JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

on the pages so that Google can go on the page two, page three,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and so on.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But what if we have these Load More buttons?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So it does mean that on all the pages we have 10 items,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

we click on the button, we get another 10 items, and so on.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Which is the best solution for that Google


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

can crawl all the items on these pages, like in the shop?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And if I have a static link to page two,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

the page two link, if I open it in a new tab,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

should it show the 20 items?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So the first 10 and the second 10?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Or should it just show the second 10 items in the process?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

What's the best solution?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Because I have read a couple of articles,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

but I couldn't find any working solution


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

which was actually approved.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

MARTIN SPLITTENBERG


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So it really is a question of what works best in terms


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

of your implementation.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But there are a few guidelines that are generally true.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So number one is, if it's a button, and when I say button,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I literally mean a button, not a link.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

A button.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

If it's a button, you're out of luck.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Google bot does not click on the button,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

so we are not interacting with that.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So that's bad.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

The best idea would probably be to implement that button


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

as a link that basically goes to,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I don't know, question mark, page two, or slash two,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

or whatever.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It doesn't matter what the URL looks like.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

The point is it goes to a URL that shows


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

a different batch of content.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I would argue, I personally would argue,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

best would be, or easiest for us would be,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

if the page two link shows just the batch of 10 items


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that are on page two, because that


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

would mean that we are seeing definitely unique content.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And depending on how much content each of these products


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

has in the list that you're paginating there,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

you might end up, if you have lots of content


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that we have already seen on other pages,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and then only 10 are different, it


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

might get canonicalized away, which is not what you want.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So having unique content per page


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

is definitely a benefit there.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And you can use JavaScript to override this behavior


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

for users, so that when they click that link,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

it doesn't behave like a link that actually takes you


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

somewhere else.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But actually, you override the behavior of the link


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

to just include more, the next 10 items on the same page,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

so that you don't have the janky move


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

between the different pages, if that's what you want to avoid.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That's how I would implement it.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Is that the best strategy?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Maybe.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It depends on what you're trying to do,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and it depends on what is possible in the platform


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that you're working with.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That's a discussion to have with your developers.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But in general, buttons, we don't interact with buttons.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So if that's all you have, then you're out of luck.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

We are not seeing the other content.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Having static links to pages is definitely a better strategy.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah, so we were planning to use static links.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But yeah, but you have answered the question, actually,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that it's not a problem that if page two for a user,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

let's say page 10 for the user displays 100 items,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and for Google, it's only 10 items.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So that's not an issue.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That's not an issue, exactly.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's not cloaking or anything.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's just a different way of how people


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

can navigate your content.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Good, thanks.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And one more question regarding this pagination.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

What I have seen on one of my client's website,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

in log files, actually, that in the last couple of months,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Google has started to crawl an on-click URL, which


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

is actually a link.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's a HREF link, but it has on the on-click load


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

page and the URL.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And these URLs were actually crawled by Google.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And that's actually the way my question is,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

does Google crawl these on-click events?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Because as you say, Google is crawling mostly


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

these static URLs and not the on-click and any buttons.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And these links are never linked to any of the pages.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

MARTIN SPLITTENBERG


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So either someone put it somewhere where we found that.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So we don't click on things.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That's true.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It is possible, hypothetically, that it's a fake Googlebot.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It could also be that it's a Googlebot running.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So Google is alive.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It was a Google Search Console.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Google Search Console.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Ah, Search Console, interesting.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah, across the place.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

In that case, it definitely comes from us.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But you would have to share that, because I still


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

don't exactly understand what you mean with this.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But I know that we are not clicking on anything.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And clicking does not cause a crawl.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So even if we were to click on something,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

it wouldn't cause a crawl.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

What is possible that somehow something triggers,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and we think that's a URL, and then we try it out.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But I can't think of anything.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So that would be interesting to see in more detail, definitely.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But if you can share one of those URLs


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that we actually pulled out and how it is positioned


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

in the code, that would be interesting.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But in general, we don't click on things.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's ridiculously expensive to click on things.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That's why we're not doing that, by the way.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

In terms of CPU power of the WRS,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

clicking on things is expensive.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So that's why we're not doing it.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Awesome.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

We get questions in the chat as well.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Adil is asking, if our pages are essentially identical,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

the only real difference of each page


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

is the event schema for different days.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Will all pages be crawled and rendered?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Probably they will be crawled and rendered.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Maybe not all of them will be indexed.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Some of them might get canonicalized away,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and then eventually don't necessarily get crawled again.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

We wrote all the event schema.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I'm not super sure how our policy looks


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

like around event schema.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So you have an event that has multiple days,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

but you have different pages for it.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That's interesting.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I think it would probably be a good idea.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So I'm not 100% sure if I understand the question


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

correctly.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But assuming that you have a multi-day event,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

you'll only need one set of event-structured data markup


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

to say so, because you can say the start and end times


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and dates, as far as I'm aware.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So I would probably prefer to put that on one page


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and canonicalize to that page.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But your mileage may vary.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That's definitely territory where I would just


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

test and see what happens.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I have observed that Yannick asking question again.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I have observed that automatically loading


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

more products or job postings while scrolling


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

increases the CLS value with each load.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

From Google's point of view, is a show more


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

button a better solution?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I don't know.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

The CLS metric is a tricky one that


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

is also being overhauled, because it's definitely


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

not perfect.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So yeah, tricky question.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I don't think a show more button is necessarily


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

going to be a preferable solution,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

because I think there is something


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

to be said for infinite scrolling.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So if the users keep scrolling and things pop in,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I think that's not a bad experience per se,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

even though the CLS metric does make it seem that way.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But I'm not sure if load more necessarily changes


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

how that would affect CLS.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But again, CLS metric, that's definitely something


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that we are overhauling, because we are not


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

super happy with the way that it works right now.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Aha, OK.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So rather than having calendar pages use a monthly view


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

to provide all the data, I don't know.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That's a good question.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Adil, I would try different versions


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and see how they perform, because I don't


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

have the answer for that one.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Lovely.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thanks, Dave.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

By the way, it's Addy's birthday today.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So if you want, you can pop over to Twitter


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and say, happy birthday to Addy.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Sweet.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Anyone else?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Any other question?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Also, Tamas, if you want to share the URL with us,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

you can do that in the chat if you want,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

or you can also just ping me on Twitter.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

If you don't want to do that in public, that's fine.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I will share it with you later.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I will just summarize everything then.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Awesome.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thank you very much.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I have another question.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yes.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's regarding crawling.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So if you have a website, and the website


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

is a couple of years old, this website has a slash D-E-N


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

slash E-M part.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

They have exactly the same content,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I mean, in the English and German version.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's a webshop.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

They have approximately the same backlink profile.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But one of the folders is called three times more as the D-E-A.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And it's similar to the traffic as well.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So that means that one, the D-E-A gets three times


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

more traffic as the E-M. Does it also


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

affect the crawling from Google?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It has nothing to do with it.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

No, that's separate concerns.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

For crawling, we basically just try


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

to figure out how often does content change


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and how often we think we should be revisiting that part.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So it might just be that we saw more fluctuation or more change


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

in one of the folders over the other,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

but it has nothing to do with how much traffic goes where.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It also doesn't say anything about the quality.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

No, no, no.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

No, it was just interesting to see.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And the content changes actually at the same time.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So if there's a new product.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Interesting.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So it's good to know.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Do you use hreflang to tell us about the different versions?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah, in that case, that makes sense.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Maybe we identified that if we crawl one of the folders,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

we kind of get the information for the other bits as well.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's kind of like, OK, so we already


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

know that basically whenever this changes,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

this other thing changes.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So we don't necessarily have to recheck everything here.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

We only have to check the bits and pieces that


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

have changed on the E-M side because they


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

are linked to the hreflang.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So that's a possible explanation for why


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

you are seeing this disparity between the two folders.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

OK.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Cool.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That makes sense.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thank you.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

You're welcome.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

We have a few people who joined recently.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So if any of you has questions, we're


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

in the audience part of the Q&A. Getting very quiet.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

We haven't even reached the 30-minute mark yet.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Hi.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Do you have a question?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

