A week ago, I had several people notify me that the news tab in Google Search was missing. I checked using multiple browsers and devices and I saw the news tab, so I thought it was a quick bug that was resolved. Then, days later, Nieman Labs reported that Google tested removing the news tab, although I am not 100% sure if that is true.

Shameem Adhikarath on February 21 at 1:50 am ET notified me on X that he was no longer seeing the news tab and shared several screenshots, here is one of those screenshots:

Sarah Scire who wrote the story on Nieman Labs also posted this screenshot on X:

Now, you can see from Sarah’s screenshot, that this top bar and filter bar is a test. This is a Google test for a new search filter. And yes, the news tab is missing from both screenshots.

Google did send Nieman Labs a statement, which Google did resend to me – but here is the full statement unedited from Google:

Now, I can read this two ways:

(1) Google testing removing the news tab

(2) Google was testing a new search filter and there was a bug where the news tab did not appear for some of those users in that test.

I really think the way to read it is the second way – that Google was testing a new feature, a new user experience and that test had a bug resulting in the news tab not showing up for some of those users.

I did ask Google for clarification on this statement but I am still waiting to hear back.

For some reason, I really don’t think Google intentionally removed the news tab. I think it was a bug from some other test Google was trying out.

Even Google’s own Search Liaison saw the bug and was surprised:

I suspect the news tab is sticking around for a while in Google Search and this was an unintended bug caused by some unrelated user interface change in the search interface.

I do not think Google was intentionally testing removing the news tab but again, Google has not responded to that specific question yet.

Either way, some data on the news tab:

Forum discussion at X.