OK, thank you.


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from April 14, 2020

John, I have two questions.


I haven't been here in almost half a year.


I don't know how long it's been, but somewhere around there.


Quick question.


The hashtag symbol, adding it before the actual,


like in the title tag, does that affect the home page?


That means the actual title, like if adding a hashtag


prior to the first word, does that


affect the main keyword for the actual home page?


So for instance, if I'm selling toys, and I have the hashtag,


and then pipe, and then the actual word,


and then so on and so on.


Because I'm still having issues with that,


because I'm having kind of an argument with someone on that.


I believe.


I honestly don't know.


So my feeling is we would probably


understand to ignore the hashtag symbol


and just focus on the word, which is probably


what you're trying to do.


But I don't know if we would use that combination of symbol


plus word as something unique.


So you ignore it?


My guess is we would just ignore the hashtag symbol


and focus on the word itself.


But that's something that you can probably


test by including some random word with a hashtag


and seeing if you can search for it with just the random word


without the hashtag symbol.


It's hard when someone believes that the hashtag,


you know how it is.


Yeah, I mean, it's not going to make


your site rank for that keyword anyway automatically.


So just using like hashtag toys or, I don't know,


like hashtag cheap credit cards in a title,


I don't see that making any difference.


It just looks kind of weird in the search results.


OK, and then also you said something a while back


on Twitter.


And I know a lot of people quote that also here on the Hangout.


But you said that guest posts placing a link back


to your site from a guest post is unnatural.


But what if a person does that on a massive basis?


Do you just ignore that?


Because I think Gary said in this other tweet.


Usually we would just ignore that.


So that's the kind of thing where


if we can tell that this is clearly an unnatural link,


we would essentially just try to ignore that.


So what if the guy has like 40,000, 50,000,


you would just ignore that?


Yeah, it sounds like they've been busy.


But it's easier to ignore a lot of links


than to ignore individual ones.


Because if our algorithms are kind of with that mindset


of like, we don't know if we can trust this link,


and if we can see that there are lots of these links out there


that are essentially following the same pattern,


it's a lot easier for us to just say, oh, all of these


are the same bucket.


We should just ignore those.


OK.


Thanks, I appreciate it.


Sure.


Can I ask a quick question?


About the in Search Console international


targeting and the geolocation there for country,


and the hreflang you can specify reasons,


do they do basically the same job?


Are they analogous to each other?


Or are they a little bit different in scope?


Yeah.


Geotargeting and hreflang are essentially different things.


But people tend to use them for related things.


So hreflang essentially helps us to swap out the URL


if we rank one of the URLs of that set.


And geotargeting helps us to understand that this is


probably a local page.


So if someone is looking for something local,


we would try to show that.


So the end result can look kind of similar,


but they're technically different things.


I think it's pretty confusing to have this slight overlap


there.


I'd love to have some easier setup for all


of the international things.


But all of the proposals I've put together


ended up being much more complicated


than what we have now.


So it's like, I don't know.


If someone has a really good idea for how to let search


engines know about international versions of a website,


that would be fantastic.


But it's been challenging.


SPEAKER 2


All right.


More questions from any of you.


Hi, Mr. Marlow.


Hi.


This is Mihai from Search Engine Journal.


I'm kind of chasing you with the discolored question


of large images.


On the last call, you said you were looking to the issue


why are non-AMP pages pulling small images.


I would like to kindly check if you


did get the chance to look.


We've been looking into that.


And there's some work being done from the team


to make, I think, the information a little bit clearer


and to be a little bit more consistent internally


with how we deal with those kind of issues.


So I don't have a complete update for you yet.


But people are working on it.


So hopefully, we'll have something soon.


Thank you.


Sure.


Wow, we're running out of questions.


I can't believe it.


Let me see.


There's one in the chat.


We have separate pages for shop where there are only


two things in that page.


One is the shop info and two ratings and reviews.


And our users usually come for the ratings and views.


So I want to display the ratings in the search results


probably in the search results.


And then we'll go to the next one.


I want to display the ratings in the search results prominently.


Yeah, so I think if on the product pages


you have reviews and ratings, then that's


a great use of the structured data


for those individual reviews and ratings.


I would just make sure that you're following


all of the guidelines there.


Because lots of people like to use the review structure data.


And that's something where our systems and our engineers


are kind of more and more picky with regards


to what we actually show in the search results.


So make sure you're following the guidelines as completely


as possible so that it's clear that what you're providing


on your page is actually what makes sense


to show in the search results.


Does the date in front of a meta description


affect the ranking if the blog post is from previous years?


No, not necessarily.


So a lot of times when we recognize a date on a page,


we can show it in the search results directly.


And that's not because it's in the meta description.


But we show it next to the snippet, which


is usually what we take from the meta description.


And we display there.


But that's not necessarily a ranking factor


because it's not always clear what a user is looking for.


Are they looking for kind of the newest information


on this topic?


Or are they looking for research information


on this topic, which might be a little bit older?


So just because there's a date being shown there,


that doesn't necessarily mean that that's


kind of a positive or negative ranking factor in any way.


Are you seeing any potential shift impact


of COVID-19 on the proportion of mobile tablet desktop searches?


I have not seen anything there.


I don't know if we'd have any data on kind


of those changes at the moment.


I have no idea.


It seems like an interesting question.


If you have a website that gets a lot of impressions,


you can probably double check that yourself in Search Console


and see if there are any changes there.


It'd be interesting to look at across a number


of different websites.


But I don't know if that would be something


that we would publish or if it's easier for you to kind of work


together with a bunch of other publishers


and combine that data and look at it from your side.


All right.


Any last questions before we head out?


Martin.


No?


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG


Oh, I'm just I just have to leave.


Bye-bye.


Just waving.


OK.


Fine.


So the next Hangout is lined up on Friday.


There's a German one lined up on Thursday


if you want to practice your German.


So if there's anything that we missed,


feel free to jump into one of those Hangouts.


Thank you all for dropping by.


And hope you all stay safe and healthy and at home,


I guess, as much as possible.


And see you next time.


Bye, everyone.


Thank you.


Search Console explained (and why you need it)| Search for Beginners Ep 6

Imagine a service where you can check many aspects of your website's activity in Google search for free.


You could find out how many users visit your site from Google search,


which carries bring people to your websites,


or how your website appears on Google search.


Well, there's good news.


This service already exists, and it's called Google Search Console.


If you're a business owner and you have a website, Google Search Console is for you.


Even if someone else is in charge of the technical maintenance of your website,


your site is still part of your business.


Make sure that you have access to Search Console and that you're familiar with what it can do.


Learning about how your website is performing in search results will help you make informed business decisions,


and will help you become more aware of how to use search as a channel for connecting with your potential and actual customers.


So what can Search Console do for your online business?


It helps you understand whether your site is on Google, and how Google Search, and the world, sees it.


Search Console includes a wealth of information.


There are a few metrics you can review every week to make sure your website is getting visitors.


How do your potential customers usually find you on Google Search?


What queries bring you the most traffic?


What other sites mention and link to your website?


How well does your mobile site display information?


Search Console allows you to submit new content to Google,


and to remove content that you don't want to show in search results.


You can also monitor the health of your website.


Search Console will warn you if we detect that your website has been infected by malware,


or if it has any spam issues.


So remember, if you have an online business,


it is important to monitor your website's activity in the same way you might monitor your inventory levels,


or your weekly operational costs.


This is to make informed business decisions and maintain a positive online presence.


Get familiar with Search Console as one of the ways to monitor your website's activity and health.


In the next episode, we'll offer five essential tips on how to make sure your website appears on Search.


If you liked this video, like it, share it, and comment.


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from August 21, 2020

All right, welcome, everyone, to today's Webmaster Central


Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I am a Webmaster Trends Analyst here at Google in Switzerland.


