So that's something where I know the mobile-first indexing


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from January 10, 2020

team tries to focus on batches of sites


and move them over in groups.


And it might be that they're just


focusing on maybe a different kind of site at the moment.


And then once they rerun everything


for all kinds of websites, then that will shift over.


But I wouldn't worry that this is a sign


that you're doing anything wrong with regards


to mobile-first indexing.


OK, and is it OK that Google shows in results


the name of the new site when you search for the old site?


In snippet, I mean.


I think that's normal, because we understand this connection.


But we try to show the old URL.


So usually if you click on the cache page there,


you will also see actually it's the new URL that's


being indexed, not the old one.


OK, thank you.


I have a four subdirectory website


that serves four different regions.


For example, example.com slash IN slash CA slash US slash GB.


When I inspect element for example.com slash CA,


it shows me the inspected page is indexed.


I can also see the page in the Google search results.


But the cache of this page is shown as example.com slash US.


Also, when I do a site query, for example.com slash CA,


the first result is slash US.


There are no IP redirect and canonical tag issues.


Hreflang is implemented.


What could be the cause here?


So what is probably happening, I don't see the actual pages


here.


It's hard to say.


But what's probably happening is that we're


seeing these different English versions


as being substantially similar in the sense


that for our systems, it's just as useful to just index


one of these pages and just keep that.


Because if the English version is


the same across all of these different country versions,


then it doesn't make much sense for us


to index the same thing four different times.


So with indexing, we'll pick one of these versions.


And if you have hreflang annotations on these pages,


then when we show that version in the search results,


we'll try to match that to the hreflang version


that you have specified.


So a user in Canada, if they search


for something on your website, they


would tend to see the Canadian URL.


And the user in the UK would see the UK URL.


However, the indexed version, the cached version,


would be one of those pages.


So for the most part, that's usually less of a problem.


It's just confusing in the sense that as an SEO, when


you're double checking which pages are actually indexed


and suddenly it feels like not all of these pages


are indexed properly.


The other part that is definitely confusing


is the way that we would show this in the search result,


not in the search result, in Search Console.


On the one hand, in the performance report.


In the performance report, we would


report on the canonical URL.


So we would just report on whichever one of these


we would choose as a canonical.


We would not show these different country versions


independently.


You can, however, look at the country breakdown


in the search performance report to see which kinds of users


are going to that page.


And the other place where this also shows up


as being confusing is the index coverage


report in Search Console, because we would count this


as one page being indexed, which kind of it is.


It's like that one version that we pick as a canonical,


that's the one that's indexed.


And the three other versions of the same content,


they would be seen as not indexed or probably flagged


in Search Console as, I don't know,


another URL was chosen as canonical,


one of those categories.


And again, there, it's not a sign of a problem.


It's not a sign that these pages would rank worse.


It's really just, like, it's confusing the way


that it's reported in Search Console.


And as an SEO, if you're drilling into those details,


that can be confusing.


So what I would recommend doing there


to double-check that it's actually working


is to just search for something generic


for these particular pages and to watch out


that these URLs are actually changing in the search results


pages.


The one place where I would be kind of careful with this


if you're seeing it happen and trying to find a way to fix


that or change that is if you have specific prices


on these pages and you have different prices


across the different country versions,


then you don't want to have kind of the wrong price shown


in the search results page compared


to what a user would see when they go to that page directly.


And if you're seeing something like that,


then my general recommendation would


be to make sure that these pages are not really identical apart


from the price.


So that the price on these pages is not the only differentiation


but rather that you really have something kind of clear


on this page that tells us this is


a different page from this other page


that you have, which otherwise is in the same language.


And just to be really clear, this kind of situation


can be really confusing.


And it's not something that I'd say is trivial to kind of debug


and look into.


So if you feel kind of overwhelmed with this,


then I'd definitely go to maybe the Webmaster Help Forum


and try to get some help there or try


to find a consultant that can help you who has more


experience with international websites


because it does take a little bit of looking


into the weird edge cases to understand what's happening.


And it is sometimes really helpful to have someone say,


well, actually, this is confusing and it's fine


the way it is.


Like, you have it set up properly


and it's working pretty much the way that it is.


You just can't measure it the way


that you would like to measure it.


I'm getting mixed results for the Google Event card, which


displays above the search results for something


like artist plus tour.


Adding structured data to the performance website


has mixed results.


And in one case, removing a broken plugin


that was generating incorrect event structured data


and then using HTML only seemed to improve the situation.


My research indicates that many venues and most ticket outlets


are hosting incomplete or incorrect structured data.


So my questions are, is the Google Event card


structured data aware?


Yes, we do use structured data for the events


that we show in the search results.


And I believe that's even the primary source of data there.


So that's something like, yes, yes, we do use that.


Which type of entity, if any, would


be the most authoritative for hosting structured data events


scripts?


My understanding is we don't really


have that difference in terms of authority


across these different website types.


I'm sure our algorithms try to figure out


which ones are the most relevant ones for specific structured


data types, like events, where you have different websites


hosting different pieces of the puzzle.


However, what is really important,


especially for events where you have one essentially


entity that is described on many different websites,


the thing that's really important for us


is to be able to consolidate all of the information


that we have there.


And sometimes what happens is we have


some pieces of information here, some pieces of information


here.


We can understand they're about the same entity,


like that one concert in this one location


by this one artist.


And we'll try to take that information


and combine it and make one kind of entity out of it.


Because as a user, when you're searching for concerts,


you don't want all of these different entities listed


separately.


You want one entry for this concert that you want to go to


or that you want to present to people.


So it's not so much that we only pick the data from one source


and only show it there, but rather we


have to consolidate it and understand


which parts of the puzzle, if you will,


come from which different websites.


And then as a kind of a last step almost,


figure out which of the URLs to link


to when someone clicks on that type of structured data result.


So it's not so much that you need


to do everything with your structured data on your pages,


but rather you need to make sure that it's consistent enough


that we can match it to the primary entity that's


involved there.


MIHAI APERGHISLAVA, MD, MPH, FITZERAT, CHEN,


SANDOVAL, AND MARTIN, MARTIN, MARTIN, MARTIN, MARTIN,


MARTIN, MARTIN, MARTIN, MARTIN, MARTIN, MARTIN,


where you're generally using maybe some providers,


or there's simply not a lot of information regarding


how to get into certain rich snippets.


Maybe like, I don't know if this is a good example, movie


tickets or something like that.


I know that Google, especially in the US,


uses certain providers for that kind of information.


But in other countries, those kind of rich snippets


don't show at all, regardless whether you


have any structured data on your website or anything like that.


Maybe you're a cinema somewhere in Romania, let's say.


So that kind of decision, whether the recipients show


or not, is entirely related to the fact


that Google has those providers, or can webmasters


do anything to kind of help speed that showing up?


Yeah.


I think for most features, we do rely on structured data.


But there's very few that rely quite a bit on feeds


from trusted sources.


And especially movies, that's one of those things


where a lot of the movie providers work together with,


I don't know, some local companies that kind of


aggregate all of the movie feeds.


And we consume those movie feeds directly.


So that's something where we try to focus on the information


that we can really trust and show that appropriately


in the search results.


So if we're not picking up individual movie theaters,


I'd double check to see if there's


kind of like this regional place where all of the feeds


come together and make sure that you're included there as well.


And if that's not the case, then that's


something where you can also come to us and say,


OK, I have this information in this feed.


Can you consume that from our side as well?


So it could be that for some countries,


we don't really have a clear provider,


or we have spotty coverage.


So for movies, that's kind of a bit unique.


For pretty much everything else, we


try to just pick up the structured data


that we pick up on the pages.


And that's something where it's often also less critical


if it's 100% correct.


With events, for example, we can kind of


figure out where things are slightly incorrect


because we have different sources of data.


For things like reviews on a page or prices,


it's something, well, if it's not correct,


it's like you're telling us and we're pointing at your pages.


It's kind of like your problem if it's not correct,


not our problem.


But with movies, people expect that the showtimes


and the information that you have is correct.


