SEARCHENGINES
Does Location Of Internal Links On A Page Matter For SEO & Google Search?

Google’s John Mueller said the location of internal links, links you place on your website to other parts of that same web site, does not necessarily matter if they are in the body content, footer, header or other sections on the page. The content, the anchor text, of those links helps Google understand what the page is about but the links aren’t really used more than just for crawling your site.
This may be different for external links, where Google may value external links differently based on where those external links are placed. But it seems with internal links, the location is not taken into account that much in terms of the value of that link.
John said this at the 2:51 mark in this video saying that for the internal links “we use it to understand the context better, so things like the anchor text helps us.” He said “another really important part is really just being able to crawl your website” and he said for that it “doesn’t matter where that link is on a page to kind of crawl the rest of the website.”
John then reiterated that “the difference that we take when it comes to different parts of the page and for links it’s usually more to kind of understand the context of pages and to be able to crawl the website and for that we don’t really need to differentiate between different parts of the page.”
Here is how Glenn Gabe summed it up on Twitter:
Does the placement of internal links matter? Via @johnmu: Google uses internal links to understand context & for crawling. For those, it doesn’t matter where the link is. Location is more important for content where G wants to focus on the primary content: https://t.co/W1WjEUB8X4 pic.twitter.com/OLyOpwhsZx
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 30, 2022
Here is the video embed starting with the question:
Here is the transcript of the question:
How about the internal link, if you have an internal link from a respective anchor text or map from the header or within the content or within the footer. Does the placement of the links within the footer, header, body content, does it matter?
Here is the transcript of the answer:
Not necessarily.
I think for internal links, on the one hand we use it to understand the context better, so things like the anchor text helps us. But another really important part is really just being able to crawl your website. And for that it doesn’t matter where that link is on a page to kind of crawl the rest of the website. Sometimes things are in the footer, sometimes in the headers, sometimes in a shared menu or in a sidebar or within a body of content. All of those kind of linked places are all fine from our point of view.
Usually what we differentiate more with regards to location on a page is the content itself, to try to figure out what is really relevant for this particular page. And for that it it sometimes really makes sense to kind of focus on the the central part of the page, the primary piece of content that changes from page to page and not so much the the headers and the sidebars and the footers or things like that. Because those are a part of the website itself but it’s not the primary reason for this page to exist and the primary reason for us to rank that page.
So that’s kind of the difference that we take when it comes to different parts of the page and for links it’s usually more to kind of understand the context of pages and to be able to crawl the website and for that we don’t really need to differentiate between different parts of the page.
Here are some other articles written here on location of the link on a page, but they are really not specific to internal links versus external links:
Forum discussion at Twitter.
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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