And part of what we do are these Office Hour Hangouts,


where people can join in and ask their questions around SEO,


the website, search, whatever.


A whole bunch of stuff has been submitted already.


But if any of you want to go ahead and ask


the first question, you're welcome to jump on in.


OK, I think I need a button with a cricket sound.


I think that would be useful here.


But that's fine.


We can also be a bit annoying, maybe,


and repost the question that I've posted before.


I think Mihai is smiling because he


knows what I'm talking about.


Remember, we've been talking about this issue


with weird indexing for a web website.


I think it was now 2 and 1-1-2 months ago.


And I'm just trying to be annoying about it.


Because I know you guys had some troubles in the last few weeks.


And there was probably a bit of a different focus in the search


team.


But really, really help me out here.


I need some help.


I don't have anything new there.


But I can check in later today with the team.


I also don't want to be too bothersome, but yeah.


Yeah, I realize when things don't work out,


it's good to try to get some input there.


That's fine.


But if you give it seven years, eventually you get the answer.


So you hang in there.


I hope it doesn't take seven years.


No.


Usually, these kind of things, when I send them to the team,


they're able to take care of them fairly quickly.


So I'm kind of surprised that this is still sticking around.


But I'll poke them a bit.


It must be something difficult. I appreciate that.


I don't know.


Sometimes they're weird things.


Thank you.


Sure.


All right.


Any other difficult questions before we jump in


with the other difficult questions?


OK.


Hi, John.


Hi.


Hi, there is an issue that I'm facing with Google Search


Console.


Like, we have a website in multiple languages.


And we have a subdirectory system.


We don't have subdomains for the other languages.


So what I'm trying to do is add properties


in Search Console as per the language.


But I'm not able to do that because when I add a folder,


it asks me to add different meta tags


or verify this property as per the Google Analytics.


If we have Google Analytics, you can verify your property


because Search Console.


But I'm not able to do that.


So what could be the issue?


I just wanted to confirm.


OK.


I don't know if there is anything


unique with the way you would need


to verify with Google Analytics.


But with the other method, if you have the main domain


verified, you should be able to add subdirectories


and subdomains right away.


So that's something where, if you're seeing it's not working


with the verification method that you have set up now,


I would just try a different method.


I know, for example, the domain-level verification,


if you do that with the DNS verification,


then you can definitely just add all subdomains


and all subdirectories without doing


any special verification yet.


So that might be an option to look into that.


SPEAKER 2 Sure, I'll try other methods.


Sure.


Interesting.


SPEAKER 1 OK, let's see.


The first question I have on top of my list is one,


I don't really have anything that I can help with


because there is no additional information.


It would be highly appreciated if you could help us out here.


Our prime keywords have gone from the search results.


These keywords were ranking on the first page


for the past seven to eight years.


Three of our sites have been impacted due to this syndrome.


And we have used the same keywords in all three sites


since we have similar products under different brands.


We have done multiple on-page and off-page analysis


to check and ensure whether we had any spamming issues.


Unfortunately, the end results of all of our analysis


did not trigger any signs of errors or warnings.


All these keywords are showing impressions and clicks


in Search Console.


We've already raised this concern in the forum


previously as well.


Thank you in advance.


So there's no information here that I can look at.


So it's really impossible for me to say anything here.


In general, just because a site was appearing well


in search results for a number of years


does not mean that it will continue


to appear well in search results in the future.


These kind of changes are essentially


to be expected on the web.


It's a very dynamic environment.


On the one hand, things on the web


change with your competitors, with other sites.


On the other hand, things on our side


change with our algorithms in search.


And finally, on the user side as well,


the expectations change over time.


So just because something performed well in the past


doesn't mean it will continue to perform well


in search in the future.


So that's kind of the only thing I can really point out here.


So my recommendation there would be


to start a thread in the Webmaster Help Forum


and include the details.


Include the sites that you're talking about,


the searches that you're talking about, maybe some screenshots


if you're seeing something confusing in Search Console.


But without any kinds of details,


nobody can really help you.


So that's kind of the direction I would head here.


My question is regarding footer links.


The company I work for is one of the biggest


publishers in the country.


They have many popular properties


and are linking them together with exact match footer links


and exact match brand name links.


I want to change these into brand.com or brand-only links


as to not get hit by any linking penalties.


Can you elaborate on this and confirm or deny


that no following or using only branded anchor


links without keywords and footer is the right approach?


So in general, if these are websites from the same company,


then that's not something you would need to no follow.


So that's kind of the main thing here I would add.


I think going forward and linking mainly the brands


might be an option there.


It kind of depends on how much we're talking about here.


If this is a handful of different websites


that you're running at the same time,


then that's, I think, totally non-issue in any way.


On the other hand, if you're talking about hundreds


of websites and you're all cross-linking these


in the footer across all of your websites,


then that's something that starts to look a lot more


tricky, I guess.


And that might be something where the web spam team might


want to take a more detailed look at what


is actually happening here.


My suspicion is that it lies somewhere in between maybe,


I don't know, 10 sites, something like that.


And that's the order of magnitude


where I'd say it's not going to make or break things


in any particular way depending on how you link there.


I would just link naturally.


So if people know these sites by brand name,


link to them by brand name.


I think that's a good approach.


I don't think you need to no follow these sites.


Two days ago, I saw a site in the top result,


which has been offline for about two years.


Can you tell us the reason behind this?


I have no idea what you're seeing in the search results.


So that's really hard to say.


We do keep URLs around in our index for a fairly long time.


But if a website has been offline completely


for a number of years, then that would


be kind of unexpected from my point of view


to show them in the search results.


What might be happening is that maybe this URL is blocked


by robots.txt, and we've never been able to recrawl it.


And we don't know what is actually behind that URL.


So that might be something that's happening.


But if your website is completely offline,


if the domain has expired or whatever,


then we would usually drop those fairly quickly


from the search results.


The old structured schema tool will now be replaced.


Can Google improve the speed of the new tool?


I've measured it once.


The old tool gave results in four seconds,


and the new one takes over 30 seconds.


Yeah, it's like, what's up with speed


as a ranking factor at Google?


So I know the team is aware of some issues around speed.


But I don't know how much of that can actively be resolved.


Because one of the differences between the old tools


and the new tool is that it's not


is that the new tool essentially runs the pages through all


of our indexing pipeline.


So it runs through all of the processes


that we would use for normal indexing


to determine what's on the page and how we should treat that.


And that's something that can sometimes


take a little bit longer than if you just


load a page from a server and do a quick analysis of it.


So that's one of the reasons why things


are a little bit slower there.


In general, though, when we look at the metrics overall,


we see that the majority of the requests


are handled really quickly, definitely not


in the order of 30 seconds.


So that's something where, depending on the site,


sometimes maybe it will take a little bit longer.


But for the most part, it should be fairly quickly.


But I don't think it'll be in the same range as something


that just has to load the HTML and then move on.


Define the schema type in another language.


Which language should I define for type, service type,


et cetera?


For example, Buchalta in German versus Accountant in English.


I don't know how that would be best handled.


Usually, our recommendation would


be to use the same primary language on a page


and to have one primary language per page.


So you wouldn't have an entry for an Accountant in German


and the same page being the entry


for the Accountant in English.


You would have one page in German and one page in English.


And if you have one clear language per page,


then you don't have that problem that you


have multiple languages that you want to use in the structured


data on one page.


You would essentially just use the primary language


for the structured data on that page.


JING WANG HONG CHEN LEEUWUAN KIM TONG HONG CHEN


CHEN LEEUWUAN KIM TONG Hey, John.


Just follow up on that.


If I have a page with a mainly video accountant,


and there it's in English, but I have foreign language


transcription and foreign language subtitle,


can I use the foreign language as the video schema markup,


like the title, description, and things like that?


JOHN MUELLER Sure, I think in that case, from a theoretical point


of view, I would see that page as being


in that foreign language.


