SEARCHENGINES
Daily Search Forum Recap: January 21, 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.
Google said it is looking for ways to make crawling more efficient without using Bing’s IndexNow. Google said it may update its Google Webmaster Guidelines in 2022. There is a bug with Google Ads discovery and performance max campaigns. There is a new placements report for performance max campaigns. There is a new experiences page for Google Ads. Google has new requirements for car review snippets. Google no longer ranks the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency, no joke. I should be on vacation next week but I do plan on publishing daily, including this newsletter but I may be slower than normal. Plus catch my weekly video recap is out, make sure to subscribe and like it. 🙂
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
- Google Might Update & Even Rename The Webmaster Guidelines In 2022
Everyone panic – Google might not just make larger updates to the Google Webmaster Guidelines but also rename the guidelines. Gary Illyes from Google said over time the Webmaster Guidelines have become confusing and somewhat outdated and it does need an update. - Google Wants To Make Crawling More Efficient & Environmental Friendly
Google’s Gary Illyes said on the last Search Off The Record Podcast that Google in 2022 is looking to make crawling more efficient and environmentally friendly. And while Google is investigating ways to do that with IndexNow, Gary said it wont be done in a way “that people expect” with that. - Google Requires Both Product & Car Markup For Review Snippets In Google Search
Google has updated its product structured data help documents to say that you need both product and car structured in order for Google to display ratings and review snippets in search for car search results. Google said “currently car is not supported automatically as a subtype of Product.” - Google Ads New Experiments Page Now Live
Google is rolling out a new Google Ads experiments page that promises to “help you create, manage, and optimize your experiments in one place.” There is a new summary page for your experiments and a sync feature. - Confirmed Bug With Google Ads Discovery & Performance Max Campaign, Plus New Placement Reports
Google Ads confirmed some sort of bug with Discovery and Performance Max campaigns that are a “significant subset of users.” It is unclear what this bug is, but it started last night at around 11pm ET. Also, George at Search Engine Land spotted that Google released new placement reports for Performance Max campaigns. - Federal Vampire & Zombie Agency Disappears From Google Search
The Federal Vampire & Zombie Agency is no longer showing up in Google Search, is it some sort of conspiracy or technical bug? Well, it is a technical issue with the web site, it is having server issues but I thought it would be fun to cover since I never knew such an agency existed. - Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Search Updates, Deduplication Of Top Stories, Crawling Spikes & Page Experience Desktop Report
In this show we got everything for you from creepy crawling to blood sucking vampires and and walking zombies. First, we had a few unconfirmed Google search algorithm updates this week, one last weekend… - Google NYC Conference Room View
Here is a recent photo from the New York City Google office and the view this conference room has. It was the first time this Googler has been back at the office in almost two years and it was a nice
Other Great Search Threads:
- Because enough lovely humans have jokingly asked… Here’s ASMR for SEO but it’s just me reading the webmaster guidelines, Jamie Indigo on Twitter
- Google is taking their anti anti-trust disinformation campaign to the SMB via the faux SMB org called the Connected Commerce Council (funded by Google amongst others), Mike Blumenthal on Twitter
- I wouldn’t focus on 3rd party search volume metrics — who knows how that data is made up. Write for your users, measure your success yourself, work to improve over time. Don’t focus, John Mueller on Twitter
- I’d always update the links. Make it as easy as possible for users & bots to get to the page you want., John Mueller on Twitter
- If you want to block the framed page from being used for indexing at all (even via the framing page), using noindex on it would help. Using x-frame-options can prevent iframing in general, if you just want t, John Mueller on Twitter
- No idea. It’s possible. We render JavaScript, and the maps embed might use JS to show more text. Maps are pretty complicated, it’s more than just an image, so I’m not super-surprised if some of that ends up being, John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
Other Great Search Stories:
Industry & Business
Links & Content Marketing
Local & Maps
Mobile & Voice
SEO
PPC
Feedback:
Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, you can follow us on Facebook and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Hanukkah Decorations Are Live For 2023

Hanukkah (aka Chanukah) starts this coming Thursday night, December 7th. Google has added its Hanukkah decorations to the Google Search results interface to celebrate. Google does this every year and I expect to see the same rollout in the coming weeks for Christmas and Kawanzaa but for now, since Chanukah is in the coming days, we have the Hanukkah decorations live at Google Search.
Here is a screenshot of the Chanukah decorations as they look like on the mobile search results.
You can see it yourself by searching on Google for [chanukah], [hanukkah], but not yet [חֲנוּכָּה] or other spelling variations yet but it should soon. It looks better on mobile than it does on desktop results.
To see the past, the 2023 decorations, 2021 decorations, 2020 Chanukah decorations, 2019 Google holiday decorations, the 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and so on.
Happy Chanukah, everyone!
Forum discussion at X.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Pay Accepted Icons In Google Search Results

Google seems to be testing a Google Pay Accepted label or icon in the Google search results. This label has the super G logo followed by the words “Pay accepted” words next to search result snippets that support Google Pay and notate such in their structured data.
This was first spotted by Khushal Bherwani who shared some screenshots of this on X – here is one:
Here are some more screenshots:
Here is test and without test window for same query. pic.twitter.com/n9cYWBOsro
— Khushal Bherwani (@b4k_khushal) October 20, 2023
Brodie Clark also posted some screenshots after on X:
In continuation from the test from October, Google is now testing out a new Google Pay label associated with organic results. Last month, Google was testing Pay Accepted text, with this month changing it to Pay encrypted checkout. More details: https://t.co/MvFNoPmMDR pic.twitter.com/WDVVc4RbTO
— SERPs Up 🌊 (@SERPalerts) November 30, 2023
I tried to replicate this but I came up short.
This is not the first time Google had similar icons like this in its search results.
Forum discussion at X.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Discover Showing Older Content Since Follow Feature Arrived

Typically, Google Discover shows content that is less than a day old, but it can show content that is weeks, months, or even years old. However, typically, Google will show more recent content in the Discover feed. Well, that may have changed with the new Google follow feature.
Glenn Gabe, who is a very active Google Discover user, noticed that since the Follow feature rolled out, he has been seeing content that is weeks and months old way more often than before the follow feature rolled out. Glenn wrote on X that “this could also be playing a role. i.e. Google isn’t providing as much recent content, but instead, focusing on providing targeted content based on the topics you are following.”
It makes sense that if you follow a specific topic and if Google Discover only shows the most authoritative types of content, it might be hard for Google to find new content on that topic. So it does make sense that Google may show older content more often for that specific topic you follow.
Here are screenshots Glenn shared:
Have you noticed this in your Discover feed?
Forum discussion at X.
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