you're doing some things really well, to understanding,


English Google SEO office-hours from August 13, 2021

well, actually, you have the whole foundation covered


really well.


And then you're kind of sure that at least you're


not missing anything.


It doesn't guarantee that you rank better


for all of those keywords, but it makes sure


that you have all of that foundational things ready.


So like I said, on our site, the SEO starter guide,


I think there is from Moz, is a really good SEO starter


guide out there.


Some of the other SEO tools also have really good guides.


And I would just work your way through all of these


from the start to the end.


Take notes on things that you haven't been doing.


And then try to implement some of those things.


Because they always have, like, maybe 9 out of 10 things


are things you already know about.


And 10% are things that are new there.


And those 10% sometimes can be kind


of the difference between being kind of a mediocre website


in search to being one that is actually pretty good


and has a good foundation.


AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 Thank you so much.


It was a good time.


Thanks.


Cool.


All right.


With that, I'll take a break here


with regards to the recording.


I'll still be here.


So those of you who still have your hands raised


or who have more and more questions,


feel free to stick around.


But just to make sure we have a reasonable length


for the recording, I'll pause it here.


If you're watching this on YouTube, thanks for watching.


And as always, feel free to like and subscribe to videos.


Join us in one of the next Hangouts if you'd like to.


It's always interesting to see what pops up.


Let's see.


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from September 8, 2020

OK.


All right, welcome, everyone, again


to today's Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangouts.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate at Google.


And part of what we do is connect webmasters, site


owners, SEOs with the search teams at Google.


We had a bit of technical issues here.


Sorry about that.


Hopefully, this one will be a little bit better.


But a bunch of questions were submitted.


And Barry asked some really good questions to start off with.


So why don't you give it a start again, Barry?


Thank you.


I don't know if it's really good, but I'll ask it anyway.


So on Friday, again, you said that if somebody


was impacted by a broad core update,


that site would not necessarily have


to wait for the next broad core update


in order to see an improvement or even a full recovery.


And its rankings, I believe.


And then I looked at the Google blog post about Google core


updates on the Google Webmaster blog, and it says,


kind of implies that you probably


might have to wait until the next broad core


update to be released.


Although, you might not have to.


Sometimes they make smaller core updates,


or maybe there's other algorithm updates that might


see the site improve over time.


So you get this really, really nice explanation


about how things might work.


And we discussed how Panda and Penguin in the old days


and how it's not the same.


So if you could just spend the next 45 minutes discussing


how the algorithms work.


OK, 45 minutes seems like a long time.


But yeah, I mean, in general, the bigger core updates


are really kind of changes in the way


that we calculate things on our side


when it comes to the different ways that we look at a website.


So it's kind of a different way of looking


at the relevance for a website.


But essentially, things can change incrementally over time.


It's not the case that a website is


stuck in one particular position until the next broad core


update.


It can happen that a website is strongly


affected by a core update.


And then over time, it kind of results in the state


where it's kind of back in a previous position.


Some kinds of really strong changes


when it comes to core algorithm updates


do need to kind of wait for that bigger core algorithm


update to be reprocessed again.


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


some really big changes might be things


where you need to wait until we're able to reprocess things


and take a new look at the way we would


want to consider relevance.


But a lot of small things along the way


essentially can be adjusted over time.


So it's not the case that if a website is negative


affected by a core update that it needs to wait,


you can definitely make changes over time with your website


as well.


JONATHAN KAPLAN-FURMANN, MD, PhD Right, so you kind of also


explained that with these core updates,


the actual scores within them may be refreshed continuously


or regularly, not in real time, but regularly


between core updates.


Unlike when it came to, let's say, the old pen,


there were Penguin updates where that score would be assigned


to whatever those scores would be,


would be assigned until the next update would be released.


In this case, these core updates are different in that


those scores are regularly refreshed


throughout and between different core updates.


So that's true.


And although most ICOs I've asked


saying they would never see a site recover from a core update


until the next core update, that is not true.


