SEARCHENGINES
Google Says The Helpful Content Update & Link Spam Update Can Take Another Week Or Two To Finish

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, said on Twitter on Friday afternoon that the December 2022 helpful content update and December 2022 link spam update may take an additional two weeks to complete. He said it would finish “likely within two weeks, maybe only one, but that’s not a guarantee. Timings might change.”
Here are those tweets:
Likely within two weeks, maybe only one, but that’s not a guarantee. Timings might change.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) January 6, 2023
As a reminder, the December 2022 helpful content update started on December 5, 2022, and should have been done three weeks ago, but we are now on week number five. And the December 2022 link spam update started on December 14, 2022, and should have been done almost two weeks ago, but now we are heading into week number four.
So if the updates take another two weeks, then the helpful content update might take a full seven weeks to roll out, and the link spam update might take about might take six weeks to roll out.
Earlier last week, Danny Sullivan implied that the fluctuations we saw on January 3rd to 5th were related to these updates. He said on Mastodon then, “Both the updates are continuing to rollout. Normally these types of updates would have concluded by now, but rollouts can slow or pause when we get into the holiday periods.”
The two updates were delayed in its finish date because they ran into the holidays. Google said there was a security issue with completing them on the holidays. Also, we did see some big turbulence days before Christmas, and then things calmed down a lot. The truth is, the Google volatility is much calmer still than the previous couple of weeks. We also saw some fluctuations on December 26th.
So, in short, it is still rolling out and might do so for several more days…
I should note that the weekend volatility and chatter were somewhat less than a typical weekend.
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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