SEARCHENGINES
Listen To Google Talk About de-SEOing The Search Central Website

Google’s Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes, and Lizzi Sassman sat together on the latest Search Off the Record to talk about de-SEOing – what we would probably call over-optimization strategies. It is an interesting listen to, stuff you probably heard before but it is interesting to hear Googlers who are intimate with how Google Search works tackle this issue on their own site.
Here is the embed:
One thing, they take credit for coining the name “de-SEOing” but what they describe as de-SEOing is what SEOs would call working on over optimization – something both Gary (who was on the podcast) and Matt Cutts talked about before. Here is where Gary mentioned it:
That is totally a thing, but I can’t think of a better name for it. It is literally optimizing so much that eventually it starts hurting
— Gary 鯨理/경리 Illyes (@methode) May 24, 2017
Before listening, it might make sense to read about Google relaunching the Google Webmasters brand to the Search Central brand and then the year later progress report.
One final point, at the end, at the 27 minute mark or so, Gary talks about he finds it annoying that he cannot use the internal Google tools to debug these issues. He has to use the public tools that you or I use, such as Google Search Console, to debug these issues because otherwise it would not be fair. He said:
And it’s also kind of annoying because when we are looking into how people reach those pages, I could use the internal tools. It could be very simple to do it. Like I could just hit up the debug interfaces that we have and tools and just look at how it happens. But we can’t do that. We actually have to use the same tools that anyone else, external to Google, has to use or could use. And it’s very annoying because the information is less obviously. I know why it’s less than what we have internally. Still annoying. But yeah, we will have to figure it out with Search Console and other similar tools.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
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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