that's kind of up to you.


English Google SEO office-hours from May 6, 2022

But my recommendation is really make fewer articles


that are actually really good.


The one extreme case here that can pop up


if you're really intensely copying your own content


is that you end up creating doorway pages.


And that is essentially taking one piece of content


and creating lots and lots of variations


just with different words in it.


And that's something that would be against our Webmaster


Guidelines.


So that's something I would watch out for.


And also, that's something where you're


creating a ton of really, I don't know, lower quality,


I don't know, I would almost say junk pages for your websites,


which is essentially just like fluff that doesn't provide


any unique value overall.


And instead of diluting the content of your website


like that, I would recommend focusing


on making the primary content of your website


a lot stronger instead.


So that's kind of my recommendation there.


So if you're asking, is Google OK with it?


Well, it's like, you can do whatever


you want on your website.


But that doesn't mean that Google is going to value it.


All right.


Next question I have here is, our website


is not very user friendly if JavaScript is turned off.


Most of the images are not loaded.


Our flyout menu can't be opened.


However, the Chrome Inspect feature in there,


all menu links are there in the source code.


Might our dependence on JavaScript


still be a problem for Googlebot?


And from my point of view, like with the first question


that we had on web components, I would test it.


So probably everything will be OK.


And probably, I would assume, if you're


using JavaScript in a reasonable way,


if you're not doing anything special to block


the JavaScript on your pages, then probably it will just


work.


But you're much better off not just believing me,


but rather using a testing tool to try it out.


And the testing tools that we have available


are quite well documented.


There are lots of variations on things


that we recommend with regards to improving things


if you run into problems.


So I would double check our guides on JavaScript and SEO.


And think about maybe, I don't know,


trying things out, making sure that they actually


work the way that you want, and then taking that


to improve your website overall.


And you mentioned user friendly with regards to JavaScript.


So from our point of view, the guidance that we have


is essentially very technical in the sense


that we need to make sure that Googlebot can see the content


from a technical point of view and that it


can see the links on your pages from a technical point of view.


It doesn't primarily care about user friendliness.


But of course, your users care about user friendliness.


And that's something where maybe it makes sense


to do a little bit more so that your users are really


for sure having a good experience on your pages.


And this is often something that isn't just


a matter of a simple testing tool,


but rather something where maybe you


have to do a small user study or interview some users


or at least do a survey on your website


to understand where do they get stuck, what kind of problems


are they facing.


Is it because of these, I don't know,


you mentioned the fly out menus?


Or is it something maybe completely different


where they're seeing problems?


That maybe the text is too small or they can't


click the buttons properly?


Those kind of things, which don't really align


with technical problems, but are more user side things


that if you can improve those and if you


can make your users happier, they'll stick around


and they'll come back and they'll invite more people


to visit your website as well.


Let's see.


Our static page is built with HTML


and our blog is built with WordPress.


The majority of our blog posts are experiencing indexing


issues in Google.


How do I fix this?


So I think, first of all, it's important to know


that these are essentially just different platforms.


And essentially with all of these platforms,


you're creating HTML pages.


And the background or the back end side of your website


that ends up creating these HTML pages,


that's something that Googlebot doesn't really look at.


Or at least that's something that Googlebot doesn't really


try to evaluate.


So if your pages are written in HTML


and you write them in an editor and you load them


on your server and they serve like that,


we can see that they're HTML pages.


If they're created on the fly on your server based


on a database in WordPress or some other kind of platform


that you're using and then it creates HTML pages,


we see those final HTML pages and we essentially


work with those.


So if you're seeing issues with regards to your website


overall when it comes to things like crawling, indexing,


or ranking, and you can kind of exclude


the technical elements there, kind of that Googlebot


is able to actually see the content,


then usually what remains is kind


of the quality side of things.


And that's something that definitely


doesn't rely on the infrastructure that you


use to create these pages, but more it's about the content


that you're providing there and the overall experience


that you're providing on the website.


So if you're seeing something that, for example,


your blog posts are not being picked up by Google


or not ranking well by Google and your static HTML pages


are doing fine on Google, then it's


not because they're static HTML pages


that they're doing well on Google,


but rather because Google thinks that these are actually


good pieces of content that it should


recommend to other users.


And kind of on that level, that's


where I would take a look and not focus


so much on the infrastructure, but really


focus on the actual content that you're providing.


And when it comes to content, it's


not just the text that's the primary part of the page.


It's everything around the whole website that comes into play.


So that's something where I would really


try to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.


And if you don't see, kind of from a bigger picture


point of view, where maybe some quality issues might lie


or where you could improve things,


I would strongly recommend doing a user study.


And for that, maybe invite, I don't know,


a handful of people who aren't directly associated


with your website and have them kind of do


some tasks on your website and then ask them


really tough questions about where they think maybe there


are problems on this website or if they would trust


this website or any kind of other question around kind


of like understanding the quality of the website.


And we have a bunch of these questions in some of our blog


posts that you can also use for inspiration.


It's not so much that I would say


you have to ask the questions that we ask in our blog post,


but sometimes having some inspiration for these kind


of things is useful.


In particular, we have a fairly old blog post


on one of the early quality updates.


And we have a newer blog post, maybe, I guess,


it's like two years old now.


It's not super new.


Blog post on core updates.


And both of these have a bunch of questions on them


that you could ask yourself around your website.


But especially if you have a group of users


that are willing to give you some input,


then that's something that you could ask them.


And really take their answers to heart


and think about ways that you can improve your website


overall.


Let's see.


I have a set of canonical or I have set canonical URLs


on five pages, but Google is showing it a third page


as well.


Why is it not only showing the URLs where


I've set a canonical on it for?


So I'm not 100% sure I understand this question


correctly, but kind of paraphrasing,


it sounds like on five pages of your website


you've set a rel canonical.


And there are other pages on your website


where you haven't set a rel canonical.


And Google is showing all of these pages kind of indexed


in essentially in various ways.


And I think the thing to keep in mind


is the rel canonical is a way of you specifying


which of the pages within a set of duplicate pages


you want to have indexed like that.


Or essentially which address you want to have used.


So in particular, if you have one page maybe


with the file name in uppercase and one page


with the file name in lowercase, then in some situations


your server might show exactly the same content.


Technically, they're different addresses.


Uppercase and lowercase are slightly different.


But from the practical point of view,


your server is showing exactly the same thing.


And Google, when it looks at that,


says, well, it's not worthwhile to index two addresses


with the same content.


Instead, I will pick one of these addresses


and use it to index that piece of content.


And with the rel canonical, you give Google a signal


and tell it, hey, Google, I really


want you to use maybe the lowercase version of the address


when you're indexing this content.


You might have seen the uppercase version,


but I really want you to use the lowercase version.


And that's essentially what the rel canonical does.


It's not a guarantee that we would use the version that you


specify there, but it's a signal for us.


It helps us to figure out all things else being equal.


You really prefer this address, so we will try to use that.


And that's the preference part that comes into play here.