It has a video, and the video is maybe in English,


but essentially you're targeting users in your own language.


So that's something where I would use the markup


for that particular language.


JING WANG HONG CHEN LEEUWUAN KIM TONG HONG CHEN I see.


But a video markup is about a video, right?


But if I use a title as the foreign language and description


as foreign language, as long as I have translated subtitle,


it's OK?


JOHN MUELLER I think that's OK, yeah, because you're making kind


of a video landing page for that.


So essentially, someone's searching for something.


They would go to your page to watch this video.


And you want the people who are searching in your language


to land on that page, not necessarily


someone who is searching in English


to go to your landing page, right?


JING WANG HONG CHEN LEEUWUAN KIM TONG HONG OK, sounds great.


Thank you.


JOHN MUELLER Sure.


Which is the relationship between the core Google


update in organic search and Google Discover?


I have some websites that did not


receive any impact in the May 5 algorithm


but dropped out massively in Discover.


So we see Discover essentially as a part of search.


It's, I don't know, search is probably the wrong word


to use for Discover because you don't actively


search for something, but we show something to you.


But from our point of view, that kind of


falls into the general systems of search,


which means we use the normal crawling and indexing


systems for that.


We try to understand the content like we would do for search.


And we also use a lot of the quality algorithms


and a lot of the kind of understanding systems


behind search when it comes to Discover as well.


So it's very possible that some of the bigger algorithm updates


that we make for search, they also have an effect in Discover


because we kind of reuse those same algorithms across all


of these different places.


So that's something where maybe what you're seeing there


is really an effect.


I think it is always a bit tricky with Discover


because it's more like supplemental traffic


that you get to your website because people aren't actively


searching for it.


And it's really hard to kind of diagnose


like what is the problem if my website is not


being shown automatically because there's


no real way to determine should it be shown at this point


or should it not be shown.


I own a website with multiple international subdomains.


I have multiple language home pages for each subdomains.


But there is a problem with my Canadian subdomain home page.


In Search Console, it shows that it's indexed.


And the canonical is what I chose it to be.


But for some reason, the page is not


showing in the search results.


Other pages from the main subdomain are showing fine.


It's really hard to say without any details.


So that's something where maybe what would help here


is to either have some details in the question with regards


to maybe some queries or some URLs


where you're seeing this problem or to post in the Webmaster


Help Forum to kind of get some input from other people as


well.


And for that as well, you'd need some queries or some URLs


where you're seeing this problem.


In particular, when it comes to a Canadian home page,


my guess is that you might be using the same language


content on the Canadian home page


as maybe the American home page or maybe the French home page,


depending on which language this page is in.


And in general, when it comes to international websites that


have the same language content but they're


for different countries, it's something


where our systems sometimes try to simplify things and say,


well, this content is actually the same.


It's the same content in the same language,


but maybe there's like a country targeting aspect here.


Maybe there are hreflang annotations here.


But what can happen is that our indexing systems will


fold these together and say, I will just


index one of these versions.


And that's something that happens very frequently,


especially in the German area where we have Germany, Austria,


and Switzerland.


They all have German content.


And it's very easy for our systems


to look at some of these pages and say, well,


all of these pages are the same.


We will just index one of them.


And in Search Console, what will happen


then is we will focus on the canonical URL.


We'll kind of combine all of our signals there in Search Console


and show that to you there.


In the search results, if you have hreflang set up,


then usually what will happen is we


will show the individual URLs in the search results


and kind of guide the user to the appropriate local versions


if we can figure all of that out.


But the tricky part is in Search Console,


you would not see what is actively


being shown in the search results


because we try to simplify it and show you the canonical.


So that makes it very tricky to kind of debug and figure out


what is actively happening here.


There are two approaches that you could take there


if that's happening in your case.


I really don't know.


Like, you mentioned Canadian, so I'm just guessing


French or English content.


But there are two approaches that you could take here.


On the one hand, you could just leave it be because probably


if you look at the search results


and you see the right URL is being shown,


then the data in Search Console is confusing,


but it's working out well.


So maybe that's OK.


Maybe that's not worth the extra trouble.


The other approach is to make sure


that these pages are significantly different.


So if you have a Canadian and a US homepage or US website


or product page or whatever, and they currently


have exactly the same English content,


then try to make sure that the Canadian page is significantly


different from the US page so that when


we look at those pages, we don't even


consider folding them together.


And if we don't fold them together,


we will just index them as separate pages.


We can still use the hreflang annotations


between those pages, and that will also just kind of work


out.


The advantage of that is that in Search Console,


you will have a little bit clearer data


on what is actually being shown from which


of the individual country URLs.


So that's kind of the approach I would take here.


It might be, though, that maybe you're


seeing something completely different, something really


weird and unique in your particular case,


but it's hard to tell from your question.


So if that doesn't match, I would definitely


start a thread in the Help Forum because there


are a lot of people there who have experience with these


things.


And you're also welcome to just post again


in one of the future Hangouts where


we can kind of look into the question a little bit more


detailed.


Link attribute question.


SPEAKER 2 Hey, John.


Hi.


Yes.


SPEAKER 3 Hi.


Hi, John.


Just a follow-up question from the previous one.


So I think I'm also facing the same issue.


I've already visited in the previous Hangout as well,


so I'll ask for the examples.


I also published the question in the Help Forum as well.


But I'm not finding any particular,


you can say, answer to that particular problem.


Like, I mean, our pages are in two different languages,


and they're targeting different countries.


But still, like, Google thinks they are kind of duplicates.


So just wondering, like, I mean, what


would be the possible solution to that?


SPEAKER 2 I really can't understand you


from kind of a sound point of view.


But I think you're saying you have a similar problem to that?


SPEAKER 3 Yes, John.


So I mean, I posted on the chat itself in our previous Hangouts


where you asked for giving examples of the website,


wherein we have this website in Japan and Brazil.


But Google somehow thinks Japan is a duplicate of Brazil.


So I mean, the Japan home page is kind of now


indexed by Google.


And while searching for in the country,


it's for a brand name, so the Brazil version is gone.


SPEAKER 1 OK, can you maybe drop the URL again in the chat


and add a short comment?


Then I can pick that up afterwards.


SPEAKER 3 Sure, thank you.


SPEAKER 1 Sure.


OK, link attribute question.


If I have hundreds of outbound links on my site, which


are affiliate links to large sites like Amazon, Booking,


or eBay, and didn't qualify them with a rel="nofollow",


or rel="sponsored", does my site get penalized someday


in the future?


Background, it would be a big hassle


to add the attribute to all existing links.


Yeah, so I think there are a few things that kind of come


together here.


On the one hand, it would be nice to have


the rel="nofollow", or rel="sponsored",


on these affiliate links.


However, for a lot of the more common kind of affiliate


setups, we do have understanding of how these URLs look like,


and we essentially treat them as nofollow links on our site


already.


So that's something where if you're


using kind of these common setups, these bigger country


companies that have had affiliate setups for a longer


period of time, then that's something where we already


essentially treat those as nofollow links.


So my guess here is in your case,


that's not necessarily the case.


In general, going forward, I would still


recommend using the rel="nofollow",


on these kind of links, just to make sure


that you don't kind of rely on Google figuring out itself,


because that's kind of the right approach here.


In general, when it comes to links and maybe kind of links


where you have some kind of relationship


with the other websites, and that's


the reason why those links are there, then what can happen


is when the Web Spam team looks at that


and sees that there is a significant problem here,


that these links are causing problems with regards


to the quality of our search results,


and we need to take action to kind of ensure


that the search results remain fairly reasonable, then what


will happen there is that the Web Spam team will usually


do a kind of a manual action on the website that


has these links and essentially treat those links as nofollow


on our side.


So that's kind of the primary step there.