And that can definitely happen.


That can definitely happen.


I think the important thing to keep in mind


is that if a website is negatively affected


by a core algorithm update, it doesn't


mean that you can't do anything.


You have to wait it out.


It's really the case that you can improve things.


And when the next core algorithm update


comes after a couple of months or whenever that is,


on the one hand, your website will be in a different state,


which will probably be a better state.


And on the other hand, our algorithms,


when they look at that again, they're


able to see and can confirm that better state as well.


So there are certain things that require


us to rethink how we would calculate a score.


But a lot of times, we can just calculate it in the same way


using the new data that we have.


Thank you.


John, a quick follow-up on that, a different one this time.


So I know you mentioned at some point in the past that it's,


and I think it's mentioned in one of the blog posts


as well, that it's not necessarily the case


that you need to do something about that specific page


if you're negatively affected by that update.


It's not necessarily the case that your page has something


wrong with it, but that Google might


decide that other pages are simply


more relevant in that specific period of time


or for other specific reasons.


So would it be a good strategy to kind of,


if you were negatively affected for certain queries,


just to look at what other sites, what other pages are now


ranking well and kind of try to understand


why Google prefers to rank those pages ahead of yours?


I think that's reasonable.


I don't think that's kind of totally out of the question.


I think I would discourage just trying to chase the other


websites the whole time.


But if you do notice a bigger pattern where you're like,


well, everyone else is doing things in this way now,


and I'm still doing things in a very old way,


maybe it's worthwhile for me to reconsider kind of also


modernizing things.


And it might be that you say, I'll


do it the way that the others are doing it,


or it might be that you say, oh, I can do a user study


and work out where things will be in the future


and kind of jump to that already.


Right, I'm thinking of a simple example.


Maybe you have some commercial content


that went down in rankings, and you kind of


notice that Google is now ranking


more informational content for some reason.


And you don't have that, and maybe it


would be a good idea to also have some informational content


since it seems that users or Google


believes that users are kind of preferring


that kind of content when searching for those queries,


something like that.


Yeah, yeah.


I think that definitely makes sense.


I mean, it's always something that can change over time.


It's not the case that Google decides


that this is the kind of content that people want,


but rather we kind of see how things evolve on the web


over time, over the whole web, and we think,


well, this is probably a reasonable direction to take.


So just because we might show more informational content


for some queries that you're looking at maybe


doesn't mean that you should change your whole site strategy


and throw away all commercial content,


because you still need to sell something to survive.


It's not that you can just swap everything out and say,


well, Google says this is the answer.


I will make everything the same answer.


Oh, sure.


No, I was thinking, in addition to your commercial content,


maybe add some informational content as well,


because I think that a good reason


to kind of look at the search results and see what's ranking


is to also kind of try to figure out what the user behavior is,


because Google tries to make sure that the top 10 websites


or the websites ranking well are offering good user


experience and a good result for whatever query the user has.


So trying to see what kind of results


show up in the first page in Google


can kind of give you a glimpse on maybe this


is what users are finding relevant specific


to those queries.


OK.


Yeah.


I mean, any kind of user studies that you do essentially


is a good idea now.


Cool.


Let me try to run through some of the submitted questions.


We don't have a ton of time this time,


but we'll see how far we can go.


The first one on top is about our domain migration.


We talked about this one pretty extensively last time.


I don't have any new information to share there,


but the team has been looking into what


might be happening there.


So maybe we'll have something in the future there.


Then a question about deleted pages.


In my search console, there are around 15 million pages


reported as crawl anomaly.


From the 1,000 sample, I've seen that 90% of these


are deleted since January.


Every day, we add and remove thousands of URLs,


but not 15 million.


So it's too big to compare to the valid URLs.


Is there any way that we could better approach crawl anomaly?


So crawl anomaly is a collection of various different kinds


of crawl issues that we run across,


including issues where it's not necessarily a technical crawl


error.


So it's not that there's a 404 or 403 or something like that


that happened.