And it comes into play when we've


recognized there are multiple copies of the same piece


of content on your website.


And for everything else, we will just


try to index it to the best of our abilities.


And that also means that for the pages where


you have a rel canonical on it, sometimes we


will follow that advice that you give us.


Sometimes our systems might say, well, actually, I


think maybe you have it wrong.


You should have used the other address as the canonical.


That can happen.


It doesn't mean it will rank differently


or it will be worse off in search.


It's just, well, Google systems are choosing a different one.


And for other pages on your website,


you might not have a rel canonical set at all.


And for those, we will just try to pick one ourselves.


And that's also perfectly fine.


And in all of these cases, the ranking will be fine.


The indexing will be fine.


It's really just the address that


is shown in the search results that varies.


So if you have the canonical set on some pages


but not on others, we will still try to index those pages


and find the right address to use for those pages


when we show them in search.


So that's kind of like it's a good practice


to have the rel canonical on your pages


because you're trying to take control


over this vague possibility that maybe a different address will


show.


But it's not an absolute necessity


to have a rel canonical.


Let's see.


A bunch of questions here.


What can we do if we have thousands of spammy links


that are continuously placed as backlinks


on malicious domains?


They contain spammy keywords and cause 404s on our domain.


We see a strong correlation between these spammy links


and a penalty that we got after a spam update in 2021.


We disavowed all the spammy links


and we reported the domain, which


is listed as a source of the links as spam.


What else can we do?


Yeah.


I think this is always super frustrating as a site owner.


When you look at it, you're like,


someone else is ruining my chances in the search results.


But there are two things I think that are important to mention


in this particular case.


On the one hand, if these links are pointing to pages


on your website that are returning 404,


so they're essentially linking to pages that don't exist,


then we don't take those links into account


because there is nothing to associate them


with on your website.


Essentially, people are linking to a missing location


and then will say, well, what can we do with this link?


We can't connect it to anything, so we will drop it.


So that's kind of the first part.


A lot of those are probably already dropped.


The second part is you mentioned you disavowed


those spammy backlinks.


And especially if you mentioned that these


are from a handful of domains, then you


can do that with the domain entry in the disavow


backlinks tool.


And that essentially takes them out of our system as well.


So we will still list them in Search Console.


And you might still find them there and be


a bit confused about that.


But essentially, they don't have any effect at all.


If they're being disavowed, then we


tell our systems that these should not


be taken into account, neither in a positive nor negative way.


So from a practical point of view,


both from the 404 side and from the disavow,


probably those links are not doing anything negative


to your website.


And if you're seeing significant changes with regards


to your website in Search, I would not focus on those links,


but rather look further.


And that could be within your own website


to understand a little bit better what is actually


the value that you're providing there.


What can you do to really stand up


above all of the other websites with regards


to the awesome value that you're providing users?


How can you make that as clear as possible to search engines?


That's the direction I would take there.


So not lose too much time on those spammy backlinks.


You can just disavow the whole domain


that they're coming from and then move on.


There's absolutely nothing that you need to do there.


And especially if they're already linking to 404 pages,


they're already ignored.


Let's see.


Since the end of January, we see a massive ranking drop


for our.de domain.


And then later also on further international domains,


like ATCH, IT, FR, ES, lots of top-level domains.


Everything either points to a technical issue or an issue


of lost Google trust.


The IT team has identified an issue with the SSL certificate.


There is no manual action or security issue


in Search Console, lots of minor technical aspects


have additionally been fixed, and we double-checked


the common SEO mistakes, like robots.txt, robots.metatag,


canonical, hreflang, et cetera.


But nothing is fixed.


Could it be, are we on the right track,


or is there something else?


So I think taking a step back without looking


into the specific site.


I know you specified the site there,


and I'll double-check some things there.


But essentially, the bigger picture


where you're seeing it first in one top-level domain,


and then over time, you see it in the other top-level domains


as well, to me, that suggests that there is not


a simple technical tweak that you need to do on your website,


but it's rather more a matter of Google's understanding


of your website overall.


And in particular, the SSL certificate,


if SSL works well in a browser, it will work well for indexing.


That would not be a cause of a drop of visibility in the search


results.


And a lot of the, you mentioned them already,


as minor technical things, those are


things that tend not to cause bigger issues across a website


as well.


And especially if these are not things


where the problem has just recently been added


to a website, then probably that wouldn't


be affecting a sudden change in how a website is shown


in search.


So for example, if you had your robots.txt file completely


wrong, it would not be a case that after one or two years,


then suddenly Google would react and say, oh, we can't


deal with this website anymore.


It's really like that's a clear technical issue,


and that would have been a technical issue from when you


uploaded that robots.txt file.


Whereas if you later on, over time,


see that actually the visibility of the website overall


is changing, then that's more of a broader SEO type of thing


where you would want to look into all of the various SEO


topics as well and not just purely focus


on small technical tweaks.


And it's really hard to say what particular thing you should


be focusing on there because SEO takes into account


so many different aspects across the website.


Let's see.


Now we can do some short ones.


What's the latest stand on app indexing?


Is the project shut?


How to get your app ranked on Google if app indexing


is no longer working?


So app indexing was a very long time ago,


I think a part of Search Console and some of the things


that we talked about where Google would be able to crawl


and index parts of an app as it would appear and try to show


that in the search results.


And I think that has migrated a long time ago over


to Firebase app indexing.


And I double checked this morning


when I saw this question, and Firebase has also


migrated to yet another thing.


But it has a bunch of links there for follow up things


that you can look at with regards to that.


So I would double check the official documentation there


and not listen to me talk about app indexing as much


because I don't really know the details around Android app


indexing.


The one thing that you can do with regards


to any kind of an app, be it a mobile phone, smartphone


app like these things or a desktop app that you install,


you can absolutely make a home page for it.


And that's something that can be shown in search


like anything else.


And for a lot of the smartphone apps,


there will also be a page on the Play Store or the App Store.


I don't know what they're all called,


but usually they're like landing pages that also exist,


which are normal web pages, which can also appear in search.


And these things can appear in search


when people search for something around your app.


Your own website can appear in search


when people are searching for something around the app.


And especially when it comes to your own website,


you can do all of the things that we


talk about when it comes to SEO for your own website.


So I would not say, oh, app indexing is no longer


the same as it was 10 years ago.


Therefore, I'm losing out.


But rather, you have so many opportunities and different ways


to be visible in search.


You don't need to rely on just one particular aspect.


Then let me just take one more question here


before I run out of time and have to add other people in.


The bot crawling is causing a real problem on our site.


So we have our CDN block unwanted bots.


However, this also blocks the translate this page feature.


So my questions are, one, is it bad for Google SEO


if the translate this page feature doesn't work?


Does it also mean that Googlebot is blocked?


And second, is there a way to get rid of the translate


this page link for all of our users?


So I think there are different ways or different


infrastructure on our side to access your pages.


And there's, on the one hand, Googlebot and the associated


infrastructure.


