Google Notes On Search May End **** Does Not Mean Notes Will Go Away In May

There have been some people noticing that the Google Notes On Search labs experiment has an end **** of May 2024 and thus they are expecting Notes on Search to be turned off by then. Just because it has that end **** listed, it does not mean the labs experiment will end on that ****.

As a reminder, the Google Search Generative Experience SGE labs experiment had listed an end **** of December 2023. But then came December and Google decided to remove the **** and extended SGE as a labs experiment.

Notes on Search, since it launched last November, had that May 2024 **** on it. So that is not new.

So when it comes to Notes on Search, Google may decide to:

(1) Kill it off in May 2024

(2) Google may remove the **** and keep it as a labs experiment

(3) Google may decide to roll it out in the main search results

If I had to guess, it will be turned off as a feature but I have no inside information on when or if that will happen.

Khushal Bherwani posted about the end **** earlier this month and some have picked it up as evidence that Notes on Search will go away. I see it in articles now, I see it on social media and I hear people speaking about it at events. It might not go away in May (or it might), I just don’t think we can use the end **** as evidence of that because SGE had the same thing.

John Mueller of Google responded to these rumors on X saying, “Yeah, I’m pretty certain this was just a way of showing that Search Labs experiments tend to be temporary – like it was the case with what was shown for SGE.”

Here are the firsts posts on this topic:

this has that screenshot saying May from last year https://t.co/QhB4GiU3BL

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) April 9, 2024

the screenshot in the web story shows the end **** of may pic.twitter.com/m9sPP2ckNv

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) April 9, 2024

Yeah, I’m pretty certain this was just a way of showing that Search Labs experiments tend to be temporary – like it was the case with what was shown for SGE. https://t.co/BOGASSSwj4

— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 15, 2024

Forum discussion at X.