And then we would notify you in Search Console,


and you could clean that up and do a reconsideration


and all of that.


So that's something where I think


that might come into play a little bit more in situations


where it's clearly kind of a problematic setup with regards


to the links.


When it comes to affiliate sites like these,


we've seen these tons of times.


And we can essentially do that on our own.


Our systems can nofollow these internally as well.


So that's not something where I would lose any sleep


over your kind of old affiliate sites


that you have left over that are running.


But going forward, I think it's a good practice just


to make sure that you have everything lined up properly.


From our point of view, it's also not a sign


that you're doing anything problematic.


Like, if we recognize that you have affiliate links


on your site, that's not bad.


It's not something that you need to hide.


Essentially, that's just something


we try to recognize so that we can treat these links


appropriately.


But it's not a sign that your website is of lower quality


just because you earn money through links on the website.


So that's something where traditionally,


when affiliate sites come to us and say,


oh, they're not ranking well, and they


think it's because they're an affiliate site,


then usually the kinds of affiliate sites


that are problematic on our site are the ones that essentially


don't have a dot of really good content.


So it's not so much the fact that there are affiliate links


on the site, but rather that they're


trying to take the easy approach and just copying


a feed of products and putting them on their site,


or maybe spinning some descriptions


and putting them on their site.


And then it's really mostly a matter of the content, not


the links.


So from that point of view, you don't


need to hide these affiliate links.


You don't need to do anything special with them.


We generally figure that out ourselves.


Can you take a look at Google News, the sites that


were approved after December 2019 and not ranking


and not showing in the Google News tab?


Yeah, I don't know.


I saw some threads on Twitter, and I


think Danny Sullivan passed that on to the Google News team.


I don't have any details there to share.


So that's something where, generally speaking,


these kind of issues are handled by the Google News team.


It's definitely not the case that all new websites


after 2019 are not shown in search.


How things are handled in Google News, I don't know in detail.


No.


OK.


My question is about structured data.


The template of product pages in our CMS consists of two parts,


one on the user's PC, the second part on the user's mobile.


So it's the same URL, just displayed


none for the unused part.


Part of the content is basically duplicated.


So my question is, how should I use structured data


for each displayed part two times, or is one time enough?


Yes, one time is enough.


So you don't need to duplicate the structured data on a page.


In general, I would recommend trying


to use a more responsive layout so that you just


have the content once.


It makes it easier for maintenance.


It makes it a little bit easier with regards


to updating things on your side.


So that's kind of the approach that I


would take in the long run.


But sometimes it takes a lot of work


to shift from one kind of mobile interface


to a different kind of mobile interface.


So that's not necessarily a big problem.


But for structured data, I would just include it once.


You can theoretically include it twice.


Our systems are not going to break if you do that twice.


But the problem if you do that twice


is that we need to make sure that we're really


getting exactly the same information


both of these times.


And if you have it there twice, then the chance


that something is not completely aligned definitely exists.


So I'd watch out for that.


And the second part of the question is, how bad for SEO


is this type of content?


So a template with display none for PC or mobile.


Like I mentioned, it's something that some sites do.


When it comes to responsive design,


we generally recommend just having one layout


and using kind of more responsive elements on the page


to kind of adjust the layout appropriately.


But it's not something that I would say


will break our systems.


So from that point of view, going forward,


when you kind of think about a redesign of your website,


I would try to find a way to improve that.


But it's not critical that you need to do that right away.


Many sites, even regional newspapers,


have lost their favicon in mobile search a while ago.


Mine as well, as far as I know, all


abide by the published favicon policies.


Is something else to consider?


I don't know.


I need to have some examples.


So the one example I have is someone


who has kind of like a missing home page and a redirect.


I pass that on to a team, but I'm not


aware of anything where generally we


dropped all favicons.


So if you have some examples, send them my way.


For current events, older well-linked pages


turn up high, while fresh pages with relevant content


from the same site rank lower.


Not shown at all.


Is there any way to address this?


This is, I guess, sometimes a bit tricky,


because as a site owner, you might say,


well, this page is more important than another page.


When it comes to SEO, it's not that you


can provide any kind of preference


or any kind of prioritization within your own website.


So essentially, we will look at these pages,


and if we have them in our index,


we will try to rank them appropriately


in the search results.


It's not something where you can say, well,


instead of this page, show that page,


but still keep the other page indexed.


So the kind of strong approach is just


to no index the pages that you don't


want to have shown at all.


But that's kind of taking a big hammer into this problem.


The other thing that you can do in general with websites


is to make it clear overall, when we look at your website,


which of these pages you think are really important.


So one way that you can make it clear


which pages within your website are really important


is with the internal linking of your website.


So if they're pages that you think


you'd like Google to treat with a little bit more value,


then make sure that users, when they go to your website,


recognize those as being important as well.


So that could be something like you link to them


from the home page.


You link to them from a sidebar from various parts


of your website.


You kind of really position them prominently


within your website.


So that's kind of the approach that I would take there.


If you really strongly feel that these pages are


more important than these other pages,


then make sure that that importance is really


visible to people.


Because there is no meta tag or no kind of structured way


where you can say, this one should be more important


than that one, you really have to show it through your website


as well.


Google crawlers, slow caching issues after the Google bug


update.


Can you look into this?


I don't know what this is referring to.


So we did have some issues with regards to indexing,


but that was unrelated to any Google crawling.


So if you're seeing anything specific about crawling


being slower, then it would be useful to maybe look


at the website itself.


I'm definitely not aware of us crawling less frequently


from the web overall.


So when it comes to crawling, there


are a few things that can come together.


And maybe that's something where your site is specifically


being affected at the moment.


We have a blog post, I think from last year


or maybe even longer, about crawl budget,


where we talk a little bit about how we determine how much we


would crawl from a website.


And that's primarily based, on the one hand, on our demand,


what we think is important to be indexed from the website.


And on the other hand, based on technical limitations


on the website side with regards to how much we can


crawl without causing problems.


And sometimes when you see issues


with regards to crawling, it maps


into one of those categories or both of those categories.


So I would double check that blog post.


It's about crawl budget and see how that may or may not


apply to your website.


I consult for an industry leading brand.


They publish the main yearly status report


for that industry.


They host the main conference for that


with thousands of people attending each year,


have higher authority, as in DA, than any other player,


more and better reviews in comparison sites,


and have pretty great content.


Still, they don't seem to be able to rank


on page one for non-branded keywords and keywords


tend to rank consistently in position 11


across the keywords we monitor, but also the keyword


corpus for industry tools.


Is there a reason why a page would be banned from page one


and pushed to page 11 without having a manual notice


in Search Console?


I'm not aware of anything in that regard.


So as far as I know, we definitely


don't have any algorithm or any kind of manual setup


that would say your pages cannot rank on page one


but need to rank on page two in position 11.


So that's something where I'm not aware of anything


like that.


It's really hard to say without having specific information


here, though.


So it's possible that something on our side


is stuck or not happening as expected.


It's also possible that maybe things elsewhere on the web


are just also really good.


And maybe it's really a competitive area.


And just because you're really good


doesn't mean that you're good enough


to be shown on the first page of the search results.


But it's definitely not the case that we


would have any kind of limitation


and say, oh, this website should never be shown on positions 1


through 10.


Or at least I'm not aware of that.


I think that would be kind of awkward to have.


Because if we think a website is relevant enough


to show on position 11, then it can sometimes


be relevant enough to show on position two or three as well.


So just in the interest of providing relevant results


for users, I don't think it would make sense


to push a website to page two for any particular reason.


We have a huge website with millions of pages.


And don't want them all indexed.


We have sitemaps that have an update frequency and priority


attributes.


However, we're in the process of changing these


to be last modified and priority attributes.


Does last modified instead of change frequency


help Google to pick up new and fresh content better?


So we don't use change frequency or priority in sitemaps.