And I believe the translate systems are slightly different


because they don't go through robots.txt,


but rather they look at the page directly kind of thing.


And because of that, it can be that these are


blocked in different ways.


So in particular, Googlebot is something


you can block on an IP level using a reverse DNS look up,


or you can allow it on an IP level.


And the other kind of elements are slightly different.


And if you want to block everything or every bot


other than Googlebot or other than kind of official search


engine bots, that's totally up to you.


When it comes to SEO, Google just


needs to be able to crawl with Googlebot.


And you can test that in Search Console


to see does Googlebot have access.


And through Search Console, you can get that confirmation


that it's working OK.


How it works for the translate this page kind


of like back end systems, I don't know.


But it's not critical for SEO.


And the last question, like how can you block that kind


of translate this page link?


There is a no translate meta tag that you


can use on your pages that essentially tells


Chrome and the systems around translation


that this page does not need to be translated


or shouldn't be kind of offered as a translation.


And with that, I believe you can block the translate this page


link in the search results as well.


And the no translate meta tag is documented in our search


developers documentation.


So I would double check that.


Cool.


OK.


So we made it to the end of the session.


It feels kind of weird to do these without anyone else


in the room.


But oh well, we'll kind of see how it goes,


see how the recording ends up.


And if you've enjoyed this, feel free to drop in your questions


for one of the future SEO office hours.


You can also help out in the help forums


if you like answering these kind of questions yourself.


I'd appreciate your feedback on the format


like this if this is OK for you, if you'd like it


saw you differently.


I'm also going to continue recording the Ask Google


Bots video series where we just go into one question, one


answer type thing.


Maybe that's also an approach that we


should take for these kind of things too.


We'll see.


Anyway, thanks for sticking around until the end.


And hopefully, see you all in one of the future episodes.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the Search


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Off the Record podcast.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Our plan is to talk a bit about what's


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

happening at Google Search, how things work behind the scenes,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and who knows, maybe have some fun along the way.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

My name is John Mueller.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I'm a search advocate on the Search Relations team


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

here at Google in Switzerland.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I'm joined by Martin and Gary, who


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

are also search advocates on the Search Relations team.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So one topic that has come up over and over again externally


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is everything around core web vitals and kind of speed


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and things around that nature.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And it feels like we don't really


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

have all of the details that we can share publicly


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

at the moment.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So one of the ideas that I had is maybe


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

we could take this as a chance to create something


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

like a hypothetical search engine.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

For example, if we three were to go off and create


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

a search engine, how would we do something like this?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

What do you think, guys?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

MARTIN SPLITTENBERG


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Steve.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

What do you mean, Steve?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I mean, Steve.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Like Steven?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We call our search engine Steve.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

What's the verb for it?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

To Steve something?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Exactly.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

When you want to Steve something, then you go to Steve


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and you type in the things that you want to Steve


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and you click Search or you hit Enter.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I don't know.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think we need like an A-B test.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Do we have an alternative that we can?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yes.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, search and make search face.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, that totally rolls off your tongue.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We'll go with Steve.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think that's much easier.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Sorry.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Steve.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We could call it Ask Steve.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Ask Steve?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

No, no.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We'll just go with Steve.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It's like you can go to Steve.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

How old are you, Martin?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Just remembering the old times.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh my gosh.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I mean, we can make an official version like Mr. Stevens.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That would be the grown up version.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Now that we have the most critical parts covered,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

which is surprisingly quick this time,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

what do you think about using speed as a ranking


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

factor in Steve?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So we kind of have like this gigantic index.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Like Gary has been talking about the index for a while now


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and how we have all of these sharks that go around.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Shards.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Shards is kind of like kale, right?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So many floppy disks.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Anyway, we have all of this index stuff happening


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and all of this crawling stuff happening.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So kind of the next step, I guess,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is talking about the ranking side of things.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And if we wanted to use speed as a ranking factor,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

how would we go about that?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So first, I would talk about how we, Google, release


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

our ranking signals and how we decide what should be


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

a ranking signal and what not.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Because that might help us further down the road


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

decide what can we do for Steve.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Because there are quite a few quirks there


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that you have to navigate before you


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

can release a ranking factor that


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

will be useful in some way.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And I think we talk about this on the How Search Works site,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

as well as we talked about this at conferences.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And I know Matt Cutts organized a video recording


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

of one of our Search Quality team meetings


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

a while ago, which was heavily publicized as well.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And people found it very interesting.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And all these give a little sense


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

in what goes into releasing a ranking signal.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

One of the things that we should consider for Steve


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is the weight of the ranking signal,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

meaning that will it be heavyweight,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

meaning that it will shake up the results quite a bit,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

or it will be minor and it will be more like a tiebreaker.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Because sometimes that's what you need, actually.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And to make that decision, we at Google


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

use data from our experiments and raters,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

basically, who are all these things reflecting how users


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

interact with search results.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And we look at the metrics that they generate,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

basically how they interact with the search result


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

page or direct evaluation from raters, from humans.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And then we're taking that into account.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We decide whether to learn something or not.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Or stepping back, we can even decide


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

whether to go to the Search Quality meeting for approvals


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to launch this or not.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So for example, if you have a ranking change that


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

shakes up the results a lot and you


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

don't think it should as a ranking engineer,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

then you can take a step back and ask yourself,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

do I want to go with this to the ranking leads or not?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So if you think about it, there are


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

two big categories of ranking changes.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

One is where you launch something


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to fix a persistent problem or a bigger problem.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

If I wanted to give an example for this,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

it is fake news, for example, where


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

there are sites that are ranking better


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

than authoritative sources.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And you want to fix that.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

The problem with that is that in your experiments, when


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

you push down non-authoritative sources,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

then that may actually look in your metrics


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

as a negative change, meaning that the metrics generated


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

by the experiment will look negative.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And that's because users might be


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

more willing to click on something, for example,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that's more clickbaity.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That makes sense, yeah.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

If you push those down, then that


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

might look negative in your experiments.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And then on the other end of the spectrum


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is lightweight changes, where you perhaps just


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

need to fix something very minor or you


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

want to influence something.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

HTTPS, for instance?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, HTTPS would be a good example for that,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

where we specifically designed it to be a tiebreaker,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

because we didn't want to compromise


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

the quality and the relevancy of our search results.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But we still wanted to give a little boost for HTTPS results


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

in our search results, enough to break a tie, for example,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

where that happens, which actually happens


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

more often than not.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So those would be the two categories.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And if we designed a speed algorithm or a speed ranking


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

change for Steve, then we would have


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to decide where in this spectrum,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

defined by these two endpoints, would we want it to land.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

My take on it is that it should be closer to the HTTPS ranking


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

change that Google did, because you don't want


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to sacrifice relevancy for speed.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But maybe you guys think differently.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, I think one example that I sometimes used


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is you can make a really fast, empty page.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But that doesn't mean that it's necessarily


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

a good result for people.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So just because something is super fast