No.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Ooh.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Doing fine.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I do get an echo.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Oh, I'm sorry.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

No worries.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I'm putting on my mic.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I'll just wait.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Hello?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

All right.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah, we still have an echo.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

OK.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Well, I guess we have to listen to the echo.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

How are you doing?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah, I'm doing great.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thank you.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Ah, now the echo is gone.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Lovely.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

This works.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

OK, fantastic.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So my question is, actually, I'm seeing these various blogs


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

saying that the JavaScript SEO is like a new big thing.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So I'm not sure about that.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So can you give us some brief about it?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So what is exactly the JavaScript SEO,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and how does it work?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Interesting question.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

What is JavaScript SEO?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

In general, it's nothing different than regular SEO.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

There's nothing fancy.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

There's nothing new.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

There's nothing specific.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's just acknowledging that a bunch of websites these days


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

are using JavaScript to generate the content that they actually


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

show.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And thus, you need to understand the JavaScript that


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

does that, that builds the page's content,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

in order to understand if there are any SEO problems.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

For a long time, the general opinion


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

was that JavaScript and SEO don't go together.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So if you use JavaScript to build your page,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

you can't be discoverable through search.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That is not the case.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That is not true.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And people who keep telling that are definitely far behind,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

because that hasn't been true for at least a year


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

at this point.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But there's nothing super specific about JavaScript SEO.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's just a different aspect of technical SEO,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

just like local SEO is an aspect of SEO.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And if you're interested in it, we actually


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

do have a pretty good article that I shall share in the chat


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

real quick.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That gives you an overview of how JavaScript


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

can influence the page, and how we are processing it,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and what you should be aware of.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But there's nothing super fancy about it.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

SPEAKER 1, Understood.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Understood.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thank you so much for explaining.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

You're welcome.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

All right.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Do we have more questions?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I have at least eight people in this lovely.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah, it's eight people and me.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So if anyone has a question, feel


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

free to use the chat or your microphone and or camera.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Ah, so good to be back.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I have had a bit of a break with these,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

because there was a lot of work to be done around the events


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and a bunch of other things that are not necessarily


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

super visual externally.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But I'm really, really happy to be back to the office hours.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

There are no further questions, and I


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

shall do a little countdown in a moment.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Then I would say we wrap this up.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Any questions?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

No?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

OK.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

In that case, thanks, everyone who joined live today.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It has been a blast.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thanks a lot for all your questions.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thanks to everyone who submitted questions through the chat


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

or through YouTube.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

The next one is going to be in two weeks.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That one will be in a later time slot


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

so that it accommodates different time zones.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I'll post on YouTube when the next one will be,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and you can ask your questions there.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Or join us live in two weeks.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thanks a lot for joining.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Stay safe.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Stay healthy.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Have a fantastic rest of the week.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Bye-bye.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Bye.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thank you, Zev and Martin.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thanks for joining, Dave.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021


English Google SEO office-hours from January 8, 2021

All right, welcome, everyone, to today's Google SEO Office


Hour Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I am a search advocate at Google.


And part of what I do are these Office Hour Hangouts


where people can jump in and ask their questions around search.


Bunch of things were submitted on YouTube already.


So we can go through some of that.


But maybe first of all, I just wanted


to wish you all Happy New Year.


Thanks for sticking around last year through all of the,


I don't know, ups and downs and sideways and everything.


Hopefully, this year will be a little bit easier.


But it's starting off with a bang.


So we'll see.


Hopefully, at least with these Office Hour Hangouts,


we have something kind of regular that's not too great.


Anyway, and so we can jump through some of the questions


that were submitted.


But maybe first of all, if any of you


want to ask a question, something on your mind,


feel free to jump on in now.


No one.


Oh, I see.


Someone raised their hand.


Go for it.


Hi, John.


If you can hear me?


OK, perfect.


So I'm trying to index a site that


has about a million products.


So I'm trying to index it slowly by just submitting


the products first and then categories pages,


rather indexing tags and everything once.


So this is being done from last few weeks.


And I've managed to index about 3 lakh products.


So is there something I can do extra to expedite the process


so I can get indexed those products quickly?


Not really.


I assume this is a new website?


Yeah.


It was actually published three, four months ago.


OK.


So usually what happens on our side


is we try to index a bunch of content


from especially new websites.


But we're a little bit trying to be almost on the safe side


when it comes to a ton of content.


In particular, it takes a lot of storage.


It takes a lot of time to index really large websites.


So we need to make sure that it's really worthwhile.


So one of the things that we do is we might,


in the beginning, with the new website,


we might be a little bit more conservative and a little bit


hold back a little bit on the indexing speed,


on the crawling speed so that we don't


cause problems on the server.


And over time, as we see that this is a really good website,


that it's embedded well within the rest of the web,


and we'll pick up again and crawl a little bit more.


So what you're seeing there is essentially


normal and expected.


And it's not that there is a simple way to just say, OK,


Google, index a million pages.


But rather, you have to kind of show to Google


that actually the millions of pages


that you have on your site, they're worthwhile.


And they're important to the index


because they contain something that people are looking for,


where people are actively going to your site,


recommending it to other people.


So that was really interesting.


I actually know the quality from your guidelines, et cetera.


So this is actually a parts website, mechanical parts.


It has a specific niche or industry


that is searching for those parts.


So I believe it might take much longer than the usual.


Much longer than the usual website.


I don't know.


It depends.


It's possible.


So one of the strategies that some sites use, especially


in the beginning as they're building things up,


is to concentrate on fewer pages that


are really important for you and build up on those pages


and expand on that.


So with a parts website, one of the things you could do


is focus, for example, on the categories of parts


that you have.


And instead of focusing on all of the millions


of individual parts on the categories,


because then people will still be


able to find your categories if they search specifically


for the part number or the name of the part.


But you'll have a lot fewer pages


that you want to have indexed in the beginning.


And we can focus on that first.


And then over time, you can say, oh, well,


these parts are also good to be indexed and these parts.


So kind of controlling, indexing a little bit


to match what you actually want to have found.


Perfect.


Yeah, I got it.


Thank you so much.


Sure.


It's always a bit challenging with a new website


and if you have a lot of content.


And especially if it's something where you'd say,


well, it's normal content.


It's not that you're automatically


generating content in the millions of pages.


But it takes time and kind of learning to focus first


and then expand from there.


I think that really helps.


Thanks.


Can I ask the next one?


Go for it.


OK.


Hello, John.


So my question is regarding links reporting search console.


So as of now, we cannot see all the links.


But regarding some links which are visible on the report,


so are Google filtering based on some reference tag?


Sorry, I forgot the actual name.


Nofollow?


Yeah, the Nofollow sponsored or UGC and all.


So is Google shows all the links, all type of links?


Or Google filters some type of links or attribution,


we can say?


So just wanted to know.


We don't filter by the type of links, which


is sometimes a bit confusing.


But what we do there is we show a sample of the total links.


It's not that we would show all of them there.


It's not that we would filter by Nofollow or by disavowed links


or things like that.


It's really just the sample.


And we try to make it a representative sample.


But sometimes you have a little bit more,


and sometimes you have a little bit less.


Thanks.


John, I have follow up on this.


Sure.


So John, in case there is any site migration, on that case,


can we expect immediately moving links from one property


to next property?


Or it will take time for Search Console


to start showing links on new property?


Because we are noticing that in some websites,


links reported is not fetching for new property.


I think it would be normal that it takes a bit of time


with a site migration to update all of the data in Search


Console.


I don't know if there's anything different with regards


to the links reports there.


But it is pretty normal when you do a site migration


that the data takes a bit of time.


Specifically, with regards to links,


what happens there is we track the link


based on the canonical URLs on both ends.


So on the one hand, the page that it's linking from,


we take the canonical URL from there,


and the canonical URL of the page that it's linking to.


And if you do a site migration, then individually, the pages


on your website will ideally shift the canonical


to your new site.


And then when that canonical shifts,


then we count that link as being from the original source


to the new canonical URL.


So that's something where theoretically, if we just


don't do anything special for site migrations,


then that's a process which will take a bit of time.


