sure to check out the roundup at Techmeme.
Forum discussion at Twitter, WebmasterWorld.
SEARCHENGINES
Most SEOs Think Yahoo Won’t Be Able To Compete In Search

As you know, Yahoo is planning a come back to search with a new way of thinking about Yahoo Search. What that means, we don’t know yet, but we do know Yahoo is thinking hard about how they can compete. Greg Sterling ran a Twitter poll asking if Yahoo has a shot at it, and most say, nope – Yahoo Search is dead on arrival.
The poll on Twitter asked, “Yahoo is planning to “relaunch” search. Is there a chance to revive it?” It received a nice number of responses, 631 responses. The results were not too optimistic.
- 43.7% said nope, dead on arrival
- 26.6% said depends on the UI/UX
- 29.6% said yes, now is the time
Here is that poll:
Yahoo is planning to “relaunch” search. Is there a chance to revive it?
— Greg Sterling 🇺🇦 (@gsterling) January 30, 2023
Personally, I think Yahoo has a good shot at it, better than most other companies. But time will tell and I am very much looking forward to seeing what Yahoo Search comes out with.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
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