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

Google promised to let us know when they expand when they use MUM in search and Google did just that yesterday with this new announcement. Google announced how they are using MUM for better detection of queries around personal crisis. And Google also said the search company used BERT to reduce unexpected shocking search results.

Last month we spotted Google testing an audio based listen and translate feature for the local panel. It seems Google is now trying this out for standard knowledge panels. These will play an audio clip of the knowledge panel text in English or your local language, even if the language is written in English on the search results page.

Google announced that now the Search Console connector for Google Data Studio can now bring in traffic data for Google Discover and Google News. This means you can do more mashing up of your data, directly in Google Data Studio specifically with those two new traffic sources.

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that the “nofollow is not a dampening factor.” Meaning, when you put a nofollow attribute on a link, it does not dampen the value of the link, it totally does not give any credit or value to that link at all.

Earlier this week I reported that we were not seeing huge changes yet for the March 2022 Google Products Reviews update. Well, it seems like some of the tools and a number of SEOs are now noticing larger changes specific to sites that would match the product reviews categories.

Google is rolling out to features to give searchers more ammunition when looking at the search results on news related topics or evolving topics. One is a highly cited label for top stories and the other is more information about search results that are changing quickly.

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. This newsletter showcases a ton of search interface tests, a ton of them. Yes…

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Microsoft Bing is testing (or maybe rolling out) new explore icons for images that show up in the web results. There are these round circle category icons that let you refine your search for the query, to show more images that match the refined query.

Microsoft Bing seems to be testing a new search feature that embeds snippets of content from Wikipedia in this large Wikipedia box in the search results. It basically brings in portions of content from Wikipedia broken down by the Wikipedia’s page content.

Google seems to be testing a specialized local pack that looks more like the local service ads. Maybe this is a bug because the ads are not labeled or maybe Google is testing free local service listings? The local pack design looks more like local service ads and gives you the option to refine the query and location.

Back in August 2021, Google began testing this expandable tab search result snippet. Then the test seemed to have expanded in November 2021. Last week, I had countless folks ask me about this again, but I am not yet able to see it myself – but clearly Google is re-testing this search feature.

Google’s John Mueller said again on Twitter that you should only keep old URLs that have been redirected elsewhere in your XML sitemap file temporarily and not long term. John has said this a few times before – but now John is saying keep them there for one to three months, as opposed to less than six months.