On the one hand, for us to shift the canonical.


On the other hand, for us to shift the data in the links


reports.


So I don't know if we do anything special for site


migration cases where you have the setting in Search Console,


but I would expect that this takes several months maybe


to settle down to the new domain when you're


doing a migration like that.


And it's probably similar for the other reports,


but especially with the links report,


it's really something where we really


have to focus on the canonicals on both ends.


And that especially takes a little bit longer.


AUDIENCE 1 So in that case, if new property is getting indexed,


then immediately the links from old property will be shifted,


or Google needs to go and crawl those links again.


And then only it will map canonical and then shift.


Meaning it will depend on links source crawling,


or it will depend only?


No, it's based on the destination.


It's a little bit, I don't know, complicated in the sense


that for the links, we have those both ends,


like the page it's linking from and the page


that it's linking to.


And if either of those changes the canonical,


then we will update that in our internal links.


But especially with the links report,


there are so many steps that lead to the data being shown


in the links report, I could imagine


it just takes a little bit longer.


AUDIENCE 1 OK.


Thanks.


Sure.


One other question I just wanted to ask.


So suppose a website receives a manual action regarding


unnatural links.


So how a webmaster or a website property owner


will analyze those links?


OK, because of those links, I'm receiving the manual action


because in manual action, there is no example links are given.


So this is very hard to have a master


to identify which links causing the manual action.


Yeah.


So I think the general theme is kind of like, well,


if you don't show all of the links,


how can I fix all of the links?


And in general, when it comes to manual actions,


it's not something that is based on individual links.


It's really based on a broader pattern.


And that's essentially the broader pattern


that you should look for and try to resolve,


and not those individual five links there and five links


here kind of thing.


So for manual actions, I think in pretty much all cases,


it would be the situation that in the length report,


you see enough information to recognize that broader


trend of a problem.


And based on that, you can fix that broader problem.


And the manual actions team is, for the most part,


not going to be picky in that, oh, you fixed 700 links,


but you didn't fix these two links.


But rather, they want to see that you understood


what the problem was and that you were able to resolve that.


So that's kind of the general idea there.


And for that, you don't need to have all of the links.


You need to kind of know what the problem is.


And most of the time, you kind of


know what you or what your site did to get that manual action.


And then fixing that is something


that needs to be done.


One of the things, especially I think


with the links-based manual actions,


is it takes a lot of manual work on our side also


to review those.


So sometimes they just take a little bit longer


to be reviewed, which means from a practical point of view,


it makes sense to really go through and try


to clean up as much as possible with regards to those links.


So that's something.


If you do have a manual action based on links,


then finding the broader pattern is really important.


But also really being clear that you recognize it and cleaned it


up is really important.


Again, as you said, the broader pattern.


So recently, in a couple of months,


we saw links are coming from Google websites itself.


For example, hotel websites, Google Hotels.


So from Google Hotel website, we are


getting around hundreds of thousands


of links for a specific single page without nofollow,


and the anchor text is remain the same.


So will this cause maybe the reason for the manual action?


No.


That should not be the case.


If it's a nofollow link, definitely not.


If it's something which is a natural link that is there,


then also definitely not.


It's really more a matter of maybe you


reached out to 1,000 bloggers and tried


to get a link from their site.


Or maybe there's some other pattern involved


where you're paying people for links


or you're doing some kind of a link exchange kind of scheme.


Then that's the kind of thing where the Web Jam team would


step in and say, OK, we need to take manual action here.


For nofollow links, we can ignore those automatically.


That's perfectly fine.


Just because it's a large number of links, that doesn't matter.


If it's a similar anchor text, that doesn't matter.


It's really the thought behind the links


that's important for us.


Thank you, John.


John, regarding nofollow, we all know that they


don't need to be disallowed.


But what about UGC and sponsored links?


You also don't need to disavow those.


Also the links, you got tagged as reference.


Which one do you mean?


A reference.


Referrals.


Yes.


How do you mean?


I don't know.


The links have something from Google Chrome.


Referrals probably, I think, Google Chrome's attribute,


which is ignored by Google crawler.


This is what I know about.


So Google crawler ignores referral link.


That is also equivalent to a dofollow link.


Those links are visible in the links report.


So do we need to disavow those links or not?


No.


I mean, if they're flagged as such


that they wouldn't be passing page rank,


like with a nofollow, UGC, sponsored,


then that's perfectly fine.


You don't need to disavow those.


Yes.


And John, that stuff's still really only worth


doing with a manual penalty and not just as a general tidy up?


Yeah.


I mean, the one case I might do that outside


of a manual penalty is if you really


know that someone working on your website


did something weird in that direction


and you just want to make sure that it doesn't end up


in a manual action.


But for normal websites on a day-to-day basis,


you don't need to do anything with a disavowed report.


John, regarding this, I had one idea.


So when Google already discounts those links when


manual action happens, and we have seen a lot of times


webmasters disavow other types of links which are not


worth to be disavowed, and you also


suggested that it is not the web spam team 100%


expects things to be disavowed, then


why Google wants webmasters to disavow those links


or do some exercise?


Because Google is already just discounting those links.


And the chances are sometimes webmasters make


more damage on the website.


Yeah.


I think at some point we'll get into the position


that we can really completely handle this.


But on the one hand, it's a way for people


to clean things up if they are aware of issues.


And the other part that I think always comes up a little bit


when it comes to links is the general fear


that a competitor might be harming your website.


And that's something where I think


we do a really good job of recognizing those situations


and ignoring them.


But I know it's easy to lose sleep over something like that


because it feels like something that you have no control over.


And by using the disavow links report,


that's something where if you do recognize something


where a competitor is doing something really


weird with regards to links to your website,


then you can go in there and say, OK, I just


want to be 100% sure that this is not something


that Google will ever consider as something that I do.


So that kind of that peace of mind aspect, I think,


is also quite useful there.


But I think it would be nice at some point


to be able to move away from just focusing on links so much,


but probably not soon.


And also, the other option is to just not allow users to do it,


in which case they're screwed permanently.


Yeah.


You're asking Google to do more work to save you work,


which for the most part, you don't


need to do if you haven't done anything wrong anyway.


So it's self-policing in a lot of ways,


other than genuine attacks on other sites.


But they're few and far between.


The genuine ones.


Or I should be more specific, the genuine ones that work.


I mean, it goes on all the time.


Our site's got a ton of junk links coming into it,


but we didn't build them, so we just ignore them.


But genuinely malicious, effective, negative SEO


attacks are, you just can't find them.


They don't work for Google, by the way.


OK, I'm going there.


Thank you, Rob.


OK, let me run through some of the submitted questions,


and we'll probably have more time for other things that


come up over the course as well.


I have five brands that each cover


different non-overlapping territories,


but all brands offer the same service.


I have a website for each brand.


The content for each website is the same,


other than the service.


Each website is the same, other than the territory


that's covered.


What's the best approach for SEO for website content


so that one brand doesn't penalize the other brand


with duplicate content?


Is it to write different content for each site


or to use JSON-LD to tell Google the target


territory for the content or something else?


So it sounds like the content is in the same language, which


is something that I think would make it very different.


Because if the content were just translated


into different languages, then it would be unique content.


We wouldn't have to worry about duplicate content.


So that's one part that sometimes comes up.


But it sounds like maybe in this case,


everything is in English and for different countries that


speak English, for example.


One thing you can do here is use the hreflang attribute


to tell us about these different versions


and say, this is the English version for the UK.


This is the English version for the US, that kind of thing.


That helps us.


What happens there with the hreflang


is that we will index these different versions,


in most cases.


And when a user searches, we'll try


to show the version that is most suited to their location.


So that's one approach that you could do there.


The other approach is, like you mentioned,


making sure that the content is slightly different.


A third approach might also be to say,


well, if this content is really the same everywhere,


then maybe it makes sense to concentrate it into one side.


Usually, I recommend trying to reduce the amount of content


and focusing on fewer versions rather than more versions,


just because it makes that single version, if you


have a single version, much stronger.


In that, we can understand that all of the value of your site


is concentrated there.


