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Back in March, Google tested showing zero search results with just the answer for specific queries for about ten days. Google was caught testing it again yesterday but Google said it was just a glitch and was not the zero results feature from back in March.
Valentin Pletzer notified me of the test yesterday via Twitter. I should add that Valentin is super amazing at finding Google tests and is very rarely ever wrong. He said Google was testing showing zero results again and this time for the query [storm surge hurricane florence]. He said he was able to reproduce it many times within that period of time and then it stopped working.
He shared a screen shot as well:
Here is what it looked like with search results below the answer information:
Last time Google did this, the search community was not happy but back then it was just limited to time, conversions and calculations types of search results.
In any event, Google said this was a glitch and not something they are proactively testing.
And the exact URL would also help. This is probably a glitch.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 12, 2018
Here was the cookie Valentin captured during the test:
138=EpVDtahIDftJwGw7J3i2JhEaFttzXiL1MZaTz1tv3y_0s9ZDjQtHdDZIKB-CO2kcWYjMXpte5lG_Xow9nw43_8XGt8rbgEF9FwiQO-bFDb8DoG2TU8xaaPcJO1ilr4YR
— Valentin Pletzer (@VorticonCmdr) September 12, 2018
He is no longer able to reproduce it - so maybe it was a glitch?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