It could be that there was a server error that took place.


It could also be that it's something like an empty search


results page that we ran across, where especially if you're


talking about a site with millions of pages,


it's very common to run into these kind of empty search


results pages.


And from our point of view, for the most part,


these are things that you need to take into account or work


on.


That said, with one of the future updates of Search


Console, we're working on getting rid of the crawl


anomaly altogether, not in terms of kind of just hiding


all of this data, but instead taking it and reclassifying it


as something more useful.


So instead of collecting a bunch of things


and putting them into crawl anomaly,


we'll kind of split that out a little bit.


I don't know about the timing on this.


It's not happening today.


It's not just around the corner.


But I know the team has been working on this for a while


now.


Do I still have to worry about having product schema


if I already have a product feed in the Merchant Center?


So this is something that I think


is coming up more and more in that


with the rise of organic shopping results,


a lot of people tend to do both, kind of set up a Merchant Center


feed, set up a Merchant Center account,


and have the structured data on their pages.


And from our point of view, at the moment,


it's definitely the case that you can do both.


And it makes sense to do both because the structured data


on your pages is what we would show in the search results,


and the information from your feed


is what we would show in the organic shopping results


that we also provide.


So essentially, it leads or can lead


to the same URL on your website.


But there are different ways of giving that information.


I suspect at some point, we'll work out a way


to make it so that you can just focus on one or the other


and you don't have to do everything double.


But at least at the moment, that's the situation


that you can submit your products through Merchant


Center with the Merchant Center feed.


That information is directly taken into the organic shopping


search results.


You can also provide some structured data on the pages,


and we show that as a rich result in the search results.


One of my clients has very weird structured data on page.


They have two product schemas on the same page.


Each of them is missing certain recommended fields,


but both of them combined are eligible.


Would that work?


I don't know.


It's something where I would use the rich results testing


tool to double check what we see overall for that page


and focus on that.


I think ultimately, I'd recommend cleaning this up


so that you don't have this fractured structured


data on these pages, especially if the structured data is


of completely different types, like one micro data


and the other one with JSON-LD.


Then to test that and maintain that on your side


is going to be hard anyway.


So that's something I try to clean up.


But it's possible that we would be able to combine those two


and to treat it as one set of valid structured product


structured data.


Our site has lost a lot of rankings in the past three


months, and we're trying to figure out why.


Right now, we have two main guesses.


Because of the 200 backlinks that we


lost due to cleaning up of a manual penalty back in April,


or because of a new WordPress theme


we switched to in June, which is very slow,


gets a score of 20 out of 100 in page speed,


how much impact do you think each of these changes


had on our SEO?


So the first one is impossible to say.


It's something where I can't really


say what the actual effect there would be.


Because if your website just has 200 links


and you remove all of those links to your website,


then obviously that will be something


that is kind of more of a stronger effect.


On the other hand, if your website has millions of links


and it's well embedded within the web


and these 200 backlinks are from a paid campaign


that you did which ended up not being nofollow,


then that's probably a minimal change on your website.


So that's kind of the one thing.


The other thing there to keep in mind with manual actions


in general is that if you clean up a manual action, that


essentially means in the past your website was ranking


in an artificial situation.


And the manual action kind of took care of that.


And if you clean it up so that the manual action is no longer


necessary, then your website is ranking


in a different situation.


And it can happen that it's very similar to before,


but it can also happen that your previous positions


in the search were artificially strongly inflated


due to the things that the manual action was looking at.


So that's something where you might see a stronger


effect from manual actions and cleaning that up over time.


But it's really hard to say without looking


at your website.


The theme change is something I suspect is less likely,


but there might be an effect that you're not thinking of.


So on the one hand, the speed change,


I doubt that would be negatively affecting your website


in a really strong way.


We do take speed into account when it comes to search,


but we currently only do that on mobile.


And that's generally more of a soft factor


with regards to ranking.


So I don't think even a fairly strong change in speed


over that period of time would cause your website to drop


significantly in search.


