Google is testing a new option on some people also ask results, an option to click a button that says “read full answer.” Valentin Pletzer spotted this in the German Google results and I am not able to replicate it on my end, but here are his screenshots, you can click on them to enlarge.

Google is testing a new look and design for the trending searches you see on the Google home page on mobile and in Google Discover. Here is a screenshot of the slick search phrase in a bubble with the trending icon next to it that Jason Mandragona shared on Twitter.

Google is showing more and more cars for sales in the local search results. Saad AK spotted it the other day and shared a video of it in action and Riley Hope shared more details on how dealerships can get their cars in these spots.

Our friends at Microsoft Bing released a holiday gift over Christmas, the IndexNow WordPress plugin. If you run your site on WordPress, you can easily click a few buttons to add IndexNow support to your site and get instant indexing from Bing and Yandex.

It looks like Google is testing new layouts and formats for the visual stories, formerly AMP stories. Brodie Clark shared some screen shots of the new designs on Twitter.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today…

A few months ago we reported about a Google Search Console users permissions issue. Well, that issue is now resolved according to Caio Barros from Google. The issue seemed more like an issue with communicating the true access than a bug with access.

Google’s John Mueller was asked if stock levels can impact the ranking of products on an e-commerce site. John implied that the answer is no, he said “that seems unrelated, at least for normal search. It might impact product search but he is not sure if it will or won’t – but normal web search, it should not impact.

John Shehata shared a chart from his Newzdash service that showed how Google is showing more web stories in the top positions of the top stories carousel in the mobile search results. John said on Twitter “I am starting to see more and more web stories in Google Search Top Stories (News Box) carousels. The numbers are still small.”

Normally the month of December is not that busy because people take off for the holidays and such. But the past month was really not that calm at all. We had huge Google ranking volatility most of the past month, we had a confirmed three-week rollout of the December product reviews update, Google confirmed a local update and much more.

You do not need to nofollow or use a rel sponsored attribute on your internal links, even if those internal links lead to sponsored reviews content with affiliate links to those products. Lily Ray asked Google’s John Mueller about this and John said while half away, the link attributes are not needed.

Several months ago Google told us that returning a “results not found” type of page can result in Google Search considering that page a soft 404 and thus removing it from the search results. The same is true for “Sorry we don’t deliver to this location” or other negative and error looking pages.

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. Google Search Console’s international targeting setting can take weeks to kick in…

Google is now showing bike icons for the bikeshare data it shows in the local search results, including the local pack and local listing for a bike share location. Google also shows the quantity of bikes that are available at that location. And Google is also showing electric car charging icons.