SEARCHENGINES
Google Says 301 Redirect Close One-To-One Match Even When Content Language Does Not Match

Gary Illyes from Google said on Mastodon this morning that you should 301 redirect URLs when there is a “close-to 1:1 match” for that URL. We know that, but what he added was this is even true for when the “language of the content doesn’t match.”
Gary wrote, “301s are great when you have at least a close-to 1:1 match for the URL and you want to consolidate them, perhaps even if the language of the content doesn’t match. 404s for everything else. But that could be just me; I love deleting stuff.”
So if you have a close 1:1 match on URL A and URL B, even if URL A is in French and URL B is in English, you can 301 redirect them. I suspect this sometimes happens when you decide to pull out of a region and no longer need to translate specific pages.
If you think of how localization works and hreflang works, this advice from Gary makes sense. I mean, hreflang is not a ranking thing, Google said numerous times. It just helps Google understand that this page in English is the same page as this French page but just in a different language.
So it may make sense to 301 redirect those pages even if they are not in the same language if those pages are going away.
Forum discussion at Mastodon.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Search Console Was Down Today

Google Search Console seems to be down right now. If you try to access it, you will get a 500 server error. I suspect Search Console will be back up shortly but right now, if it is down for you, you are not alone.
Update: At 8:52 am ET Google Search Console is back, the tool was offline for about 50 minutes.
Google’s Daniel Waisberg is 100% aware of the issue. He responded to some posts about the issue, saying, “we’re working on it.” John Mueller from Google is also reposting Daniel’s posts on X.
Here is what it looked like when you tried to access it while it was down:
Search Console went down at about 8 am ET and returned at 8:52 am ET.
Here are the posts on X from Daniel Waisberg of Google on this issue:
I was looking for a plug to charge my phone, so I had to unplug the server 🤷♂️
— Daniel Waisberg (@danielwaisberg) November 27, 2023
Joking aside, we’re working on it! 👨💻
— Daniel Waisberg (@danielwaisberg) November 27, 2023
Who knows, maybe we will have a new Search Console feature when it returns?
Here are some of the complaints:
Search Console its down atm.
— Juanan Carapapa (@Carapapeando) November 27, 2023
@rustybrick search console is down pic.twitter.com/Nm6P84WJld
— Daramel (@Daramel29) November 27, 2023
Is Google Search Console currently experiencing issues? It’s not functioning on my device.
Cc:- @JohnMu @searchliaison @googlesearchc @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/YHjXfSVn30
— Vijay Chauhan 📈 – SEO for Enterprise Businesses (@VijayChauhanSEO) November 27, 2023
In Spain too pic.twitter.com/d1Yiwef72k
— Rafa Martin 👽🖖 (@rafainatica) November 27, 2023
Someone kick the server in the corner @googlesearchc @JohnMu @danielwaisberg https://t.co/79IFVVFdTM
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) November 27, 2023
Anyone facing google search console 500 error 🤨🤨#DigitalMarketing #google #searchconsoleerror #500error #trend #news # pic.twitter.com/jWDscWcz1f
— Pankaj besarwal (@Iampankaj10) November 27, 2023
GSC this morning… talk about a case of the Mondays pic.twitter.com/6H3KUG2sd4
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) November 27, 2023
Update: At 8:52 am ET Google Search Console is back, the tool was offline for about 50 minutes.
Should be all good now.
— Daniel Waisberg (@danielwaisberg) November 27, 2023
SEARCHENGINES
Google Testing New Flight Prices Rich Result?

Google may be testing a new type of rich result for flight prices. This test shows a section under the flight search snippet that contains the dates, trip details and price.
This was spotted by Antoine Eripret who was able to trigger this numerous times, over numerous days, while in Spain. Here is his screenshot he posted on X:
He also posted this video of this in action for me:
Recently Google told us not to put flight prices in titles because those prices change too quickly. Maybe Google is testing updating those prices in more real time through the use of structured data and is thus more confident to show them as rich results and not title elements?
I don’t think Google officially supports flight schema but maybe they will soon?
Forum discussion at X.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Merchant Center Automatically Creating Promotions

Google Merchant Center has been automatically creating and applying promotions to some of your products over the Black Friday holiday season. The truth is, Google has been doing this for some time, but more are noticing this now because there are a lot of discounts going around this season.
In fact, the new Merchant Center does a lot of things for you, automatically.
Rachel Lowell posted about this on X and shared this screenshot that shows “Your promotions are live on Google.” “Google found promotions on your website. You can remove this connection at any time,” Google added.
Greg Finn suggested, “If you’ve got BFCM sales setup – double, triple check those promos.”
Forum discussion at X.
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