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

doesn't make it actually useful or helpful for people.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So I think when it comes to Steve,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

we should make sure that it's not super high weight.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But at the same time, I also don't see it


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

as something that is purely influential kind of thing,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

because it is something that people watch out for.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And if we can show people ahead of time


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that what they're going to click on is going to be slow


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

or is going to be reasonably fast and useful,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

then I think that does help people


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to figure out a little bit better what


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is useful for them.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So I guess similar to the tiebreaker scenario


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that you mentioned, especially in situations


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

where you can find similar answers on multiple sites,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

then clearly having those on top that are actually


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

a very good user experience with regards to speed, usability,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think that kind of makes sense.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, I would agree with the tiebreaker nature of it,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

because in the end, users have a first and foremost goal,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and that is to get an answer to whatever intention they came


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

with.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And that answer should come in a delightful fashion,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

not slow and annoying.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, I mean, just personally, when it comes to Steve,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think it's something that we should probably


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

test before we nail everything down and say,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

it's going to be this strong kind of thing.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Because it might be that there are situations where


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

there are pages that are not purely identical or purely


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

equivalent, where speed does play a bigger role.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But it's tricky to kind of figure out.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I like the experiments part that Gary mentioned,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

because I think it's super tricky to get


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

all the weightings right.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

You probably want to look at more than just speed


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and relevancy or authority or something.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So for Steve, we probably need lots of signals


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and figure out how to weight them all somehow.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So how we did at Google with the HTTPS ranking boost


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

was that we came up with a weight, basically something


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that we thought would be appropriate.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And then we ran an experiment.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And we saw how people react to it, how the results changed.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And then based on those results, we made a call,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

or do we want to accept those changes?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Do we want to convince the ranking leads that that's


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

good for our users, for Google users?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Or we go back to the drawing board


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and decrease the weight, for example, or increase the weight


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and push it more?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And in reality, we went back, I think, four times or five times


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and kept decreasing it based on one of the ranking leads'


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

recommendation to the point where it is at the moment,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

where it acts as a tiebreaker.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So we could do that on Steve as well.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Basically, we come up with a number,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

how much it should change the results,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and then adjust the weight based on experiment results.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Maybe more than five and less than seven.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think it should be at least seven.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

At least seven.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I have no idea of the order of magnitude, but fine.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Seven sounds good.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Does speed have any kind of technical role


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

as well with these things?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So if we say speed is important for ranking,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is there already some aspect within Steve that also


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

takes speed into account?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I'm thinking of the crawling stuff, where


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I see it externally that people are sometimes confused.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

They look at their crawling stats,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and it says, your site is fast.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And then they look at their speed report,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and it's like, your site is slow.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Is there some connection there that there's already


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

some aspect of speed taken into account or less so?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

There is a technical aspect to speed,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and it starts with the question, what


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

do you mean when you say speed?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And speed is not always the same thing,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

depending on what you're asking.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

If you look at it from a crawling perspective,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Steve probably wants to crawl sites as quickly and as often


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

as possible, because we want to have the latest


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and fastest information.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So if something gets added or removed or changed on the page,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

we want that change to be reflected in our index.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But then again, Steve has to make trade-offs,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

because we might run Steve off of a bunch of Raspberry Pis,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

for instance.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And then Steve can only crawl so much in a day,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and we need to decide what to crawl.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Also, maybe when it sees it takes very long to connect


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to a site server, and we can only


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

have a limited amount of connections at the same time,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

then Steve would conclude that waiting for the slow server


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

means it can't make connections to other servers


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

while it's waiting.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Wait, wait, wait.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

You mean Stevebot?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh, yes, Stevebot.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Why, yes, of course, the crawler part of Stevebot.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And then there's the Steve index tiers, very tearful,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and Steve index sharks, and of course,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

the Steve rendering service, where


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

we want to support dynamic website content anyway.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So yeah, Stevebot has a pending connection


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

waiting for a slow server.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That's one challenge.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

The other one is when the server is fast to connect to,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

but it takes a while until it actually


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

sends over the response.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So again, that would be holding up Stevebot.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And then Stevebot would probably want to crawl other sites more


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

often when they are faster.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But that's just some of the aspects of how speed can


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

affect crawling in Stevebot.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And a completely different topic that happens later on


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is JavaScript, when you have a fast site.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But do we actually want to support JavaScript?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

No, no.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

JavaScript is evil.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh, OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

No JavaScript, no stupid rendering service, so sad.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK, OK, fine.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Hypothetically, if we were to expand Steve and make


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Steve understand JavaScript.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK, so that'd be Steve 2.0.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So Steve 2.0 has a Steve rendering service.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And some site might be really fast in crawling,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and a quick connection, quick response,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

but then uses JavaScript to create the actual content


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

on the screen.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So we need to actually start a headless browser


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and run the JavaScript.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But then how long do we wait for the JavaScript to finish?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Do we say 60 seconds?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Do we wait five minutes or just 10 seconds?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And I guess we can use some heuristics


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to figure out a good value and also some common sense


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

guidance, like no user is going to wait 10 minutes,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

so we don't wait for 10 minutes either.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But still, the question then is, what


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

do we measure in terms of speed on the user side of things?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But we can just take the rendering speed, right?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Like you said, we're going to render the pages,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and then we wait.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Can't we just take that number?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Yeah, we could take that number


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

from rendering.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But what do we exactly measure there,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

until the content shows up?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think that's great for pages like Wikipedia articles,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

where you just read.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, and that's what we call LCP, or the Largest Contentful


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Paint.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But what about if it's like a pizza website?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So the content shows up quickly.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I can see the pizzas.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But when I click on one to add it to cart, nothing happens.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So I click like 1,000 times, and suddenly I


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

have 1,001 pizzas in my cart.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And you have to awkwardly remove 1,000 pizzas.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That's not bad.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Wait, no, no, no.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

You don't remove 1,000 pizzas.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

You buy the 1,000 pizzas.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

You have interesting eating habits, Gary.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I would give pizzas to everyone, and I


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

would put pineapples on it.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

A what?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh my goodness, you're mean.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But you know what?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I'd still eat that.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Pizza with pineapple is still pizza,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and there's no such thing as a bad pizza.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

What?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

What's wrong with you?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I will add this to the list of horrible things Martin did.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh my, that must be long.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

How many shards does it take to store that?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

At least seven.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Seven?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Seven floppy disks.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That's big data, man.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK, OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Back to our pizza delivery service.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Like you're saying, 1,000 pizzas would be a bad signal?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

No, 1,000 pizzas itself isn't a bad signal.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It's just if we were just to look at the largest


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

kind of a paint, we'd miss out on the interactivity issue


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

on that website.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Or another thing, if you're trying to tap on something


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and then something on the page makes everything move


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and you tap on something completely different,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

like, I don't know, a pizza with pineapple,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and you don't want that, that's also super frustrating.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So I think we need more metrics than just


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

like a single speed metric.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So you're saying we can't just use the Steve rendering


