SEARCHENGINES
Google Can Now Crawl From Outside The US

Gary Illyes from Google announced at the Google Search Central Live in Singapore yesterday that Googlebot, Google, can now crawl from outside of the US. He said, according to reports, that the system to handle this is currently live but may not be used in all cases or it may not be used at all for your site.
Update, this report is not 100% exactly accurate. Gary posted on Mastodon after he saw this story saying “that’s not quite what I said. I said that the IP blocks are allocated and you can check the countries they are assigned to, and we may use them in the future for local crawls.”
no he didn’t
— Gary 鯨理/경리 Illyes (@methode) November 25, 2022
Here is the rest of the original story as I previously reported it. But please take into account the update from Gary above.
Kenichi Suzuki, who was at the event, posted on Twitter saying “Googlebot can crawl from a country where the server is located (i.e. from outside US). The system has already gone live but may not be used (at all). In addition, it becomes effective only in a condition where access from outside of the country is blocked.”
Here is that tweet:
Googlebot can crawl from a country where the server is located (i.e. from outside US). The system has already gone live but may not be used (at all). In addition, it becomes effective only in a condition where access from outside of the country is blocked. #SearchCentralLive https://t.co/1hPl67NPw8
— Kenichi Suzuki🇺🇦鈴木謙一 (@suzukik) November 24, 2022
We heard rumors that this might happen earlier on this year from Google’s John Mueller. John said then “I could see this [where Google crawls from] expanding over time if we see a broader need.” So it looks like we are there.
Keep in mind, this is probably used for sites that (a) block Googlebot access from US regions, (b) show different content from different countries and (c) Google suspects something fishy based on geo-targeting.
Google previously said that it did not find any benefit to crawling from outside of the US back in 2017. There are however times Google will crawl from a specific region but it is rare.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
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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