And when someone searches for something general,


we can say, well, this is a really strong and good website


for this topic.


We can show this one.


Sometimes, that's not feasible when


you're targeting different countries


or different territories, sometimes for policy reasons


or, I don't know, some other reasons.


So if you need to have different versions,


then you kind of have those options of making


different content or using hreflang attributes.


The other thing maybe worth mentioning here


is that there is no penalty for duplicate content.


It's not that we will say your website is lower quality


or spammy or problematic if you have


the same content across different websites


for different audiences.


What happens on a practical level


is, if it's exactly the same page,


then we might just index one version of that page.


And we'll try to concentrate the value there


because we think it's exactly the same thing.


So we put it all into one page.


What can also happen if a part of the page is the same


is we'll index the individual versions.


And if someone is searching for something


that is within this chunk of text that


is shared across these pages, we'll


just pick one of those pages to show in the search results.


And we'll kind of filter out the other ones.


And usually, we'll try to pick the one that best matches what


the user is looking for.


But sometimes that's kind of tricky


if we don't have enough information about what exactly


So those are kind of the different approaches there.


And I think there are pros and cons


to all of those approaches.


So it's not that there is one solution that will always


work if you have five brands and you want


to keep them kind of separate.


But different approaches might make sense


in your particular case.


My website is an e-commerce site.


And my website's index pages have been declining.


What can I do to increase my website's index number?


So I think we talked about this in the beginning slightly


as well with regards to the site that had millions of pages


and is just getting started.


In particular, when it comes to indexing,


we don't guarantee that we will index all pages of the website.


And especially for larger websites,


it's really normal that we don't index everything.


And that can be the case that maybe we just


index 1 10th of a website because it's


a really large website.


And we don't really know if it's worthwhile to index the rest.


Sometimes we index 90%.


And you kind of struggle with those remaining 10%.


But kind of that balance between trying


to index as much as possible and trying


to focus on the content that we think is actually


going to be shown in search, that's something we always


have to struggle with.


So usually, the approach that I recommend is kind of twofold.


And we talked about this in the beginning as well.


On the one hand, trying to reduce the number of pages


that you want to have indexed so that you


can focus a little bit more on fewer pages


and making those stronger.


That's one approach I think makes sense and is,


depending on the website, kind of possible.


The other approach is to really significantly work


to improve the quality of your website overall


and to make it so that Google and users and everyone


understands that this is a really important website.


And it would be a flaw in Google's algorithm


if Google's algorithms decided not to index as much as


possible from this website.


So that's kind of the other approach there.


Usually, it's a little bit easier to focus on fewer pages


and just making those stronger than to significantly improve


the quality of a whole website overall,


especially when you're talking about a really large e-commerce


website.


But sometimes it's worthwhile to take that time


to invest and try to significantly step things up.


Share some brief information on SSR and CSR


and how it impacts indexing and ranking.


So SSR is server-side rendering, and CSR


is client-side rendering.


So usually, those are the aspects of how


are you using JavaScript on a website


with regards to showing the content on your website.


And the general approach there is


if you have a JavaScript-based website,


if you don't do anything special,


then that would be called client-side rendering


because in your browser, it has to process the JavaScript


and then render the pages.


Whereas if you do something special on your website


with that JavaScript-based website


so that the server actually processes the JavaScript


and then sends the HTML code to the browser,


then that would be called server-side rendering.


And there are pros and cons to both of those approaches.


Sometimes there is a speed aspect involved there as well,


and that server-side rendering takes a bit of time.


But it makes things a little bit faster for users,


so you kind of have to balance things out there.


I would recommend checking in with Martin.


Martin also does Office Hours for SEO, for JavaScript SEO


in particular, and trying to ask him, I guess,


questions more specific to what exactly you're looking for


because this is a really broad topic.


And I don't think there's this one thing where it's like, oh,


you should do exactly this, and it will work well.


But rather, usually you have some existing framework


on your website that's based on JavaScript,


and you need to figure out what you need to do then.


So I'd check in with Martin on that.


How do AMP pages help in ranking?


Also, how does it make sense when we have a PWA,


client-side rendered, light, quick-loading pages,


and we also make AMP for the same pages?


So AMP pages do not affect ranking.


That's kind of the first thing, first off.


So it's not that you need to use AMP if you


want to rank well in search.


I believe there are still some features that


rely on the AMP framework with regards


to how we show the content.


There's also Web Stories, which is based on AMP.


So if you want to use anything around that,


then maybe it makes sense to use AMP.


But if you're just worried about speed,


AMP is a great way to make really fast websites.


But it's not the only way to make really fast websites.


So that's something where if you do have a really fast website


already, then maybe that's already fine.


So yeah, I don't know.


I don't want to talk you out of using AMP,


because I think it's fantastic to have


a framework that makes it easy to make really fast websites.


But at the same time, you don't need


to kind of turn everything around.


And if you have a really fast website already,


then change your framework and change all of that


just so that you can use AMP.


Regarding the upcoming mobile-first indexing update,


if content is similar and crawlable for Google


Bot for mobile and desktop, but the mobile version is not


responsive, then how can this update affect those websites?


I see several blogs claim that responsive web design is


a first step for this.


But I don't see any information from the Webmaster Central


blog for this claim.


OK.


Now, so I'm not 100% sure what exactly you're asking here.


But if you have a separate mobile and a separate desktop


version, and you have those versions linked properly


so that we can understand the connection between those two,


then that's essentially what we need


so that we can understand that those versions are there.


When it comes to mobile-first indexing,


we will only index the content from the mobile version,


though.


So that's something where if, like you said,


the content is similar and crawlable for mobile


and desktop, then that's kind of what we would focus on.


And we would use the desktop version


as a way of understanding, oh, there's a desktop URL


for this page as well.


And if someone on desktop is searching,


we can show them the desktop URL.


But otherwise, we'll focus indexing on the mobile version.


And it's not the case that the mobile version


has to be responsive design.


If you have separate mobile URLs, that's perfectly fine.


I don't think it's the optimal approach


to have separate mobile URLs.


But if that's the way your website is set up,


then if the mobile URL has all of the content,


then that's essentially OK.


Hi, John.


Hi.


May I ask a question?


Sure.


So my question is about targeting different regions


in a country.


So one of my clients, they provide the same service.


But for each state, they have different brand names.


And they have different separate websites for each brand.


Now, they want to use same content on each website.


Do you think this will be a problem


from duplicate content issue?


And if we have this issue, then how


we can rectify this problem?


I think we just went through that question briefly


right before you joined.


So I'd check out the recording afterwards


and see if that answers your question,


because that's pretty much exactly the same question


there, like the same content for different brands kind of thing.


Thank you.


Sure.


Prateek, I think you had some more details on the question


there.


Do you have a microphone that maybe you can ask there?


Yeah.


John, I think he is talking more about viewport.


Is it really required to have responsive page


if the content is similar in mobile and desktop version?


OK.


So the viewport meta tag, I think,


is specific more to the responsive design setup.


So that's something where if you have a separate mobile URL


and a separate desktop URL, that's perfectly fine.


For indexing, we focus on the content of the page.


We don't see if it's mobile friendly.


We essentially just use a mobile version for indexing.


Mobile friendly is something that we


use for the page experience ranking factor, which


is coming in May.


So it makes sense to have a mobile friendly page.


But if you have a mobile version and a desktop version,


and the mobile version is mobile friendly,


then that's perfectly fine.


How would you remove date snippets


appearing in the search results for static pages,


like home, services, contact, et cetera?


So we don't have a meta tag to remove dates, in particular,


from pages that we show in the search results.


Usually, we try to understand when it makes sense


to show a date on a page.


And we'll try to show that in the snippet of the search


results itself.


If there's a specific date that you want to have shown,


then you can use the, I think, the date structured data


in the article, structured data type, I think,


where you can tell us which date we should use there.


So if you do have a date, we can tell us there.


If you don't tell us there, then we'll


look at the content itself to try


to find a date within that.


If you don't want a date to be shown,


then it's not possible to suppress that date snippet


from being shown.


But what you could do is, of course,


make sure that there's no date shown on your page.


