So I wanted some clarification on the no script tag.


English Google SEO office-hours from November 5, 2021

I know that's recommended for users


who don't have JavaScript on.


How does Google handle that?


And is it recommended to also include that just for when


the page doesn't get rendered?


We generally ignore the content in the no script.


So I don't think that would be a workaround


if you're trying to include something for indexing.


So from that point of view, I would use the other methods


more.


OK.


Thank you so much.


Cool.


Let's see, I think Hazel was in between.


But I don't know if you dropped your hand


or if it just disappeared otherwise.


We'll just move on.


I think it was me and I accidentally dropped my hand.


Sure.


Go for it.


Thank you.


So I have a question.


I'm testing with the plugin in WordPress


that generates dynamic content.


But then when you check the HTML code,


you actually don't see any of the words


that we're trying to use within the text,


within the subheadings.


And I was wondering if Google would have a problem


understanding what's, well, in the end shown to the end user.


It's really nothing.


There's nothing in the HTML code.


It says something like just the tags, it says dynamic content.


But you can't really read the words that we're actually


showing to the user.


So I'm not sure if that's also something


that Google would be able to see in the end


and we can perhaps run for the keywords we want to run for


or what's going to happen there.


I don't know that plugin.


So it's hard for me to say.


One thing you can do is.


It's called if so.


I don't know if you know it.


No, OK.


So many different things.


So one thing you can do is use the inspect URL tool


in Search Console to check that page.


And you can check the HTML there.


And the HTML is based on rendering.


So when we try to process the page like in a browser.


And if in the HTML you find the content


that you want to have shown, then we can index it.


But if it's not in the inspect URL HTML,


then we're not seeing the content.


OK.


Yeah, no, then we're not going to succeed with that, I guess.


Because it's not showing really the words.


OK, yeah.


That's all I need to know.


In that case, you already had it figured out.


Cool.


Yeah.


Good.


Thank you.


Tom.


Hey, John.


Super quick one from me.


I've sent a lot of applications to the schema rich snippet


application tool.


And we've done everything on our side


to adhere to the documentation.


I was on here like a couple of weeks ago


asking if you could give the team a nudge


to check that Google form.


I was just wondering if you had any time to do that


or if you could do that.


Which form?


So basically, when you apply for book featured


like rich snippet on the schema documentation,


there's a Google form to apply to have the website that you


look after be included within that.


And so you kind of like submit it and then nothing happens.


And I just wondered if there was an internal team that


looks after the application process


or if inbox is kind of just not checked.


I was just kind of like wondering.


We spoke about it like a couple of weeks back.


I don't know.


Which type of structured data was that?


It said book.


For books.


I can check afterwards.


But usually I pass these on.


Or if you can drop the details into the chat here,


I can copy and paste it out and make sure that they have it.


That'd be amazing.


I'll drop it in the chat.


Thank you very much.


Sure.


Thanks.


David.


Hi.


Hey, John.


So I'm working on actually I'm a content creator that


creates log posts for an e-commerce site.


And we are selling like super technical products,


like really it's metal profiles.


And we have many different types of those profiles.


And we have a lot of thin content


because we have the same variations.


Basically, if we have one U-shaped profile,


for example, we have U-shaped profile in green, in red,


and in blue, let's say.


And then when we click green, red, and blue,


which are all three URLs, different URLs,


we have within this URL like thousands


of variations and combinations and lengths and thicknesses


and all that.


And I'm just I'm not I was never I


don't know how to handle this because I don't know like


should I canonicalize those.


But then again, we're linking to them.


So I don't want to like create bad in links


or whatever or bad quality links inside of my page.


Or if I should, I don't know, no index or block from robots.


I really don't know.


I don't have experience in there.


OK, everything on the internet seems to be like very like


nobody seems to agree.


And like some people handle it the one way


and of people another way.


So I'm not quite sure what the best thing to do is.


And yeah, we don't need we don't need people to come


to those variation pages.


We don't want that.


We just we just want to create good quality


on the on the category pages.


OK, I think you're kind of answering


the question in that case.


Because what usually what we recommend


is if you have unique items that you


want to have findable in a unique way,


then you make sure that you have unique URLs for them.


And you make sure that they're canonical,


that they're not blocked by no index.


But if you don't care about those individual URLs,


if you care more about the higher level categories,


or if you have something like a broader product or category


that essentially is the most important way of finding


the content, then you can canonical to that page.


You can no index the other versions if you want.


You can essentially do whatever you want there


to kind of make it so that we focus all of our signals


on that main page that you do care about.


That's the question.


Because then I'm again asking myself,


then I would be pointing to many no index URLs within my page.


That's fine.


Like if you link to those variations


and you don't want those variations findable,


that's perfectly fine.


And this is something where I suspect


some of the confusion online is just


based on people having differing opinions on what they consider


to be important.


So if you're selling shoes, then probably a specific shoe model


is the product that you care about.


If you're selling shoes for maybe extremely large feet,


then you want the shoe size to be also indexable.


So it's something where people have different, I don't know,


priorities.


And you can kind of pick and choose


what you want to care about.


I don't know if you're selling a phone,


you might have the different phone colors all on one phone


product page.


If you have one of those colors is gold


and it's like super fancy, then maybe you


want to have a separate gold page and just all


the other colors together on one page.


And everyone does it a little bit differently.


And I imagine with industrial products,


like you mentioned, where you have


so many different dimensions and variations,


it probably makes sense to focus on the general layout


and say all of these different options


are essentially an attribute of the main product


and we should just focus on the main product.


SPEAKER 1 OK.


But if I would want to canonicalize,


then I would have to basically have the same copy on the side


to which I canonicalize.


I would have to have basically the same content


on the variation page.


No, you don't need to.


You don't need to have the same content.


The thing to keep in mind with setting a canonical


is that we will try to index the canonical page that you


mentioned.


So if there's anything unique on the non-canonical pages,


then we wouldn't be able to find that.


So essentially, anything that's critical,


make sure it's also mentioned on the canonical page.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


All right, thank you very much.


SPEAKER 1 Sure.


Christian.


SPEAKER 3 Yeah, hi.


Hi, John.


This time I have a question regarding Discover.


In Discover, we have more or less


two different, let's say, search result pages.


So we have the first page, and then you


can click on more results, and then you have the second page.


And my question is, is there any kind


of ranking involved in this so that some article is


on the second page?


Or is it more a matter of time or current of the time


when it is updated or something?


There is probably a sense of ranking,


but I don't think it's the same as traditional web


ranking in that Discover is just so personalized.


So it's not something where I think it would make sense


to have the traditional notion of, oh, you open a Discover


page and you're number five, and then maybe next time you're


number four or something like that.


So there is a sense internally within the product


of trying to figure out what is most important for you


or most relevant for you now when you're browsing Discover.


But I don't think any of that is exposed externally.


So it's, I don't know, it's basically a feed the way


that I see it.


It keeps going.


So this would be kind of personal ranking, which


only involves my personal interests?


Or are there other aspects like, let's say,


the strength or popularity or anything else


of a website which would also take effect onto this ranking?


I don't know.


I mean, there are lots of things that


go into even kind of the personalized ranking side.


And then I imagine there are also


different aspects of maybe geotargeting


and different formats of web pages, more video or less


video, more images, less images.


But I honestly don't know what specifically.


OK, so the best way to cope with it


would be to follow the recommendations there


are for being listed in Discover, which


have been published by Google sometimes before.


Yeah.


Yeah, I would follow those recommendations.


In particular, watch out for the aspects where we say,


don't do this or those kind of things.


And I would also look around externally on Twitter.


There are a handful of people who are really almost


like specialized on Discover.


And they have some really cool ideas.


They've written some good blog posts on what they've seen,


the kind of content that works well on Discover,


the kind of content that doesn't work well on Discover.


I would definitely check those kind of things out.


But because it's such a personalized feed,


from our point of view, it's not that you can kind of work


to improve your ranking in there because it's not a keyword


that people are searching for.


It's kind of like, well, here's some stuff for you


that we think might be interesting.


OK, cool.


Thanks.


Sure.


Cool.


Let me jump to some of the submitted questions.


And I'll get to all of you with raised hands as well later on.


But just to make sure that the submitted questions also


get covered a little bit.


Let's see.


A question regarding 301 redirects and cache control


headers.


I know I should use 301 permanent redirects in order


to pass page rank the best and fastest way possible.


However, our dev team doesn't like to implement 301s,


mainly because they're stored in browsers possibly forever.


They say in case of a misconfigured redirect,


people might not ever be able to lose the incorrect 301


redirect.


So first question is, does Google Store 301 redirects


just the same as browsers seem to do?


The whole crawling and indexing system


is essentially different from browsers in the sense


that all of the network side of things,


they're optimized for different things.


So in a browser, it makes a lot more sense to cache things,


to cache things longer.


But essentially, from our point of view


on the crawling and indexing side,


we have different ways of or different things


we need to optimize for.


So we don't treat crawling and indexing


the same as a browser.


It's a bit weird in the sense that we


render pages like a browser.


But the whole process of getting the content into our systems


is very different.


And we see this sometimes when you render a page


or when you see a page getting rendered


and it uses really old JavaScript files just


because we've been able to cache them for a while, which maybe


on a browser wouldn't happen.