And there are usually not that many sources of information.


Right, and I think that's the same for,


I'm thinking of another example now, like sports events


and things like that.


I know, again, in the US, there are a lot of feature snippets


regarding teams playing scores, things like that.


I assume that's also one case where you're


using certain trusted teams.


I believe so.


So especially things like the sports results,


which have to come in fairly quickly,


that's something where I believe we also use special feeds.


So in this case, outside of the US,


is there any way certain webmasters


that have this kind of verifiable,


trusted information, can they contact Google in any way?


Is there a program for working with these providers


or selecting these providers?


Yeah, usually that goes through the business development


parts of Google.


So I believe there is some general contact page there.


Or if you have a local Google presence, in most countries,


we have some sales offices and things like that.


And then often, you can go through that.


OK, cool.


OK, let me see if there's something


that we can answer very quickly.


And then otherwise, we can switch


to more questions from you all.


After configuring pages to correctly send structured data


to Google, how long does it take for them to show up?


Is it 12 weeks?


So it's definitely not 12 weeks.


In many cases, we can show the structured data as quickly


as we can index that page.


So if we're willing to show that structured data


from your website and you've provided it in a valid way,


then we can pick that up and show that essentially


the next time that we crawl and index that page.


OK.


Can we add jumping link into internal pages?


Will it add kind of like past page rank


and help improve the ranking?


So jump links within internal pages


are essentially where you're linking from one part


of the page to another part of that same page.


And from our point of view, that's


not something where we need to pass any signals because you're


linking between the same page.


It's not that that page suddenly has more page rank because


you're linking to yourself.


But rather, what you're doing is giving us


a little bit of information about the structure


of the page.


And that can sometimes be helpful in the sense


that when we show something in the search results,


we know this is a really long page.


And we have a kind of a link to a part of the page that


is particularly relevant to a user's query.


Then sometimes we can show that kind of as a jump link


in the search results directly so that you can jump


specifically to that part of the page.


What helps us there is on the one hand


to have these links between the parts of the page,


on the other hand also to have clear headings and subheadings


on that page so that we know this part of that long page


is actually very relevant to the user.


And here's a way to get there directly.


OK.


And a bunch of backlink questions.


Let's see.


Many times got hackers hacked into Search Console


to change the targeting country.


Can I submit the hacker email address


so that Google can blacklist them forever?


So I guess there are a few things here.


On the one hand, we do try to understand


which email addresses are problematic.


And we have different ways of dealing with that.


I don't think we would just blacklist them


from Search Console forever.


The other thing is that if people


are able to verify your site in Search Console


with their own account, then it's


not the case that they hacked into Search Console


or into your Search Console account.


But rather, they hacked into your website.


And they're able to make changes on your website itself, which


means they're able to add a verification


tag to your website, which would then allow


them to go into Search Console.


So instead of thinking about just how you can lock down


your Google account so that other people can't get


into Search Console, you need to double check


to make sure how people were able to get into your website


and what you can do to lock down your website, not your Google


account, but your website itself,


so that people can't make changes there.


Because ultimately, the goal of a hacker is not,


or I'm guessing in this case, I can't


speak for all hackers, of course.


But the goal is not just to go into Search Console


and then change a targeting country,


and then it's like, ha, ha, ha, I confused you.


But rather, they're probably placing pages on your website,


or they're placing specific links on your website


to add their more malicious content or their monetization


methods.


So that's something where the setting in Search Console


is less of a thing that they actually care about.


It's kind of like a side effect.


But what they do care about is all of these other changes that


are happening on your website.


So if you see people verify your site in Search Console,


and you think they're hackers, and they're


doing something crazy, then I would not


worry about Search Console primarily,


but rather think about your website


and how they were able to get into your website,


fix all of those issues on the website first,


and then you can also make sure, of course,


that things like Search Console are cleaned up as well.


OK.


We have a few minutes left.


If any of you want to jump in with the last question,


feel free to do that.


I also seem to have a little bit more time left,


so we can continue kind of off the record


afterwards as well if any of you want to stick around.


I have a very specific question regarding something we spoke


about on the 13th of December.


It's regarding a very specific site,


so I don't know if we want to wait until after the Hangout.


Maybe we can take a look at that afterwards.


Great.


I'll stick around.


Thanks.


Hi, John.


I have a quick question about the Searchlink site box.


And I know that in the past, the structured data markup


for the SiteLink search box doesn't support


subfolders or subdomain.


Is it like this right now?


I believe that's still the case, yes.


OK, so it's not possible to target


the multi-language website that are


structured with subfolders.


Exactly.


Yeah.


The SiteLink search box, I believe,


is on a per-domain basis.


So you specify one SiteLink search box


for the whole domain.


In some cases, that's a little bit suboptimal.


Sometimes you can do things like add a banner to that page


to make it a little bit more useful for your users.


OK, thank you.


All right.


I guess we can take a break here.


Thank you all for joining in.


Thanks for all of the questions that were submitted.


I'll set up the next batch of Hangouts probably later today.


And if there's anything that's missing


that you need to get answered until then, of course,


feel free to jump in on Twitter or join us in the Webmaster


Help forums where a bunch of experts


are able to help as well.


So with that, I wish you all a great weekend.


And hopefully, see you next time.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Welcome, everybody, to the next episode of Search Off the Record podcast.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Our plan is to talk a bit about what's happening at Google Search, how things work behind the


De-SEOing: ants vs π

scenes and maybe have some fun along the way.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

My name is Martin Splitt, a search advocate on the Search Relations team here at Google


De-SEOing: ants vs π

in Switzerland.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Today, I'm joined by Gary.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Good day.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And Lizzie.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Hey.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Both are also on the Search Relations team.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

In this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about de-SEOing, what it is, why people


De-SEOing: ants vs π

don't like to talk about it, and how to do it.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Martin.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yeah?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I have a question to you.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Oh, is it JavaScript?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

No, it's more important.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Okay, that's good.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Have you ever been a pie?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

No, wait, wrong question.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Have you ever been to a Turkish prison?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

No, wait.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Have you ever made a pie and then left it on the window to let it cool?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And then the birds came, and the ants came, and eat it all?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yeah.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

That happens very often, right?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yeah, like on a daily basis.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I mean, do you like ants?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Do you want to have ants?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Because that's how you get ants.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I know we did have ants because of things that I left out for a while.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But what does this have to do with this podcast?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Oh, nothing.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I just like to talk about pies.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Okay.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So the ants, they are the wrong audience for your pie, right?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Because when you make pie, you obviously want me over there and have some pie, not the ants,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

correct?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

If I have to choose between ants and you, I'm not so sure, but I get your idea.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

What?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

That's mean.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Sorry.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Sorry, Gary.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Of course I want you to have my pie.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Well, now I don't believe you.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But anyway, they are still the wrong audience.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And that is something that happens on the web as well, to some extent.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And we noticed that with Lizzie on developers.google.com slash search site that we like to call onesie


De-SEOing: ants vs π

because it's easier to say.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Right.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But why don't you want as much traffic as possible on our documentation?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Because some traffic is the wrong kind of traffic.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

How so?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So with traffic, usually what you want is to have it convert in case of search documentation


De-SEOing: ants vs π

or developer documentation, that would be they complete some action as a result of reading


De-SEOing: ants vs π

the documentation.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And if they are, for example, reading the wrong kind of documentation because we optimized


De-SEOing: ants vs π

for something that we shouldn't have, then they are not going to be able to complete


De-SEOing: ants vs π

said action.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And I think we have quite a few examples for this.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But one prominent one was the removals documentation.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

If you think about it, there are at least two tools, maybe three, where you can remove


De-SEOing: ants vs π

search results, for example.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Those three tools documentation should be optimized differently for different keywords


De-SEOing: ants vs π

so they attract the right kind of traffic from search engines.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So that the people use the right tools for what they are trying to accomplish.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Right.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I think we could take a step back actually to talk about how we discovered this was an


