Day by day Search Forum Recap: January 5, 2024

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

YouTube may have seen a drop in visibility in Google News. OpenAI is going to open the GPT store next week. ChatGPT’s browse with Bing searches Bing differently. Google Search has site-specific product category menus. Microsoft will bring plugin support to the Copilot app. And I posted the weekly SEO video recap.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• YouTube’s Significant Drop In Google News Visibility
  
  It seems that YouTube is not showing up in Google News as often as it use to. Will Flannigan, the SEO Editor at the Wall Street Journal posted a chart from The Trisolute News Dashboard showing the drop in visibility experienced by YouTube in Google News.
• OpenAI GPT Store Launch Opens Next Week
  
  OpenAI is opening its GPT Store next week where you can publish apps and software that you built on top of OpenAI’s GPT to the public.
• ChatGPT Browse With Bing Has A Different Implementation Of Bing Search Access
  
  As many of you know, OpenAI’s ChatGPT service has a plugin for Browse With Bing, which basically opens up Bing Search to the popular AI chat feature. But Browse with Bing in ChatGPT “has a different implementation of Search access,” Mikhail Parakhin from Microsoft said.
• Google Search Site Specific Product Categories
  
  Google Search can show a browse by category for a specific site when you search for that brand. For example, when you search for [eBay], Google may show you some of the categories the sites has that you can shop for. I am not sure if this is new, but I’ve never seen this before.
• Copilot App To Get Plugin Support
  
  As you know, Microsoft released the Copilot App for iOS and Android but it does not support plugins like the Bing App. But don’t worry, Copilot will soon support plugins.
• Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google New Years Update, Search Console Feature Requests, Google Groups Spam, Decay Of Search & More
  

  Right before the New Year, the Google search results volatility spiked big time. I posted the Google webmaster report for January 2024 this week. I published a big list of feature requests for Google Search Console…

• Google Ping Pong Tables In Mountain View Office
  
  Here are some ping pong tables in the Google Mountain View office, in California. It is also known as the GooglePlex. We have seen ping pong tables at Google before but these look like new ones.

Other Great Search Threads:

• “Zulu time” is a timezone which you can specify in ISO8601 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Coordinated_Universal_Time_(UTC) ) and regarding the visible text, https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/03/help-google-search-know-best-date-for , John Mueller on X
• Link Unbuilding, WebmasterWorld
• Maybe Bing should start by letting sites easily update their favicons (like Google does). Bing displays many old favicons, wrong image files, and more. They also have no documentation really about favicons, even though it’s a super-visible component to a , Glenn Gabe on X
• No, that’s not a concern. The concern is that it might lead to mixed signals and race conditions. From most to least solid:, Martin Splitt on X
• Shift+Enter is supposed to create a new line. But we did manage to get a repro – a rare issue in non-Edge browsers, fixing. Thanks, Barry!, Mikhail Parakhin on X
• Slowly but surely diving into the Nov Core Update & 2023 SEO winners and losers via @sistrix data. This one is interesting: the biggest % visibility winner in 2023 was actually not Reddit, it was technically the CIA. The CIA is building out this great, Lily Ray on X
• Thanks for sharing this example. I’ve passed it along to the team. While these technically fall within the matching definitions, we’re actively looking at this type of feedback for future pro, AdsLiaison on X
• The #CookieCountdown continues as today we restrict third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users! Make sure you’re prepared for how this affects your site, your users, and of course, your own browsing. Need to know details are, Rowan Merewood on X
• The Google Play Help Community is a great place to engage with fellow users and we’re seeking new Product Experts! If you are interested in Play Apps, Books, PC Games and Movies, simply go to, Google’s Product Experts Program on X
• With Lens, you can still do reverse image searching. Apparently the “Find image source” link that used to be at the top of the results was dropped because it was confusing to most people (most people aren’t trying to reverse image search). Instead, when y, Google Search Liaison On Mastodon
• Scam hotel booking sites are managing to get listed as official booking provides in Hotels Google Business Profile displayed booking providers. Check all your booking links, Tim Capper on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Content Marketing

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

Other Search

Feedback:

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