So if you don't have any dates in the HTML page,


then we don't really have much to pick up on to show there.


So especially when you're talking about things


like a home page or a contact page, for the most part,


you probably don't have dates on there anyway.


So that should be something where you shouldn't


see that too frequently.


If you do see this showing up on pages where you say,


well, it's a normal contact us page,


why is Google ever showing any dates there,


then I would love to have examples of that.


So in particular, a query where you're seeing that happen


and the URLs from your site where that's happening from.


So that's something that we can take up with the team


here that works on showing dates and recognizing dates


on a page, where we can say, well, maybe we're


recognizing a phone number as a date accidentally,


and we need to be able to fix that.


After the disavow tool is used, does the domain


carry any mark that it may hold it back?


No.


The disavow tool is purely a technical thing, essentially,


that tells our systems to ignore these links.


It's not an admission of guilt or any kind of bad thing


to use a disavow tool.


It's not the case that we would say,


well, they're using the disavow tool,


therefore they must be buying links.


It's really just a way to say, well,


I don't want these links to be taken into account.


And sometimes that's for things that you've done


or someone working on your website has done in the past.


Sometimes that's for things that you just


don't want Google to take into account for whatever reason.


And both of those things are good situations, right?


It's like you recognize there's a problem,


and this is a tool that you can use to resolve that.


And that's not a bad thing.


So it's not the case that there is any kind of a red mark


or any kind of flag that's passed on just because a website


has used the disavow tool.


How can a bad SEO practice rank first and a good SEO practice


website rank second and third when


the implementation of the new Google updates hits big sites?


Or it's never going to happen.


I think this is something that comes up


pretty much all the time.


It's like I'm ranking below a website,


and they're doing one thing bad.


And why doesn't Google notice that and just


remove that website completely from search?


Because they're keyword stuffing,


or they bought links, or they've done some other crazy thing.


And I don't think that this is something that is,


for the most part, useful to focus on as a site owner.


Because essentially, you're focusing


on someone else's website and trying


to find problems in that other website


rather than taking the time that you have


and focusing on your website instead.


So that's the first approach that I have there.


The other thing is that our algorithms


use so many different factors when it comes to ranking.


That it is very common that a website does not


do everything perfectly.


I think that's the most common situation overall,


in that a website will do some things really well


and some things kind of OK, and maybe will do some things


really badly.


And because of that, it's not the case


that we would say, well, we'll just remove all of the websites


that aren't perfect.


Because I think the search results will be pretty empty.


And instead, our algorithms are built in a way


to try to find the overall view of that website.


So that could be simplified into,


well, we take the average of how good the website is.


It could also be that, for some things,


we can recognize that a website is doing something badly,


and we try to ignore that.


And I think that ignoring option is really important and really


a strong part of our algorithms.


Because that means that even if you follow bad advice


from the internet somewhere, it's


not that your website will automatically


be discarded and never shown in search.


But rather, we recognize, oh, you're


using keyword stuffing on your pages,


and we can just ignore that keyword stuffing.


And we'll focus on the good parts of your pages.


So if you get weird advice from friends or from the internet


about your website, and you follow that advice,


and we can recognize that you're trying


to do something sneaky there, then we'll try to ignore that


and instead focus on the good parts of your website.


So that's kind of a good thing for your situation.


But obviously, if your competitor


is doing something wrong and we're just ignoring that bad


part, then that can be a bit frustrating.


So instead of focusing on the things


that your competitor is doing wrong,


try to find ways that you can improve your website that kind


of are more, I'd say, sustainable for the long run


for your website in particular.


And that could be to say, well, the competitor


is doing these things badly, and maybe Google is ignoring those.


But I can do those things really well


so that when Google re-evaluates my website over time,


it'll see, well, actually, I have a lot more things that


are lined up and done well.


So that's definitely one approach.


The other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of times,


these situations are based on kind


of technical elements of a website,


where if you look at a website and you say,


oh, their HTML is not good, or they have maybe


this specific score in a testing tool that you have,


and your website has a better score,


those technical elements do matter to some extent.


But what is also really much more important almost


is the overall quality and the value


that your website brings to the web.


So that's something where it's very easy as an SEO who focuses


on tools and numbers to say, well, technically,


my website is better.


But practically, maybe that other website


is just a lot better in that it provides


a lot more value to users.


It works really well for those users.


So they might be doing things like, I don't know,


using frames on the website and doing kind


of these old-school HTML things that are not really great.


But the value that they provide is just so much more


than kind of this technically sleek website


that maybe you have at the moment.


So focusing on kind of the areas of improvement


where you see you can surpass those competitors is important,


but also making sure that you're providing something


that is really significantly better than them overall,


and not just from a technical level,


but kind of just purely from a user level as well.


And I think evaluating that non-technical aspect


is really hard.


But one of the things that I find really insightful


every time I look at it is when you do user study.


So we did a blog post specifically,


I think, for the core updates and for the Panda update


at a time with lots of questions you can ask yourself


or you can ask users about your website.


And that's the kind of thing that I would take and do


a user study and maybe find 10, 20 users of your website


and go through these questions in an objective way


to really get input on where you can improve your website,


not purely from a technical level,


but also kind of from a user level as well.


Let me see.


Maybe we can run through some of the other questions here.


The large website with millions of products,


I think we talked about that briefly,


the most important ranking factors.


I don't think we list the most important ranking factors.


So I'll have to disappoint you there.


If I submit a blog post today and add more content in 10 days


from now, do I need to submit an updated site map for the blog


post to get updated?


Or will it just get recrawled?


So the site map file definitely helps


us understand when there is new and updated content.


So that's a great thing you can do.


If this is something that is kind of if you're


using a CMS like WordPress, for example,


then this will be completely automated.


There's nothing that you need to do there.


If you're using a setup where you


don't have a kind of an automatic site map file,


then you can use the Submit to Indexing feature in Inspect URL


and let us know that way.


From a practical point of view, if you're doing anything more


than a website with, let's say, 10 pages,


I would strongly recommend using a site map file


and automating this rather than doing it manually.


Should a 404 page contain a self-canonical?


Is it OK if I added one and then removed it?


We don't look at any content on a 404 page.


So if a page is returning a 404 status code,


then essentially we say, OK, that's fine.


That's enough for us.


So if there's a canonical there, if there's a no index there,


if there's anything else on that page,


we essentially ignore that.


If it's a 404 page, it's a 404 page.


Cool.


OK.


I think we ran through those questions.


What else is on your mind?


What else can I help with?


John, actually, that question about a date popping up actually reminds me of something.


A friend of mine asked me a question about her site,


and I thought it was a pretty good question because it had, well,


wide appeal for others.


And it's about different types of content on one site.


So she has a website that has resources for women who are interested in stand-up


comedy, where you can take classes, how to write a routine, that kind of stuff.


It's very, very evergreen.


But she also has a blog that's written by established comedians tied to news events.


So she asked me if the news year articles written by these well-known comedians,


or experts, if you will, should they have bylines and timestamps


while the evergreen content does not?


So I guess that's it.


I think that makes sense, yeah, to have something like that.


It's sometimes, I imagine, a bit tricky if you mix those two on the same site


and if it's hard for us to recognize which part is the news year content,


which part is the evergreen content.


So something like separating that out in a separate URL structure, I think,


would make sense.


But in general, if you have something that is timely,


then I would certainly go for making sure that you have that byline there,


that you have the date on the page, that you have the date in the structured data


as well, just so that we can clearly understand this is something new that


just came out.


Maybe we can show it in Discover.


Maybe we can show it otherwise in the search results.


Thanks.


Hey, John.


Hi.


I'm having a question on X-Robot tag.


So we can't supposed to use a private folder or the page level


noindex meta tag.


So I just go through the X-Robot tag.


So is there a permanent solution for preventing the Google from the index?


Or it's something similar to robot.txt blocking.


So we need to block the page entirely permanently from the Google


or any other search engines.


So can we use X-Robot tag?


Sure.


Yeah.


I don't know about other search engines.


So in particular, the X-Robots tag is kind of a special variation


of the robots meta tag.


So I don't know if all search engines process that exactly the same way.