De-SEOing: ants vs π

issue because it was not necessarily that we just looked at our analytics to see, oh,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

we are having too much traffic and we don't want that.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

It was actually another problem.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Wait, what?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

That's what I said.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

No, it's, well, I'm saying this.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So we were getting buckets of feedback reported to us through our send feedback button that


De-SEOing: ants vs π

were people saying, can you remove this picture of me on Instagram or all these other use


De-SEOing: ants vs π

cases that we were just like, well, this is not the flow that you should, like, how did


De-SEOing: ants vs π

you arrive here, first of all.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Second of all, the document that is here is not going to help you on this journey.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And we wanted to help those people find the right point, but also make sure that our doc


De-SEOing: ants vs π

was actually getting viewed by the people that it should be getting viewed by.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So what you're saying is that to identify the traffic that we don't want on our pages,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

you had to add a feedback functionality so that we got feedback on what people thought


De-SEOing: ants vs π

the intention of the doc was.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And then we saw that that mismatched with what the doc actually intended to do.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yeah, like how the problem arrived to us was not necessarily us looking at data in a vacuum.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

We were looking at other things and then thought, hey, actually, I think that one way that this


De-SEOing: ants vs π

is, that could be solved is if we were to de-SEO this part of our site, because we saw


De-SEOing: ants vs π

that a large amount of our traffic was coming from search.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And then we investigated, what does it look like when you search for remove something


De-SEOing: ants vs π

from search?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And our page was at the top, and we didn't necessarily want that for generic type query.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

That is fascinating, because normally people would die for getting on the top of search


De-SEOing: ants vs π

results.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And now you're saying, oh, we really want to get out of it for this specific query.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I think because it was causing us other problems.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So if we're looking at our site as a business, this was causing us to have way too many support.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Support requests that we were not the right fit to even address.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So the SEO could help in a different way than just more traffic.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So besides querying what people would use to get to the page and figuring out the queries


De-SEOing: ants vs π

that we don't want and looking at feedback, was there anything else that you did to further


De-SEOing: ants vs π

identify the traffic that you got that you didn't want?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Or was that sufficient?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

We also looked at other sources of analytics.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So we have this other point in our documentation next to the Send Feedback button where you


De-SEOing: ants vs π

can give a rating for was this page helpful.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So you can say thumbs up, like yes, it was helpful, or thumbs down, it was not helpful.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And this page had really unhappy people.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So usually our stat is like 75% find this helpful.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And this page was like 50%.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So we thought, OK, we're having a lot of people come to this page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

They're unhappy.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And then they're also writing into us to ask us to remove, like just pasting in like this


De-SEOing: ants vs π

is the image or this is the page that I want you to remove.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And it was clear to us that based off of the way that they were phrasing the request that


De-SEOing: ants vs π

they're not the website owner of that page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And the purpose of our page was for website owners.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

If this is a page that you own and you don't want it showing up in search results, this


De-SEOing: ants vs π

is the flow that you should do.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

What did you do to fix that?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Because it sounds like you figured out a way to get out of that situation.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yes, that is true.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So one of the things that we did was to partner with the SEO team inside of Google.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I'm not sure how we're supposed to be referring to that group.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But we've talked about in the past how we've worked with the other SEOs at Google to optimize


De-SEOing: ants vs π

our pages or get advice about what we should do.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So we brought this to them to say, hey, we would like to optimize the title and description


De-SEOing: ants vs π

for this page and then also on the page do some reworking to make sure that it is actually


De-SEOing: ants vs π

addressing the audience that we want to address.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Because before the title of the page was something super generic, like remove information from


De-SEOing: ants vs π

search results, which is like, okay, that seems accurate that we would be showing up


De-SEOing: ants vs π

for that type of query.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But the actual content on the page was more for website owners.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So we changed the content on the page to be focused more for website owners.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So like your web page, remove your web page from search targeted with the words on the


De-SEOing: ants vs π

page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So that was one thing.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So you made the content more relevant to the right kind of audience.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yes.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

What confused me, and maybe Gary knows this better than I do, is why did we get this traffic


De-SEOing: ants vs π

in the first place?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Like it sounds relatively clearly like a mismatch between what the page was aiming for and what


De-SEOing: ants vs π

people wanted.


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I mean, what people wanted, that's very relative, right?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Like a search engine can't actually tell most of the time what exactly the person wants.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

It's more like a guessing game.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And then you decide to show, for example, refinements or something to have the user


De-SEOing: ants vs π

get to the right page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But in this case, it's really not obvious what they want.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

If they search for remove page from Google, then if you have a matching document, then


De-SEOing: ants vs π

you will serve that.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And that's it.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But in this case, it was like we had at least two matching documents, because we also had


De-SEOing: ants vs π

in the consumer help center, like the user help center, we also had a document for removing


De-SEOing: ants vs π

search results.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Then we had our own page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And probably we also had a legal removal help documentation as well.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And then from there, Google and other search engines had to figure out which one to send


De-SEOing: ants vs π

the users to.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And then ours was the most generically optimized page.


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And then we got all the traffic.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And the removals, we call out removals, but it's not an isolated thing.


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I think we also see this with videos where we get traffic that is seeking YouTube help,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

for example, because perhaps the YouTube documentation is not as optimized as ours for generic video


De-SEOing: ants vs π

or video queries.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

You know, you keep saying generic queries or that our page is generic, but we also have


De-SEOing: ants vs π

the word developers shows up in our site name and then also in the domain.


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So would that make our thing seem more technical in nature?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And why would we be showing up for these consumer facing queries?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Why can't Google just figure it out and know that our thing is for technical people?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Or if you are doing something with your website, show us.


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Why did we have to do something additional?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

FRANCESC CAMPOY-MARONI Well, but we don't know if the user is a


De-SEOing: ants vs π

developer or not.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

From search perspective, we don't know if the user is a developer or a user, an end


De-SEOing: ants vs π

user.


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And also that you can't trust too much the domain name because if you trust it too much,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

you are going to have a very bad time in ranking.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

For example, I own spammyguy.com.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Do you think I'm spammy?


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Don't answer that.


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FRANCESC CAMPOY-MARONI No.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

FRANCESC CAMPOY-MARONI But just don't.


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You just can't trust domain names usually.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Back in the math cuts era even, where we took away trust from domain names so they rank


De-SEOing: ants vs π

less for the words that appear in the domain name because we observed that people were


De-SEOing: ants vs π

exploiting the ranking benefits that domain names gave and in general URLs.


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And we ended up with spammyguy ranking for canned spam, for example.


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And we definitely don't want that.


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MARTIN SPLITT-GARNETT Yeah, fair enough.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Okay, so I see that there is the issue of queries with a very generic query intention


De-SEOing: ants vs π

and then pages which are optimized for these generic topics.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And if we have those, we get traffic that we don't want on these pages.


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So we kind of optimize them by de-optimizing them in a way.


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We got less traffic.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So we de-SEO them.


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Why is that something that I've never heard before?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

It seems like everyone is just about optimizing and getting more traffic, but I've not heard


De-SEOing: ants vs π

this angle much.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

GARY ILLYES-SELLS Maybe that's because we invented this term


De-SEOing: ants vs π

like a week ago.


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MARTIN SPLITT-GARNETT Oh, yeah.


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But no, I mean, even the concept at hand, like having less traffic on your pages is


De-SEOing: ants vs π

something that I haven't seen much chatter about.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

GARNETT Is the term qualified traffic, like the traffic


De-SEOing: ants vs π

that you want to be coming to your site is actually the people that will convert.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So if you have a job posting page or something, you don't want everyone applying to your job


De-SEOing: ants vs π

for being a developer advocate at Google.


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If it's the number one job position, you will just have way too many people applying that


De-SEOing: ants vs π

are not necessarily the right fit for it.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But if you were showing up for something that is more filtered down, then maybe the applicants


De-SEOing: ants vs π

are actually going to be the people that apply.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So you don't necessarily want all the traffic for that kind of thing.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

You want like the people that would be actually applying for the position.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

MARTIN SPLITT-GARNETT And technically, you are still just optimizing.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

You are not de-optimizing.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

You are optimizing for the right kind of traffic or the right target audience.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

MARTIN SPLITT-GARNETT I have heard qualified traffic beforehand,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

but I haven't really seen as much conversation about it as just like people coming to me


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saying like, oh, we lost impressions.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And then I said, yeah, but did you lose clicks or did you lose conversions?


