SEARCHENGINES
New Google Search Status Dashboard

I always wondered why Google had status dashboards for hundreds of other products across Gmail, Drive, Google Ads, etc., but not for Google Search – its most important product/service. But that all changed today when Google launched its Google Search Status Dashboard report.
Today, Google launched the Google Search Status Dashboard report at status.search.google.com. This report will give you official confirmation from Google when there is an issue or outage with crawling, indexing or serving with the Google Search service.
Here is a screenshot of this:
Google said “As we head into 2023, we want to introduce another tool for the public to understand the most current status of systems which impact Search—crawling, indexing, and serving. While system disruptions are extremely rare, we want to be transparent when they do happen. In the past, we’ve worked with our Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) to externalize these disruptions on our Google Search Central Twitter account. Today, we’re introducing the Google Search Status Dashboard to communicate the status of Search going forward.”
This dashboard reports widespread issues occurring in the last seven days, with some details and the current status of the incident. A widespread issue means there’s a systemic problem with a Search system affecting a large number of sites or Search users. Typically these kinds of issues are very visible externally, and internally the SREs’ monitoring and alerting mechanisms are working behind the scenes to flag the issues, Google added.
I still suspect we will spot issues with Google Search well before Google confirms them on this dashboard. That being said, I am super excited that Google set up its systems to work with the Google Status systems for Google Search in the future.
Here is a podcast with more on this:
Plus Google has a new help document on how to use this dashboard.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
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.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Core Update Done Followed By Intense Search Volatility, New Structured Data, Google Ads Head Steps Down & 20 Years Covering Search

Google’s November 2023 core update finally finished rolling out this week, and it was the longest core update rollout. Then, a day later, we saw more intense Google search ranking volatility and chatter. Google added new organization structured data and also added a new profile page and discussion forum structured data, both with Search Console and Rich Results test support. Google’s crawl rate setting is going away soon. Google Search Console went down a couple of times this week. Google spoke about the SEO value of bringing back 404 pages for links. Did you see the Google patent for what appears to be SGE? Microsoft is working to bring GPT-4 Turbo to Copilot and Bing Chat. Google Ads won’t allow personalized ads for consumer finance topics in February 2024. Google Local Service Ads has new impression metrics. Google Ads released its Ads API schedule for 2024. Google is testing Gray accepted labels in the search results. Google is testing line separators between sitelinks. Google is testing an interview label for news results. Google local photos is testing hearts and other emotion reactions. Google is testing removing the cache link from the search result listings. Google’s head of search ads, Jerry Dischler, is stepping down after 15 years. And I’ve been covering the search industry and search for 20 years now. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Sponsored by BruceClay, who has been doing search marketing optimization since 1996 and also has an amazing SEO training platform.
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