But if you're serving the X-Robots tag on a site-wide level for all


of the URLs from your website, then that's a good way


to prevent them from being indexed.


So the server level configuration or the header.php,


which method did you prefer for the entire site blocking?


Totally up to you.


OK.


That's like we only see the end result.


And how you implement that end result is totally up to you.


Thank you.


John?


I have a question.


Actually, there's a website which was put to noindex through meta tags


and was de-indexed 10 days ago when we realized


that we removed that noindex property or tag.


And we're just waiting for about 10 to 12 days


now to get crawled by the Google.


Is this something you don't take extra long when this happens?


Usually because the average, we get index over sites in a few days,


like three to four days or maybe seven days.


But it is taking a bit longer.


Anything you can add to it?


Is it the whole website, or is it just pages within the website?


Actually, I was reviewing.


It was the whole website which was put to noindex.


So eventually, whole website was removed from the Google.


So when we looked, and we find that the whole website is


noindex, that's removed.


So we just, yeah.


Now, and how long ago did you remove the noindex?


It was about 26th and 27th of December.


And now it is 8th.


So it's quite long, yeah.


So usually, for the most part, I think there are two aspects


that play into that.


On the one hand, for most websites,


we try to recrawl at least some of the pages


every couple of days.


So even if the website was on noindex for a long time,


then we should try to recrawl those every couple of days.


So it's like end of December.


And now, it feels like, I don't know, maybe two weeks almost.


That seems like a time where we should


have recrawled at least some of those pages


and shown those again.


So that's something where I would


say if we're not indexing anything after two weeks,


that feels like maybe there might be something else that


is wrong.


So maybe something like a removal request


is still pending somewhere within the website.


You can check that in Search Console.


Maybe there is a manual action that's in place.


You can also check that in Search Console.


Those are, I think, the most obvious ones


that could be at role there.


It could also be that maybe the website is returning a 404


status code when you look at the page.


And in a browser, it can look normal,


but the status code might be 404.


So that's kind of one thing there.


But that's really, I would say, the case


if we don't index anything at all from the website


after those two weeks.


If we index things like the home page,


but not all of the detail pages, then I


think that's normal after two weeks.


I think that's something that tends


to take a little bit longer, especially


if the whole website was on no index for a longer time.


So that's something where I'd say


if we're not indexing anything after two weeks, that


feels like something else is wrong.


If we're not indexing everything after two weeks,


that's completely normal.


I would expect that to take maybe several months


to get picked up completely again.


So those are, I think, the two aspects there.


SPEAKER 2


Hey, again.


Hi.


So Happy New Year, by the way, John and everyone.


So I've got one around Search Console.


I've noticed in some cases that certain queries that


are very low in average position, 60, 70, 80,


have a very, very high number of impressions.


I know that, for example, with other products like Google


Analytics, Google tries to filter out bots and scrapers


and things like that.


I wonder if for Search Console, these high number


of impressions for such a low position


where users wouldn't usually get to page 7 of the search


results are either like, is it just scrapers or bots


or anything like that, or it might be a bug or something.


How reliable are these impressions, basically?


We do filtering for scrapers and things


like that on several levels.


But it's also something that it can happen that it shows up


in Search Console.


So that's not completely excluded that we would never


show that there.


But for the most part, I think most of these things


are filtered before they reach Search Console.


So my guess is if you're seeing something like that, which


is obviously kind of a pattern of scrapers and bots


and the usual stuff, then that might


be kind of a side effect of that,


that we're just not filtering in Search Console.


But yeah.


AUDIENCE 1 The weird thing is that, so I'm


comparing two queries, or one of them, the average position,


like 10, 11, 12, something like that.


The other one, average position is 60 or 70.


Both seem to have about the same search volume,


60 or 60, and they both have like 10, 15,000 impressions.


So I get why the one on page 2 or page 1 might have that.


But page 7, the same number of impressions,


that has to be something like that.


I don't know.


It is really hard to say.


Sometimes the ones I've seen that


have gotten through in Search Console


are things that are more periodic,


in that if you look at the individual query,


then you see, oh, it's like every Sunday they come,


and it's like thousands of impressions.


That might be a sign that it's in that direction,


but it's really hard to say.


Sometimes these things just make it into Search Console.


AUDIENCE 2 Right.


The only problem with that is that if you're


trying to check out click-through rate,


for example, to try to figure out, oh, look,


these are some queries that have a lot of impressions.


We have a very low click-through rate.


Let's try to optimize for those or something like that,


where the data is not actually there.


It's not actual users that are creating those impressions.


Yeah, I think that's always a struggle.


But on the one hand, I'm not really a fan


of people scraping search anyways,


but these bots and scrapers are around all the time anyway.


So it's always, regardless of how


you're tracking those metrics, you always


have this level of noise that's involved there,


which makes it a little bit tricky to understand


these actual users or these bots acting like users.


OK.


Cool, OK.


Let me pause the recording here.


It's been great having you all here,


and it's been good doing these Hangouts again,


kind of something a little bit regular and normal


along the way.


I'll be around a little bit longer as well.


So if any of you want to stick around


after the recording stops, you're welcome to stick around.


Otherwise, I set up the next English office


hours for next Friday in the evening our time here,


so maybe a little bit better for the US time zones.


So you don't have to get up in the middle of the night,


Michael.


Always good to have you here, though.


And I think a German one is lined up as well for next week.


So if you have anything that we still need to cover,


feel free to jump into one of those office hours


or, of course, drop by the Search Central Help


forums, where experts like Mihai hang out


and can help answer your questions as well.


All right.


Thanks, everyone.


English Google SEO office-hours from July 16, 2021

All right, welcome, everyone, to today's Google SEO


Search Central Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate on the Search Relations team


here at Google.


And part of what we do are these Office Hour Hangouts


where people can join in and ask their questions


around their website and web search.


Looks like a bunch of you have raised your hands already.


And I think, Michael, you were the first one.


Somehow your hand disappeared.


Want to get started?


Sure.


So I came in to work on a site that certain sections


of the site didn't seem to have the upward momentum


with the organic search that I would expect.


I diagnosed what I believe is the correct diagnosis


for that section of the site, the blog.


I think the entire blog page is coded in JavaScript,


in the JavaScript app, with uncrawlable links.


So I've taken your advice from previous Office Hours


to confirm that.


And so this week we rolled out a temporary Band-Aid,


because it's going to take a long time to kind of recode


the entire section.


So a temporary Band-Aid we did was put some no script code


in there so that if JavaScript is disabled,


that they would see links to all the blog posts.


So we did that.


We did that as a temporary solution.


My question to you is, number one,


do you consider that cloaking if it's just


links to all the blog posts?


And number two, because there's so many of them,


there's like 600 links, is that going


to hurt us on that main blog page


by having 600 links on there?


Yeah.


So that's just generally want to see.


I would assume that we would have a positive experience,


a positive impact by doing this fix.


But I just wanted to confirm with you if you


saw any red flags there.


OK.


So I think, first of all, we wouldn't consider that cloaking


because it's essentially just providing


something similar to what you have in the JavaScript side.


So I wouldn't worry about that part.


In general, we do try to ignore things in a no script tag.


So that might be something to watch out for,


to double check if it's actually working as expected.


So I'd kind of watch out for that.


And the 600 links, by themselves,


that shouldn't be problematic.


But it does sound like this is more


of kind of like a temporary solution


to kind of like as a stopgap measure to try


to get all of these pages back into the index,


something like that.


And for a temporary solution, I don't


see any problems with that.


I think for the long run, it would be worthwhile


to figure out a way to make sure that you have a clear structure


within the website that's kind of crawlable.


But as kind of a temporary step to at least making


those pages findable.


Sure.


OK.


Thank you.


Let me just grab you, Lindsay.


I think you were somewhere in the list.


I forgot where.


But we'll just go with you.


I wasn't next.


But someone, yeah, I think I was in there.


Whatever.


That's fine.


Go ahead.


Oh, great.


Thanks.


I hope I'm not cutting anybody else off.


My question, I don't know if it's


quite applicable for this conversation or not.


But I thought I would give it a shot.