But essentially, it's different.


And then the second question is, will Google


accept 301 redirects with cache control no cache or time


in the headers in order for us to get the best of both worlds?


Yes, that's perfectly fine.


If it's a 301 redirect, we treat it as a 301 redirect.


It doesn't matter what kind of cache headers


you also add on top of that.


So from that point of view, if this


is a solution that works well for your dev team


and for yourself, why not?


I think that's perfectly fine.


The other thing is 302 redirects might also


be an option if that works better for your dev team.


302 redirects have a bad reputation


among SEOs, which I think is incorrect because they


do work the same as normal redirects as well.


It's not that they don't pass any page rank, anything


like that.


And if you have 302 redirects for the long run,


we treat them exactly the same as 301 redirects anymore.


So if you can't work out how it works with 301 redirects,


maybe 302 redirects would be an option too.


A question regarding images.


I have portfolio-style sites with pages each showing


10 to 30 thumbnails displayed in a gallery and in full size


when clicked.


Depending on the CMS plugin used,


the full-sized image is or is not included in the page HTML.


So for instance, we have a kitchen URL


showing a portfolio.


The plugin has a feature that you can load kitchen question


mark image equals 123, and it'll load exactly the same page.


But JavaScript will open a full-sized version


of the image, providing a sort of unique URL


for a page for that image.


In reality, there's only one page containing the entire image


set, and it's only JavaScript that is kind of making that


work.


Do you advise on considering each image having its own page


and listing it in a sitemap, or should I canonicalize them


all through the main kitchen page


and list only kitchen in the sitemap, as in reality,


there's only one HTML page there?


So in general, I would treat these as unique pages.


If when the page is loaded and rendered in the browser,


it shows something unique, then it's a unique page,


even if that's done with JavaScript.


So we do process JavaScript.


You can test that with the Inspect URL tool,


and you can double check to see what Google is actually seeing.


The one place where I would tend to say it's useful having


a separate image landing page is if you care about image search.


And for image search, having something like a clean landing


page where when a user enters a URL,


they land on a page that has the image front and center,


maybe has some additional information


for that image on the side, that is really useful,


because it's something that our systems can recognize


as being a good image landing page.


And whether or not you generate that with JavaScript


or with the static HTML on the back end,


that's more up to you.


But essentially, the aspect of having a unique image landing


page is something that really helps


when it comes to image search.


Because otherwise, if we just have this portfolio page


with 30 small thumbnails on it, and we


and someone was searching for an image,


it's hard for us to say, well, you'll


find the information you need on this big landing page


with lots of images on it.


Because chances are the image is somewhere


where they don't see it offhand, and they'd


feel kind of confused if we sent them there


after searching for that image.


The thing with image search is that it works kind of separate


from normal web search, and not all sites care about it.


It's not the case that if you have good performance in image


search that you will have better performance in web search.


You can essentially treat these as separate things.


And from that point of view, if you only care about web search,


if you don't really need these images


to be visible in image search, then this


might not even be something that you need to care about.


So I think those are kind of the different options there.


We run a small website with less than 200 URLs


and perform a major redesign to a headless CMS


to improve the quality of the user experience a few weeks


ago.


Our traffic and rankings have dropped significantly


a few days later.


How long will it take for Google to reassess the new design


and return to previous search position?


Our URLs appear to be crawled post-update in Search Console.


The migration used the same content, URL structure,


metadata, navigation, with only a few technical issues.


For example, the H2 headers were not


shown in the HTML, which may have caused some confusion,


but which were resolved two weeks later.


So it's hard to say what all was involved.


But in general, with bigger site relaunches,


it is important to watch out that as much as possible,


you can reuse the old things if you really


want to kind of be seen as a new iteration of the old website.


So using the same URLs sounds like you're doing that.


Things like internal linking, that they matter.


The text on the pages, the headings,


the overall structure of the pages, all of that


matters a little bit as well.


And just from kind of looking through this question,


because I don't know the website, my feeling


is that there's more of a almost like a technical issue that's


involved here that's causing these problems rather than


something subtle from the redesign


that you launched there.


So especially if you're saying you have the same URLs


and the URL structure is the same,


the text is mostly the same, and you're


seeing a 60% drop in traffic from search,


to me that would point more at some kind


of a foundational technical issue that maybe popped up


together with the redesign, which could be, I don't know,


maybe we can't crawl your site at all anymore.


Or maybe we can't reach your server properly.


Or maybe the hosting setup that you're now using


is detecting Googlebot as a rogue bot


and blocking Googlebot.


Those kind of things are elements


that I would look at here.


If this were a redesign where you just changed everything,


new URL structure, you set up some redirects,


and it's a completely different website essentially,


then I would expect this kind of a drop or a change.


But if essentially everything is the same


and small things have changed, then I


wouldn't expect that big of a drop.


And it would be more of a technical thing, I think.


Let's see, second part of the question,


if improving the quality of pages


is important for Google with the page experience update,


why does it take Google so long to recognize


these improvements?


It seems counterintuitive for SEOs


to commit to making a real difference to improve the web


experience if they have to sacrifice losing search


position and traffic for several months.


Yeah, I think if you make a bigger change on your website,


then sometimes you do see fluctuations.


But that's not something where we


would say those fluctuations are there because you


improved your website.


It's just we have to re-understand a website


when you make really big changes across a website.


But from my point of view, a lot of the restructurings


that you can do across a website,


depending on how you set them up,


how you execute on them, you can do that


in a way that essentially has a very smooth transition when


it comes to search so that it doesn't cause your whole website


to disappear.


I don't know, if you're seeing this or if you're here,


I don't know, I don't see you offhand here.


But if you want to drop me a URL,


maybe on Twitter to double check,


I'm happy to take a look.


Does having multiple pages not indexed due to quality


affect the overall site crawlability?


No.


If you choose to no index pages, that


does not affect how we crawl the rest of your website.


The one exception here, of course,


is for us to see a no index, we have


to crawl that page first.


So if there's something where you're creating,


let's say, millions of pages and 90% of them are no index


and you have 100 pages that are indexable


and we have to crawl the whole website


to discover those 100 pages, then obviously we'll


get bogged down with crawling millions of pages.


But if you have, I don't know, a normal ratio of indexable


to non-indexable pages where we can essentially


find the indexable pages very quickly


and there are some non-indexable pages on the edge,


essentially, I don't see that causing any issue at all


with regards to crawlability.


And this is not something that is due to quality reasons


that Google says, oh, no index pages are bad.


It's purely a technical thing.


If we have to crawl a million URLs,


we have to crawl a million URLs to see what is there.


It's not something where we can say, well, oh, we'll


crawl only 50,000 because there are some no index pages.


Essentially, it's just a numbers issue.


We've heard that temporary 302 redirects


don't pass page link equity.


Is our understanding of that accurate?


More in general, we've heard that using 302s causes


significant SEO issues, which has caused us to wonder if we


should avoid these at all costs or if there are specific


instances where we should use them.


Good question.


Kind of similar to the previous one on redirects.


And the answer is a clear no.


There is no negative SEO effect from 302 redirects.


I think the whole feeling of you lose


page rank when you do 302 redirects, it is false.


And it comes up every now and then.


I think the main reason why this comes up


is because 302 redirects are, by definition, different


in the sense that with a 301 redirect,


you're changing the address.


And you want Google systems to pick up the destination page.


And with a 302 redirect, you're saying, well,


this is temporarily somewhere else.


But you want Google systems to keep the original URL.


So if you're purely tracking ranking of individual URLs,


then, of course, a 301 will cause the destination page


to be indexed and ranking.


And a 302 redirect will keep the original page


indexed and ranking.


But there's no loss of page rank or any signals assigned there.


It's purely, well, which of these two URLs


is actually indexed and shown in search?


So sometimes 302 redirects are the right thing to do.


Sometimes 301 redirects are the right thing to do.


If we spot 302 redirects for a longer period of time


where we think, well, maybe this isn't a temporary move,


then we'll treat them as 301 redirects as well.


But there's definitely no hidden SEO benefit


of using 301 redirects versus 302 redirects.


They're just different things.


I hope you can help me with this.


Is it normal for a URL to rank high on the first page


for its chosen keyword?


It can be found by searching with a site query,


yet it can't be found by doing a simple URL search in Google.


I have lots of URLs like this across many sites.


And I don't know if my sites are having


any filter applied to them.


So I think, first of all, if your pages are


ranking for your keywords, then it's


easily working right.


So I wouldn't assume that anything is broken there.


And it's definitely the case that we


try to recognize URL type queries


and treat them a little bit like a site query.


But ultimately, they're different queries.


And it can happen that we don't show pages


that we have indexed if someone specifically searches just


for the URL itself without doing something like a site


query or an in-URL query.


And I would, in cases like this, just


focus on the normal rankings that you see for the keywords


that you do care about.


Because chances are, your users are not


searching for the URL itself, but rather


for whatever keywords you happen to have on your pages


or the content that you have there.


I noticed that previews in Publisher Center


don't show thumbnails for WebP image formats.


There seems to be little to no information on the web.


Since there is a constant urge to improve metrics and user


experience, could you clarify if the format is currently


supported or offer advice on adoption with regards


to Discover and Google News?


