SEARCHENGINES
Google Crawl Spikes After URL Parameter Tool Went Offline?
As you know, last week, on April 26th, Google disabled the URL parameter tool within Google Search Console and stopped respecting any of the rules added to that tool. Some are asking if the recent crawl spikes they saw with Googlebot was related to this change.
Dave Smart posted on Twitter charts showing his crawl activity spiking around this time. Of course, this can easily be unrelated to the URL parameter tool. It is almost impossible to isolate this crawl spike to the URL parameter tool. But Dave did say there were no other changes around this time.
Here are his tweets:
1/3 Gone, but not forgotten! Now might be a good time to check in to see what’s being crawled.
I suspect they depreciated using what was configured here a few days back, here’s the crawl stats for a client’s sitehttps://t.co/FbBvbCWjct pic.twitter.com/yAPhONATGU— Dave Smart (@davewsmart) April 26, 2022
3/3 Judicious use of robots.txt quickly brought this back down from 9 hits per second from gbot to 1.5 / 2 per second, & (a lot more of) those actually valuable URLs. A temporary fix, the site’s re-platforming soon anyway. If your site relied on the param tools, keep an eye open.
— Dave Smart (@davewsmart) April 26, 2022
Glenn Gabe jumped in to say it is likely unrelated:
Always a strong possibility they picked up and started crawling randomly. I agree! This started ramping up on the 13th, so nearly 2 weeks ago, no other real changes, but then nothing is ever static.
— Dave Smart (@davewsmart) April 26, 2022
And John Mueller from Google agreed:
That would be my take too. The systems automatically adjust over time too, so I wouldn’t ever expect this to be completely static.
— 🦙 johnmu.xml (personal) 🦙 (@JohnMu) April 26, 2022
Of course, anything is possible. I have heard from some others privately that they saw significant crawl spikes after the URL parameter tool went away – and yes, they used that tool heavily. But again, it is impossible to confirm without having access to Google’s end.
Have you noticed this as well? What do you all think?
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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