It's relevant to the top stories carousel


and how it's sort of approached and curated


in different countries.


I work at international SEO, so I spend a lot of time


looking at SERPs in multiple regions.


I just noticed a lot of differences by region,


some of which are obviously good and relevant


because they're targeting different audiences


with different search habits.


But in Canada, I've noticed some differences


that seem to just have a generally kind


of detrimental effect on the quality of ourselves.


I posted something about this in the channel, so apologies


if this is redundant as well.


But wire stories or syndicated content, for example,


it's not unusual.


It's actually quite common for the same identical story


to appear multiple times in top stories side by side by side.


So a user might search for a news topic


and see identical content across publishers, which has always


sort of struck me as unusual and not something I ever


see in US search results.


Similarly, there's often more stale content.


So the same query right at the same time in, say,


Canada, the UK, and the US.


The US often has much more fresh results,


even for a story that is not US-specific in nature,


whereas results in Canada or the UK


might be four, eight hours a day or later.


So obviously, in the news space, this


is a fairly significant difference.


And I was just curious if you could shed any light


on those kinds of differences, especially the ones that


seem to kind of lower the quality of search


in certain regions but not in others.


Now, I don't have really a lot of insight into that.


But in general, we try to treat these kind of search features


as a part of organic search results.


And that means we do apply everything around geotargeting


there as well.


And I could imagine there might be situations


in some countries where we just don't have enough content


to kind of make sure that we have the really, I don't know,


high-quality bar essentially there in the top stories.


And I could imagine that you might


be seeing something like that.


At least it's not the case that we kind of like purposely


have different requirements in different countries.


So that's kind of the direction I would suspect there.


I think what would be useful from my point of view


would be to have some screenshots and some examples


from you.


So if you run into this and you're like, oh,


this looks terrible, send some my way.


And I can pass those on to the team that


works on these features to kind of give them feedback.


Usually, these kind of changes aren't


things that they'd be able to do from one day to the next.


But sometimes having some examples of where things are


really bad makes it easier for them to say, oh,


we need to prioritize working on international search quality


or whatever it is.


I've been tracking for about a year


and have more examples than you would ever want.


So I'll happily send that your way.


Is there a preferred address or place to send?


Let me just drop my email address here in the chat.


Thank you so much.


Sure.


All right.


Akash.


Hi, John.


Hi.


So actually, I was looking for a client for internalization.


And what I found is for a few countries,


it could be, let's say, France or UK,


with the proper Ahrefs-length tags,


we are able to rank up pages, like what those scenario was.


But for a few countries, we are unable to get the country


specific URLs over there.


So we have added the proper Ahrefs-length tags,


sitemaps, we have separated them.


We make sure that the home page and the internal part


of those particular sections are being linked properly.


But since a few countries have been


able to get their proper URLs, but for some few countries,


they are not able to achieve that.


I've been working for more than two to three weeks, what


could be the possible issues and how to figure it out.


But they're not able to find all those things.


OK.


So I think there are a few things to think about.


On the one hand, Ahrefs-length doesn't change rankings.


So it's not something that would make your site appear


in search for specific countries.


What it does is given the rankings that your site has,


it tries to find the appropriate URL from your website


to show that.


So for example, if we think one of your pages


should be ranked number five, and a user


is searching in the UK, and you have


one page that is marked up with Ahrefs-length for the UK for that


then we'll try to show that page.


So it's not that it will change the rankings.


It'll just try to find the best page based


on the set of pages that you have marked up with Ahrefs-length.


So that's kind of the first thing.


For ranking internationally, geotargeting


would be the correct approach.


So that's something you can do either with country code


top-level domains or with a generic top-level domain


and then either subdomains or subdirectories.


And you can specify geotargeting in Search Console.


Geotargeting changes rankings slightly


when we think that the user is looking for something local.


So it wouldn't change it if we think


the user is looking for something completely global.


But if we suspect they would like to have local results,


we'll try to use geotargeting to improve that.


That's the other thing.


And I think the final thing also worth saying


is specifically because Ahrefs-length doesn't change


rankings, you need to kind of make sure


that your website's different country-specific versions are


properly known.


That means they're properly linked within your website.


That means that you properly work to promote them as well


externally so that we know that these individual pages should


be shown in the search results in individual countries.


So those are kind of the aspects there.


So Ahrefs-length is a good approach,


but it doesn't change rankings.


Geotargeting would change rankings


when someone is looking for something local.


And with international sites, you always


need to make sure that your pages are also


kind of supported so that we can show them in search.


OK, one more thing, John, how about to tell a user that this


is the proper URL for your country


rather than going to the more specific canonical version?


Because I've seen in some other countries,


we have a canonical URL, like the one


which is same for all these pages


that are the US version, so for some countries, it's been


properly visible.


So does it take time, two, three, or maybe


like three to four months to properly analyze your website


and find the correct URL for your audience?


Usually, it does take time, yes.


But I am not 100% sure if you're doing it right


with the real canonical.


In particular, if you have different country versions,


you should not pick one country as a canonical.


So that's one thing to watch out for.


These pages should be separate, and they should


be able to rank separately.


But the other thing that you mentioned,


kind of like to tell the user which is the right version,


I would recommend using a JavaScript banner


to tell the user, hey, we have a version that we think


is a local version for you, and you can click on it here.


If you use a redirect, that always


makes it a little bit tricky because we can't crawl through


that properly because we always crawl from one location.


So that was a cool little bit.


Thank you so much, John.


Thank you.


Have a nice weekend.


Sure.


You too.


Praveen.


Hi, John.


How are you?


Hi.


So my first question is related to a product that we have,


and this product is something that


is available in two different countries


with different names.


So for example, it's available in US as product US,


and in India, it's like product India.


So both these products have similar features,


specifications, not exactly same, but similar.


Now, what we were looking for is if someone in India


is searching for product US, ideally, they


should see product India in search results.


We'll provide them an option to go to product US


if they want to, but in search results,


they should see product India.


So do you think a direct link tag


is a good solution to the problem,


or do we need something else?


I think hreflang is the right solution for that,


because like I mentioned before, it doesn't change rankings,


but it swaps out the URL.


So in a case like that, even if you have different product


names, if someone searches for one of those product names,


then we will still use hreflang to try


to swap out the local version.


So that would help someone searching for the US name


if they're located in India to get the page from the Indian


site instead.


But I would also work with a JavaScript banner


in a case like that, just to make sure


that you're catching all of those variations.


Yeah, sure, sure.


And that's just one more question.


It's related to the Search Console.


So just wanted to understand that the search, the queries


that we see in Google Search Console


are the exact query that the user is using while searching,


or is it like something where Google clubbing different


queries with same intent into something, one query,


and that's how it shows?


So we don't try to mix different intents together,


but I think there's some difference between integer


numbers.


Oh, sorry.


It's Google.


We don't try to mix different intents together,


but we do try to simplify some things in Search Console.


And I think what happens is everything is lowercase,


and we probably remove some punctuation.


I don't know the exact details with the punctuation,


but it's something where we don't interpret the query


and try to make a simpler version of the query,


but we do very, very light canonicalization


of those queries.


Sure, thank you.


Thank you.


Janet.


Hi, John.


So I think my question is hopefully more simple


than everyone else's, but I work at a startup,


and we just launched our website.


And unfortunately, when you search up our name on Google,


our company name, which is Q-A-I, so H-U-M-E space AI,


the meta description for the home page


has really odd punctuation and formatting.


And so we use a content management system


called Contentful to update the meta descriptions,


and we've tried to do that.


We've tried to force Google to re-index and re-prol the site,


but that meta description never gets changed.


And so kind of like a sad and stressful thing on our part


because we work so hard on the site,


but it kind of looks janky when you search it on Google.


So I'm not sure if you sort of can help me troubleshoot that


or if you know anybody I can contact.


I kind of dropped in on the office hours


because I couldn't find any other help out there.


Yeah.


So I would definitely drop by the Search Central Help Forum


because folks there can probably help out.


But I think there are a couple of things.


On the one hand, we do sometimes update the description


based on what people search.