However, if you change the theme of your website,


the template, the way that your site is put together,


it can also happen that you change other things


on the site.


And that can include internal linking,


like how the different pages within your website


are connected, which ones we think are most relevant


or least relevant, with really bad internal linking.


It can be really hard to determine that.


And with much improved internal linking,


it can be a lot easier to recognize


the important content on your site


and to rank it really well.


So that's something that can happen there, but also


the way that you present your content can change.


And that's something that probably,


if the content itself doesn't change,


could still have a minimal effect, not a really strong one


though.


So one example that we sometimes saw with the mobile first


indexing update is that if an image is seen


as very important for a page and it's embedded very visibly


in kind of like the center of the page, then for image search


we can say, this is a really good landing


page for that image because when a user goes there,


they find that image front and center.


Whereas if your theme changes that so that that image is


no longer front and center, but rather kind


of the thumbnail on the bottom right corner of your page,


then at least for image search, we could look at that


and say, well, this is not really a great landing


page for that image anymore because that image is not


something that users would spot offhand.


So that's something where kind of the design, the layout


of the pages can have an effect.


In this case, it's mostly about image search.


It kind of depends on the way that you


have your website set up.


My guess is if you're just changing themes slightly


and it more or less looks the same,


it's just kind of a little bit slower


because you have some fancy animations or something


like that embedded there, then that theme change itself


will have minimal to no effect on your rankings.


Does a 410 gone send a better signal than a 404 not found,


that a page has been removed and will not come back?


We've been using 410 for removed content and for 404


for URLs that never existed, but not sure


if it's the best approach.


So in the past, we've recommended


using 410 in situations where you want to remove things


a little bit faster.


That's still the case, but I think in the bigger picture,


it doesn't change anything.


So if you're looking at a website over a longer


period of time, then whether it returns 404 or 410


for individual pages that you don't want indexed


doesn't change anything.


It's really just that initial moment


from when you remove something to when


it's removed from search.


And if that's really critical for you,


that it's removed quickly, then I


would use a removal tool anyway.


But otherwise, that difference between 410 and 404


is almost a theoretical difference and not something


that you need to worry about on a day-to-day basis.


I submitted a site move back in February 2020,


and it's still pending as of this Friday.


Based on the timeline of the pending site move,


does this indicate that there's a problem with the site move?


No, that's definitely not the case.


The pending site move essentially


just says your site is still listed in our systems


as a site move that you initiated yourself,


and that's useful for us.


It doesn't mean that there's any problem there.


It's not the case that you see a status update with the site


move where it says, oh, it's complete.


You don't need to do anything anymore.


It's really just, well, the status at the moment


is it's moving.


And maybe it's completely moved since February,


but you still have that setting set that says, oh, it's like,


I really want that new URL visible instead.


The pending site move disappeared from Search Console


in Monday, August 31.


I submitted the site move request,


and the quick validation passed again.


Yeah, this is essentially just that setting timing out.


That doesn't mean anything.


That should be fine.


Lastly, the site ranking has taken a hit.


Based on my analysis, it appears to be related


to the incomplete site move.


What are some steps that can be taken to push a site move


through?


So just to soothe your worries there,


this wouldn't be related to the setting in Search Console.


If you're seeing that something is incomplete with regards


to a site move, then one of the effects that you would see


is that you see traffic going through to the old version


of the website.


If you do something like a site query in the search results


to look at the old domain, then you


will always see the old domain there,


because we kind of have that association that, oh, there


used to be content here, but now it's here.


And if someone explicitly looks for the old content,


we'll be like, oh, yeah, sure, we


know that there was content here,


and we'll show it to you, even if the site has already moved.


So a site query won't tell you if things are incomplete.


It's more within the search results themselves,


within the traffic that you see from search,


where you would see if maybe a site move is incomplete.


And in a case like that, where the site move is incomplete,


usually the issue is that the redirects are not


set up properly.


And usually that's something that is kind of easy.


I don't know.