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

service to get a number and then stick that number


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

into our ranking system?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We might have to get multiple numbers


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and then figure out how to mix these numbers together


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

into one signal.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

What if we create a browser called Steve Nickell


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and use data from that browser that would feed


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

into our measurements for speed?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That's not a terrible idea, actually.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But it seems like a kind of a long-term plan.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It's like we're just three guys.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I don't know if we can.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

John, you got to think big.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Got to think big?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Very big.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Steve Nickell.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It's a moonshot, but it's worth it.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But I mean, if we didn't have Steve Nickell until we


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

have Steve Nickell everywhere.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Then we have an interesting problem.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Where do we measure speeds?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I can do it on my computer.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I have this speed testing tool.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, OK, great.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But what if the user is somewhere


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

with a terrible mobile internet connection, like Germany?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Your computer probably has a stable, fast fiber connection,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

doesn't it?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It's possible.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Can't we buy that kind of data?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Basically, connection times and perceived speed?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We can probably get that.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think the internet connection speeds in different regions,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that seems like something that could be doable.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And then you're saying, basically, we just


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

scale the numbers that we get internally.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And it's like, oh, slower here, faster here.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And how do we apply that then?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Do people in different regions have different rankings?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, but you'd probably have that


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to begin with due to things like different language regions.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I mean, getting results in the language


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I don't speak just because it's ranking high elsewhere


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

isn't going to be great.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So there will probably always be ranking differences anyway.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, we would definitely have that.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We need to have that.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Otherwise, I would get German results in Switzerland,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

for example.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I already get.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Wait, wait.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Well, that was an example of how things actually work well.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Good job.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I would get results from Germany in Switzerland, for example.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So we should introduce a Steve Lang meta tag.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

What do you think?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I would advocate for not introducing more meta tags.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We already have enough meta tags on the internet, please.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And thank you.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think one approach we could also do


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is based on the data that we see from people using Steve


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to try to figure out which regions are even


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

relevant for individual sites and maybe use


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that to scale the numbers.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Do you think that would make sense,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

or is that tricky with things like global sites


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that everyone uses?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, that's probably tricky.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But the reality is that there are not


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that many truly global sites compared


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to the bulk of the internet.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We were exploring this quite a bit


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

when I was on the country promotion language demotion


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

team a while ago when I was working on ranking.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And there aren't all that many truly global sites.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But sea shanties are global.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

They are, yeah.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK, now it's in my ear again.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Don't tempt him.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Do not tempt him.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh, I have to.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Soon may the ranking change come.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

No?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Soon may the wellerman come to bring a sugar and tea and rum.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

One day when the tonguing is done,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

we'll take our leave and go.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

If you keep doing that, it will also be in my ear eventually.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That's the plan.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That's fantastic.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, fantastic indeed.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Another thing we should look into when


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

we use this kind of data, like regional data and so on,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is we need to prevent people from abusing that,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

like feeding us bad information through data sources


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and experiments and influencing how we measure speed.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So you mean make a page fake fast?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah, fake fast or fake slow.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Why would you make a page fake slow?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It's like.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Well, if it's your competitor, you kind of go,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

ha ha, I'll make a connection from a flaky mobile network


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

in a bunker.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

You do know that we have 4G receptors in the bunkers


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

here in Switzerland, right?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Surprisingly, I actually do know that after all.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Our basement is an airway shelter.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And I have a fantastic mobile connection in there.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I even made video calls from down there.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK, so.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So that would not work.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I guess we're not going to have spammers in Switzerland


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

in that case, which is kind of good.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But I'm sure there are creative people everywhere.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I don't know.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Like, how would we deal with people


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

trying to gain these signals?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Well, one thing that we have to consider


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is how many people will actually try to do this,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

basically how feasible it is to do it.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Because if it's not feasible to do it,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

then there can't be all that many people who do it, right?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Which renders the whole problem kind of moot and basically low


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

priority, something that you don't necessarily


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

have to fix in the first release, for example.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Then if you see an optic, for example, like some genius


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

creates this service which would enable others to, I don't know,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

run competitor site on iPhone 2 in a German bunker,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

then that might actually change our mind.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But in the first release, when we don't know or don't


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

think that it's feasible to spam,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

we might not need to fix anything.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That can be a problem for future Steve.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It's kind of like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

or like however that saying goes.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And I was like, theoretically, we


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

could be trying to solve all of these problems


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

at the same time, but if we don't even know,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

it's actually going to be a problem.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Let's look at it when it does come up.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Right.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think that the most important thing


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is that we have to figure out whether it is feasible to spam


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

because it might very well be that it's not even


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

feasible to spam.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Basically, you have to invest so much in equipment,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

for example, or infrastructure, spamming infrastructure,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that it might not be feasible for spammers


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to actually create that.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

With web spam, that's completely different


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

because you literally can create websites for free


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

at no cost whatsoever besides your own time


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and spam the living hell out of search engines.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But with speed, it might actually not be feasible.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It might also be one of those things


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

where the best way to game it is to make your site fast, which


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is kind of like, OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Good job.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

You're doing the right thing for the wrong reason,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

but hey, you're doing the right thing.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So cool.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So I guess the next step would be,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

how do we tell people about this?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh, that's a big one.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So do we put a banner on Steve and say, by the way, today,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

all results that you see will be fast?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Or what would you do there, Martin?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I would create a podcast called Steve of the Ricker.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

We could have a Steve relations team.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

A Steve relations team.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Steve Central.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I mean, is it something that we would even tell people about?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Which metrics that we would use and what


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

we're kind of thinking behind this?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Or how would you see that?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think it's OK to tell people we


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

are looking for in broad terms.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Your site should have relevant content.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It should be fast and so on.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But I would probably not disperse too much


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

on the exact factors and weights.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That stuff is just used to game the system normally.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And it's a pretty gnarly situation


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

where giving out too much information


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

makes the ecosystem worse for everyone in a race


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to the bottom because everyone tries to game the system then.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And yeah, it's tricky.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

I think it's tricky.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But at the same time, I also like


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

being able to give people some clear guidance


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and some mechanism for them to double check.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Is your site Steve friendly or not?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Kind of, I don't know, testing tools or understanding


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

of what exactly we're looking for so that they


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

can work on things a little bit in the right direction.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It also feels like something where


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

probably the exact metrics and the weighting


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

will evolve over time on the one hand for, I don't know,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

potential abuse situations.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But maybe also just because there are


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

different possibilities at some point with regards


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

to what we think really annoys people or not.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Because I guess it all ultimately goes back to,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

it's like, why would we even use speed


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

as a ranking factor on Steve?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And it's not like we have nothing better to do


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and speed is a number, therefore we


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

will put it into our system of calculations.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

But it's more like, well, if we make a search engine like Steve


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

then we kind of rely on people actually using the web


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

because otherwise why would you use a search engine?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So we kind of need to make sure that the experience on the web


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

is a good one for people.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Which I think kind of also matches


