SEARCHENGINES
Google Search’s 3 Pillars of Ranking Via DOJ Documents

The SEO community is buzzing about some recent U.S. Department of Justice documents released that hint at some ranking concepts at Google. One slide is named “The 3 Pillars of Ranking” and discuss body, anchors and user interactions.
The slide says The 3 Pillars of Ranking:
- Body: What the document says about itself
- Anchors: What the Web says about the document
- User-interactions: What users say about the document
Then there is this footnote that says “we may use “clicks” as a stand-in for “user-interactions” in some places. User-interactions include clicks, attention on a result, swipes on carousels and entering a new query.”
Cyrus Shepard seemed to be the first to spot these and posted a Twitter thread on them, here they are:
What user interactions does Google measure?
• Attention (hover/mouse movement)
• Clicks
• Scrolls
• Enters new query2/5 🧵 pic.twitter.com/tEiLmshBex
— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) November 2, 2023
This isn’t “personalization” – as public Google comments seem to want us to believe
“If you search right now, you’ll benefit from the billions of past user reactions we’ve recorded”
4/5 🧵 pic.twitter.com/jsnAfzMF8D
— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) November 2, 2023
CAVEATS
1) These documents are from 2016. Advancements have undoubtedly made Google less reliant on user data. But no doubt they still use it
2) Google successfully redacted much of the documents. Lots they don’t want us to seehttps://t.co/XIc3SngDng
5/5 🧵
— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) November 2, 2023
Danny Goodwin dove in a bit more and published a story named 7 must-see Google Search ranking documents in antitrust trial exhibits on Search Engine Land.
A lot of folks are using this as evidence that Google uses click data directly in its search ranking algorithm. Technically, this doesn’t prove that, it just says that Google does use it for feedback on how well the algorithms are working. In this slide Goodwin pulled out, it shows how Google shows results in the search results, then takes the interaction back to learn from it. Is that learning real-time in that the algorithm immediately changes the results based on click data? Seems not. But that learning does influence future ranking and algorithmic changes. Maybe I am wrong, I am wrong a lot.
“The association between observed user behavior and search result quality is tenuous. We need lots of traffic to draw conclusions, and individual examples are difficult to interpret”
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) November 3, 2023
One document that Goodwin showed me also is this email chain internally within the search team about how they are focused on making sure the ad team does not influence the free/organic listings. Danny Sullivan, Paul Haahr and Pandu Nayak, and others are all in this chain. It doesn’t talk about rankings but it did make me feel like Google’s search team is focused on keeping ad influence out of the organic results.
Forum discussion at X.
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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