[lol] Is Google giving a cryptic message?

Was trying to see if one of my posts have been indexed... And of course, nope. But what surprised me was this cartoon animation below.



Yes, it is click-able. When you click it, the character sometimes catches a fish, or a can of sardines and tosses it into the pail beside him.

Not sure if it is some cryptic message (especially that smirk face on the character, he/she sometimes whistles too) to say you have to wait patiently or it (google bot) needs to catch the 'bait', to be included in the search results (the pail).
Or just simply to beautify the no results page.

EDIT: See 3rd post for my observation. It does seem to be a cryptic message.

Never seen that one before.

Can you link to a live example? (not your site)

Things that I found out:

1) It doesn't appear if you're in incognito mode. You MUST log in to your Google Webmasters and do that query search for your unindexed post/page only then it will appear.
2) It doesn't seem to show for all webmaster accounts or websites. I tried to access my client's and partner's one and do a query search on their website and this doesn't appear. And if I do the search of the affected site (the URL that's showing the animation) on their accounts, it also doesn't show.

So it seems that it only appears if you're doing a query search on your own website that has posts that aren't indexed. Possibly from that "Crawled but not indexed" message... Because this blog post hasn't been indexed despite submitting it manually a few times and all.

P.S: In case if you're wondering, the post is 100% original, researched, cited with references and all. Written by a native English writer. It was published on July 2021 and it hasn't been indexed even today.

P.P.S: I will try to do a screen capture and upload the clip to show the animation to you all.

Ok, here's the video capture of all the animations after clicking the character.


I guess it is a cryptic message to say my post wasn't indexed because it isn't what people (google users) want? lol

Edit: Wait, the strange thing is now if I try to do a query search for non-existent links of other websites (e.g: blackhatworld.com/agaseasdasdasdasdasd) it also shows the animation. Oh crap, does that mean my webmaster's account has been 'blacklisted'?

Edit 2: Ok, I'm freaking out.

What was the query and browser you used for this? I cannot replicate.

MaikoSophie said:

Ok, here's the video capture of all the animations after clicking the character.

I guess it is a cryptic message to say my post wasn't indexed because it isn't what people (google users) want? lol

Edit: Wait, the strange thing is now if I try to do a query search for non-existent links of other websites (e.g: blackhatworld.com/agaseasdasdasdasdasd) it also shows the animation. Oh crap, does that mean my webmaster's account has been 'blacklisted'?

Edit 2: Ok, I'm freaking out.

Click to expand...

Okay, I'm so freaked out with the cryptic message I'm trying to decipher what it means... Especially when other members doesn't seem to be able to replicate what I'm facing.

Is Google trying to say they like live or archived content as long as it is relevant?
Relevance in the sense that the character is fishing (looking for fish)... the first catch was a live fish (live/new content) and the character is happy about it.... The character is also happy to get a can of sardines; so does that mean archived/aged content are okay as long as it's relevant (sardines).
But the other 2 catch when the character is unhappy are the shoe/boot and empty can, which the character doesn't want. So... Shoe/boot could mean copy-paste content? Like boot prints on sand. And, of course, the empty can means thrashy low-quality content.

rustybrick said:

What was the query and browser you used for this? I cannot replicate.

Click to expand...

As mentioned in my previous posts, it seems to only happen on certain accounts.

My blog post that hasn't been indexed since July 2021 will show this animation if I'm logged in to the webmasters account linked to the blog. And even if I try to do a query search for non-existent posts or other website's post that aren't indexed, it also shows this animation.
However, when I logged in to my client's webmasters account it doesn't show this animation at all. So I can confirm it only affects certain webmaster's accounts.

It seems to show on all browsers. I've tested it on Edge, and Chrome.

The only thing I suspect why my account is being shown this animation is because I kept manually submitting the unindexed post over and over, despite that "Crawled, but not indexed" message. Maybe Google just got fed up and drops me a cryptic message.

Google is the evil cat and you are the fish. That's the cryptic message.

Please share details on how I can replicate this.

MaikoSophie said:

this cartoon animation below.

Click to expand...

Is there somthing fishy about your site

this is very fishy.

They assume now that we have been playing cat & fish games since the beginning.

Is this a joke or real? See https://techdows.com/2021/11/google-search-past-hour-filter-fishing.html

rustybrick said:

Please share details on how I can replicate this.

Click to expand...

Just for the animation ?

rustybrick said:

Is this a joke or real? See https://techdows.com/2021/11/google-search-past-hour-filter-fishing.html

Click to expand...

Real...

As I mentioned earlier, only some Google webmaster accounts will see it.

That's why I am wondering is it a cryptic message since the rest of you can't replicate it.

Does anything looks fishy in your page? or it can be a simple animation for you to wait till the page get indexed.

PTWWAAA said:

Does anything looks fishy in your page? or it can be a simple animation for you to wait till the page get indexed.

Click to expand...

Not a single bit. Really.

As mentioned earlier, all the articles on that particular site is 100% original, researched and backed with citation/references, in-detailed written too and follows Google's webmaster guidelines. And of course, written by a native English writer. Not AI generated or whatsoever.

And also, despite that strange animation, the rankings and traffic for that site still remains the same. No improvement, no tanking, or whatsoever. But sales for that site dipped badly for the past few weeks.

MaikoSophie said:

Not a single bit. Really.

As mentioned earlier, all the articles on that particular site is 100% original, researched and backed with citation/references, in-detailed written too and follows Google's webmaster guidelines. And of course, written by a native English writer. Not AI generated or whatsoever.

And also, despite that strange animation, the rankings and traffic for that site still remains the same. No improvement, no tanking, or whatsoever. But sales for that site dipped badly for the past few weeks.

Click to expand...

Did you get to the bottom of this?

So, the devil loves eating fish. I never knew.

MisterF said:

Did you get to the bottom of this?

Click to expand...

Nope, not at all.

It still shows till this day and only when I log in to that Google webmasters account.

SERoundtable mentioned this too: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-no-results-found-fishing-game-32409.html
But no one seem to comment nor talk about it.

It's so mysterious and strange. Google's twitter accounts (searchliason and other prominent staffs like Danny Sullivan) didn't mention about this too.

Really odd.

At least with Matt Cutts we had good memes.