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And they could usually not even answer the question because they don't really look at


De-SEOing: ants vs π

it.


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So is it maybe also a problem that people are looking at the wrong things?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

GARY I think there are multiple facets to this.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

One is that when the SEO works for a larger company, like they are an in-house or long


De-SEOing: ants vs π

contract SEO company, and the company they work for wants to measure success based on


De-SEOing: ants vs π

impressions.


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They want to grab as much traffic as possible, which I think is wrong, but that's how it


De-SEOing: ants vs π

is.


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And then they are optimizing for generic keywords and trying to catch as many impressions as


De-SEOing: ants vs π

possible.


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And another aspect to this is when the SEO just doesn't know that they shouldn't optimize


De-SEOing: ants vs π

for generic keywords.


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And I encountered this.


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Do you remember those times when we still went to conferences like in person?


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Like back in the old days.


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MARTIN SPLITT-GARNETT Pictures were still black and white.


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GARY Yeah.


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Back in the good old days, I loved the hallway discussions and people just coming up and


De-SEOing: ants vs π

asking questions.


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And I encountered it so many times where people were like, okay, I want to grab more traffic


De-SEOing: ants vs π

because I want to grow my website.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Then if I told them that, well, you are growing your website with the wrong kind of audience,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

or you are not even growing your website because you are getting the wrong kind of audience.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Like if you just want to rank for pie, for example, the Greek letter pi, and you're getting


De-SEOing: ants vs π

traffic for apple pie, that's the wrong kind of audience.


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They are not going to be interested in your Greek letter pi.


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And it's very hard to accept that because in most folks mentality and also in mine,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

impressions and clicks translates to success.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

KASLIN STUART You know, it's interesting that you phrase


De-SEOing: ants vs π

it that way because it seems like we're almost approaching the goal differently for some


De-SEOing: ants vs π

of these things.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So for DSCOing, I could also see it fitting for the site move, site rebranding thing.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

You might want to have the goal that I want to deoptimize for the old name for the thing.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So for example, our clicks are impressions for webmaster.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

It's actually good that we see the clicks going down for that because we removed the


De-SEOing: ants vs π

term everywhere.


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We don't necessarily want that, but we also validated it from looking at other sources.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So from keyword planner or trends to make sure the search interest for that thing is


De-SEOing: ants vs π

also going down.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So it's not that it's like, oh, it just went over somewhere else.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

This thing is actually going down.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But the approach from the beginning is that the goal is different, that we'd want to see


De-SEOing: ants vs π

the traffic going down for that.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And that's what it means to have a successful rebrand that people went and did this other


De-SEOing: ants vs π

thing instead.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

JON FOUST I think rebranding is even more complex than


De-SEOing: ants vs π

just the SEO-ing things because you also have to employ some marketing and quite rigidly


De-SEOing: ants vs π

guidelines about what you can do with the old name and what you cannot do with the new


De-SEOing: ants vs π

name in order for people to forget the old name and stop using it.


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And I imagine that it is very hard.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

People are like elephants.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

They don't forget easily.


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And some people might even call search console webmaster tools sometimes.


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I'm looking at myself here.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Oh, no, that's Martin.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Sorry.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

MARTIN AGUINIS No.


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JON FOUST Fine, it's me.


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It is hard.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

MARTIN AGUINIS I think that if you were just looking at


De-SEOing: ants vs π

our search console analytics and you saw the clicks going down, you're like, well, people


De-SEOing: ants vs π

still search for webmaster.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So why is the click going down for this keyword like, oh, no, panic, when actually that might


De-SEOing: ants vs π

be a metric for success for a certain project.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

JON FOUST Talking about metrics and success for a while


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now, how did you validate if it worked or not?


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MARTIN AGUINIS Yes.


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Good question.


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So we did see the traffic go down.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So from before, in the before times, before we noticed that this was an issue and it made


De-SEOing: ants vs π

changes, we were getting 40% of our traffic from organic search to this removals page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

After we changed the content on the page to be more targeted towards the website audience,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

the traffic dropped to 20% from organic.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But we were still, like I checked again yesterday, we're still not having like the numbers that


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I would like in terms of the satisfaction.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So people are still upset.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And one of the things that I think that we could do is to look at the other sources,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

like where people are coming from, because the next thing that, well, it's now the biggest


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piece of the pie, like where people are coming from for this document is other Google help


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centers.


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So support.google.com is like the main referral source.


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So my next idea is to look at like, what is the context that people are coming from over


De-SEOing: ants vs π

there?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Like it's all within the larger company, so the call is coming from within the house.


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Like why are, what is the context that they're coming to us and are they being set up for


De-SEOing: ants vs π

failure?


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Like when are they expecting something else when they're coming over here?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So Gary, if you recall, I think I asked you about this and then you sent me this massive


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spreadsheet with links, I think.


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I don't know how you found them, but that is the next thing is to sort of do like cold


De-SEOing: ants vs π

calling door to door, like look at this link, like how are they linking to us?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Is it in the context of like a general removal or is it website facing?


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I think I got that from Search Console actually, or some similar tool.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

You mean Webmaster Tools?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yeah, Webmaster Tools.


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So sort of like to answer your question, like it was sort of a success, or at least from


De-SEOing: ants vs π

the deoptimizing or de-SEOing, we did lower it to like an appropriate amount.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And we also saw the number of people who are writing into us, like we're not getting so


De-SEOing: ants vs π

many requests that are what we would consider to be consumer facing, where people are like,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

remove this Instagram page of me or like this picture of me, like personal queries.


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So to me, that means that we're not having that huge influx, but the problem is not completely


De-SEOing: ants vs π

gone away.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Right.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So it's a work in progress still.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But are there any lessons you learned from the process and the outcomes, like what has


De-SEOing: ants vs π

changed that you would want past Lizzie to know, or you will make sure future Lizzie


De-SEOing: ants vs π

to apply?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Is there anything that you would say like that's a good strategy to avoid being in this


De-SEOing: ants vs π

position in the first place?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yes, that's a good question because we did inherit this article.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So sort of it's been like a cleanup effort to go and tidy up things from the migration


De-SEOing: ants vs π

where we brought in a bunch of documents to sort of tighten them up and make sure the


De-SEOing: ants vs π

flow is good.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But this also made me think about when we write new articles to make sure that they're


De-SEOing: ants vs π

more targeted.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Because we have the opportunity to just write something that is generic, but then it's not


De-SEOing: ants vs π

differentiated enough to show the value for what this page is about.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So for example, we just published an article for SafeSearch and your website.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And I was thinking about this when we wrote the title because there is another SafeSearch


De-SEOing: ants vs π

article that's like how to turn it on, like the filter, how to use it from a consumer


De-SEOing: ants vs π

standpoint.


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And our document is not that.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So approaching it from like, how can we make sure our document doesn't run into this problem


De-SEOing: ants vs π

again?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I see.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So you want to avoid being too general and too generic to not attract the kind of traffic


De-SEOing: ants vs π

that you don't want to.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And it sounds like it's mostly a content writing or like copywriting thing and copy rewriting


De-SEOing: ants vs π

thing.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Are there other aspects to this?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Well, first, content writing, copywriting is a big chunk of SEO.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Pretty much all search engines work on the basis of content, like the actual content.