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

how Google would probably look at this in terms of like,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

well, we need to make sure that when people go online


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

they actually see going into a browser, searching for things,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

looking at random websites as something that's fun,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

that gives them information, and is not


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

super annoying in the sense that you accidentally


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

end up ordering 1,000 pizzas when you just wanted one.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

MARTIN SPLITTENBERG or worse, ordering a pizza with pineapple


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

on it, according to Gary.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So you're saying like that shifting around metric,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

we should make that really high weight?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yes.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So important.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Make it at least seven.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

At least seven.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Maybe it depends on the type of site that you're looking at,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

though.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Maybe.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Cool.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

So I think Steve is shaping up fairly well.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That gives us some work to do.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Now we just need someone to actually do the coding.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

What do you think?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Should we go to some consultants who can just


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

help us bash out some Python?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Ooh.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Python?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Python.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh, now we use, do we use C?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Or like what do we use for coding nowadays?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

You can use JavaScript.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

JavaScript.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Well, that would be the shortest career I ever had.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh, you would show up, say no, and leave?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yes.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK, maybe not JavaScript.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Maybe we will pass the discussion


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

of programming language onto another podcast episode,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

or someone else's podcast.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Because that probably could get quite controversial.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Wow.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK, cool.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

This was a good idea.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

This was very much fun.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It was a great idea indeed.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

You should have come up with this sooner, John.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

What's wrong with you?


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

OK.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh, Gary, so supportive.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Cool.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

All right.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

One day the element comes.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Oh, no.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It worked.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

You did it.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And I think we should cut here.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

That's it for this episode.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Thank you for joining us here, folks.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

It's been fun doing these podcast episodes.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And I hope you, the listener, have also


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

found them entertaining and maybe even insightful.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Regardless, let us know what you think.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Drop us a note on Twitter.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Drop us a note in the YouTube comments,


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

where we'll also be uploading these podcast episodes.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And let us know what else we should be covering


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

and maybe what other ranking factors Steve should


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

be taking into account.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

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


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

this podcast with everyone everywhere


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

so that we get at least seven viewers or listeners.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Listeners.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Yeah.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

All right.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Thank you.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

And goodbye, everyone.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Tschüss.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?

Namari.


What if speed was a ranking factor...?


Search Off the Record - Trailer (New Podcast Show by Google Search Central)

I'm John, here from Google Zurich.


I'm Martin, also from Google Zurich.


And I was Gary.


This is a new podcast series that we're trying out to try to give some behind the scenes


insights into what goes on at Google when it comes to Search and all of the communications


around Search.


So our goal is not to be another source of documentation, but rather to just give some


background information about what's on our minds.


So in this podcast, we're trying to share a little bit with everyone who's interested


in what we are thinking and working on and what happens before things become public,


basically.


So like little bits and pieces from our daily work, as well as things we discover at events


and on Twitter.


Mixed bag, really.


I kind of like the name Search Off the Record, because it's a lot of the stuff that we do


that is not documented or kind of some of the information that leads to what we ended


up documenting in the end, which is kind of fun.


Also, for some reason, it is recorded, but not on records.


So technically, we're OK, right?


Mm-hmm.


Yeah?


We're safe.


Also, we had other ideas for the names.


And it's probably great that we chose this name, because others were like search engine


square table.


That would have been awkward, Gary.


I don't know.


It's good we tabled that.


That's good.


Yeah.


Martin, stop it.


We should have searched for a better name.


I'm the search engine of your choice.


So why you should listen to our podcast?


Well, primarily because we are really, really funny.


Secondarily, because we have information that you don't have, and you want that information


badly.


Because we talk about sofas, for example, and we talk about coffee occasionally.


Well, actually, almost always.


And robots.txt.


Are we going to talk about secret algorithms at Google?


Is a sofa a ranking signal?


Yeah, absolutely.


Well, this is search off the record.


And now we're still on the record.


But I guess we will continue to be on the record until we say something terrible enough


for someone to just either stop the recording or fire us.


Whichever comes first.


Should I stop the recording?


Yes, please.


Make it stop.


So what would you choose as your user agent, Martin?


Pink fluffy unicorn.


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

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


Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a webmaster trends analyst here at Google in Switzerland.


And part of what we do are these Office Hour Hangouts


where folks can join in and ask their questions


all around web search.


Today, it looks like I'm in a train,


but it's actually a meeting room here in the office.


Because the office is right next to the train station,


they have some rooms that look a little bit different.


Seems to be working OK.


So we'll see how things hold up with my laptop on a stool.


As always, a bunch of questions were submitted already


on YouTube.


If any of you want to get started,


feel free to jump on in now.


Or if not, that's also fine.


Is that OK to start?


Go for it.


OK, my name is Armin Harian.


I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina.


I have a question, John.


I have written it down.


So is there a benefit in removing metaname robots


content equals follow?


Because by default, Google follows the content


if there is no index or no follow, right?


But on a website that I'm consulting,


the follow is there.


And I asked to remove it.


They said, let's find out if there is benefit in removing


or what's the pros and cons.


For us, it doesn't matter.


So we don't use it at all.


If it says follow, that's kind of the default value.


We essentially ignore it.


So if you have it or if you don't have it,


it doesn't change anything for search.


There's obviously a small size difference in the HTML page.


But for the most part, most HTML pages, that's very minimal


and probably wouldn't have any effect overall.


So my guess is you can leave it there.


It doesn't cause any problems.


The main reason I might remove something like that


is so that you don't run into this question later on.


Like a year later, someone's looking at your website


and is like, do we need to remove this or not?


Because it doesn't have any function.


Well, you already cleaned it up.


But it's totally up to you.


It has no effect on search.


Thank you very much.


My next question is, we're talking


about a very large website, e-commerce, retail website.


So a lot of time happens that a product is no longer available.


We're talking about hundreds of thousands of products.


And some of them may be no longer


available for some different reason.


Either it's no longer available or the vendor


decided to change the product number


and simply created a new page.


And this one is no longer available.


So in this scenario, what is the best thing to do?


Is the product no longer available for sale?


Should we remove it or should we redirect it


to the same, basically same or very, very similar product?


If you have a replacement product,


I would always redirect.


Because that way, you're keeping the value of the existing page


and you're passing that on to a replacement.


If you don't have a replacement, then doing


what you would normally do with out-of-stock products


is kind of my recommendation.


What you would normally do can depend.


So ideally, let us know that this product is out of stock.


On the one hand, you can do that with the normal HTML page


saying not available, with the schema markup saying


it's not available.


You can return that page with a no index if you want.


You can return that page with a 404.


You can return the generic 404 page.


All of those are different options.


I think it depends a little bit on how


you want to work with out-of-stock pages, how


much manual effort you can put in.


So if you can't figure out where you have a replacement product,


if it's a really large site, then obviously, you


have to do something generic.


But how you handle that in practice is really up to you.


SPEAKER 2 I can let other people take questions, ask questions.


And then I have two more questions


I can ask later.


JOHN MUELLER Sure.


