Category: Google Search Engine

For years and years Google has told us they don’t index all the content and URLs they know about on the web. No just because there is a directive telling them not to but because Google chooses not to index those pages because of various factors like P…

Google announced yesterday a new feature they are “beta testing” to allow searchers to filter their web searches by dates. So they announced a new before: and after: search operator that lets you do this. Then quietly noted that they discontinued the…

In September we covered a report that Google has in their Sitelinks images or icons. Well, I have never seen it live in action before until today when Mike Blumenthal shared an example on Twitter.

Google announced they have updated the design for the Google Assistant search results on Android. They slid into the announcement that now Google Assistant results can have ads – search ads – displayed. Google said “When relevant, these results may i…

This is funny – back in 2011 when Google+ launched, Google removed the + search operator from Google search so it can work better with the Google+ strategy. Now that Google+ is dead, Matt Cutts, a former Googler, posted on Twitter “On the bright side, …

We have seen audience reviews in the Google search results panel for TV and movies but now Google is expanding it to music. Or maybe Google had it for music for some time but we haven’t seen examples of it yet.

Google is once again testing a new user interface for the image search preview image window. This is similar to previous tests but this one takes the right hand window look and keeps the black background interface versus the white background interface…

Google’s Satyajeet Salgar posted on Twitter that the Google search team launched a new feature with the Google Arts and Culture to bring their content to the AMP Stories format in search. AMP stories launched over a year ago to provide a more interac…

Last week we reported that Google was testing a new top bar with icons next to the search filters for maps, videos, images, etc. Now I am seeing additional reports of Google testing the icons not just in the search bar but also in the search results p…

Dan Shure noticed Google showing a knowledge panel on the left side, where it looks like it is in the featured snippet box area. It almost seems like a bug or photoshopped but I can personally replicate this myself for the query – [radio history].
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Google is testing showing icons in the search bar filters next to the all, news, maps, images, shopping and other buttons. This takes them back to a user interface they had in 2011, which they shortly dropped a year or so later.

Here is a new test spotted by Jose Varghese on Twitter where Google Image search is letting you drag up the article an image is sourced from. As you can see from the GIF or video below, Google lets you drag up the Verge article from the bottom of the …

After I wrote up the what is neural matching, I got to thinking and decided to email Google a bunch of questions, which I published at Search Engine Land as Danny Sullivan posted the answers on Twitter via the @searchliaison account.

Looks like Google is trying out the expandable featured snippets in the knowledge panel location. Mordy Oberstein spotted this and posted on Twitter videos and screen shots of it. I can replicate it.

I am hearing from some international searchers that the Google knowledge panel is showing up in a different language than the rest of the search results. So if you search in English, Google returns English search results, but the actual knowledge pane…

Last May we reported Google is testing asking searchers for answers to questions they might not have search results for. This was primarily in India and other countries where Google may not have as vast of a web index to provide answers on any and ever…

We’ve seen examples before with video thumbnails in the Google search results snippets. But it feels like Google is showing video thumbnails more often now, like they are with image thumbnails more often.

Google now can show you words they think you’ve searched Google for to get dictionary answers. If you search for [dictionary] or other variations around that, Google will show you “Words you’ve searched” previously for. I don’t think this is super new…

Google seems to be testing a portrait mode, i.e. taller mode, for the top stories in the mobile search results. Valentin Pletzer shared some screen shots with me on Twitter and you can see, some are videos and some are just tall images as opposed to s…

It appears that Google has increased the number of times they are showing image thumbnails in the mobile search results snippets. A report by RankRanger, which I covered yesterday at Search Engine Land, shows that 75% of the search results they track …