It's something that we looked into a lot in the beginning.


And we noticed over time that this is not providing


any useful information to us.


So within a sitemap file, we essentially


look at the URL and the last modification date.


Those are essentially the primary attributes there.


There are some other things, for example,


for images or videos that you can put in sitemaps as well.


But essentially, we look at the URL


and the last modification date.


And the URL helps us to recognize new pages faster.


The last modification date helps us to recognize pages


that were updated recently.


So with regards to recognizing when things change


on a website, last modification date is really useful.


With regards to just recognizing when pages are new,


just listing the URL is good enough for us.


So if you currently have the URL plus change


frequency or priority attributes,


then with the URL alone, we already


can kind of pick up the newer pages quickly enough.


So having last modification date there


makes it useful when you change older content on a website


regularly.


But if you're just adding new content all the time,


then probably the setup that you have is OK as well.


Is the priority attribute actually used by Google


for any crawl or ranking factor?


Yeah, like I mentioned, I don't think we use it at all.


I believe within the custom search engine setup,


it might still be used.


But at least for Google Search, we don't use it at all.


We just noticed over time that it really


wasn't providing us with any additional new information.


We noticed that some sites either set everything


to the highest priority, and then that's not very useful.


Other sites use kind of simple algorithms


where they would set priority based on the directory


structure of their website.


And from our point of view, that's something we see already.


So that's not also providing any additional information.


So in the end, we decided to just not use priority at all.


It's still a part of the sitemap specification.


It doesn't cause problems if you use it.


It's just that we haven't found it that useful


when it comes to processing and using content in a sitemap


file.


Question related to Search Console.


I'm not able to add my website in Search Console.


The website is www.sg.


It's indexing and crawling, but I can't create a Search Console


account.


It shows an internal error.


I don't know.


I'll double check with the team.


It's kind of a unique domain name.


So maybe our systems think that maybe something


is missing there.


But I'll double check with the team.


Our website recently faced a fraud DMCA attack,


after which our content was taken out of the search


results.


The problem is the person who filed the complaint


is the actual person who has copied


the content from our website.


We filed DMCA against their website,


and they just filed back bogus DMCA against us,


which seems to be working.


I want to know if Google checks for a website's indexing


history before taking action or not.


Also, how can this ensure that only the person who wrote


the content originally wins?


If the content is backdated, which WordPress allows


very easily, Google displays a backdate in the search results


too.


Does Google provide a service where


they can identify when a content was originally published


or at least indexed so that one could find out


which of the two content hold the copyright


and which other one needs to be taken down?


So these are really good and complicated questions.


I think the general theme around all of the DMCA


is that this is a process that we're required by law to follow.


And it's not something where we can interpret


the law in any particular way.


Essentially, there is a fixed process in place here.


We do see various people trying to abuse the DMCA systems,


and our lawyers and our systems are well-tuned to that.


So that's something where it's not that we just blindly follow


everything, but rather we do try to weed out


all of these abusive uses of these systems.


But in general, if you're seeing this back and forth thing here


with regards to DMCA, then that feels more like something


that you would need to handle on a legal level


and not something where Google would be


able to resolve that for you.


So that's something where it might


be that Google's lawyers are able to help you


with some of this.


But for the most part, it's a normal legal process


that we tend not to get involved with directly.


With regards to having a service where


Google could kind of identify the original source


of the content, I think that's really tricky.


And I doubt that we would have such a service.


So as far as I know, we definitely


don't have one at the moment.


But it's kind of a tricky situation


because what I saw way, way before joining Google when


I looked into this problem a little bit on our side as well


outside of Google is that spammers are often


very technically savvy.


And it's possible for them to get things sometimes


indexed before the original content is indexed.


So if Google were to just look at the date of indexing,


then that's not necessarily the date when


the content was first created.


And if there were an incentive to get things indexed quickly


to kind of take someone's ownership of the content,


then that's something that I'm sure people


would try to take advantage of.


So that's, I think, just kind of as an aside.


In general, though, all of these legal questions


are things I can't directly help with because I'm not


your legal advisor.


And I can't give you legal advice.


So my recommendation there would be


to get help from a lawyer on your side


and to figure out an approach that you can take there.


Because this is, in general, not something


where it's a matter of going to a search console


and clicking the right buttons, but rather


where you really need to make sure


that you're following the appropriate legal steps so


that you can resolve this problem.


So John, follow up on that.


So Google can't tell from a legal perspective


if that is original content.


But from a ranking point of view,


do I need to worry about a website grabbing my content?


Or Google can figure out I published it earlier


if I actually do publish it earlier.


So they will actually rank higher


because I publish it first.


We have a number of systems that try


to figure out which version of the content


we should be showing in the search results.


So that's something where sometimes it comes down


to things like that.


But it's not always just that.


So one scenario that we see from our side all the time


is that we will publish something


on our blog, on the Webmaster Central blog.


And then it'll be indexed there first


because we publish it first.


But someone else will take that content


and sometimes copy it completely and add


some additional information.


And then from a search point of view,


we're kind of in that tricky situation in that if someone


is searching for that content, should we


show the original source?


Assuming we know that this is the original source.


Or should we show that other article


which adds some additional information to it?


And from that point of view, sometimes it


really makes sense to show that other article because it


actually does have some additional information.


So even if we were able to map perfectly


this article or this piece of content


was first published here and probably


is this person's copyright, doesn't


mean that we would always rank that version of the content


first when someone is searching for the content.


So it's kind of a tricky thing.


In general, the one place where this kind of falls


into a little bit of a clearer bucket


is when we can recognize that a whole website is essentially


just copying content from other people.


Then that's something that's a lot easier for our systems


to say, well, there's actually no real value


in showing this website because they're not adding new value.


They're always just copying things from other sites.


We might as well just show the other sites instead.


So that's kind of the clear situation.


Everything else is kind of a vague, tricky, tricky realm


of which one of these versions is really the better


one to show to users.


I have a few things.


Just as an aside, do you know how many DMCA requests


are filed every day?


Is it a big number or is it just a handful?


I think it's a big number.


I don't know what they're doing.


So I mean, we have a video on some of the DMCA things


from Google official side.


But so one of the reasons I think it's a big number


is that some of the bigger content providers


do these things automatically, where they kind of automatically


crawl the web on their own and figure out, oh, these people


are copying our content.


And it's clear that they're copying our content


and they just file a DMCA complaint automatically.


So that's something where it ends up with a really


large number fairly quickly.


Oh, I think we also have in the transparency dashboard,


we have the DMCA complaints as well.


So you could probably look up kind of the largest submitters


there as well.


That might be interesting.


AUDIENCE OK, yeah.


Thanks.


Yeah.


It's complicated because on the one hand,


I know we would like to help people more with this process.


But because it's so kind of legally tricky,


it is very hard to do that without ending up


giving people legal advice.


And that's something that we really can't do.


All right.


So I don't know.


Let's maybe move on to some more live questions from your side


if there is anything.


AUDIENCE Hey, John, I have a question.


So since 2017, Google started to rank page


with intrusive pop-up lower.


But there are exceptions like cookie consent,


like age verification, things like that.


So my question is, what if I slip


some promotional information in my cookie consent pop-up?


Like,


JOHN MUELLER Our system is trying


to recognize these kind of legal overlays.


And that's something where if it's not clearly something


that we would consider kind of this kind of legal overlay,


then we might assume that that's something that's


more a part of your content, it said.


So that's, I think, the tricky part there.


AUDIENCE I see.


So how much is considered intrusive?


What if I want to promote something using my pop-up,


but it only take up like 15% of the screen and did not


overlay all the content?


Is that OK?


JOHN MUELLER We don't have a specific number.


So from that point of view, it's hard to say.


In practice, if it's a small part of the page,


then generally that's OK.