So I don't know the details of what you're seeing here.


I don't know the details of what you're seeing in Publisher


Center, so that's kind of hard for me to say.


But in our image processing systems, we support WebP images.


And we essentially use the same image processing system


across the different parts of search.


So my feeling is it would be really unexpected


if any of these related parts of search


were to treat WebP images in any other way


than just normal images.


So my guess is that maybe the preview you're


seeing in Publisher Center is just not


representative of what we actually show in search.


A simple way to double check would


be to see what these pages show up as in search directly.


And if they look OK to you there,


then probably it's just a bug in Publisher Center.


What I would do here, though, is pass that feedback


onto the Publisher Center scene.


I don't know Publisher Center, but most of our tools


have feedback sections where you can submit feedback,


and I would use that there.


And if you're seeing that this is something really weird


and that in some of the search services it works


and some it doesn't, then feel free to also send me


some examples, and I can pass that on to the teams


here internally as well.


Let's see.


Another redirect question, I think.


I work with a developer who is merging


two sites for a mutual client.


I would like to see site A redevelop


to include valuable content from site B


and then specific 301s from site B


to site A with site B remaining hosted


until I see the re-indexing.


This can't happen due to some XML feeds


that need to remain.


What is going to happen is site B


is going to have content from site A added to it


and then renamed to the site A domain.


And redirects will be added at a domain level.


So site B will actually be replaced with site A


and no longer exist.


So my question, is there any difference


between keeping site B hosted with 301 redirects


versus renaming site B to become site A?


Is that confusing?


Yes.


To me, it feels like a bad idea, but I can't find anything


specifically talking about the difference between having


content hosted and 301ing versus redirecting the domain


and there being no actual website files anymore.


So I think there are two aspects.


Just briefly dimension, on the one hand,


when you're doing any kind of a site move or migration


like this, usually I recommend either going incrementally


in a direction that you want to head


or doing the whole move all at once.


In this case, it sounds like you're going incrementally first


in the opposite direction, like moving everything in site B


and then moving everything back to site A.


And that kind of back and forth move, I think,


can make it harder for our systems to follow


and to understand what you're trying to do.


So as much as possible, I will try


to find a way to do that in one step


or find a way to kind of incrementally move things


from site B to site A and then build the new structure


directly on site A incrementally.


That's kind of the first thing.


The other thing with regards to redirects or just hosting


everything on the new site, my suspicion


is it's exactly the same thing from an external point of view


in that we'll see the redirects going from one place


to the other.


And the practical thing that you might be seeing


is maybe the content itself is just


hosted in this one directory on the server


or on the other directory in the server.


And it's more a matter of how you technically


host it on your side, which is different.


And what people actually see externally,


search engines as well, is probably exactly the same.


So probably those two options of redirecting site B to site A


or hosting site B on site A, probably those two options


are exactly the same.


So hopefully that helps a little bit there.


All right, let's jump back to some more live questions


in the meantime.


Mihai.


So many mute buttons.


Hey, John.


So special.


Yeah, so I do have a couple of questions.


I'll try to stop if there's too many


and maybe ask a few more afterwards.


So a few of them are related to one


of the topic of one of the previous questions regarding


multiple versions of a given product and canonicalizing it.


So I'm curious in cases where you have unique products,


but the only difference is a very slight variation.


So there's literally the same content on every page.


And maybe the image or the color or something like that


is different, but not something that people would actually


search for.


However, let's say you have like 10 products,


and eight of them you canonicalize.


Would that mean that Google only sees


like a category with two products


and maybe figure out that, well, this category only


has two products, maybe we won't rank it


as well versus other sites that maybe have more?


I don't think that would be bad.


Like, I don't think the number of products in a category page


is a ranking factor from that point of view.


So I wouldn't see that problematic.


Also on a category page, even if you have only two pages that


are indexable, that are linked from there,


you still have things like the thumbnails and kind


of product descriptions and things


like that that are also listed on the category page.


So kind of having the category page with 10 products


and only two of them are indexable,


I don't see that as being problematic.


OK, so there's no reason for Google


to think this page is kind of thin in value or?


No, I mean, because it has all of the information there.


Like maybe the links essentially lead back to the same pages,


but you have information on this page about different products


that fit into that category.


And so in terms of maybe internal linking,


would that make any difference?


Like maybe on the product pages, you


have breadcrumbs that lead back to the category page.


With the canonicalizing so many products,


would that make an impact?


Or it basically sums up to the same result?


I suspect it's probably all the same.


It's probably all the same, right.


OK, one more question regarding this scenario


is if you have like eight variations of that product,


all of them can equalize to one of them.


But that one of them, that's the canonical version,


gets out of stock.


But you do have the other ones that are in stock.


Would it be OK to move the canonical to one


of the products that's in stock?


Sure.


I mean, you can change canonicals over time.


I suspect what would happen here is


that it takes a while for our systems to recognize that.


Because you're changing the rel canonical,


and our systems generally try to keep the canonical stable.


So especially we want to avoid a situation


that we're fluctuating between two URLs as canonicals


just because the signals are kind of similar.


So probably there will be some latency involved


in switching over.


But that's something you can definitely do.


OK.


Yeah, I have a few more questions.


But I'll just leave it to the other people with the hands up.


We have more time afterwards as well.


We'll see.


Cool.


Johannes.


Hi, John.


Nice seeing you.


Nice to that I can talk about one problem


I have with a client.


It's like, I think, a standard problem.


It's many URLs blocked by robots.txt.


Also, they have a HTTP header that is set on noindex.


So I set open the robots.txt so the URLs can be de-indexed.


But the client is afraid that the server


won't proceed all the requests and will fail.


So I said, well, if you see the user agent as a bot,


you can just give out a blank HTML body or maybe


another kind of page.


So my question is, is there any risk


of getting penalized because of cloaking if the HTTP header is


set to noindex?


No.


I don't see any problem with that.


So in particular, if you're showing search engines less


than you would show users, then that's


less of an issue with regards to cloaking.


So the part of cloaking that is more problematic for us


is if you show us a really big and interesting page,


and when users get there, they see something really tiny


or slightly different.


But if you're showing us, essentially, an empty page


and saying, oh, there is nothing here,


you shouldn't index this page, and we drop it out


of the index, then we don't care if users see something else.


Because from our point of view, what we want to avoid


is that we promise users something that they can't find.


So if we drop a page from our index,


we can't recommend that page because we


don't have it anymore.


But kind of the other way around,


if we recommended a page to people for a specific query


and they go there and they can't find that content,


then they're frustrated and they think we did a bad job.


And that's something where our cloaking problem comes from.


But showing less is perfectly fine.


OK, that's a good argument because in this case,


you should know the Stefano, not Stefano.


But it's OK, everyone on the road called me Stefano.


I don't know why Stefano, by the way.


It's OK.


My question today is related.


I go back to the first question they asked today.


It's about the spammy backlink.


So I'm noticing this period.


I'm using one of the Google tools for us.


I'm using Google Alerts.


That gives me some tips about who


is talking about our websites.


And I'm seeing a lot of URLs coming from AI-generated content.


But those sites are not listed or not indexed in Google.


Clearly fake sites.


So it's OK.


Google don't see them.


I don't see them in Signbrush or in Ahrefs.


The only point where I see those links is because I'm


in Google Alerts.


So I'm a little bit worried why I


get this type of information from Google


and then decide it's clearly not relevant.


And this took me to another thinking


that is about the use of artificial intelligence,


especially in Google, without a single user.


In Google, with the raising of the MAM technologies


and all this kind of stuff.


We're seeing a lot of black hats still


and some sites using artificial intelligence-generated content


to try to trick the Google algorithm.


I know probably you are aware of this.


And I'm curious about how are you dealing with this?


What can we do to take out of all of this spamming backlink?


Yeah.


Good point.


So I think the first one with regards to Google Alerts


is Google Alerts.


I don't know the Google Alerts scene directly.


So this is just purely based on my observations.


It's essentially trying to find content as quickly as possible


and alert you of that.


And because of that, my assumption


is that it picks up things that we see for search


before we do all of the complete spam filtering.


And because of that, we can send out alerts for things


where actually, when we take a second look for indexing,


we say, oh, this is junk.


We can get rid of it.


And I see that with alerts as well.


So I have a variety of Google Alerts


that I'm kind of subscribed to just to see what is happening.


And sometimes the alerts are just really spammy and weird.


And I suspect that's something that the Google Alerts


team can work on.


But I wouldn't see that as an issue with regards to search.


So if they're not being indexed, if they don't show up


in the other tools, I would just ignore them.


So that's kind of the one thing.


With regards to automatically generated content,


I feel like this is a topic that has actually been around


for a really long time because it's


like there have just been so many different ways of


generating content automatically.


And some of it is used in useful ways.


And some of it is used in really spammy ways.


I've made test sites with auto-generated content for,


I don't know, since before I joined Google.


What was that?


Maybe, I don't know, 13, 14 years ago?


And it's something where these technologies exist.


And people will use them.


And search engines will index some of that content.


But for the most part, we'll look at it and say,


oh, this is really low-quality content.


And we'll see that these pages don't collect signals


the way that normal pages do.


