A week ago, several people notified me that the news tab in Google Search was missing. I checked with multiple browsers and devices and saw the news tab so I thought it was a quick bug that got resolved. Then, days later, Nieman Labs reported which Google tested by removing the news tab, although I’m not 100% sure if that’s true.
I was notified by Shameem Adhikarath on February 21st at 1:50am ET X who no longer saw the news tab and shared several screenshots, here is one such screenshot:
Sarah Scire, who wrote the story at Nieman Labs, also posted this screenshot X:
Now, in Sarah’s screenshot, you can see that this top bar and filter bar is a test. This is a Google test for a new search filter. And yes, the news tab is missing from both screenshots.
Google sent a statement to Nieman Labs, which Google sent back to me, but here’s the full, unedited statement from Google:
The news filter is now available to users and we have no plans to remove it. In an effort to better understand our users’ preferences, we were testing different ways to display filters in Search, and as a result, a small subset of users were temporarily unable to access some of them.
Now, I can read this in two ways:
(1) Google tests by removing news tab
(2) Google was testing a new search filter and there was a bug where the news tab was not showing up for some of these users in this test.
I really think the second way to read it is that Google was testing a new feature, a new user experience, and that test had a bug that caused the news tab to not appear for some of these users
I’ve asked Google for clarification on this statement, but I’m still waiting for a response.
For some reason, I really don’t think Google intentionally removed the news tab. I think it was a bug from some other test that Google was trying.
Even the Google Search Link saw the error and was surprised:
Yes, it happened to me too. I said, “Where has he gone?” It’s back, here’s the statement about it:
“The News filter is now available to users and we have no plans to remove it. In an effort to better understand our users’ preferences, we were testing different ways to…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) February 23, 2024
Yes, it happened to me too. I said, “Where has he gone?” It’s back, here’s the statement about it:
“The News filter is now available to users and we have no plans to remove it. In an effort to better understand our users’ preferences, we were testing different ways to…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) February 23, 2024
I suspect that the news tab remains for a while in Google Search and this was an unintended bug caused by an unrelated UI change in the search interface.
I don’t think Google was intentionally testing the removal of the news tab, but again, Google hasn’t answered this specific question yet.
Anyway, some info on the news tab:
The Google News filter/tab generates less than 2% of Google’s total clicks to news publishers. https://t.co/KNW0RjdEx9
— John Shehata (@JShehata) February 27, 2024
Discussion in the forum a X.
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