So with regards to the intrusive pop-ups,


the ones that we primarily see as being problematic


are really where you take the majority of the screen


and you just use that for a pop-up, where


when people go to your pages, they're not


able to get to your actual content.


That's what we would consider problematic.


AUDIENCE So generally, if the pop-up


don't interfere with the main content, you're probably OK.


Yeah.


Thanks.


Sure.


All right.


More questions from any of you.


Hi, John.


Hi.


This is Baboon from India.


I just wanted to know if Google News


indexing will be solved soon.


There are quite some issues regarding the indexing


on the new Argo.


I saw some tweets around that, but I don't


have any insight on that.


Actually, it started after the last December upgrade,


when the BERT Argo was introduced.


Jane.


Jane, are you there?


Oh, man.


Yeah, I don't have any insight on what


has been happening with the Google News side.


Sorry.


Can you pass it to the team?


We did pass it to the team to take a look.


Yeah.


Thanks, John.


Thanks.


Sure.


Hi, John.


So one of my colleagues showed me a query, a Romanian query


for a medical term, where one of the top five results


shows a website that has an article on that topic.


But there's a lot of links towards Viagra


and other things like that.


It also seems to show up in the cache.


So it looks like Google has already crawled it.


But for some reason, the anti-spam feature


hasn't kicked in, so to speak.


Here's the actual search.


And this is the site that, at least for me,


shows up in position four.


So it looks like they might have been hacked recently.


I'm just not sure how much it takes for Google


to notice that and see, oops, there are a lot of links


to spammy places.


Yeah.


I don't know if you're seeing that site on your end.


I'll take a look afterwards.


But we do have systems that try to recognize


when sites get hacked.


I think it's, I don't know the situation


of this particular site.


But in particular, it's a lot easier for us


to recognize these kind of things


when there are significant changes on the site.


Like when a website is a school website


and suddenly has a lot of pharmaceutical content on it,


then that's something where it's like, well, probably


something went wrong here.


But if a website was already kind of in a medical area


and suddenly has pharmaceutical content on it,


then that could be something that's


a little bit more of a natural progression there.


That might be a little bit trickier for our systems


to pick up on.


So that's something where sometimes we


can pick it up fairly quickly and fairly well.


And sometimes we need to improve things overall.


Right, I was just asking, since this is a medical topic,


I know that Google kind of tries to take


a bit of a stronger stance in terms


of the quality of content and relevance, things like that.


Yeah.


I don't know.


I'll take a look and pass that on to our team.


Cool.


All right.


We're kind of out of time.


Hi, John.


Hi.


Bapu Nagin.


I just wanted to know, I had an old domain, which I have begun


a website this year.


So it is crawled by the Google desktop crawler.


So I wanted to know if it will move to the Google mobile fast


indexing soon.


The website is responsive and being enabled.


So our systems use a number of factors


to determine when we should switch this website over


to mobile first indexing.


And usually that's something that happens automatically


over time, where we will reprocess the websites


that we currently don't have in mobile first indexing


and double check that they're actually OK.


But in general, it's not something


where you would have any kind of ranking or indexing advantage


if you were switched over to mobile first indexing.


So it's not that you kind of need to do that as quickly


as possible or not.


It's really just from a technical point of view,


we will switch over to the mobile crawler.


And if everything is OK on your website,


it will continue to work as it had before.


So it's not that we would say your website is bad


if it's not in the mobile first index yet.


All right.


Actually, I heard it will move from September onwards.


All website will be moved to mobile fast indexing.


That's where I watched.


Yes, we initially said in September


we would shift the rest of the web


over to mobile first indexing.


But we decided to move that date backwards to end of March


to give sites a little bit more time


if there are specific issues that you need


to resolve on your website.


Thanks.


Sure.


With that, maybe let's take a break here with the recording.


I still have a little bit more time if any of you


want to hang around afterwards.


But let's maybe pause the recording here.


And in the meantime, anyone who wishes to go,


it's like I wish you all a great weekend.


Thank you all for sticking around and listening in.


Thanks for all the good questions.


And hopefully, I'll see you all again


in one of the future Hangouts.


Introducing Getting Started with Page Experience

Are you confused by Core Web Bottles? Perplexed by page experience? Or just have no idea what


I'm talking about? Then I have just the thing for you.


Join us right here on this channel for a brand new video series where we'll deep dive into


all those things and more. We'll learn about Page Experience, the brand new ranking factor


coming to a search results page near you. We'll examine and explain each and every aspect


of this exciting new collection of metrics you can use to make sure your site is giving


every user the best possible experience. You'll come away with a deeper understanding of what


all these different measurements are and specific steps that you can take to improve each and


every part of your site. From the tools to code changes and more, it doesn't matter if


you're anxious about algorithm adjustments or you've already perfected your page's performance.


This series will have something for everyone. So make sure you're subscribed if you aren't


Google Search Console: How to Submit a Robots.txt in the New Version? #AskGoogleWebmasters

Today, we'll be answering Divyesh's question.


Divyesh is asking, with the new Google Search Console,


we're not able to submit robots.txt.


I have to switch to the old version.


When is the plan to move it to the new version?


As you've probably noticed, we're


still moving features and reports


over from the old Search Console to the new Search Console.


Depending on when you're watching this video,


we might already have moved more features over.


In general, our plan with the new Search Console


is not to just copy features over,


but rather to rethink them along the way.


What problems are we trying to help websites with?


Is this still something that needs


to be handled in our tools, or has the problem become mostly


irrelevant in the meantime?


Are there other ways to help which might be more efficient


or perhaps less confusing?


All of this is to say, there's a lot of work involved


with adding new features to the new Search Console.


So it can take a bit of time.


In general, we try to avoid pre-announcing bigger launches.


We prefer to just launch when it's ready.


Using the old Search Console is, of course, perfectly fine


in the meantime.


That's all for today.


And I'll see you again in the next episode of


Ask Google Webmasters.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

Hi, I'm Alan Kent, a developer advocate at Google specializing in e-commerce.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

In this series, I'm going to explore a number of common technical issues


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

that can impact the effectiveness of your e-commerce website in Google Search.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

While this series is technical in nature,


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

you may find the content useful even if you're not that technical.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

My goal is to help you decide which technical areas are worth your time exploring further.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

What the series will not cover is advice for specific platforms.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

For example, I will not be recommending platforms to use as there are many great solutions on the market.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

Also, the diversity of solutions means I will focus more on identifying if your website has room for improvement


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

rather than helping you fix it.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

Solutions are often platform specific, so any recommendations I give will be fairly generic.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

Each episode in this series will introduce an area where we have seen problems on e-commerce sites.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

For each problem, I will then describe the potential impact of the problem,


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

show how to use tools to detect if your site suffers from the problem,


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

and finally provide general recommendations where possible.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

Watching this series should help you understand the most common issues we have seen in Google Search,


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!

enabling you to take action to get the most out of your e-commerce website.


Welcome to Ecommerce Essentials!


Does a website theme matter for SEO? #AskGooglebot

Today's question comes from Nitin, who wonders if changing a website's theme can affect its SEO.


It's easy to consider website themes as just a splash of color on top of a finished structure,


but there's so much more involved. A theme determines a lot of things on a website, such as


how content is displayed, including headings, text, images, and more. How are pages linked within the website?


How quickly pages load for users? Which content options you can use? And how to use structured data?


All of these items are important parts of a website, and they play a role for SEO.


So regardless of whether you're just getting started, or if you're interested in changing an existing website,


the theme that you pick will affect SEO. A good theme can make it easier for search engines to understand the content that you create.


In short, yes, changing a website's theme generally will affect a website's SEO.


Picking a theme for a website is hard, even when it comes to the visual design, at least for me.


My recommendation would be to try themes out on a test website.


In there, add some content from your previous website so that you can easily compare.


Of course, if you're just testing, make sure to block indexing of the test website.