And because of that, we'll basically say,


oh, well, we'll kind of ignore this.


And from our guidelines, it is the case


that if it's automatically generated content,


it should be blocked by robots, for example.


But my feeling is, at some point,


that is going to shift a little bit in the sense


that we'll focus more on the quality


rather than how it was generated.


And that's something where I could imagine


that there might be some setups for automatically generated


content where you can actually create something


that is fairly useful, where based on maybe the input


data that comes in, it's actually something


that is useful for people.


So I know, for example, I think in the US,


some of the news sites use feeds from the different,


I don't know, geological institutes


for earthquake detection.


And they will automatically generate a news article


if they see that one of these feeds says,


oh, there was an earthquake in this big city.


And they will take this automatically generated content


and publish it initially, because as soon as possible,


get the information out there.


But they'll also have people who go in and actually create


something useful on top of that.


So some mix of maybe automatically generated content


and human-curated content I imagine will become normal.


But we'll continue to have the really low effort


automatically generated content as well, where people just say,


oh, I want to target this keywords,


give me five paragraphs of text, and make it look


like it's written in English.


And a normal person looks at it and reads through it


and says, this doesn't make much sense,


or these sentences don't fit together.


And this kind of low effort content


I think will continue to be something


that our systems will try to recognize as low quality,


maybe spam, and treat appropriately.


And in the end, if it's low quality content,


it doesn't matter if it was written by a person


or by a machine.


It's not that useful for people.


SPEAKER 2 OK, thank you.


It's clear.


It's interesting that you said maybe one day we


will treat computer-generated content even more


important than human content.


SPEAKER 1 I don't think more important.


SPEAKER 2 No, no, but it can be.


SPEAKER 1 It works together, I think.


And I think those are the things that some people are working


on, kind of this combination of using these tools


to create something new.


And I totally expect that people come up with something


or some combination that's really useful.


Similar to, I don't know, you have a spreadsheet


in your browser nowadays.


And if you want to create graphs,


like you could put the numbers there


and it makes the graphs for you.


Maybe at some point, if you have a system that helps you


with writing, you start your sentences off


and it helps you finish them up or it watches out


for connectivity issues, that it's consistent what you're


writing, or the style is the same.


All of these things.


So using it as a tool, I think there are definitely


lots of uses for that.


OK.


SPEAKER 2 Thank you.


SPEAKER 1 Cool.


All right.


Maybe I'll just take Michael and then we can pause the recording.


We'll see how long your question is.


SPEAKER 3 I'll speak as fast as I can.


So I was talking to a fairly well-known news outlet


yesterday, and they were concerned


their articles don't surface anywhere or anywhere


meaningful in news.


And I should note that I don't have a vested interest


in this company, but I can say objectively


their articles were nicely reported, fairly


robust, high quality.


But what was glaring was their over-monetization with ads.


So there are many ranking factors,


and typically it isn't one thing that dooms the site.


But is it possible that that, frankly, very poor user


experience is materially hurting that outlet


from ranking in news?


It's hard to say, but it could have an effect.


And maybe it's enough that it's a visible effect.


So in particular, within the page experience algorithm,


we have the notion of kind of the above the fold content.


And if all of that is ads, then I


could imagine that it's hard for our systems to say, well,


actually this is useful content.


And especially with regards to news,


content when it's topics that are very, I don't know,


commoditized, and that there are different outlets reporting


on the same issue, then I could imagine


that something like that pushes our systems over the edge.


And if it's across the site, like on a bigger scale,


I could imagine that we end up picking that up.


It's hard to say how much of an effect


you should see that's going to be


how much of an effect you should see there.


But I could imagine there is some.


I mean, everything else really objectively looked great.


But it was one of those things where it was like,


where's Waldo, meaning where's the content, because it was


just so cluttered with ads.


And you just want to go crazy and say, please, with ads,


sometimes less is more.


And the fewer ads will actually convert


to more traffic and revenue, one of the other things


that I'm sure they're concerned about.


But I felt like that was really, everything else


was really, really good.


It was kind of disheartening to see them


hurting themselves that way.


Yeah.


Hard to say.


Cool.


May I just pop in here?


Michael, when so many ads have you checked,


the Core Web Vitals, I think the page could be very heavy


and loading very slowly, something like that, probably.


Right, so all of that was cascading.


Not only was it so many ads, but obviously it was slow


because of all those ads.


All right.


OK, let me pause here for the recording.


I have more time afterwards, so all of you with your raised


hands will hopefully get through and get your questions


in as well.


If you're watching this on YouTube,


feel free to join us for one of the future sessions


or drop your questions in the next Office Hours one.


Usually I open them up a couple of days before we go live,


so you can add your questions to YouTube in the community


section.


All right, with that, thank you for watching,


Is a Hotdog a Sandwich? #AskGoogleWebmasters

Welcome to our Google Webmasters channel and to today's episode of Ask Google Webmasters.


Today we'll look into a question submitted by Andrew.


This has been on my mind and is definitely not site-specific, but is up for much debate


in our office.


Is a hot dog a sandwich?


I have to say, this is a pretty unique question and one I've not had to spend too much time


on before.


Looking around, I found some prior art on Reddit, which I linked to below.


To be honest, I don't have a definitive answer, sorry.


Part of the problem here is that hot dogs in Switzerland are quite different than those


in the US.


So, what do you mean, an American or a European hot dog?


I'm also quite certain that these vary across countries and regions in Europe too, so there's


that as well.


Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you're asking about a typical Swiss hot dog


as I see sold at train stations while going to work.


Well, these are essentially half a baguette with a hole in the middle and a sausage stuffed


into it.


The condiments generally include your choice of either ketchup or mustard dripped into


the hole beforehand.


On the one hand, a baguette is clearly a kind of bread which can be used to make a sandwich.


On the other hand, it's not cut into slices.


In short, a hot dog is obviously not a sandwich, and instead, if I remember my Mexican food


properly, it's clearly a kind of enchilada.


That said, there are other opinions, and I wouldn't say that they're definitely wrong.


For example, while researching this topic with the team, we discovered the so-called


cube rule of food, according to which a local hot dog would be a sushi, or an American hot


dog with the bread sliced open on one side would be considered a taco.


Obviously, at this point, I'm getting kind of hungry, so maybe we should just stop recording


and take a break.


The only thing I'm really sure about is that I won't be having a hot dog for lunch, because


that's just way too confusing.


Anyway, thanks for watching, and catch you next time when we talk about more serious


topics, like perhaps canonicalization.


Why doesn’t my JS page get cached in Google?

And now we have a question from Ankit Gupta


coming in from Twitter.


Ankit asks why their JavaScript framework pages aren't shown


in Google's cache view.


Well, thank you for asking, Ankit.


Google Search sometimes keeps a copy


of the HTML page that was fetched from a server


and shows that to users in the form of a cached page.


That is, however, really just the HTML page


for JavaScript-based websites.


It gets a little bit complicated here.


Because of browser security, there


are restrictions on how content can be accessed from a page.


For example, if a page needs a JavaScript file


from your server, browsers may block that request when


it comes from other websites.


In our case, the other website would be Google's cache.


In practice, this means JavaScript-based websites often


show an empty or an incomplete page when they're


shown from Google's cache.


This is normal and not a sign of a problem.


In particular, for indexing, Google


will process the JavaScript separately


and try to index what a user would see when they visit


your website directly.


This rendered version of a page is visible in Google Search


Console's testing tools if you want to double check.


For the most part, Google can render and index content


on JavaScript-based websites fine.


So in short, it's normal that the cache view of a JavaScript


website is empty or incomplete.


That's not an indication of a problem.


It's just a technical restriction in browsers.


Well, Ankit, I hope that helps to clear things up.


If there are any other questions on your mind,


please drop us a note with the hashtag AskGooglebot.


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from April 3, 2020

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


Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


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


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


where people can join in and ask their questions


around websites and web search.


I hope you're all doing well, regardless


of the current crazy situation.


And hopefully, we can get some of these questions answered


that are still on your mind.


All right, a bunch of stuff was already submitted.


But you're welcome to jump in now


if anyone wants to get started with their first question.


I'd be happy to if no one else wants to go.


All right, go for it.


So our website's been around for about 16 years.


And we've never done any kind of link building at all,


not even a guest post, nothing like that.


But I looked in Google Search Console,


and I see that we have 320,000 backlinks.


And when I go through the list, about 90% are just no good.


The domains look spammy.


There's nothing good about them.


And I know that you've said that Google


does a pretty good job of finding out


what those domains are and just not counting them at all.


But you also said that if you're losing sleep about this,


then just go ahead and submit a disavow file.


So I did do that.


And I have two questions regarding that.


One is, you said that the disavow doesn't come


into effect, or at least it's maybe you didn't say this,


but I've read that the disavow doesn't come into effect


until 100% of those links are crawled once again.


So does that mean that every domain in that list


has to be crawled, and only when it reaches 100% of that list


does the disavow come to effect?


Or does it happen on a domain-by-domain case


within that file?


It happens on a per-URL basis within that file.


So as we recrawl the individual links that


are pointing at your site, if they're


mentioned in your disavow file or the domain


is mentioned in a disavow file, we will essentially


just drop that link.


So it's not something you have to wait for.


It just happens kind of incrementally.


