Google Discontinues Page Annotations: Here’s Everything You Should Know

In November 2024, Google announced the page annotations feature from its community forums. The forum post stated:

“We’ve created a new feature called Page Annotation in the Google App Browser for iOS. It extracts interesting entities from the webpage and highlights them in a line. When a user clicks on the highlighted entity, it will direct the user to the search page for this entity.”

For instance, if one of your webpages named a significant location in your copy, Google could insert a clickable link on the location’s name and take users to its Google profile page.

Website owners had no say over which links Google could add to their webpages. They could, however, fill out an official form to opt out of the feature. Frustratingly, many users found it difficult to locate the form, while it could take up to 30 days for the form to work – a significant amount of time for any website owner trying to salvage lost traffic.

In November 2024, Google announced the page annotations feature from its community forums. The forum post stated:

“We’ve created a new feature called Page Annotation in the Google App Browser for iOS. It extracts interesting entities from the webpage and highlights them in a line. When a user clicks on the highlighted entity, it will direct the user to the search page for this entity.”

For instance, if one of your webpages named a significant location in your copy, Google could insert a clickable link on the location’s name and take users to its Google profile page.

Website owners had no say over which links Google could add to their webpages. They could, however, fill out an official form to opt out of the feature. Frustratingly, many users found it difficult to locate the form, while it could take up to 30 days for the form to work – a significant amount of time for any website owner trying to salvage lost traffic.

Google hasn’t made a public statement about discontinuing page annotations, so I can’t explain why the feature was dropped with 100% accuracy.

However, Google’s reputation might have something to do with it, especially with the company’s controversial antitrust case last year that jeopardized its position as the world’s leading search engine. To rebuild trust with its users, Google may be reevaluating the way it interacts with publisher content to soften the lawsuit’s blow.

As of today, Google has removed any reference to page annotations in its official documentation. With the feature only lasting four months, it’s a stark reminder of how quickly Google search is evolving.

New search tools seem to come and go at the speed of sound, so I recommend keeping on top of these changes as best as you can and giving your business time to adapt. To give you a helping hand, we’re always posting about Google’s next move on our news page, so stay updated by checking it out weekly.