SPEAKER 3 Hi, John.


Hi.


My question concerns internationalization SEO.


So I'm managing SEO for a multi-regional website.


We're targeting various English-speaking countries.


We've implemented hreflang tags on the website,


but we don't have a country language selector.


Is that a problem in itself?


We're using IP redirects to direct users


to the correct regional version of the website?


OK.


So I think there are a few things to watch out for.


On a most general level, I think you


need to be careful with IP redirects


if you use that as your main method of guiding people


to the right version, because Googlebot will only


crawl from one location.


And usually, that's from the US.


So if you're treating users from the US in any specific way


where you're saying everyone from the US


goes to the generic English version,


and you always redirect them there,


then Googlebot will never see the other country versions.


So they will never be able to be indexed separately.


We won't be able to use hreflang for that version,


because we can never look at those URLs.


So that's kind of, from a technical point of view,


one thing to watch out for.


The solution we have for that is to use a banner instead


of a redirect.


So if you can recognize that someone


is from the wrong country, then show a banner


on top and say, hey, we have a version for your country.


It's here.


And usually, that means we have local currencies,


local prices, maybe other shipping prices, all of that


to guide them to the right version,


but to still let them look at the other versions.


And the advantage for indexing there


is we can look at all of these different country versions,


and we can understand how they belong together.


And we can show the right version in search for users.


OK, makes sense.


Yeah, I think that's generally what I'd recommend doing there.


You can also do that with maybe a country selector or a dropdown


on the page or just the links to individual country versions.


All of that helps us to find the different country versions.


But the important part is really that we can actually


crawl the country versions.


OK, thanks so much.


Do you mind if I jump in with a second question?


Go for it.


So I'm managing a travel brand.


And on our blog, we have a category


that is titled Travel Porn.


Now, as you might expect, this is causing our website


to appear in search results for various porn-related queries.


And I'm just wondering how much that negatively affects


our website and our topical relevancy for various articles


that we might be putting out there.


Is it such a big deal that we need


to change the title of that category


because it is a big deal in terms of brand consideration?


So I assume it's just travel porn with regards


to it being cool pictures about travel and not adult content.


Yeah.


OK.


So purely from our point of view,


that's something where I don't see a problem with that.


From just purely a search point of view, what can happen


is we will show your pages in search for people who


are searching for those terms.


But it's not that the rest of your site


will be seen as less valuable or that the other queries going


to your site would be kind of affected by that.


It would be different if you actually had adult content


there under a label like that because then we'd


be in a situation where we have to figure out


how do we deal with safe search and the site


where some parts are for adults and some parts


are kind of for a general audience.


But if it's just a label that you're putting out there,


then that's something where it's just


you'll get some search queries like that.


It'll show up in the search results like that.


But it's not going to affect the rest of your site.


And then that's more a question of do you


want your site to show up in search queries like that


or not.


And if you don't, don't care because that page


won't show up if someone just searches for your brand name.


It's not that you search for your brand name


and then porn shows up as the first result.


But rather, if someone is explicitly


looking for that kind of a query,


then that'll show up as well.


So it's not that by default your brand will be shown like that.


It's really, well, they were really looking for that.


So this is kind of an OK match from a keyword basis.


So that's why we showed it.


But sometimes you don't want that.


So sometimes you really just want


to make sure it's not showing at all like that.


Then what you'd probably want to do


is just put a no index on the page so to keep it


so that people can go there if they really like it


but to make sure that that page doesn't get indexed like that.


OK, that is very helpful to know.


Thank you so much.


Sure.


All right.


Any other questions before we get


started with the submitted ones?


If there is no one asking questions,


I can ask two more questions before we go.


Jump.


Go for it.


So in this organization, there is a large retail organization.


They are doing JavaScript redirects.


Let's say it says the domain name, the description


of basically the key phrase in the URL,


and then there is the end number, which is basically


the product number.


It's done in redirect in such a way


so that anything you remove between the domain


name and the end number, it still shows the same URL.


And is this equal to 301 redirect?


In the end, we do treat JavaScript redirects


the same as any other kind of redirect.


So the practical difference is for JavaScript redirects,


we have to process the JavaScript first.


So it can take a little bit longer,


but in practice, that's a question of maybe, I don't


know, a day or so.


So it's not something that would significantly


affect a website overall.


So if that's the way you have redirect set up,


then I generally wouldn't worry about that.


And if it's OK if that creates millions of redirects?


Is there a danger in having community redirects?


When you change a website structure,


you have a lot of redirects.


Because every time they change something in the product name,


in the product title, they also change the URL.


Is there a need for that to change the URL really?


Usually, you wouldn't need to do that.


But some CMSs make life complicated.


I think the important part is really


that you also make sure that internal linking is consistent,


that you have the new URL in the sitemap file.


Everything points to the new URL.


And then what will happen is we will see that redirect.


We'll know everything else points to that new page.


And we'll focus on the new page instead.


So it's not every time we recrawl, we see the redirect.


It's more that, oh, we saw you shifted.


So we will focus on the new URL that you have.


SPEAKER 1 Thank you.


And my last question, John.


So when I present consulting to a company,


sometimes they ask me, OK, show me some numbers.


Like, for example, if we improve images,


how much our traffic will go?


For example, having a description in image file


like you posted yesterday and things like that.


I tell them that there is no way to tell you numbers


like how much the traffic will increase, 50%.


But they always want numbers.


Basically what I'm telling, hey, we're just following


Google's best practices.


OK, what is the best answer if the upper management, top


management wants numbers?


What is the best answer in this scenario?


SPEAKER 2 I don't know.


It's kind of like how you have to convince them.


But I think the general thing is also


that you can make some guesses for some of these numbers.


Like, you can look at the total number of impressions


that you get.


And if you're always ranking for that query


and you go up in rankings based on these changes,


then that's something where you can estimate


how many additional clicks to our page


we could get based on just the historical data of which


ranking position drives how much percent of the traffic, which


is something you can see from Search Console.


So if you look at, overall, the traffic to your website,


and you see which of these URLs are ranking in which place,


you can look from the total number of impressions


to the clicks that you got to kind of make a judgment on,


OK, if we can go from number 7 to number 6,


then we would expect this much more traffic.


You can't guarantee it, of course,


because maybe you'll go up in rankings


and people just don't want to click on your result


because it doesn't match what they need,


or maybe the titles are bad, or things like that.


But it gives you a little bit of room


to say, well, in general, this would drive so much more


traffic.


And based on that, you can then make judgment calls and say,


well, our conversion rate is maybe so much.


So if we drive 10% more traffic to this page,


then that could mean this much more conversion.


So that might be an approach that you can take.


But in general, with a lot of these SEO changes,


you can't guarantee that things will change.


It's something where you have to go a little bit more


on your experience.


And based on what you've seen in the past, what kind of queries


these are, how strong the competition is,


you can kind of make judgment calls and say,


well, it's possible for us to go up in ranking.


Or maybe it's questionable that we'll actually


go up in ranking.