I think, in general, with a website that old,


you're going to collect a lot of weird things over the years.


And you probably also collect a lot of good things


over the years.


So I really assume you probably would not


need a disavow file for something like that.


I don't know your website.


I don't know what all has happened with it.


But if it's a normal website, if, like you said,


you haven't been doing link building all these years,


you didn't hire SEOs to do things


that you don't know about, then probably,


I'd say 99% of the cases, you wouldn't need


to do anything with the disavow.


SPEAKER 2 Yeah, I wouldn't really be looking into it,


except for with the JAM co-opt date.


We took a huge dive in terms of traffic.


So I'm just trying to do everything I can to see if we're


OK.


SPEAKER 1 No, that makes sense.


Kind of go through all of the small stuff as well.


That makes sense.


SPEAKER 2 All right, thank you.


SPEAKER 1 Sure.


All right, any other questions before we get started?


OK, well, in that case, I'll just


jump in through the questions that were submitted on YouTube.


And if anyone has any comments along the way


or needs any further clarification or disagrees,


feel free to jump on in.


And we'll see where we can go today.


OK, most of the WordPress themes have two navigation menus


in the HTML code, one for desktop, one for mobile.


It means that there are duplicate menu URLs


on every page in the code.


Is Googlebot able to understand the logic of desktop mobile


menus?


For example, when a page is displayed on a mobile phone,


only the mobile menu is displayed


and the desktop menu is hidden.


When a page is displayed on desktop,


the mobile menu is hidden and the desktop menu


is displayed.


Does Googlebot ignore the hidden menu links in the code?


Do the hidden links penalize the website?


So I think for the last question,


that's a definitive no.


It's not the case that these kind of links on a page


cause any harm for a website.


I think, in general, it's probably something


that can be cleaned up.


I know a lot of sites use responsive design in a way


that they have the menu in there once,


and they use a CSS to display it in different ways,


depending on desktop and mobile.


So in many cases, you can probably clean that up.


From a practical point of view, from Google's side,


the links go to the same places.


From our side, that's essentially OK.


It might be from a usability point of view.


It might make sense to clean that up.


It might be from a pure page size point of view.


It would make sense to clean that up.


But just purely from Google's SEO point of view,


that's not something you need to change.


Our business has a larger number of branches,


but we have had to temporarily close some of them


and redirect customers to collect their goods


from other bigger branches.


So we added an image highlighting


the branch is temporarily closed with a link


to the nearest branch to that.


This is currently nofollow.


Is this the best way to do it, or is there


anything you can recommend?


We don't want to confuse Google by linking two branches


and making it nofollow, but we also


don't want to harm rankings.


So you don't need to make this a nofollow link.


That's something that seems like a perfectly natural link


to have on a site.


And probably you already have the branches


linked across each other in some other way anyway.


So from that point of view, that's


not something you'd need to do as a nofollow.


Using an image to let people know that this branch is closed


is also fine.


Essentially, by using an image, you prevent that text


from being indexed.


However, you can also use something like the data


no snippet HTML attribute to let us know that something


shouldn't be shown in a snippet, which is essentially


the same thing.


From a usability point of view, using an image


is obviously a lot harder to read.


If someone is using a screen reader,


they wouldn't see what is on that image.


So that's something where I might use a normal HTML text


banner instead of an image, but ultimately, that's


a small thing.


From a search point of view, the important part here


is that you're not taking down the website completely,


that you're not returning a 503 for these kind of situations.


Because if you take the website down completely


or you serve a 503 response code, then what will happen


is Google will drop that website from our search results.


And depending on how long this is the case,


it might be that it gets dropped from our index completely,


which means people, if they were searching explicitly


for that branch, they wouldn't find anything.


And similarly, once you reopen that branch,


it'll essentially take a pretty much pretty long time


for everything to get back into the index,


to get back into a state where it's


reasonably findable in search.


So the setup that you have here with the banner,


pointing at a different branch, giving information


about kind of the closure, that's something that's


a perfect setup.


And nofollow or followed link, from my point of view,


you can also use a normal followed link.


I don't think that would change much.


We're looking at redoing our navigation


on our e-commerce sites.


Would it be beneficial from an SEO point of view


if popular product pages could be accessed directly


from the navigation as opposed to the user going


through a category page first?


Can it benefit the apparent category page


if all the link power was going to child product pages?


Or should they follow a hierarchy order


as the value of any links gets diluted the more levels


you go down?


So in general, if you're thinking about page rank,


which is kind of in this direction,


then for a lot of websites, it is the case


that the home page is kind of the primary page


that people link to.


It's kind of the strongest page on a website.


And the closer items are linked from the home page,


the more we can kind of pass value onto them and say,


well, these are pages that are really important from looking


at this website because they're even linking to it


from their home page, for example.


So that's something where, as you


see that you might have individual products which


are more important, for example, which


could be more important in the sense


that you're selling them really well.


It could be that you have a better ROI on those products.


It could be that it's something that you're trying to build up.


If you have products like this and you


want to make sure that they're a little bit more


visible in search, then linking them higher up


within your website generally makes sense.


The important part here is that you're


giving Google a sense of hierarchy,


a sense of these pages are more important,


and these other pages are a little bit less important.


So if you were to take that situation and say,


well, all of my pages should be promoted because they're all


the most important page on a website,


then you're not giving Google that hierarchy anymore.


Then suddenly, if everything is important,


nothing is important.


So really taking a bit of time to think about,


what are the things that you really


find critical when a user comes to your home page


that they find first?


And usually, those are the things


that you would want to link there.


that you want to give a little bit more value to when


it comes to search.


So that's kind of the direction I would look at it there.


So kind of going back to your question,


if there's something that you find really important,


it's not so much that you need to link it directly


from the general menu on a site, but more


that you link it a little bit higher up within your website,


a little bit closer to the pages that


tend to be more popular or stronger within your website.


We had a lot of errors in our schema markup.


So does Google still use it for pages that are OK,


or is it a site-wide thing?


The structured data markup is always on a per-page basis


and a per-item basis.


So if on a particular page you have some structured data


that's valid and some structured data that's invalid,


then we'll use the structured data that's valid,


because we can understand that.


And we'll just ignore the part that's invalid.


So even within a page, we can kind of


pick those that are valid.


And when you're looking at it across a bigger website


overall, if there are some pages that have invalid structured


data and others have valid structured data,


we'll use the structured data from the pages that are valid.


It's not the case that we would see


a website as being lower quality because of structured data


errors.


It's not the case that we would see a website


as being higher quality because it has no structured data


Essentially, with structured data,


you're giving us a little bit more information


about the pages and what you're writing about there.


And we can take some of that to kind of show the richer


snippet, essentially, in the search results for those pages.


It's not that we'll rank them higher,


but more that we'll be able to show them


in a slightly different way in search, which is often


something that people are looking for.


Because the clearer you can make it for your users


what a page is about, the more likely


they'll be able to say, well, this is really what I want.


And you'll end up having more qualified visitors


going to your website.


Our product pages on product pages


is informational behind tabs still discounted from a ranking


point of view or not.


So I think we've been talking about this for a number


of Hangouts already.


But essentially, with mobile-first indexing,


the content that is behind things like tabs


or behind user interface elements


where it's not immediately visible on a page,


that's something that we still take into account.


So purely from an SEO point of view, we can still use that.


We can still use that for ranking.


From a usability point of view, obviously,


if you're putting stuff behind tabs,


behind user interface elements, which


are perhaps unclear to users, then they


won't be able to discover that content.


So when people find your web pages in search


and they think, oh, this is really the page


that I wanted to because it has information on this topic


that I was interested in, if they go to that page


and they see or they don't see any of that content,


then it's very likely that they'll go back to search


and maybe click on something else.


So purely from a usability point of view,


if something is important, then make


sure it's important on your pages


so that both search engines and users


are able to find it as quickly as possible.


Is Google controlling results related to some health terms,


specifically corona, by filtering out


some specific types of sites?


If yes, how can we make sure that it isn't controlling


other terms as well?


So I'm not aware of anything where


we're manually filtering out sites specifically


around health terms.


I do know that specifically around health,


people have very high expectations of search results.


And therefore, we work really hard


to make sure that the search results that we provide there


are of the highest quality possible.


So it's not so much that we need to filter things out,


but rather that we need to make sure


that our algorithms are really working


as well as they should be.


And having good algorithms that figure out


what content is relevant for users or not,


that's something that makes sense across the board.


So it's not like we would only need


to do that for one specific query,


but rather we can use these algorithms


and use them everywhere.


So whenever someone is searching for something


and we have an algorithm that helps us to better understand


what they're searching for and to better show search results


for that, then we will try to do that.


So from that point of view, it's not


that we're doing anything really special for these kind


of terms, maybe apart from the various one boxes


that we have in search where we try to highlight


the more current information a little bit better.


But apart from that, it's not that we're


doing anything that we wouldn't otherwise


want to do elsewhere in search.


Will Data Highlighter be a part of the new Search Console?


If possible, would you please let


us know how many people are actively using it?


So I don't have any metrics to share, sorry,


but it is something that people are working on.


So it's not something where I'd say we decided to just turn it


off, because if we wanted to just turn it off,


we would have probably turned it off already.