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So if you mess up, I just had an idea.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Have you ever heard a term, content is king?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yes.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Why do you think that term exists?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Well, I guess because content really matters.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yeah, because it's the basis on which search engines operate.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Basically, they are looking at token slash keywords in the content and they rank based


De-SEOing: ants vs π

on those keywords they found.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

No way.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

That's wild.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I thought it's purely based on domain name.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

No, that's just Lizzie's word.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Content is pretty much the important thing here.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So once you start deoptimizing the content and the title and the description, it doesn't


De-SEOing: ants vs π

matter all that much, then you are going to see benefits and you are going to start attracting


De-SEOing: ants vs π

probably better traffic if you did a good job like Lizzie did.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But I was thinking that there is probably other stuff that's not just changing the content


De-SEOing: ants vs π

on the page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I just said that that's the most important thing.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Well, you didn't get to the epiphany part.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So one thing that we've been talking about is our blog content and how we have so, like


De-SEOing: ants vs π

since we've migrated all of our blogs into one house, onesie, where everything lives


De-SEOing: ants vs π

now, we are seeing people coming to these old blog posts and then saying like, hey,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

you wrote this thing about also localization or what to do with my regional content in


De-SEOing: ants vs π

this blog post from 2008.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Is this still relevant?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But you also have this document over here that is an evergreen page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Like who do I listen to?


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What do I do here?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

What do you think about that?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Well, it depends.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Sometimes in a blog, you can explain things in a much friendlier tone than in developer


De-SEOing: ants vs π

documentation because in the developer documentation, we want to keep a very professional sort of


De-SEOing: ants vs π

language.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

While in the blog, we could be more verbose and more explainy, I guess.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So sometimes having the blog as well is a good thing.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But then there are other blog posts that became obsolete, for example.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Right, like with something that's been deprecated or maybe we then wrote it in a blog post first


De-SEOing: ants vs π

and then we went and wrote documentation.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

For example, your dynamic rendering blog post, Martin, you initially wrote it in more of


De-SEOing: ants vs π

a code lab casual tone and then you turned it into a different page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So now we have two things.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Is this a duplicate content issue?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And if someone were to search for dynamic rendering and they see all these posts, do


De-SEOing: ants vs π

we have a problem or no?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

That's a really good question.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I think in this specific case, we don't really have a problem and it's not really duplicate


De-SEOing: ants vs π

content, even though some of it is probably a duplication of the content.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Generally speaking, the blog post was more of a here's how to do it kind of step by step


De-SEOing: ants vs π

guide and implementing it.


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And then the general document is more like, why would you do this?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Why would you need that?


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What are the background reasons for even thinking about implementing it?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And I think both of them link out to the same step by step code lab where people can get


De-SEOing: ants vs π

hands on experience in implementing dynamic rendering.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But yeah, I can see how neither of these might be optimized for their specific intention.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I think there is an overlap that is tricky to navigate.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yeah.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Or over time, one becomes the main place where we'd want people to go to find the answer,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

but we want to retain something on the blog just for historical purposes.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

There was a record that we published this thing and then we improved it and made it


De-SEOing: ants vs π

better and published it over here.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And we don't necessarily want to get rid of the blog post, but how do we direct people?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Is this an angle where de-SEOing would help?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Because maybe our blog post is getting more traffic when we would actually like this new


De-SEOing: ants vs π

and improved code lab to be getting the traffic.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So should we be doing something like no indexing the blog post and then pointing people over


De-SEOing: ants vs π

there so that we are sort of trying to guide people to the right page?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I think no index is a very harsh way of removing content, especially if the content is tightly


De-SEOing: ants vs π

related to something that you published, like an evergreen page on Docs.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So rel canonical, for example, would be a much better fit in these cases that we mentioned.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Why?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Because then you are telling search engines that this piece of content is actually there,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

but you also let the user read both of them.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

With a rhetoric, like if you set up a 301, 302, 308, whatever rhetoric, then you are


De-SEOing: ants vs π

stripping the possibility away from the user to read the original page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And sometimes that makes sense.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Like for example, if they are one to one copy, it doesn't make sense to have both live anymore.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But if you have, like in Martin's case, you have a blog post that has very friendly tone,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

code lab sort of thing, or why thing, or I was not paying attention because it's dynamic


De-SEOing: ants vs π

rendering.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And then you have the actual documentation.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

They are two different pieces of content.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

They are tightly related.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And then if Martin decided that maybe we don't need a blog post anymore, there it would make


De-SEOing: ants vs π

more sense to link the blog post to the documentation.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Martin talked about the things that we de-SEO'd, like the dynamic rendering situation that


De-SEOing: ants vs π

we might want to look into.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But having worked on removals and other things and safe search, is there anything else that


De-SEOing: ants vs π

you can see is definitely a target for future work where you say like, oh, these dogs definitely


De-SEOing: ants vs π

need an overhaul now that you know how to spot bad traffic or unwanted traffic?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I keep seeing feedback about some YouTube videos and YouTube channels and whatnots.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And I want to figure out why people are coming there to the specific page that they are landing


De-SEOing: ants vs π

on.


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I don't think it's really good because it's not as bad as it was with the removals page


De-SEOing: ants vs π

where we got several pieces of feedback every year.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yeah, this one seems kind of random where people will say like, I'm locked out of my


De-SEOing: ants vs π

YouTube account or like I can't access Google search or like these types of queries that


De-SEOing: ants vs π

are like, OK, like how did you get here?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And there isn't an obvious pattern.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Whereas with the removals thing, it was like we could see immediately that it was like,


De-SEOing: ants vs π

yes, this removals page is getting this type.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Whereas these queries seem to show up randomly across our entire site.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So it's not, OK, you're making a face.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I'm always making a face.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Do you see a pattern?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

You already know what page it is that is the culprit?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

It's a videos page.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

The videos page is getting YouTube traffic.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yes.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So that is a problem because I think we are ranking for some really generic query.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Video is the keywords that we're ranking for, which is like, how would we undo that?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I don't know, but we have to look into it.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

We have to look into it.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

OK, so that's the answer.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

We will look into it and get back to you.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

OK, looking forward to hear what else we want to optimize for more specific queries rather


De-SEOing: ants vs π

than, but it's interesting that we get random YouTube queries.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I mean, the queries themselves, they are more generic than just YouTube.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Somehow, we managed to capture it.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I haven't looked into how.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And it's also kind of annoying because when we are looking into how people reach those


De-SEOing: ants vs π

pages, I could use the internal tools.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

It would be very simple to do it.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I could just hit up the debug interfaces that we have and tools and just look at how it


De-SEOing: ants vs π

happens.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But we can't do that.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

We actually have to use the same tools that anyone else external to Google has to use


De-SEOing: ants vs π

or could use.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And it's very annoying because the information is less, obviously.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I know why it's less than what we have internally.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Still annoying.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But yeah, we will have to figure it out with Search Console and other similar tools.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

But isn't this a beautiful opportunity to make these tools better?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

OK, sorry for even asking.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I feel dumb for asking now.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Aw, I'll let Gary make you feel that way.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

High five.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Thanks for being nice.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So Gary, will you make me some pie in the near future?


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Yes, anytime you want.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Just give me an hour heads up or something like that.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

An hour to make a pie.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

That's really fast.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

I can make a pie very fast.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

OK, next week, Martin, we'll give him a one hour heads up and test this theory.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

See if it checks out.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

So I think that's it for this episode.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Thanks a lot for joining us here, folks.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And next time on Search Off The Record, we'll be chatting about structured data with fellow


De-SEOing: ants vs π

software engineer Ryan Levering.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

We've been having fun with these podcast episodes, and we hope that you, the listener, have found


De-SEOing: ants vs π

them both entertaining and insightful, too.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Feel free to drop us a note on Twitter at Google Search C or chat with us at one of


De-SEOing: ants vs π

the next virtual events or who knows, maybe even real events we go to if you have any


De-SEOing: ants vs π

thoughts.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

And of course, don't forget to like and subscribe.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Thank you so much and goodbye.


De-SEOing: ants vs π

Goodbye.