So we need to make sure that our search result looks better


rather than that we focus on trying to rank higher.


Thank you, I appreciate it.


Sure.


John, can I ask you a quick question?


All right, so we have a stock vector graphics site.


It's in roughly eight different languages.


English is the main language coming in,


so that's where all the input's coming from.


Hreflang is the most complicated thing


I've ever worked on from a technical perspective for SEO.


So anyway, so here's what we see is that most of our traffic


comes to our search result pages.


So let's say like a dog search result page,


dog vectors is the page that ranks for that.


We can see in a site command for our own site,


that's what ranks.


So we have the hreflang from our dog page


to our Spanish pero page and cacharo, et cetera,


across all the languages.


So from our dog hreflang to our pero hreflang,


the search results for the page are the exact same.


So our own internal search results,


so if we're showing 50 results on the page,


those 50 results are the exact same on the dog page


and the exact same on the pero page.


With hreflang, is that the correct implementation?


Because we're having issues to where the pero page in Spanish


does not rank at all.


And we get huela de pero, and we get all these other variations


with our hreflang.


We're finding on our Spanish pages


that hreflang pages don't really rank,


as well as pages that don't have hreflang.


So there's some kind of confusion there,


and we're just kind of curious to see


on search results pages, should they be the exact same,


or should they be different with hreflang?


So the idea behind the hreflang markup


is that if we were to show one of the pages


from the set for query, then we would


try to map the version that matches the user most.


So from a practical point of view,


that means we don't change the ranking of the individual pages


but rather if someone in searching in Spanish


were to see the English version of that page,


then we would swap that out against the Spanish version.


So in a case like that, if someone in Spanish


is searching for dog, then we would


be able to swap out the Spanish version.


But if someone is searching for the Spanish word for dog,


then we would already show the Spanish version.


We wouldn't change anything.


So from that point of view, I think


what you're seeing is just the normal ranking differences


across different languages, where we need to have support


for the individual language versions


so that we can rank them individually.


And where you would most likely see an effect from hreflang


are places where people search for the same term


in multiple languages.


So for a site maybe like yours, maybe your brand name


or your website name, when people search for that website


name, it's unclear to us which of your pages


should be ranking.


And with hreflang, we can then swap out


the one that matches that best.


So if they're searching for, I don't know, your stock photo


brand, and you have different home


pages for different country versions, then we could say,


well, one of these versions would show, therefore,


we can find the best matching version for this


and swap it out.


But for specific queries that people are already


doing in a local language, the hreflang


wouldn't change the ranking there.


It's like, well, we already have the Spanish version


that we would show here.


And that's the best matching version that we have.


It's not ranking as high as when someone is searching


in English, but it's like the best version that


matches the user's question already.


So we don't have to swap anything out.


So from that point of view, it's something


where maybe it makes sense to look at the kinds of queries


that you get for your website and to figure out


which of these queries are really


ones where Google gets the language version wrong,


and then to focus on those, which


could be things like your home page, maybe category pages,


or about pages, where people use the same terms


in multiple languages to refer to the technique or the files


that you have, and to leave the other ones where people are


already looking in their local language,


essentially just to rank on their own.


So that's something.


I don't know, it's probably a bit late to say,


you don't need to put hreflang on these pages.


But probably you wouldn't need to.


The one place where you would need to do that


is if you have the same language content


from multiple countries.


So if you have.


AUDIENCE 1 So that's where it gets kind of confusing,


because it's like we have eight different languages.


And so for the dog page in English,


essentially we have the exact same search results for dog,


pero, cacharo, chat, et cetera, across dogs.


So we're like, hey, there's eight different versions


of this dog page across all our locales.


So we're trying to figure out, hey,


we don't want Google to see these all as duplicate.


So as hreflang, what we should do to say,


hey, when you see these eight exact same pages


across these eight subdomains, they're all the same.


And this is the relationship between them.


So we were trying to, we were scared about the duplicate


content perspective.


So we thought hreflang is maybe the appropriate way.


But now we're seeing all kinds of ranking issues


outside of English.


And we're worrying is, because hreflang got super, super


complicated across eight different languages,


and we have non-circular references.


And one word in English may mean two different things


in Spanish, but then how do you get them to point back


to each other?


It was super, super complicated.


So we're kind of like rethinking the whole hreflang thing,


especially around search result pages.


But if the dog page is the exact same results as the pero page,


should those really have hreflang between each other?


From my point of view, that's a perfect use case for hreflang.


If that's kind of the Spanish version of this page,


then that's the correct use of that.


From a practical point of view, I


don't think that you would need hreflang there, though,


because those pages would have different language content.


Like if you have a page for dog, then kind of the titles


in Spanish would be dog in Spanish.


Maybe descriptions would be appropriately in Spanish.


So we already wouldn't treat those as duplicates,


even if the images themselves are the same.


But things like the text on the page, the titles,


it's a localized version of that page.


So it's different content.


We would treat it as a unique page.


So that's a common, I think, misconception


with international sites, that if it's translated,


it's still the same.


And from our point of view, if it's translated,


it's different text.


So we would automatically treat it as something unique.


OK.


And so with that, everything on the page


is essentially the exact same.


But we do have one instance of the file name.


So when the file name comes in, like let's say resource number


one on the dog page is beautiful dog background.


Well, that file name is beautifuldogbackground.jpg,


right?


Well, on the Spanish page, we were worried of creating,


we have a million resources.


So we were worried about creating


a million different files for all eight locales


and trying to keep all those indexed


and everything like that.


So we use that beautifuldogbackground.jpg


on the dog page, the Spanish pero, the Portuguese,


all the different versions of that.


We've never translated those.


So we've always wondered, do you see there's an opportunity


if we were to go translate that file name correctly


across those locales, we could rank better


in Google Image Search?


Or should we keep that one English version across all?


I would just keep one version.


So we do use the file name as a really small factor


when it comes to images.


But we use the text on the page much stronger.


So if the text on the page is already translated,


then that's kind of what you want.


And in the background, if we see multiple files that


lead to the same content, like the same image


with multiple file names, we'll treat those as duplicates


and fold that into one URL anyway.


So if you can avoid us having to struggle with this


by telling us this is that one image


and this is the only URL that points to that image,


then that makes it a lot easier for crawling.


It makes it a lot easier for image indexing as well.


OK, thank you very much, John.


Appreciate it.


Sure.


OK, let me run through some of the questions


that were submitted.


And we can get back to more live questions afterwards as well.


So the first one I have here, since Wednesday last week,


Search Console for all submitted pages on our site


dropped to 70 valid pages.


This is from 267k.


We're on Google News, and we've been re-accepted yesterday


on the new Publisher Center.


We seem to have major issues with indexing in the past week,


though.


OK, so I didn't see a URL here in the question,


but I think you tweeted a screenshot where


the URL was visible.


And I took a quick look at this on our side.


And it looks like one of the things that's kind of bubbling


up is that we see a lot of spammy user-generated content