SEARCHENGINES
Google Has Three Categories Of Web Crawlers

Google has updated its Verifying Googlebot and other Google crawlers help document to add a new section describing the three categories or types of crawlers they have. They have their Googlebot crawler, special-case crawlers and user-triggered crawlers.
I believe this was done after we, including me, were obsessed a bit over the new GoogleOther crawler. Then Gary Illyes from Google added, “Please don’t overthink it, it’s really that boring.” But I do what I do and I overthink’ed it. So Gary did what he does and had a help document to explain this in more detail.
The help document says, “Google’s crawlers fall into three categories.”
(1) Googlebot: The main crawler for Google’s search products, it alays respects robots.txt rules. Its reverse DNS mask is “crawl-***-***-***-***.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-***-***-***-***.geo.googlebot.com” and the list of IP ranges are in this googlebot.json file.
(2) Special-case crawlers: Crawlers that perform specific functions (such as AdsBot), which may or may not respect robots.txt rules. Its reverse DNS mask is “rate-limited-proxy-***-***-***-***.google.com” and the list of IP ranges are in this special-crawlers.json file.
(3) User-triggered fetchers: Tools and product functions where the end user triggers a fetch. For example, Google Site Verifier acts on the request of a user. Because the fetch was requested by a user, these fetchers ignore robots.txt rules. Its reverse DNS mask is “***-***-***-***.gae.googleusercontent.com” and the list of IP ranges are in this user-triggered-fetchers.json file.
Here is a screenshot of the new section in this help document:
Also, with this, Google restructured the order of the Googlebots on the Google crawlers page:
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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