Google Top Stories Showing Fewer Top Stories For Political Figures?

Aug 15, 2024 - 7:31 am 3 by
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Google Search changed how many stories it shows for political figures recently. Now Google shows the two by two top stories grid in search for searches on Harris, Trump and other political figures. Google use to show 7 top stories formats for these figures.

This change was spotted by Will Flannigan, the SEO Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He wrote on X a few days ago, "Is anyone else noticing a lack of 7 position news boxes on desktop for candidate and election-related queries? Here's a quick survey this morning."

I gave it a couple of days, and yes, it seems to be the case. Here are some example queries I took recently:

Google Search Top Stories 2x2 Grid Harris

Google Search Top Stories 2x2 Grid Trump

Compare that for a search on Joe Rogan where you get a different look:

Joe Rogan Top Stories

Or Mr Beast:

Mrbeast Top Stories

Or for just Google:

Google Top Stories Norm

Here are more examples:

I am not sure if this is some sort of intentional change, a bug or something else.

Gagan noticed things improving on his end but I am not sure:

Forum discussion at X.

Update: September 10th - they are back:

 

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