We now know why we have seen the Google+ icon added to the Google notifications drop down, an addition that seemed pretty redundant when it started showing up a couple of weeks ago.  You can now add notifications for both YouTube and Google Photos now too, that will show up in the notifications.

Ana Hoffman spotted the change and made this image to show it off.

While her image shows Google+ and Google Photos, you can also add YouTube notifications if you have it connected to your Google+ account.

It wouldn’t be surprising to eventually see other types of notification options showing up.  Imagine how nice it would be to not just get an email from Google if there was an issue showing up in Search Console – such as if Google notices your site has been hacked or an increase in crawl errors.  Or if there was a billing issue in Google AdWords.

To include Google Photos and YouTube into your notifications, simply click the notifications icon, then click the gear icon to access the settings.  Then you will be alerted to notifications from both YouTube and Photos when on various Google properties.