De-SEOing: ants vs π


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Hello, and welcome to another JavaScript SEO Q&A,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

or office hours, as we used to call them.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

My name is Martin Schmitt.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I am a developer advocate on the Search Relations team at Google.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And my specialty is crawling and indexing and rendering,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

specifically all the topics around JavaScript.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And that's what we're here for today.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

A bunch of people found their way into this lovely recording.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And a bunch of people of you have asked questions on YouTube.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So let's go over the YouTube questions first,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and then open the questions for the audience as well.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Deep T is asking, Ajax and Lazy Load


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

was introduced to improve the page speed


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and load content as needed.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

However, the SEO fetch requirement


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

is to load the page content beforehand.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

In React-based SPA applications or single page applications


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

or progressive web applications, what


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

would be the Google recommendation, pre-rendering


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

or dynamic rendering, and why?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

How to approach one over the other


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

without violating Google code of ethics for SEO.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So first things first, yes, lazy loading


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

is a great introduction in terms of loading content only when


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

the user potentially sees it.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And you can do that in React single page,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

in any single page application, in any progressive web app,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

in any website without violating Google guidelines


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

or without running into problems.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

We actually do have a guide on developers.google.com


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

slash search that explains how to do this properly.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

The recommended way in general is for images and iframes


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

to use the loading equals lazy.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

For anything else, you can use the intersection observer.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

You should still have some sort of links and URLs


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that actually make these page-natable so that you


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

get pages of content.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

That's a better way of doing that.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

You can use pre-rendering, which means like,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

or pre-rendering or server-side rendering, actually,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

which means basically creating the HTML content


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and then basically giving that to your users as well.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

That might make things a little faster.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

It might not, depending a little bit on your content


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and the amount of content as well.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Dynamic rendering, I would in general


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

not recommend if you can somehow avoid it


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

because it is a workaround.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

With dynamic rendering, what I mean by that is,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

if you are rendering the page and then serving that to bots


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

versus what you give to users, that is generally not


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

a violation of the cloaking guideline.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

But it still means that you are creating


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

additional technical infrastructure that can usually


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

fail at some point.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

It is harder to test these things.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

It just adds a lot of complexity for not that much value


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

unless you really, really can't fix what you're building.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

If you're building something from scratch or something new,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

then I would definitely recommend looking into server-side


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

rendering just because it gives you users benefits too,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

to have the content in the HTML and the initial HTML.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Browsers are really fast at parsing that as it comes in.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Versus JavaScript-generated content,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

you basically have to wait until the JavaScript has downloaded,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

has executed, and then only then can the browser show things.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So your mileage might vary.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And for lazy loading or infinite loading,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

if it's specific, that is not really


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

the main concern here because how much of the content


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

would you put into this initial HTML anyway?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

We recommend having a bit of JavaScript


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that does this infinite stream of content


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

using an intersection observer and then


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

also providing some sort of URL structure that adds pagination


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

or basically like slash one, slash two, or question mark


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

page equals one, question mark page equals two,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and putting that into your site maps


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

in order to make sure that this is indexable and visible


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

because there are limitations to what intersection observers can


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

do.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Marco is asking, in a page where some of the content


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

is geo or user dependent and loaded by a JavaScript,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

how does it impact in-linking and weight propagation?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

That's a very ranking-specific question,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

so I'd rather not answer that part.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

But in general, if it's geo or user dependent,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

geographically, most of the visits from Googlebot


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

come from the US, so it's likely that it's not going


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

to load some of the content.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

If it's user dependent, that usually


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

means it's customization or personalization


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that is behind login.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Googlebot won't be logged in, so it


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

will behave like a user that has never visited your site before.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So that's what we will be seeing.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Edward is asking a question.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

What suggestions does Google Search Console


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

have for identifying and listing pages


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

with excessive JavaScript?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

In general, Google Search Console


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

has the corporate violence report


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that will tell you which pages are slow


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and that those are the ones that you want to specifically


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

look into.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

If it's not on there, then that might mean that we


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

don't have enough field data.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I would probably try to have a look at Pageview Insights


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

or Lighthouse to find pages where there


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

is excessive JavaScript.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Ricardo is asking a question.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Hi, Martin.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I recently came across a site that basically, if JavaScript


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

is disabled on the browser, it just


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

shows a blank page with no content.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

This is a very traditional e-commerce site,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

so nothing that makes the use of JavaScript


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

mandatory and indispensable.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

The site is normally indexed by Google.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

At the moment, I have not detected any rendering problems,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

so there are no worries.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Mine is just a thought on how a really good solution can


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

be to create a site that depends 100% on JavaScript rendering,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

both from the SEO point of view and from the user experience


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

point of view.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

From the SEO point of view, at least for Google Search,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I can't really answer for search engines.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

At least for Google Search, it's not that much of a problem.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

From the user experience point of view, it is more brittle.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Some people are serving certain add-ons that might consider,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

oh, this JavaScript shouldn't load.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Or first load of a page, we don't load the JavaScript.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And then they don't see anything,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and then they just move on to another site.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I think using JavaScript for something where you don't have


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

to use JavaScript, and you're implying


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

this is a traditional e-commerce kind of thing,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and then I would question why it doesn't show content


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

without JavaScript.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So I feel like this is the kind of JavaScript usage


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that I don't necessarily encourage.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I would say pages that don't rely on JavaScript


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

are usually more solid, more stable, and usually faster.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Again, your mileage might vary, but I would not


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

advise on doing that where you show no content whatsoever


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

if JavaScript is disabled, unless you have a really,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

really good reason.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And oh, we build it that way is not really a good reason,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

in my opinion.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Good question.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Valin is asking, or Valin Corporation


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

is asking a question testing the crawlability


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

of my company's website, which is having


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

its CMS upgraded to a new version.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

But the upgrade will mean that the site


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

will be a single-page application running Angular JS 1.8.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

That's a really old Angular version, I think.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I am emulating Googlebot smartphone and DevTools


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and using the mobile-friendly testing tool to test pages.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

But sometimes the mobile-friendly testing tool


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

renders less content for a specific page


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

than I am seeing in the DevTools Googlebot emulation.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Why does this happen, and which testing tool


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

should I trust in this situation?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Definitely trust the mobile-friendly test more.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So here's what's going on.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

If you set your DevTools to Googlebot smartphone,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

the only thing that changes is the user agent,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

which is a string that is being sent in every HTTP request


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that you're making.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

It still uses your regular Chrome settings.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Nothing has changed.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Nothing's different.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Googlebot, however, does work differently.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

For instance, Googlebot does honor robots.txt,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

whereas your developer tools in Chrome do not.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So that's one of the many, many things that are different.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So I would not trust that too much, to be honest.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

It's a very rudimentary, very, very simple test


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

to do this in DevTools.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

The mobile-friendly test, however,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

might also not necessarily show you the reality at all times.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Like there's this dreaded error, and I have spoken about this


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

a lot of times.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

The big problem there, or the challenge here,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

is the indexing infrastructure is built for batch processing,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

for basically background processing.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So we have a lot of time until we actually


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

can crawl the resources of your page,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and we can retry individual resources multiple times


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

before we progress in indexing.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

That can take minutes to hours.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

When you are using the mobile-friendly test,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

we can't really let you wait for an hour


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

until you see a result, right?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So we have to draw a line somewhere and say,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

after a couple of minutes, if we haven't crawled it yet,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

because we don't have a crawler available,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

then we'll just move on.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And then you see other error, because this is not really


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

an error.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

This is an implementation detail of the way


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that the testing tool is implemented.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

But the testing tool uses the actual Googlebot infrastructure


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and the actual rendering infrastructure


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that we are using as well.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So what you see there is more likely what we'll be seeing


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

when we're actually indexing.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I'm a little worried about AngularJS 1.8, because that


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

is really, really old technology.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And I would recommend not necessarily using that,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

because I feel that Angular has matured a lot


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

in the last couple of years.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I think they're version 9 now.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So yeah, I'm not super sure about that technology choice.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

But in general, in SPA, even running


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

an old version of Angular should be fine


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

if you test it thoroughly in Search Console,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

as well as Mobile Friendly Test and the other testing tools.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Oh my, I actually can't read Arabic,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

so I don't know what's your name.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

