SEARCHENGINES

Fabrice Canel On Sitemaps & Next Big Thing In Search

Published

4 months ago

July 31, 2023

In part one, we learned more about Fabrice Canel of Microsoft Bing and spoke about indexing quality. In part two we dig more into the concern around content generation through generative AI tools and IndexNow. Then in the final part, we spoke about sitemaps and

While IndexNow is the best way to submit changes to search engines, sitemaps are more of a delicate mechanism for search engines. Sitemaps help Bing get a snapshot of what you think are the most important pages on your site.

He spoke about a study they did on XML sitemaps, which we published over here. He spoke about some of the adoption of sitemaps and how people get the lastmod date incorrectly. A lot of people get this wrong and it is why some search engines, like Google, do not trust that date. Bing might also not trust the lastmod date on your XML sitemap if you keep getting it wrong.

The future is to make indexing content in a more efficient way, through IndexNow. It is how Bing defines crawl efficiency.

Fabrice said there is a study that said 40% of the internet traffic is bot traffic and Fabrice wants to reduce that to almost zero through IndexNow.

He said machine learning helps Bing a lot know when developers implement IndexNow or Sitemaps incorrectly. So they have mechanisms in place to validate those. Bing Webmaster Tools will improve the sitemaps tool to report on sitemaps and discovery features, maybe it was this announcement?

Fabrice thinks the next big thing in search is AI, big data mining, a big understanding of things, and really satisfying the user. We are in the infancy of this stage now and it is exciting times.

You can follow Fabrice Canel on Twitter @facan or on LinkedIn.

You can subscribe to our YouTube channel by clicking here so you don’t miss the next vlog where I interviews. I do have a nice lineup of interviews scheduled with SEOs and SEMS, many of which you don’t want to miss – and I promise to continue to make these vlogs better over time. If you want to be interviewed, please fill out this form with your details.

Forum discussion at YouTube.

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Related Topics:Big Canel Fabrice Search searchengine Sitemaps

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SEARCHENGINES

Google Hanukkah Decorations Are Live For 2023

Published

3 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

3 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

4 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