I am not sure if anyone has noticed, but today I was looking through the search results and am seeing a new tag in the search results called “April Fool’s Prank”. This appears to be similar to the “Mobile Friendly” tag, whereas Google is flagging certain sites that are “mobile friendly.” Here is a screen capture of the search results, where a recent post of mine about Matt Cutts shows up (look for it around the 2nd page of the SERPS for “Matt Cutts”:
If you look closely at the search results, you will see that my post that appeared recently on the Globe Runner site is tagged with “April Fool’s Prank”.
Then, below that, you will see other sites that are shown as “mobile friendly”.
So, apparently this new April Fool’s tag trumps the “mobile friendly” tag, as I know that Globe Runner’s site (and that page is, in fact mobile friendly. I have checked it before today, April 1st. But now, Google is flagging or “tagging” pages on the web that contain April Fool’s pranks.
Let’s take a look at another search result, one that we know if also an April Fool’s prank, and see if the same tag is there, as well:
Again, we see that this is Barry’s April Fool’s prank, and it’s tagged again with the “April Fool’s Prank” tag.
I am not surprised, personally, about the fact that Google is doing this. In fact, with their semantic search and ability to measure sentiment, as well as other stuff like social shares and content, they can truly see what is an April Fool’s prank and what is not.
Let’s look at another search result:
Does Google care about their users so much that they are now flagging April Fool’s pranks so that they don’t have to click on the search results listing and go to other pages instead?
You decide. I’m going to keep a watch on this search result to see if it changes. But in the meantime, search for “Matt Cutts” and see if you see my blog post about Globe Runner SEO Hiring Matt Cutts.