In general, I see Data Highlighter


as a way to get started with structured data


and to try things out.


I would not see that as something


that you should be doing in the long run.


So if you've noticed that your structured data is working well


that you put together with Data Highlighter,


then my really strong recommendation


would be to implement that on the site


directly so that you don't need to go through Data Highlighter.


Because that's something where if it's on your site directly,


then other search engines will be able to use that as well.


You'll be able to control it in a much more granular way


in that you'll be able to say, this is really


this specific type of data, and this is something slightly


different, rather than having to rely on Google's algorithms


to figure that out.


So from that point of view, if you've


been using Data Highlighter regularly,


I really strongly recommend that you


find a way to implement that markup directly on your pages.


And if you're curious about structured data


and you don't have time to install a plugin


or to implement structured data, then Data Highlighter


is a great way to start.


Should I take Moz's domain authority too seriously


because it's been declining?


So I can't tell you how seriously you should be taking


Moz's domain authority because that's not


a metric that we provide.


It's not something that we use at all in search.


That doesn't mean it's irrelevant for your website.


It might be the case that this gives you some information that


is useful for you on your day-to-day work.


So maybe there is something that you see there


which tells you, oh, I'm doing things right.


And you can show that to your boss and say, look,


I've been doing things right.


This metric that I'm looking at has been going up.


Alternately, it might be that you're looking at this


and you're seeing it going down.


And if you determine, well, this metric


reflects this specific thing in search,


and it's going down, maybe that's something


that you could be working on.


But essentially, that's totally up to you.


And so I can't tell you how seriously you should be taking


this particular metric.


It's similar to maybe other performance metrics


where the page speed inside score


might be going up or down.


I can't tell you how seriously you should be taking this.


It's something where you should take that metric,


figure out what it determines, and work out for yourself


how relevant that is for your current situation for the work


that you've been doing.


So from that point of view, I can't say you should ignore it


completely because maybe it is useful for you.


And at the same time, I can't say


it's the most critical thing you should be focusing on


because your website will disappear from search if not.


Both of those are not the case.


Everyone knows that a dofollow link will help to gain rank


besides many other signals.


So no one is linking to me with a dofollow link


as it costs some link juice for them as well.


So how can a newbie like me grow my website


if no one is willing to give them dofollow links?


And furthermore, many big sites have implemented


site-wide nofollow policy.


So it's just next to impossible for me as a newbie


to get a dofollow link from a big site.


How can a newbie grow in 2020, or should they just


write content and wait indefinitely?


Is Google's system the same like others


who favor only big players, or will Google


come up with new rules for links that will not differentiate


between the type of links?


So for that last one, I think we're already


in that state where essentially we're


using nofollow as a signal.


It's not the case that we completely always ignore


those links.


So especially in some locations, we've


seen that a lot of new websites are only


linked with nofollow links.


And it would be a shame for us not


to be able to discover those links and to show them search.


So that's something where we do try to use nofollow more


as a signal.


Oops, let me just mute you for the moment.


In general, though, I think it's also


worthwhile to think about the bigger picture when


it comes to the web, and not just to assume that you need


to always just get links, and then you'll be shown in search,


but rather you're essentially opening up


as a business, as a storefront in a bigger city.


And it's both the case that you shouldn't just


wait for someone to recommend your business,


nor the case that you should just open your business up


and you kind of wait outside and see


if anyone who happens to come by and want to visit


your business, but rather you need


to do different things to help promote your business.


And sometimes you do things to call attention


to your business in ways that kind of encourage people


to take note and to notice, oh, this business exists,


and they're doing some really great stuff.


And then people will come, and then over time,


recommendations will come as well.


So that's not something that just happens automatically.


It might be that you have to do advertising for a while


to kind of get things going.


It might be that you have to do some kind of special activities


to kind of stand out even more than you otherwise would.


But essentially, opening up a website


is kind of the same as opening up a business.


And you need to do various things to get the ball rolling.


And at some point, if you're doing really great work,


if you're doing something that's really fantastic for people,


then you will get recommendations


from various folks.


And those recommendations could be in the form of do follow


links, they could be in the form of no follow links,


they could be just general recommendations,


maybe on social media where people are saying,


well, this business is doing a great job,


you should check it out.


And you might just get more people coming by.


So with all of that said, I would


say that you need to think more than just looking at links,


and rather think about how you can grow a business in general,


which involves all kinds of activities.


Can Google follow links behind JavaScript


from an SEO point of view?


Is there something that we need to be aware of so that we


don't harm any internal linking?


I don't know.


We have an expert here on JavaScript.


Yes.


I actually asked a clarifying question there,


because the question is what you mean by JavaScript links.


If your JavaScript links, or with JavaScript links,


what you mean is a link that is injected by JavaScript links


versus a normal anchor tag, like an HTML tag with an href


that has a URL, even if it's JavaScript injected,


we can totally discover that and use that for crawling later.


If you are using something else, like a button or a span


or a link that has no href but has an on-click handler,


then no, we cannot follow those.


Do you think that will change at some point, Martin?


Who knows?


I'm not sure.


Bad at predicting the future, it turns out.


So I would rather not say something too definite.


But it could hypothetically happen


that we find better ways to deal with things.


But it is just a very resource-intensive thing


to actually click on everything, especially if it's not


something interactive.


If it's a button, then you can say, well,


at least it's interactive.


If it's a div or a span, then it's just a piece of text.


So why would we click on a piece of text?


Then we would have to click on pretty much every piece


of text, so that's a little bad.


And also, there are accessibility considerations


there.


So I would not expect this to change anytime soon.


But who knows?


OK.


What if you have some of those links in the HTML


and you also have them with JavaScript?


Does that cause any problems?


Sorry, muted myself.


That doesn't really cause problems fundamentally.


If you have it in the initial HTML,


we might be able to pick it up a little earlier,


because we do run a link scan on the initial HTML.


But with rendering picking up on speed,


it shouldn't be that much of a difference.


And it's not a problem anyway.


Cool.


And I think that's a good point.


And you occasionally do these JavaScript office hours as well,


right?


I do.


The next one is next Wednesday, or actually Wednesday,


so April the 8th, 7 PM, Swiss time.


You can just check out the calendar where you also


find these office hours.


And you can submit your questions on YouTube


once I actually post the thing on YouTube as well.


OK.


So Peter, if you need more information on JavaScript,


it sounds like you have an expert that you can go to


and get that directly.


If I use the subdomain of my parent company,


would it prevent me from ranking for my own Knowledge Graph?


Since whenever people type relevant keywords,


my parent company's Knowledge Graph will show up instead.


I don't know how you mean that specifically.


So it's really hard to say.


If you want to send me some queries,


maybe post them on Twitter, that would be useful


so that I can take a look.


In general, it's probably not something


where the subdomain or main domain is really


kind of the issue.


But rather, if we see that something is really strongly


associated with one particular company,


it might be that we show that Knowledge


Panel as background information regardless


of the individual products, for example.


But it's really hard to say from this kind of a question.


So if you want to send me some more detailed information,


I'm happy to take a look at that.


Regarding keyword cannibalization,


when two URLs from the same website


are appearing on the search results for the same query,


the question is, is this something


that confuses the algorithm, meaning the fact


that there are two URLs?


The existing one confuses the algorithm


and hurts the ranking of the other URL.


Let's say I have one URL in position four


and the other URL in position seven for the query.


So if I remove the second one, does the first one perhaps


improve its position?


I think this is a complex topic and, at the same time,


something that people often overthink.


But in general, what I would think about


is what you want to have shown for a particular query.


And then use that to focus your efforts


on that one particular item.


Because as soon as you have multiple items that


are essentially strongly overlapping,


then it's, on the one hand, harder for us


to pick which one of these pages might be the most relevant one.


On the other hand, it might be harder for the users


to figure out which one of these is actually


the one that they're looking for.


And finally, from your side, it's


also a bit trickier to determine which one of these


should you be maintaining, which one of these


should you be updating.


So with that in mind, I'd really strongly


recommend making sure that the content that you're creating


is really clear and focused on one particular topic


so that these individual pages can become really strong


for those particular topics, for maybe those individual queries.


And you don't have to worry about how


is overlap happening here.


On the other hand, if you have something


like a blog or something where you just bring out


new content all the time without regularly updating


the old content as well, that might


be that it just kind of naturally happens


that you have some amount of overlapping content.


Because maybe you write about a pre-announcement


where some company is about to announce something new


or has just announced that they're


working on something new.


And later on, they announce that it's actually live now,


that it's available.


And it makes sense to write about both


of those situations, right?


So that's something where it would be kind of normal for you


to say, well, I have some content on this topic already.


I have some content on the new variation of this topic


already.


And maybe I'll just create something new, even newer,


on that topic as well, like if that product is already in use


and you're able to write a review about that.


So that's something where, on the one hand,


it makes sense to focus, to try to kind of bring


some sense of focus into your website.


On the other hand, sometimes it also


makes sense to just write about things as they come.


How effective is old off-page SEO, like backlinks creation?


Many agencies spend lots of time doing old off-page activities,


such as image sharing with links, article submission


on sites like Tumblr, classified sites,


and other free-posting sites where people hardly


read any of the posts.