So that's something where it's not always guaranteed


that we will use your meta description even


if you have a clean one.


We try to match the description to what people search for.


So if you have to oddly intersperse periods


after every single word, though.


So I can't imagine that people are looking for that.


OK.


That sounds weird.


You just look up like Hume space AI on Google right now.


Literally, it's quite odd.


So maybe we can take this conversation offline.


But I also tried the Search Forum.


And unfortunately, there wasn't anything like this online.


And nobody was able to help.


So this is my last resort.


Yeah.


I mean, sometimes a description takes a while to update.


So that's another thing.


With regards to, I don't know, weird characters


in the description, I suspect that's


something that would go away when we start processing


the meta description for your pages.


And maybe that's just a matter of time.


It's been like two months, I think.


So.


It's pretty long.


And the other thing to watch out for, especially


with titles and descriptions, is you should ideally


make sure that they're unique per page


and that they don't come across as being too spammy.


So not like a collection of keywords,


but rather like clear sentences where you're saying,


our company is this and this and this.


But it is, yeah.


OK.


Can you drop the link to your site, maybe in the chat here?


And I can take a look afterwards just


to double check if there's anything


happening on our side.


But.


Do you think I can email you as well?


Sure.


I can't guarantee that I'll be able to respond by email.


But I always pass these on to the team to double check.


OK, that's fine.


Or just if you know of anybody who can respond


or would be the point person for me to contact,


that would be fantastic.


Cool.


Let's see.


Miguel.


Hello, John.


Hi.


My question is related to soft photo photo errors.


So our site is having a number, an increased number of errors


in what looks valid pages.


And we are having these errors for several months.


And before, we managed to solve for a lot of pages,


updating the text.


So the text that was there for several times,


we updated from because it contains something


like no results found.


But now, we are having, again, these type of errors.


And actually, we are struggling on how to fix it.


So I would like to ask if there is any specific text that


might trigger these soft photo photo errors


or any other issue.


Yeah, and also, we see that on the Google index,


it's saying that the page is soft photo photo.


But when doing the live test, it's OK.


And when visiting the page with the browser, it's also OK.


So yeah, if you can give us some hints.


I would have to take a look at some of the pages.


So if you have a thread in the help forum with maybe


some links from your site where you're seeing this,


I'd love to be able to pass that on.


So if you could maybe drop a link to the forum thread


or to some sample URLs here in the chat,


then I can pass it on to the team.


So I think the text that you had in there before where it's


something like no results found, I


could imagine that our systems see that and say,


oh, it's an empty search results page.


And that's less a matter of how do I change that text


to make it so that it doesn't look like an empty search


results page, but rather it should be not an empty search


results page.


Because empty search results pages


are always tricky for us because we don't really


know if there's anything worth indexing then.


So one of the cases where I have seen this kind of cause


problems is if the page by default


has this no results found and then JavaScript swaps it out,


then that's kind of a similar situation


where if your page has a noindex meta tag


and then JavaScript removes that noindex meta tag.


And that is kind of confusing for us.


So if these are essentially normal pages


and they just happen to have some text on it as well,


that seems like something that we should


be able to improve on our side.


So I kind of love to have those examples.


And also, can it be related with different languages?


Because what we are seeing now is


that the errors are mainly on pages that are in Arab.


So can it be that you are struggling


more with specific languages with this type of?


Maybe.


I don't know.


We use different factors to try to figure out


when a page is a soft 404.


And we do look at the text on the page as well.


And it might be that some of our classifiers


are picking up text in different languages incorrectly.


And apart from the text, is there anything that you would suggest us to check?


I would make sure that you're using a clear URL structure


so that it's clear to us that these pages are


a part of your normal website and not


that these pages look like, let's say, search results pages,


where you have a parameter for searching and then


some keywords, something like that.


So those are kind of the tips there.


But in general, if these are normal content


pages on your website, then I feel


our system should be able to pick that up properly.


And if they don't pick it up properly,


then we should fix that.


It shouldn't be up to you to change your pages so


that Google thinks they're OK now.


Yeah.


Yeah, I just shared an example of page.


And yeah, as you can see, it's a normal page with content.


So OK.


OK.


Perfect.


Thanks a lot.


Sure.


We've faced similar issues in English.


But that's actually not what I'm here for.


I just wanted to take it back to be like, yeah, we


had to think about how can we make this look like a profile


unless a result's not found page.


Should I drop?


Anyway, I'm coming today because we've


been flying a little bit blind with our search results console


because we have a very large number of crawled but not


indexed pages listed under Excluded.


But then when we click into them, most of these


seem to have converted into indexed pages.


So we're really unable to accurately track


how improvements to our site are impacting


which pages are being indexed.


And I was curious, I guess, about the timeline and that.


We're concerned it's impacting your crawling budget.


OK.


I doubt it would be affecting your crawling budgets.


So that's kind of like as a side note.


Got it.


That's good.


It's something where I've recently


seen some threads like this on Twitter


as well where people saw URLs that were flagged as not being


indexed in Search Console.


And then when you check them individually,


they are actually indexed.


And I don't know exactly what is happening there yet.


But if you have some examples, if you


can send them to me, that would be fantastic


just so that I can take a look.


My suspicion is it's more a matter of timing


in that we show them in the Search Console report,


and then they get indexed over time.


And then at some point, they would drop out


of the report again.


And for whatever reason, that dropping out


is taking a little bit longer than it should.


That's kind of my guess there.


One way to kind of verify that is


to see if these pages actually show up for normal searches.


So take some words from the page, search for that.


And if they do show up, then I think there's


nothing you really need to do.


It's just a report that is kind of lagging behind.


I think we're just trying to really keep


an eye out for actual problems that are preventing indexing


as they come.


So it's, I think, a little bit difficult with those.


But then my other question about being concerned about it


impacting crawling.


We did submit a Googlebot report asking about,


like, are numbers being consistently low


despite improvements?


Do you know what the timeline would be for hearing back


from that team, roughly?


They generally don't respond.


So it's generally something where


if they find issues with regards to crawling, they just fix it


and then kind of set things up normally.


So that's something where, for the most part,


you wouldn't get a response from that team.


It's more like you're reporting it, and then they take a look


and say, oh, it's an issue or not an issue.


And then they deal with that.


I see.


Well, thank you so much.


Do you have any other advice for, I think,


getting insight into the current crawling budget,


just because I feel like we've really


been trying to make improvements but haven't seen a jump


in pages per day crawl?


How big is your site?


Our site is in the hundreds of thousands of pages.


And we've seen maybe around 2,000 pages per day


being crawled, even though there's


a backlog of 60,000 discovered but not yet


indexed or crawled pages.


Yeah.


So in practice, I see two main reasons why that happens.


On the one hand, if the server is significantly slow,


which is kind of the response time,


I think you see that in the crawl stats report as well.


That's one area where, if I had to give you a number,


I'd say aim for something below 300, 400 milliseconds,


something like that on average.


Because that allows you to do a lot of things


on average, because that allows us to crawl pretty much as much


as we need.


It's not the same as the page speed kind of thing.


So that's kind of one thing to watch out for.


The other big reason why we don't crawl a lot from websites


is because we're not convinced about the quality overall.


So that's something where, especially with newer sites,


I see us sometimes struggle with that.


And I also see sometimes people saying, well,


it's technically possible to create a website with a million


pages, because we have a database


and we just put it online.


And just by doing that, essentially from one day


to the next, we'll find a lot of these pages.


But we'll be like, we're not sure about the quality


of these pages yet.


And we'll be a bit more cautious about crawling and indexing


them until we're sure that the quality is actually good.


Yeah, because we were, I think, in that camp of too many lower


quality pages.


And we've adapted over time for, here


are the pages that should be listed and should be crawled.


But I feel like we're probably still in the lower quality camp


and we don't know how to move up.


But I guess it takes time.


Yeah, improving the quality of a website overall,


I think that's something that is less of a technical issue


for the most part and more almost like a strategic issue.


How do you approach what you publish?


One approach that is a little bit more technical


is to think about what you can do to reduce the number of pages


that you provide so that you have, instead of saying


you have 100,000 pages, you say, well,