Google has now killed off getting traffic for ranking for Google Doodles. Back in the old days, if you wrote a news post about a Google Doodle, and if you could rank in the top stories carousel or news box, it would send tons of traffic. Now, Google has added a "Behind the Doodle" box to the top of the search results.
If you click on the Doodle on today's Google US home page, you will see this box come up. Here is a full size screen shot you can click on to enlarge:
You can then click on that button to enlarge it, which will drop down all the details from the Google Doodles site about that specific Doodle:
To be fair, ranking for Google Doodles and it sending you tons of traffic has not worked well in the past couple of years. But it was fun in the old days to see your real time Google Analytics traffic send you all that traffic from searchers who did not give a hoot about SEO or SEM.
If you don't believe me, go to the Google News results for this Doodle query and look at all the articles about the Google Doodle today.
Anyway, I am pretty sure this "Behind the Doodle" search box is new and I think it works well for searchers who are always asking, why is Google posting this Doodle?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Starting with Veterans Day, November 11, 2021, Google stopped showing this box. Also, today, November 12th there was a logo for Celebrating Johannes Vermeer and there is no Behind This Doodle box also.
Update 2: It is back again:
The Today’s Doodle box is back in Google for when you click on Doodles - more at https://t.co/e5TCAnerbr pic.twitter.com/6DfCzFFjy0
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) February 17, 2022