Now consider how the theme displays your content.


There can be a lot of things to watch out for here. I'd recommend checking out our SEO starter guide and looking at the HTML which the theme generates.


If HTML is not your cup of tea, find someone who can help you with that.


For other aspects, you can also use the Search Console testing tools to check those test pages and to compare them to your current ones.


Since a theme can determine so many things across a website, it's a good idea to take your time to pick one that really works for you and that you can use for the long run.


I feel we could make this video hours long to cover all of the variations of themes, but I hope this helps to get you started.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

I feel like there's this weird, interesting spectrum on the web


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

where on one end is content and the other is app,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

but it blends at a certain point.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And it's that blending part that I find is always interesting


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

where I'd hate for us to be building something


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

in a way that then search can't understand that piece.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Right, because you want to find the content that


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

lives inside the applications, and you


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

want to still find the applications, right?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Right.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And that's what we're trying to do, right?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, let's get started.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, let's start with the web developer ecosystem.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Hello, and welcome to SEO Mythbusting.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Today, I have Dion Almer with me.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

What do you work on?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

I work in the web developer ecosystem group here at Google.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And so that's within the Chrome organization,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

but we work across Chrome and search and ads


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and all of the different areas of Google


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that care about the web.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Personally, my passion is about the ecosystem, hence the name.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, it's about looking at the health of the web


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and what are we doing to really help developers,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

but even beyond developers, hence the SEO world


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and the like, to make sure that people are being successful.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, that could be successful in building amazing user


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

experiences, but it's also successful in actually


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

being able to pay the bills.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And so they can keep making those amazing user experiences.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

That is great.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, when I have you here today, I


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

would love to talk about SEO and the web platform going forward.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, we want to look into what are the new use cases, what


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

are the things that are coming up next,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and what are the things that we, from the search side,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

should be preparing for, let's say.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Do you have any highlights that you want to talk about?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Yeah, so I gave a keynote at the Chrome Dev Summit


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

in November 2018.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And it's kind of going through sharing


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

all of these great, amazing web platform updates and tooling


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

updates.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

In the back of my mind, you're always


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

thinking about, are we getting closer to search


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and helping the world, or are we causing more problems going on?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, I'm actually really curious to get some of your thoughts


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

on some of these items.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Amazing.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

One case study, actually, that we showed was Pinterest.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And it really got me thinking, because they came along


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and their growth team built this new PWA.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

That's fantastic.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

It's amazing.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

The performance is top notch.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

It's a great experience.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, they've got this great PWA that's really exciting.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Then they've got their regular desktop site.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

They're using AMP for different things.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And so, if I'm a team like that, how do I like,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

I've got all of these different sites in a way,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

which is almost like the opposite of the promise


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

of the web at times.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Where we build it once, and it was everywhere.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, which are these?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

What's the one that I want to give to search?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

How do I think about that?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

That's a really good question.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, I think, generally speaking, if you


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

have the same content in multiple ways


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that you present them to the user,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

find out the one that is most likely to apply


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

to as many people as possible.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, if you have one specific thing for, let's say,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

sign up users to actually remix it or something,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that might not be the thing that you want to surface to search.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Because me coming into it from outside


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and not having ever used it, and I might not even


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

be able to use the feature.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And then it's like, why am I getting here?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, try to think of what are people typing into a search


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

bar?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

What is the purpose they are coming from?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

I want to see this image board that Dion has


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

created for Chrome Dev Summit.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, I might type in like image board Dev Summit.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And then I want to get the PWA probably,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

because it loads fastest and it is available even if I'm


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

offline and stuff like that.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, give me that.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But also, link to the AMP version,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

because then we can also show the AMP version next to it.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, it is not really a ranking signal.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, we might see different rankings there,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

depending on the purpose and the user characteristics,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

what they type into the search bar.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But if you link them, then we can make the decision for you.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, you don't have to worry about that kind of stuff.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

If you then have a desktop site as well, that is great as well.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

If it's responsive, that's even better.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

If it's not responsive, then give us an alternate link


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

so that we can decide, OK, so this is the Google


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

crawler that uses mobile first.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, we're probably going to highlight the PWA experience


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

over the desktop site versus if someone's


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

using the desktop site, we might give them the other version


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

rather than that.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But we are trying to make the right decisions for your users


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

so that you don't have to worry about these things.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But strategically speaking, give us


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

a canonical that makes sense to as many people as possible


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

so that we can surface the related information based


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

on what people are looking for rather than any differences


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

in the presentation.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Got it.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Cool.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

The other thing that comes up a lot


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

is integrating our tools together instead


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

of having it in silos.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, we've already been working.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We've got Lighthouse over here.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We have PageSpeed Insights.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We've got SearchCon.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We've got all of these different pieces.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We announced at Chrome Dev Summit the unification


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

of some of these.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, PageSpeed Insights now uses Lighthouse and the like.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And that's super exciting.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Wayfair, another company, built this performance portal


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

to help the team make sure that they don't regress.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Because we see that a large percentage of the times,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

people will do an investment, have a quick burst,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

get their performance good, and then it will slowly go down.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, they have this awesome performance culture


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that's trying to fix that.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And I'm just looking at that and thinking about,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

it's yet another example.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Here's all the performance stuff.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Couldn't we be surfacing the SEO pieces into that, too?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

How do we bridge these worlds together


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

so both sides can see the other things that are going on?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So, Lighthouse gets more SEO audits, which is great,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

I think.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

That probably, at some point, feeds into PageSpeed Insights


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

as well.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Search Console integrates some of these metrics as well.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Because performance is also important for search


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and discoverability.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We want to reward the content that


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

gets the user quicker into the content


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

rather than having to wait forever until something loads,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

especially on mobile networks.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But for external tools and external companies


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

who want to dig into the data, I think


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Search Console is a great way of already doing


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that in a packaged way.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But we are working on ways of integrating external parties


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and external content providers and platforms


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

to get the data that we are collecting already


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

for Search Console.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So for instance, if you know one of the many larger content


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

management systems or platforms that exist out there where


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

people are creating content, we don't


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

want them to have to specifically go


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

into Search Console and now deal with the interface


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

they're used to and then deal with something new.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

That's why we are bringing the data into these platforms.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And eventually, hopefully, once we


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

have gathered enough information to understand


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

how the data is used and what data


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

is necessary and meaningful to external parties,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

we will open these interfaces.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

There will literally be an API to integrate the data


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

from Search Console, which gives you information as click


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

through rate, how many impressions you've


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

got from search, how many clicks you get from search,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

all this kind of thing, how many of your pages


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

are indexed, actually.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Because not all of it might be indexed.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

There might be an issue.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

You might have a markup problem.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We want to surface this where people already are.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

That can be an IDE integration.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

That can be something like Wayfair does.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But at this point in time, we are too early on


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

to open that up to the general public.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But eventually, that's going to happen.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

That's so exciting.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And some people were talking about how


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

they want to understand the unknown things.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

They want to go, if I do this, that, or the other,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

how does it affect my customer lifetime value in these things?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And we keep running into something on the performance


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

side where they'll do this work, and they'll make


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

something that's a lot better.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But their metrics actually show in the field that it's slower.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And they're like, what's going on?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

In the lab, it's faster.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

It's obviously faster.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

I can see it's so much better.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

How's it slower?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And then it's because the reach that they got just totally


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

changed.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So these people on 2G networks in emerging markets


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that can actually really use this now.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Then you're comparing apples to oranges.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Right.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So you've got all of these new customers.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And so the mean metric isn't the thing that matters here.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Right now, you've reached this new audience.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

You get more revenue and the like.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And so how do we know, with the search side and discovery,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

what are the next things I should do?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

What should I prioritize?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

I think a bunch of stuff that Search Console gives you


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

already is kind of handy for that.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

