SEARCHENGINES
Google Helpful Content Update Hits, New Bard Features, Bing Webmaster Tools Updates & Quality In Search

Google’s helpful content update is still rolling out, and the SEO chatter is super heated this week, with tons of sites reporting huge drops. But the Google tracking tools are not showing heated weather, in fact, they are super calm. Google clarified that the helpful content update does not yet demote hosted third-party content. Google Bard added a bunch of features, including the ability for Google Search to double-check the answers. Google said quality affects every system in search and then dug into quality of old large sites. Google’s John Mueller said a compilation of ChatGPT output is not unique content. Google had some more issues with site names, this time in the Google News tab. Bing announced big updates to the Bing Webmaster Tools performance report, but Bing did not break out Bing Chat data there. Bing Webmaster Tools sitemap index coverage report is fully live. Bing is dropping the disavow link tool. Bing Chat is rolling out personalized answers, what we’ve been calling memory. Bing Search shows recent Bing Chat topics at the top of some searches. Google raised its ad prices to reach revenue goals. Google expanded its access to its AI tools. Google Ads has a new indicator for limited by bid strategy. Google Ads caused confusion during a migration of mapping data from UA3 to GA4. Google Maps updated its fake engagement and personal information user-contributed policy. Google is testing blue highlighted texts in normal snippets. Google is testing EU energy label icons for products. Bing is testing a new lock icon on secure websites. Google AdSense has updated its verifications. And congrats to Yusuf Mehdi and Mikhail Parakhin of Microsoft Bing on their promotions. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
SPONSOR: This week’s video recap is sponsored by Duda, the Professional Website Builder You Can Call Your Own.
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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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