But there is a question about someone using WP Rocket


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

to speed up their website.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Apparently, the site works correctly and quickly,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and the page lead insight score increases,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

but the traffic drops on the Search Console and Google


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Analytics.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

When they deactivated WP Rocket, traffic increased back again.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I don't know.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So I don't know WP Rocket or WordPress Rocket.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I don't know exactly what it does.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

But if traffic drops, I would wonder if also pages drop out


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

of the index.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And then that would probably be because the way


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that it makes things faster is by deferring content


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

to a later point, where we might actually miss it.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So it sounds like it makes things more brittle,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

even though it makes things faster.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

WordPress sites often benefit from reviewing the themes very,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

very thoroughly, because themes often load a lot of stuff


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that you don't really need.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So I would double check if you can figure out


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

why the theme is slower in the first place


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

instead of using a Band-Aid like WP Rocket.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Manoj or Manoy is asking about the cache operator


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that doesn't really work for JavaScript websites, too.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Is there an alternative to see the Google cache page?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Yes, in Google Search Console, you can see the index page.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So you use the URL inspection tool.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

But in the URL that you care about, the page URL


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that you care about, and then say, like, view crawled site.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And there you see the rendered HTML


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

that we're actually indexing.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I have a word for site.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Should I do JavaScript SEO?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Nancy?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

No.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Normally, you don't have to.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Yeah.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And that's it for the questions that touch on JavaScript SEO


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

from YouTube.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I'll reload the page one more time


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

to make sure that we're not missing out on anything here.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Yeah, that's it.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And with that, I open questions to the audience.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

There.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Yeah, excellent.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I was about to say there's a Raise Hand feature here


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

in Google Meets.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Paramoth has already raised their hand.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

You can also use the chat to ask questions, too.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

And then I'll go through these questions.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

All right, in that case, Paramoth, what's the question?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Yeah, hi, Martin.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So I have a very generic question.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Is there any added advantage of using React or Angular


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

or any other JavaScript framework in terms of SEO?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Or Google will treat this framework


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

with the conventional frameworks as the same?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Or is it any different?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

No, we don't care.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

All the same.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

OK, so I think in my current companies, some of the pages


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

are on ReactJS and some of the pages


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

are on the WordPress or other platforms.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

So should we have to migrate all into one?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Not for SEO purposes.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Like for SEO, it doesn't matter.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

OK.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

OK, thank you.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

You're welcome.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Happy to help.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Any other questions?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Again, you can use the Raise Hand feature


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

or you can use the chat as well.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Just let me know.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

All right, there are no further questions.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Other questions?


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

I hear noise coming from Suresh.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

OK, if there are no further questions,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

then I'd like to say thank you so much, everyone, for joining.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Thanks for everyone watching the recording here afterwards.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Stay safe, stay healthy, have a great time,


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

and continue building cool things on the web.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021

Bye bye.


JS SEO Q&A from June 9th, 2021


Processing 301 redirects #AskGoogleWebmasters

Today's question has been submitted by Ricardo.


Ricardo is asking, after a 301 redirect,


how long does it take Google to start ranking the new URL


instead of the old one?


I did a redirect from A to B with 301,


and then Google indexed both of them instead of the new one.


And Google is still ranking the old URL.


That's a good one, Ricardo.


Thanks for asking.


And that's something that even the SEO team within Google


wanted to ask us.


Unfortunately, we can't help the Google SEO team


with SEO questions.


But fortunately for you, we can help you.


At a general level, a 301 redirect


is just a signal for canonicalization.


You're telling us you'd prefer to have the destination


page indexed rather than the originating one.


And that's fine.


However, we use lots of factors for canonicalization, not


just redirects.


I mentioned that in one of the earlier videos, too.


So take a look at that.


In practice, what happens here is we spot the redirect,


but we also look at the other factors.


If everything aligns, we'll focus on the destination page.


To make that easier, make sure that you update


the internal links, the sitemap files, and other references


to the originating page so that they all


point to the destination page.


Another quirk here is that if you explicitly


look for the old originating page,


we'll try to show that in search.


For example, if you specifically look


for the old URL directly, we'll probably


be able to show that to you, even if we've since


switched over to the new one.


You can double check that it's working right in Search Console


using the URL inspection tool there.


And there, you can clearly see which URL is currently


selected as canonical.


And if that's not the page that you want,


look for signals pointing to the old URL and fix those.


Thanks for asking, Ricardo.


And don't forget to like and subscribe.


English Google SEO office-hours from August 27, 2021

All right, welcome, everyone, to today's Google Search Central


SEO Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate at Google in Switzerland.


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


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


A bunch of questions have been submitted already.


So we can go through some of those.


But maybe we'll start with some live questions first.


And people have already been raising hands.


So this is fantastic.


Let's start with Benette.


Hi.


I'm having some issues with the Google Search Console.


We put the tags on a certain web page.


And I tried to verify it with both analytics


and with putting the tags on.


And it still comes back unverified.


And I'm just wondering where I can go from here.


OK, so which tags did you use?


With the meta tag verification?


The analytics, just whatever it says in the Search Console.


OK, and you used the analytics method to do the verification?


I tried the analytics method to verify it.


It's been a while since we've logged into analytics


with the particular account.


And it said to upgrade to version 4.


And I did that.


And it seemed like it gave some more stuff.


And I've tried working with the software.


It's a third party software, ISU Broad, Teradata software.


And they've said that they've put the tags in the right place


to their knowledge.


I've tried working.


I work at a university.


I tried working and saying, hey, we


don't want to deal with this because basically, don't


ask us.


Ask your father.


And I've already asked my father, you know.


OK.


I suspect what you're running into


is with the new version of Google Analytics,


we don't automatically pick that up for verification


in Search Console.


So basically, by shifting over to GA4,


that makes it so that you have to use a separate method


for verification in Search Console, which could be maybe


the meta tag is something that's possible to implement.


Maybe the file itself is an option there.


But the Google Analytics method wouldn't work automatically.


I've tried the option number one, the HTML file,


adding that.


And it still doesn't work.


I would almost recommend maybe posting in the help forum


for that with the URL of your site and the URL of that file


so that someone can take a look and see if there's something


specific to point out.


Because it sounds like you're doing things right.


And I feel it's probably something very small that


is just kind of blocking somehow.


So it's in the Search Console forum or where?


Yes.


Do you have a specific link you can put in the chat maybe?


Sure.


Um, there's a short link.


I think this should work.


OK.


Let's see.


That should work.


I got it.


I'll try doing that.


And you're saying that Google personnel monitor that


and or someone else can help.


There are different people who are


quasi-experts on the product who can help with that.


It's not specifically someone from Google,


but they can escalate it to someone from Google


if there are issues on Google's side.


All right.


That's all I have to need.


Thank you very much.


Sure.


Thanks.


Michael.


Hi, John.


Very quick question just because it's top of mind


and I haven't researched it.


But we're developing very long content


comprehensive kind of copy to address a particular search.


And we were thinking of adding anchor links at the top,


kind of like a navigation menu further down, which


would make our quick answer not necessarily


at the top of the page because we would have these kind


of anchor links at the top.


Do you think that will have any impact on how we search up,


how we show up for quick answers or our ability


to rank for those?


I don't think that would affect anything.


I mean, it probably makes it easier for users


to get to that content, which is kind of a good thing.


But I don't think it would negatively affect anything


from an SEO point of view.


OK.


Great.


Thank you.


Sure.


Cool.


Jason.


Hi, John.


So when we look at our server logs,


we see generally two hits from Googlebot at the same time


or give or take a few milliseconds, right?


My team has been trying to figure out


an explanation for this.


And we even have a bit of a pool going, right?


One believes that it's hitting our server


from different physical locations, right?


Another thinks that it could be desktop versus mobile.


My money is on raw HTML versus rendered HTML.


Did I back the right horse?


I don't know.


I mean, what are you seeing?


Is it the same URL and the same user agent and everything?


Is it the same user agent as well?


It is.


Yeah.


That seems like something that shouldn't be happening.


Because, I mean, if it were desktop and mobile,


those would be different user agents.


