Google has said that the featured snippet without an attribution was a bug and 100% not something Google is testing. Danny Sullivan from Google was pretty upset with me for calling this a test when I never asked Google if they were indeed testing it. He is right, I honestly never thought people would think Google told me it was a test - so I am making it clear by writing a new post that this was indeed a bug and not a test.
So in short, this was a Google bug but my failure in saying this is something Google was testing when Google was not testing it - it was simply a bug.
Here is a screen shot of the bug where Google showed a featured snippet but it did not have any attribution to Wikipedia, the source of the featured snippet:
Again, this is something that Google did not intent for - it was a bug. Although, the lack of favicons in this screen shot was a feature that Google confirmed was a feature - more on that over here.
Danny Sullivan said on Twitter "Yes, I can confirm this is a bug -- not a test -- happening in Firefox for Android. We're working to debug it now."
Yes, I can confirm this is a bug -- not a test -- happening in Firefox for Android. We're working to debug it now.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 25, 2019
He then went on to explain how my article came off as saying Google confirmed this was a bug. Just to be clear, at no time during writing this did I even think that I was implying or suggesting Google confirmed this as a test.
I know we run a lot of tests. And we don't get around to confirmed all of them. But this would be a pretty serious change for us to be testing (which we're not). And if we'd been asked, I think we'd have taken the time to check and make clear, especially to avoid concerns.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 25, 2019
Anyway, Google had a bug, my story about it may have come across that Google was confirming they were testing this as a feature. I did not mean for it to come across that way. I just saw a screen shot of this in action, I covered it and some people misinterpreted. I am sorry for any confusion.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