But those platforms for dropping links with some text,


basically majority of their site has poor-quality posts.


So offhand, all of those examples that you mentioned


are really terrible ways of promoting your website.


So that's something where, if you hire an agency


and they go off and post links on Tumblr,


on classified sites, and free-posting sites,


and they claim that this is going to help your website,


then I would move to some other agency.


So just to be really clear, this kind of activity


has zero value for SEO.


It's not something where you're promoting your website


in any way, but rather, essentially, they're


spamming the web.


So that's something I would strongly


discourage anyone from doing.


On the other hand, creating really fantastic content


and then reaching out to perhaps other sites who


want to talk about that content, that's


a totally different story.


So it's not the case that I would say any work that you


do that results in getting a link is a bad thing.


But rather, you should be focusing


on things where you end up getting


natural links because of the value of your content


that you're providing and not focusing on dropping links


into random places anywhere that you can drop a link randomly.


That's not going to help your website.


That's just going to be considered a spam.


So that's a really bad idea.


So that's kind of like, I can't say


in any amount of working on a website


to improve the links that you would get is bad,


but rather, you should definitely not


be doing this kind of spam.


And if an agency is doing this kind of spam for you,


I would switch to a different agency.


I've created a web page, and it's ranked on a second page.


I want to take my page to the first page.


So I'm thinking, I have a new branded site.


How can I rank my web page at that page?


So I don't think there is any magic trick to ranking higher.


And essentially, ranking is not so much something


that is an attribute of a website,


but rather, essentially what you should be looking at


is how your website is relevant with regards


to individual queries.


So you can rank for anything at first position


if it's specific enough to your individual pages.


If you make up a word and someone searches for that word,


then maybe your website will be the only one that is


shown in those search results.


So just ranking alone, I think, is a bad way to think about it.


But rather, think about it, what kind of value


do you want to provide with your pages,


and how can you show that value?


How can you work on promoting your website


to make sure that other people are aware of your website


and the relevance that you're providing?


And then focus on the ranking of those keywords


rather than just ranking itself.


Another thing that you can do, which I strongly recommend,


is to think about how you can branch out and maybe focus


on more niche keywords to get started


so that you don't have to compete with all


of the big sites, for example.


So one way you can do this is to use various kind of keyword


research tools that are out there.


There's also Google Trends, where you can take one keyword


and you can pick a location, location that perhaps you'd


like to target.


And it'll give you a little bit insight


into how that keyword or how that phrase is


used in those regions.


And it'll also give you some alternatives,


so some other ways that people are searching


for similar topics.


And often that can give you some more ideas


on how you can write about this.


And instead of just taking kind of like a short, very


competitive keyword and focusing on that,


maybe it makes sense to focus on something a little bit longer,


a little bit less competitive, and to build out your website


from there.


So that's kind of the directions that I


would take in cases like this.


But in general, if you're starting out with a new website,


everything will be a little bit kind of shaky in the beginning


until things settle down.


So take your time.


Take your time to do some research on what


your strengths are, what the value is


that you can bring to the web.


And also take the time to figure out


which topics you really want to write about or create content


on and how you can expand from just one narrow topic


to maybe a broader set of topics.


What's the optimal way to build a site map with links that


have hreflang to other regions?


Is it enough to put one link and let


Google read the meta of that link that has the hreflang?


Or should we list all variations of all countries


for that specific link?


Does Google ever visit your site without declaring itself


as a Google crawler?


So for the first one, when it comes to hreflang,


there are various ways that you can implement hreflang.


It could be either in a site map file, like you mentioned here.


It could be within the HTML on the page.


It could also be within the HTTP response headers.


And all of those places are places where


we pick up the hreflang links.


We combine them all.


And based on the combined information that we have,


we essentially try to use that appropriately.


So that's something where theoretically you


could mix site maps and HTML meta tags, for example,


to pull together the complete set of hreflang links.


From a practical point of view, hreflang


can be extremely complicated, especially


if you have a lot of pages in a bunch of different languages


or countries.


So my recommendation would be to pick one location


and to focus only on that location,


just to make sure that it's easier for you to debug,


it's easier for you to maintain if you change URLs,


all of those kind of things.


So that's kind of like, theoretically, you


could split it up into different locations.


But practically, I would really recommend just picking one


to make it easier on yourself.


Regarding, does Google ever visit your site


without declaring itself as a Google crawler?


I think that's possible.


It all depends on what you mean with Google.


If you mean Google employees, then definitely we


use browsers just like anyone else,


and they're not kind of declared as a Google bot.


And we have various other tools that also access


websites in various ways.


When it comes to search, we do always


declare it as a Google bot when we want to index content.


So we really want to be clear that when


it comes to indexing things for search,


we want to make sure that we're accessing it


in a really straightforward way, that we


ask for permission first, we check the robot's text file,


and if the robot's text file isn't accessible,


then we might hold off.


If it is accessible and lets us crawl, then we will crawl.


And we'll do that with the normal Google bot user agents.


So from a search point of view, we definitely


always declare it.


How to make a link completely uncrawlable.


I mean, we want to have some links for user navigation,


but we don't want Google to spend crawl budget on crawling


or storing those links.


So probably that doesn't make much sense,


because we have essentially enough crawl budget


to crawl those websites.


It's extremely rare that we run into situations


where we are kind of limited by the amount of crawling


that we can do.


And usually, those are situations


where the server is overloaded or something like that.


And usually, also, in cases like that,


the issues are not so much individual links


that we run across, but rather that we run across situations


where suddenly the same page is indexed 1,000 times


with different URLs.


That's something where, when it comes to crawl budget,


that we could run into issues there.


On the other hand, if it's like one URL more, one URL less,


or 10 URLs more, or 10 URLs less,


that's not a situation where crawling budget would ever


come into play.


So probably, in a case like this,


where you have individual links that you just


want to hide from Google, that has absolutely


no effect on crawl budget.


So probably, you don't need to focus on anything there.


In general, if you want to make sure


that a link is not crawlable, then I


would block the URL that you're linking to by robots.txt.


That's the clearest signal that you can give us


that you don't want Google to crawl this link,


and then Google won't crawl that link.


So that's kind of the direction I would head,


instead of trying to obfuscate the link from being seen.


Obviously, there are various ways


how you could obfuscate that link.


You could use, I don't know, some fancy combination


of JavaScript in a way that Martin said you shouldn't do,


and then suddenly we won't be able to see that link.


It might happen that, at some point later on,


we actually do figure out how to crawl


those kind of JavaScript links, and then you're stuck again.


It might be that you use, I don't know,


Flash or some other technology that Googlebot


doesn't understand anymore and set up a link like that.


There are various ways to block links


from being seen by Google.


But from a practical point of view,


I don't think any of that makes sense.


You're adding a lot of complexity


for something that has probably zero value for your website.


So you're spending a lot of time on things


that make absolutely no difference from an SEO


point of view.


If the same link is present in menus as well


as the primary content of the page,


is there any possibility the link in the primary content


is giving additional support for SEO,


like understanding, relating the content better?


It can help us a little bit better,


primarily with regards to the anchor text.


So if you have a little bit of a longer anchor text in one


place, then we can combine those anchor texts


and get a little bit better kind of context about that link.


But in general, it's OK to just have the link in one place.


It's also OK to have it multiple places.


It's not like there's a big difference between those two.


Uh-oh.


Rumor has it that FeedBurner might be retired soon.


Do you know anything about it?


Is it just a conspiracy?


I don't know anything about it.


I mean, I do know about FeedBurner.


FeedBurner is a cool way to kind of propagate RSS feeds.


But I don't know of any specific plans that are out there


with regards to that.


It does sometimes feel like RSS is a bit of something


that few people care about nowadays.


But it is still a big part of the web.


It is still something that is used, for example,


with podcasts.


It's kind of the primary mechanism


for distributing podcasts.


And podcasts are really popular.


So I don't think, in general, that RSS is going anywhere.


But I don't know of any specific plans with regards


to FeedBurner in particular.


If I want my video on the page to be ranked and indexed,


is video or embed tag better than iframe?


I think we probably understand all of these variations.


Essentially, as long as we can understand


that there is a video that you're embedding on a page


and we understand which video files are associated with that,


then any of those variations will work.


There's also the video structure data


that you can use to explicitly tell us about the video


content on a page.


But essentially, if you're using a setup that is commonly


in use on the web, then probably that will just work.


So if you're embedding YouTube videos, for example,


or if you're embedding videos from Vimeo


or any of the other bigger providers,


then we've seen a lot of those video embeds.


And we can just work with them.


And it's not the case that any one of these embeds


is better than the other, because as long as we can pull


out the video and understand how it is on this page,


then we have what we need.


There is no additional value in tweaking the tag


to be more SEO friendly or less SEO friendly.


Apple recently updated Safari on iOS and Mac


to block third-party cookies.


As a result, should we expect a drop in mobile traffic


in Google Analytics, or will this not


affect analytics tracking on iOS or Mac users?


I don't know.


I don't know how analytics handles that


or how that affects individual websites.


I would recommend checking in with the analytics folks.


They seem to be pretty active on Twitter.


So there's, I think, a Google Analytics account on Twitter


that you can ask directly.


Who would probably know more on this?


