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Don’t Slow Your Website Down To Increase Time on Website For Google SEO

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Google Turtle Motion

I spotted Google’s John Mueller laughing at a LinkedIn post that is telling SEOs to slow down webpage load time so that people spend more time on your page. The advice says that Google uses time on website as a ranking factor, which Google had denied countless times, and says to improve time on website, you should slow down your site.

This post was a joke – I didn’t get the joke: It turns out, he was posting it as a joke, a meme – but honestly, not everyone took it that way. He posts a lot of SEO memes and this was one of them.

The “SEO Tip” posted on LinkedIn reads, “If your website loads too fast… Consider slowing it down. Why? Users will have to wait longer for your pages to load… Time on Website (ToW) is a Google ranking factor. The longer users are on your website the higher you will rank.”

I spotted this via here:

Now, at first I thought the LinkedIn post was a joke but then I dove into the actual post on LinkedIn and read through many of the comments and I became super sad to see what was going on there. But maybe it was a joke?

Google has said countless times that time spent on a page is not a ranking factor. Google has said for years and years that it does not use behavioral factors for ranking, outside of any of the page experience system metrics. This has been the overwhelmingly consistent messaging from Google for over a decade, as recent as 2021, 2020 but 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Google said bounce rates are not good signals, in 2008 Google said it is a noisy signal and also in 2008 said click data is not used for rankings. This is a myth Google said but then you have people at Google misspeaking causing more confusion.

Google has said for years that page speed is a ranking factor, most recently with core web vital metrics.

So this SEO is telling other SEOs to slow down a page to increase time spent on a page, which Google says is not a ranking factor when we know Google has said page speed is a confirmed ranking signal.

This is not the first time SEOs used a strategy to hurt their website visitors to try to improve rankings.

Be careful with the advice you read online.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Update: This was a joke, as I noted above, and I, as well as many others, fell for it…



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Google Hanukkah Decorations Are Live For 2023

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Google Hanukkah 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.

Google Hanukkah Decorations 2023

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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Google Pay Accepted Icons In Google Search Results

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Woman Checking Out Store Google Logo

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:

G Pay Accepted Google Search

Here are some more screenshots:

Brodie Clark also posted some screenshots after on X:

Google Pay Accepted Google Search

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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Google Discover Showing Older Content Since Follow Feature Arrived

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Dog Astronut Google Logo

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

Google Discover Old Stories Follow2

Have you noticed this in your Discover feed?

Forum discussion at X.



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