You see how certain content works


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and how certain other content might not work so great.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And that can have technical reasons,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

or it can be actually content reasons.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So what we are trying to do is we're


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

trying to also broaden the perspective a little bit.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

I mean, you said that, like, oh, yeah, we're


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

in this metric right now.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We want to improve performance.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But actually, it has degraded.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And it's like, well, it has.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But it's not a bad thing, because what actually happened


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

is we opened up to more people.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

That happens with search as well,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

if you look at it from a more holistic perspective.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So if you're not just looking at technology,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

but also at your content strategy.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And what I would love to see happening


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

is that if we bring this data to where people already are,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that people become more aware of it,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that maybe you should also look at your content


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and the way you present it and the way


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

you make sure that you're talking


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

to the person on the other end who is


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

trying to solve a purpose, right?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

You're looking for something specific


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

rather than necessarily a specific product.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

It's like, I need this task to be gone and done and dusted.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And how do I do this?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So I think bringing the data to other people will help.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And I think what developers should look at


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

is how their content is performing in search engines


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

as well.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So how often do I show up in search results?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Where in the search results do I rank?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

How many clicks do I get from search results


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

if the content looks like this versus like that?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So that's something that I hope to bring to more people


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Cool.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Yeah, that makes sense.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So web components has been another big topic.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And we released an early version of a new one


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that I'm super excited about called Virtual Scroller.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And basically, for years, web developers


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

have been saying, give me a UITable view on the web that


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

can perform in scales with the DOM.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And so we feel like we're going to be able to deliver that.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But then what's that going to mean in the SEO world?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Is search going to be able to understand this


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

if it's all virtual?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And as we kind of push the bar here for performance and user


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

experience, how do we make sure we don't leave behind?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

I think what a lot of people outside of our sphere


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

don't realize is that we are working hand-in-hand.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

It's not like SEO or search versus the browser teams.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We are trying to figure out how we can work with a web platform


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

rather than against it.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We are using the web platform.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We are basically running a browser, if you wish.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So we are actually looking into things like web components


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and Virtual Scroller specifically.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And I think it's a fantastic thing,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

because we have literally just released documentation


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

for lazy loading or infinite scroll, whatever


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

you want to call it.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Basically, you know the drill.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

You have a page with a bazillion images or product listings.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

You can't have them all on the page right away, right?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

You want to make sure that as the user goes


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

through the content, it comes back.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

How often did it happen to you that someone sent you a link?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So it's like, have you seen this product?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And then you go to the link and you see a lot of things,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

but not that product.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And then they go, oh, yeah, you have to scroll down


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

for a few minutes.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

That's not good, right?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Web components are another thing that we are really careful


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

about, and we have some guidance out there already.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We expect to give more guidance as well.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Because if you build new web components from scratch,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

they look like they are semantic,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

but they are not necessarily semantic in the strong sense,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

right?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

If it's a button that just happens to look like a button,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

but really is a div underneath, you


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

lose a lot of the accessibility features.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And so does search also loses a bunch


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

of the semantics behind it.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So right now, we are recommending


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

putting the content, the meaty bits of your content,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

like the actual, well, what it is about,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

put that into the light DOM, and then


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

use the shadow DOM and your components for presentation.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Virtual Scholar is a specific, interesting case


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

where not only is presentation, but also


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

the way of how the content gets loaded and the content behaves.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So we are working on figuring out how to make that consistent


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

with search so that you don't have


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

to worry about using these new technologies,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

because we are really excited about them as well.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Yeah, no, that's great.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

How do you feel about, I keep longing


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

for a world in the future where we


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

add with web components these different semantics,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

kind of high level semantics that search can understand,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

but also assistants can understand,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

so we can get further into transactions and the like.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

We've got the notion of, I really


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

want to be able to go onto a commerce experience,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and so I want to buy a t-shirt for Martin.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And everything is broken in a way


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that it knows your t-shirt size, even if I don't.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

You know what I mean?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And there's a person tag and all these other things.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And then you get a great UI from it, too,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

because it's standardized, but then search could use that.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And Assistant could do full transactions if we do that.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And it feels like that would be a way for Assistant


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

to kind of reach the long tail versus trying to go to everyone


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

who's building a website that's got a lot of work to do


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

as it is, and we're asking them to modernize this,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and fix your performance, and do this for discovery,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and also build this thing for the Assistant.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Do you feel like we'll ever get there?


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

I think we get there probably quicker than we think,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

because conveniently we have already


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

pushed the idea of using structured data to expose


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

a bunch of information on your pages in a way


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

that not only our crawlers can understand them,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

but also anyone else who basically


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

parses this information.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

And we're using schema.org for that.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So we use a standardized format rather than just


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

a proprietary thing.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

So I hope that gets more adoption,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and we see it both picked up by developers


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

and by these Assistant systems, because then you


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

can use the web really powerfully,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

because you have all the semantic data that you can just


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

pull together and then package in such an experience


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

as you explain the full end-to-end commerce,


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

for instance.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Cool.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Nice.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Man, thank you so much.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Thank you, Martin.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Thank you.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

See, development and SEO don't have


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

to be contradicting each other.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Also, the iced tea is pretty not good.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

Pretty watery.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting

But it has the fantastic right color.


The Future of the Web: SEO Mythbusting


Rich Results & Google Search Console | WMConf Lightning Talks

Hi, I'm Daniel Weisberg, Search Advocate at Google,


and welcome to another Lightning Talk


from the Webmaster Conference Lightning Talk series.


Today, I'm going to talk about how to get started with rich results


and use Search Console to optimize your search appearance in Google Search.


There are four questions I'll try to answer today.


What are rich results and structured data?


How to uncover issues with alerts and checks?


How to fix and validate errors and warnings?


And how to monitor and optimize search traffic?


How to search for and validate errors and warnings?


Many years ago, you would search for a piece of information on Google,


and all results would come up as plain blue links.


Over time, the answers that Google provided to your queries became richer,


evolving in what we call today rich results.


Rich results are search results that provide special features or information.


For example, for recipe rich results,


you might see a small picture of the dish and a preview of some ingredients.


For job posting rich results, you might see a description, salary,


and click through to apply for the job.


Those results are powered by Google's ability to understand the content of a website.


Sometimes, Google can also use markup that developers add to their pages


so machines can understand their content better.


This markup is called structured data.


To get started, visit our search gallery


and browse through all the structured data types supported by Google.


This will help you identify which types would work for you,


and you might even find a specific case study


to help you understand the value of implementing it.


Once you find one or more features you'd like to implement,


read the documentation to learn how it works,


see sample code, guidelines, and detailed reference information.


Depending on your content management system,


you can install an extension or plugin that does the hard work for you.


Otherwise, your developers can use the rich results test


to check and modify their code in the live code editor.


This can save valuable time and effort.


It's always more efficient to have your markup working properly


before moving it to production.


Once you've implemented structured data on your site,


you can start analyzing it in Search Console enhancement reports.


There are three questions that are at the heart of the reports you see in Search Console.


Is there anything wrong with my site?


How can I fix any issues and tell Google about it?


And how can I optimize my search performance?


Let me go through an example of how you would use Search Console


to answer those questions for your rich results.


In order to answer question number one, there are two things you need to know.


The first one is that we'll notify you whenever we find an issue on your website.


Whenever Search Console finds an error in your pages,


we'll send you an email to let you know about it.


You'll get some details about the issue with a link to more information


or to the report you need to check.


The second thing you need to know is that if an existing issue


starts affecting more pages, you won't get an email.


So take a look at the enhancement reports once in a blue moon


and check that the trends are somewhat steady.


Some amount of fluctuation is natural, but you don't want to see sudden spikes.


To see a summary of the health of all the structured data on your site,


go into an enhancement report in Search Console.


There is a separate report for each rich result type


and another report for structured data that had errors


that prevented us from knowing the type of rich result.