SEARCHENGINES
Should You Avoid Naming Your Company Or Product 404?

We know that sometimes Google can be triggered to treat your pages as a soft 404, essentially Google thinks that page should be 404ed and thus removed from the search results. So one SEO asked if he should avoid naming his new product or service with the name 404 in it?
Matt Tutt, an SEO, asked John Mueller “I’m planning a top secret SEO conference, and priorities first, plan on launching a range of merchandise to fully cash-in on the event. First up is a 100% woollen, handmade bumbag. I was going to name the product “this is not a 404” alas fear it might inadvertently trigger a “soft 404″ error; and so I am wondering if, from a marketing perspective, is it in fact a terrible idea to include the numbers 404 in the product name itself? It will be used on the page title after all…”
John Mueller of Google responded that there are products already named 404, like 404 wheel and a search for [404 wheel] returns products named 404 wheel:
John wrote “Anecdotally the “404” products i know of rank normally. Try searching for “404 wheel” for example. If you called it “404 not found” i think you might have a harder time, but even those search results aren’t empty.”
So I guess if you are going with the name 404 or you sell t-shirts named “404 not found” you probably need to be careful and keep an close eye on how Google handles it.
Here are those tweets:
Afternoon @JohnMu! Quick q… I’m planning a top secret SEO conference, and priorities first, plan on launching a range of merchandise to fully cash-in on the event. First up is a 100% woollen, handmade bumbag. I was going to name the product “this is not a 404” alas fear it…
— Matt Tutt (@MattTutt1) April 21, 2022
Anecdotally the “404” products i know of rank normally. Try searching for “404 wheel” for example. If you called it “404 not found” i think you might have a harder time, but even those search results aren’t empty.
— 🦙 johnmu.xml (personal) 🦙 (@JohnMu) April 21, 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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