Is there a way to get explanations from Google SEO


teams when a website is penalized or filtered


from the search results with no message in Search Console?


My website has suddenly disappeared from the search


results since July 2019.


I'm not sure to understand why.


I try to respect Google's guidelines as much as I can.


But I don't achieve it to get it back in the search results.


So in general, when it comes to manual actions,


when a website team looks at websites


and sees that they're doing something


that goes against Google's guidelines,


we do send notifications in Search Console.


And you both get a message in Search Console


as well as have that manual action setting report


in Search Console.


So from that point of view, if anything is penalized,


then that would be visible there.


If it's not visible there, then that's


something where essentially our algorithms are trying


to figure out where this web page will be relevant


and how we should be able to show it in search.


I think, in general, if you're running into a situation where


a website is not indexed at all in search,


so if you're saying it disappeared from the search


results, I would try to figure out, is it indexed or not?


Because if it's not indexed, then most of the time,


for normal websites, that will be due to technical reasons


on the website.


So that could be something where perhaps you or your host


is inadvertently doing something that


prevents Google from being able to index its content at all.


And those kind of technical issues


are things that tend to be easier to resolve.


It might be, for example, that maybe you're


blocking users in the US, and Googlebot


is crawling from the US, so we wouldn't be


able to pick up that content.


It might be something else as well.


If the website is indexed and it's just not


ranking where you want it to rank,


then that's obviously a little bit trickier,


because there's so many factors that play into ranking


that it's really hard to say, this


is the one thing that you're doing wrong


or that you should be doing slightly differently.


It's really a lot trickier.


I don't know, I think I just saw a comment in the chat


which suggests that maybe you're here live.


Is that possible?


If so, what I can do is after we finish with the normal hangout,


maybe if you want to stay on, then I


can take a quick look at your site


to see if there's anything obvious.


It's a bit hard to do that in the live hangouts,


because I have no idea about your website.


And where I should even start.


But after the recording is finished,


then I tend to have a little bit more time to double check.


So we can take a quick look there.


All right.


I think we're running kind of low on time,


but maybe I can just shift over to any other questions


from you all in the meantime.


Hi, John.


Hi.


Again, me, Rohan, from Search Engine Journal.


So I would like to follow up with the question


I had in the last hangout about large images in Discover.


So far, here is what we have found through our tests.


So when we use AMP, all of our images, like all of our images,


are pulled large.


But when we switch to non-AMP, they are becoming small.


And sometimes I do notice that even AMP images


on other websites have small terminals.


But in our case, we have, like, all the time,


like, large when we use AMP.


But when we use non-AMP, it's small.


And I did the following tests.


I changed the image aspect ratio to Google recommended aspect


ratio, the thumbnail, to see if it does help, but it didn't.


I, a little bit, like, changed our article schema


to play around to see if it does any impact, but it didn't.


And I would like to know, like, is there


any specific, like, secret in AMP


that it helps pull images large and we can implement


on the regular web page as well?


Usually, I think there are two ways


that you can do that with the large images.


One is that form.


I don't know if you filled that out.


Yes, we did fill out many times and a long time ago.


OK.


Yes, and I did fill it again, like, a few days ago.


But I don't know if it was reviewed or not.


And the other is the max image preview robots.matter tag.


I think you have that as well.


I'll double check specifically for your site


with the team on that.


Thank you very much.


Yeah, to see if there's anything kind of blocking


that maybe I can point out or if it's blocking on our side


and we just need to unblock.


Appreciate it.


Sure.


All right.


Anyone else with any questions before we pause the recording?


I could jump in with another one if you'd like.


OK, go for it.


So you've said that once a site switches over


to mobile-first indexing, that's the only thing that's


going to be in the index.


Now, I'd imagine, obviously, you also cross-check the desktop


site occasionally.


But what I'd like to know is, should all my SEO focus now


only be on the mobile site?


Because suppose on our website we


have a separate theme for mobile.


So rather than making the change both times when it's something


that's just technical SEO, like a meta description or schema,


am I safe if I just do those changes on the mobile site?


From talking with the indexing team,


they would like to see anything consistent across the desktop


and mobile site.


But we will, essentially, with mobile-first indexing,


we only use the mobile site for indexing.


So from that point of view, I think


it's OK to focus on the mobile site.


But in the long run, it should really


be across the whole site.


And using things like responsive design


makes that a non-issue if, at some point,


you can switch to something like that.


AUDIENCE 1 I get what you're saying.


Thank you.


JOHN MUELLER All right.


More questions from any of you.


OK.


No more questions.


AUDIENCE 2 If anybody doesn't have, I will give one.


JOHN MUELLER OK.


AUDIENCE 2 So what would be the best recommendation from you


to avoid meta descriptions rewrites?


JOHN MUELLER To avoid them from being rewritten.


So we try to do two things when it


comes to displaying the description in the search


results.


On the one hand, we try to recognize


when there's irrelevant meta description given


on a page, which could be just like a collection of keywords.


It could be something where you have the same description


across a large number of pages.


That's something where we would probably


jump in with our algorithms to try to resolve that.


And the other case is when the meta description is something


that doesn't match at all what the user is searching for,


where we think probably it would be easier for the user


to understand why this page is relevant if we pick something


from the page itself that covers those queries a little bit


better what they're actually looking for.


So those are kind of the main situations


where we end up rewriting the description that we provide


in the search results.


So if you can make sure that your pages have unique meta


descriptions, that they're kind of short,


that they would fit into a snippet on a page,


and that they match what users would generally


be looking for when they're going to that page,


then chances are pretty high that we'll just


reuse what you have in the description meta tag.


Because very frequently, we see that Google does pull,


as a meta description, first sentence, the H1 tag, which


is repeating the title tag.


One does see a blue link, the headline of the article.


And in the meta description, the same text goes.


Yeah.


So.


I don't know.


I think that would suggest to me that we're not completely sure


about the meta description that you have on that page.


So I mean, when we try to pull out text from a page,


it's sometimes tricky to find the right part of a page


to pull from.


And sometimes headings make sense.


Sometimes something that's higher up on the page


makes sense.


But it's sometimes a bit tricky.


Just sent an example of that case.


OK.


Cool.


All right.


I think we're pretty much at time.


I'll be around a little bit longer if any of you


want to stick around afterwards.


But thank you all for joining in.


Thanks for all of the questions that you submitted.


And hopefully, we'll see each other again


in one of the future Hangouts.


And of course, in the meantime, stay safe.


Stay healthy.


Don't do anything crazy like going outside,


depending on where you're located, I guess.


Wish you all a great weekend.


And hope to see you all again next time.


Bye.


Pop filters, nofollow, Core Web Vitals, and more! | Search Off the Record podcast

And I hope you have a great day.


And as always, I'll see you in the next video.


And I'll see you in the next one.


Thank you.


All right.


Welcome, everyone, to the first episode


of Search Off the Record, a podcast


that we're trying out a little bit


to see how we can bring across some more


information from behind the scenes from the Google search


side.


So my name is John Buehler.


I am a webmaster trends analyst or search relations


person at Google, together with Gary and Martin,


who are also part of the search relations team.


And our plan is to talk a little bit about how things are


working behind the scenes, maybe have some fun along the way


as well.


So what's been happening on your side, Gary?


GARY ILLYESISIOSAKE LABORDEAUXIAS-MARTIN LABORDEAUXIOS-MARTIN


LABORDEAUXIOS-MARTIN LABORDEAUXIOS-MARTIN LABORDEAUXIOS-MARTIN


MARTIN SPLITT Aygney Broderick


MARTIN SPLITT It's so easy to say just one thing personal


or normal.


Hmm.


Oh, yeah, you're definitely helping more folks.


They apply online.


So simply go on over to get that engineering on Google.


And you have a big new mechanical component, right?


And there is aaireBec walks into their home and a


Pop.


OK, cool.


On the bright side, I've never said Mary Poppins so often.


That pops.


Very nice pop culture reference.


So yeah, I'm wondering when we get a follow up on the pop


filter situation so that we hopefully have pop


filters for the next episode.


Speaking of following things.


Oh, no.


I know that recently, yeah, there


was a little bit of a conversation


happening on Twitter, Gary.


No?


I mean, no follow is always a topic in one part of the world


or the internet.


And it's fine.


It's a big topic.


It's something that many people are passionate about


for various reasons.


And we are asked about it quite a bit.


And we had two dates announced.


Not the fruit, but the unit of measurement of time.


And one was, I think, September 1st,


which was when we could have potentially used no follow


in our ranking algorithms.


And then the second date was March 1st,


I think, which was when we allowed ourselves to use no


follow in crawling and indexing.


And the question typically is whether we started


using any of those or in any of those fields.


And we don't really have anything to announce still.


We are working on a few things that will be helpful,


I think, for the web and also probably


helpful for webmasters.


Think along the lines of what would be a good example.


You have those sites that can, for example,


redirect to the new site when they move.


And they just leave up a link saying


that, visit us on our new site.


And often, those links are no-followed.


And it would be very helpful, for example,


for us to follow those links and essentially


help webmasters have their new site discovered much faster.


And we are also thinking about other things, really.


But yeah, I really don't want to name those things


because they might actually not happen at all.


And it might just turn out bad.


But if you think about it, those no-follow links