And if it's the same Googlebot user agent,


then we should be caching that a little bit.


It shouldn't be that within seconds we would


refresh the same page again.


Even if we were to render the page,


we would use the HTML version that we have.


And then we render the page pulling


in all of the extra content.


We wouldn't render the page by fetching the HTML again


because that would be kind of inefficient.


So that feels almost more like a bug on our side


if you're seeing that.


Or maybe you're seeing something in the logs


that is simplified or tracking it slightly differently.


I don't know.


But if it's the same URL, same user agent, within seconds,


that seems like an issue on our side.


Different physical locations wouldn't be the case


because we usually crawl sites from the same location.


So it's not that we would crawl it once from this data center


and once from a different one.


We essentially pick one location and we crawl the whole site


from that location.


OK, so that's interesting because in our consumer


experience, we use the location to serve up


more relevant content.


So that could mean that we could be limiting


the amount of content accessible to Googlebot


if you're only crawling it from one location, yes?


Because I've seen this sometimes with CDNs or security setups


where essentially we request the URL once


and it does a kind of a redirect back to the same URL


or something like that as an, I don't know,


an anti-bot measure or something like that,


where maybe we're following a redirect like that


and kind of indirectly picking up the content.


And that would be something where I'd say if that's


actually happening, if you can tell,


for example, with the Inspect URL tool


when you do a live request, that that kind of bouncing


through your server is happening,


that seems like something that would be inefficient


on your side where you'd probably


be able to get more crawls in if you didn't have that kind


of indirection in between.


Makes sense, cool, thank you.


All right, Xiao.


Hey, John.


So my question is that I wonder how


do Google will interpret the URL that is modified using


window.history.pushstate.


So basically what they do is that they exchange your URL


with a redirect display on the browser.


Do Google consider the content of the URL before modified


or after modified, associated?


Yeah, we would generally, if that happens during the page


load, for example, then we would see that as a redirect.


And it's a bit tricky always with redirects,


which URL we would take into account and use for indexing


because we use different things for canonicalization.


But if we see that happening during the page load,


we would assume that you're trying to say,


oh, actually index it as this URL.


And we would treat it as that.


If that's something that only happens when you click a button


or you click on a link or something like that,


then we probably wouldn't see that at all


because we don't process those events.


I see.


So it's in JavaScript.


So they only do that after they parse the JavaScript, right?


So in this case.


But they automatically do that when people go to that page.


In this case, you consider the after modified URL


to be associated with the content?


Yeah.


Would you recommend not doing that?


Maybe redirect is better?


I think if you can do a server-side redirect,


it always saves resources because we


don't have to render it.


But it kind of depends on why you're doing that.


If you're trying to do a redirect,


then I would try to do a redirect as clean as possible.


If it's something like a page that has infinite scroll


or something where you're loading like the next article


when one page loads, then obviously that's


a little bit of a different situation.


And maybe you need to make sure that you're not


changing the URL when the page is loading for Googlebot.


So from that point of view, it kind of


depends on why you're doing this.


So is that also from what you say,


that the push state is a method to canonicalize the content?


However, would so in this case, like redirect


is superior than push state, right?


But how about canonicalization?


That which one is superior?


So for canonicalization, I don't think


any one is better than the other one.


But the server-side redirect is something


we process immediately.


And push state is something where


we have to read the JavaScript first, which means it takes


longer for us to get there.


So if you want to do a redirect, the server-side redirect


is like the fastest way you can get us to process that.


I see.


Thank you so much.


Sure.


Rajiv.


Hey, John.


So I have a quick question.


So just wanted to ask, so we were having a debate


about if infinite scroll is better


or pagination is better.


So I got just one question.


So if we implement infinite scroll on our website,


so basically the blog category pages or the blogs itself,


they will be in continuation to each other.


So will it increase the page size?


Or is there any way by how it can impact our page


speed or performance?


I mean, it can increase the page size.


I would see it more as almost a usability question.


And for some sites, maybe it makes sense


to have something like pagination.


For other sites, maybe it makes sense


to have kind of an infinite stream of articles


where you can go from one to the next one.


I think those are both legitimate approaches.


And both of those are things that you can do in a way that


work well for SEO.


So it's something where I would almost


focus on what you want to do from a usability point of view.


And then as a second step, think about what


do I need to do with that selection


to make sure it works well for SEO.


OK, got it.


Thanks, John.


Sure.


Alistair.


Hi, John.


How are you?


Hi.


Good to see you.


So I've got a question about either removing old content


or keeping it.


We've got a website with about 9,000 news pages in the news


section.


And we've got about 500 articles in the core subcategories


of the site.


And I was wondering, would there be any consequences


if we sort of stop producing content for the news pages


and instead divert our efforts to the main articles


on the website, which bring in the most traffic?


I think that's almost like a strategic question.


It's less of something where I'd say there's an SEO effect


that you would see there.


I mean, obviously, if you stop producing content,


you just have older content in one part of your website,


then that part of your website won't


be visible as much for kind of newer type queries.


But you only have limited resources.


And you have to focus your work on something.


So if you decide that the other part of your website


is more important, that brings in more visitors or more


revenue or whatever, then focusing your efforts there,


I think, is a perfectly legitimate decision.


Perfect.


That's brilliant.


And so if we just left them alone,


then it shouldn't really make a big difference.


Because the other option is removing the 7,000 pages,


which don't get any traffic at all.


And obviously, if we consider about broken links


and sending up the correct redirects,


do you think that would be a better option just getting rid


of the content?


I mean, if when you look at it, you say it's bad content,


then it's perhaps worthwhile to get rid of it.


But if you look at it and you essentially think, well,


it's reasonable content, it's just not a lot of traffic


there, then I think that's fine to keep as well.


So it's not the case that just because something is old


or just because something has less traffic,


that it's automatically bad content.


That's it.


Thank you.


I have two more questions.


But before I ask them, I have a question,


which is, how many questions can I ask in a row?


A couple is fine, as long as we don't spend the whole hour


on the questions.


Yeah.


Of course.


So another question is, when creating


informational content, what do you think


would be best over the long run?


Should we be creating ultimate guides?


We see we backlink it with keyword research,


and then they have an ultimate guide, which covers the who,


what, where, and why of that.


Or do you think it'd be better to maybe just niche down


in each particular question?


Like, why is keyword research important,


or how to do keyword research?


What's your advice for that?


I think it's almost like a strategic decision there


as well, where you can target the head queries.


And if you have something really good,


if your website is really strong in that area,


then I could see how that can attract a lot of traffic.


But at the same time, for the more tail queries,


often there's less competition, and it's easier to be visible.


So you might have less overall traffic,


but it's easier to rank there, and it's easier to grow there.


So usually, the way I look at it, especially


for newer sites, smaller sites, is get started with the tail


queries and build up from there.


Because you also learn with that what kind of content


resonates well with your audience,


you kind of grow into that situation.


Whereas if you spend a lot of time creating this head content


and it doesn't get any visibility,


then it's a lot of work that you put into that,


and you don't get a lot of value out of that.


At least with the tail things, you incrementally


get more and more out of that.


That makes sense.


Thank you.


And the last question, and it's probably


not your favorite one.


I'll take my gray hat off.


But what does large scale article marketing


or guest post campaigns with keyword rich


anchor text links mean?


I suspect that's from the Webmaster guidelines somewhere.


It sounds like it, yeah.


I mean, it's something where sometimes we see sites


in engaging in something like that, where they're


creating a large amount of very similar content


and trying to spread that as broadly as possible.


And essentially, with that content,


if it's, for example, guest post,


you're posting it on other people's websites,


it's essentially artificial links pointing to your website.


And what we're trying to say there


is we really want to see sites kind of get


recognized in a natural way on the web,


and not in a way where it's like you're putting


all of those links out there, but rather other people


are saying, well, this is actually good content,


and they link to you instead.


So I don't know.


That's very simplified.


That's really helpful.


So instead of manually building links,


you just want to produce lots of good content


and get that to rank over the long term.