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Despite Criticism in 2022, Google Says Search Results Are Better

Published

11 months ago

January 1, 2023

Despite Criticism in 2022, Google Says Search Results Are Better

In November, yes, a month ago, there was a lot of criticism across the web that Google Search and the results were declining. We touched on the topic when I covered a poll about SEOs being split on if Google is getting worse or is the web getting worse.

Now that it is a slower week, I am digging through some threads I did not cover when I should have, and I spotted Danny Sullivan of Google defending the quality of Google’s search results on Mastodon.

Angus McIntyre, a respected author, wrote on Mastodon “Have you noticed that results returned by #search engines like #Google seem to be becoming progressively less useful? Despite Google’s best efforts & frequent algorithm changes, the #SEO industry seems to be winning the battle to render the #web perfectly vacuous & entirely useless.” He linked to this blog post named A trillion dollar opportunity by Talia Goldberg.

Angus later on in the Mastodon thread wrote “Not to knock Google specifically here; I think there’s been a decline in result quality across the board, affecting all search engines. But there was a time when Google’s ability to bring up relevant results seemed almost supernatural. Now, not so much. I’d be interested to know if this perceived decline in quality is supported by stats. Response to my thread suggests others share my perception: what do the numbers say?”

So Danny Sullivan responded saying, “Our numbers say we’re showing more relevant results. I wrote a post about this earlier this year. But as I also covered, our expectations are likely higher, plus we likely feel more disappointed when results we want aren’t there. Of course, there’s more that can be done, and we’re definitely working on it.”

Danny linked to this post he wrote in March that has some quotes such as “Over the last seven years, we’ve decreased the number of irrelevant results by over 50%.”

The thread is an interesting one; if you want to dig through it, you can click on the Mastodon link and then dig into different branches of the conversation.

The thing with Google is that they won’t stop trying to keep improving, I know that. Will it ever be good enough? The answer is no, and I think Google is okay with that, but I don’t know if we are.

Forum discussion at Mastodon.

Source: www.seroundtable.com

Related Topics:criticism Google Results Search

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SEARCHENGINES

Google Hanukkah Decorations Are Live For 2023

Published

5 days ago

December 3, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

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.

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SEARCHENGINES

Google Pay Accepted Icons In Google Search Results

Published

6 days ago

December 3, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

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.

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SEARCHENGINES

Google Discover Showing Older Content Since Follow Feature Arrived

Published

7 days ago

December 2, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

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:

Google Discover Old Stories Follow