SEARCHENGINES
Google Says Expanding Your Navigation Menu Does Not Impact Google Discover Traffic

Google’s John Mueller was asked if going from 5 to 10 links in your site’s main navigation menu to about 150 links in that navigation menu would result or possibly impact your Google Discover traffic. John unequivocally said no, any Google Discover traffic drop would be unrelated to your site navigation change there.
In general, John explained again that you should not depend on Google Discover traffic and that Discover traffic can come and go without warning. Heck, most SEOs are not confident with SEO advice for Discover specifically.
John said on Twitter the navigation menu changes are “unrelated” to the Google Discover traffic changes. He then referenced the Google Discover help document that says “Given the serendipitous nature of Discover, traffic from Discover is less predictable or dependable when compared to Search, and is considered supplemental to your Search traffic.” Note, Google updated that document with that phrase in June 2020.
Here is the full thread, so you can read the full context:
One day, I decide to add ~150 new links to my site-wide nav. Then, I also decide to place the site-wide nav at the top of every subfolder door page and article across the site (above respective sub-navs, adding ~170 new links at the top of each individual page)…(2)
— Eva (@evalangelotti) April 14, 2022
Upon investigation, I find that the drop in traffic occurred specifically on pages in the categories/subfolders where the site-wide nav was added above the sub-nav, (adding 170 new links at the top of the affected pages). Traffic did not drop on pages unaffected by this change(4)
— Eva (@evalangelotti) April 14, 2022
My question is, would it be possible for site-wide navigation changes on a high DA site to cause A. Significant reduction in crawl requests for entire subfolders affected and B. Inability for Google to index new content from the subfolders quickly enough to rank in Discover (6)
— Eva (@evalangelotti) April 14, 2022
My hypothesis being that because nav links were added at scale, Googlebot wasn’t crawling and indexing new content quickly enough to rank it in Discover. The 170 new links at the top of each page made it more difficult for G to index based on user intent / topic / entity etc.
— Eva (@evalangelotti) April 14, 2022
Is this a hypothetical situation, or something specific on your site? If it’s something you’re seeing, I’d assume it’s unrelated.
— 🦙 johnmu.xml (personal) 🦙 (@JohnMu) April 14, 2022
I’d still go with “unrelated”. As mentioned in our docs at https://t.co/kkA2QTzIJs “Given the serendipitous nature of Discover, traffic from Discover is less predictable or dependable when compared to Search, and is considered supplemental to your Search traffic.”
— 🦙 johnmu.xml (personal) 🦙 (@JohnMu) April 14, 2022
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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