Well, easy is always an overstatement.


But it is something that you can take


a look at the individual URLs that


are getting traffic from search and try to figure out,


are these redirecting properly?


Why might Google be showing the old URL instead


of the new ones?


You can also think of all of the other things


we have in the site move help center article, which


includes things like, have you updated all of the links


within your content?


Or have you reached out to the more important people who


are linking to your website externally that they also


update their links?


And sometimes these kind of changes


can affect which URL we show in search.


Is keyhole markup language still relevant to SEO?


So KML, Keyhole Markup Language, is something


that you can use in Google Earth or, I don't know,


maybe even Google Maps to kind of define geographic settings


and things like that.


And way in the beginning, there were things


like geo sitemap extensions, I think,


where you can include KML files.


But as far as I know, that's no longer relevant at all.


So that's, at least from my point of view,


that's not something you have to worry about.


As far as I understand, the language and the file format


continues to exist.


You can still use it in some of the kind


of geographic information systems.


So if you have files like that, maybe they're still useful.


Maybe they're not that useful.


It's something you can double check on your side.


It wouldn't affect SEO.


Does Google ignore tracking code script when crawling pages?


Sometimes.


So not necessarily while crawling,


but when we render a page, if we recognize


that certain scripts tend to have no functionality at all,


then we will skip them when it comes to rendering.


And a really common one here is Google Analytics,


because that's something we see all over the web.


There are lots of other algorithmic, algorithmic,


analytics scripts that we also tend to skip like that.


And essentially, it's not that we're


trying to recognize if there's a tracking script here or not,


but it's more we're trying to optimize how we render pages.


And if we can recognize these scripts are not


relevant for rendering of a page,


we can skip them and move forward a little bit faster.


John, can I ask you a question about e-commerce pages?


Sure.


Category pages?


So you did an interview, I think, with Mary Haynes,


where you had said that there's risk when you put content


on these category pages that Google might only


rank them now for informational and not transactional searches.


So I've been doing that strategy for a long time,


putting content on those category pages.


And it seems to work well, but I didn't


know that there was this risk here for that issue.


So can you clarify that a bit more


and put me in the right place?


Clarify that a bit more and put me at ease?


Because it seems to work.


Well, if it works for you, then it must be good.


I don't know.


So I mean, the thing that we see is not so much that there's


any informational content on these pages is problematic,


but if it really gets to be overboarding.


Whereas when we look at the page itself,


and there are like five items listed in the category on top,


and then there are five Wikipedia articles of content


on the bottom, then that's something


where we might look at that page and say, well, overall, this


is more of an informational page about this type of product


and not something where a user would go to actually purchase


this product.


So that's kind of the problem that we see sometimes.


And usually, the effect that this runs into


is more along the lines of keyword stuffing


than anything else, where we see like, oh, you mentioned


this category name 100 times, 200 times on this page.


Is it really the most important word on this page,


or is it something that's artificially inflated?


And if we see it's embedded in these kind of Wikipedia


articles of content, then we might say, well,


it might be artificially inflated.


So that's kind of the extreme case.


On the other hand, there's also the situation


where an e-commerce page has absolutely


no informational content at all and is essentially


just a list of products.


And from our point of view, that's


also hard to parse because we don't really


know what this is about.


We might find different brand names, different type names


listed there with an image embedded with them,


but we don't really know.


Is this shoes?


Is this shorts?


Is this sportswear?


What is kind of the overall goal of this page?


So some amount of informational content is good.


No informational content is kind of problematic,


and too much informational content is also problematic.


So you're kind of aiming for that center area there.


And that's something I see a lot of sites doing this really


well.


They have good kind of, I don't know,


baseline informational content there.


It's really good.


SPEAKER 2


Yeah, I don't know about FAQ there.


It's kind of borderline from my point of view


because often you end up having the same FAQ on all


of these pages.


And from our policies, we say you shouldn't


have the same FAQ on all of these pages.


SPEAKER 1 No, I wouldn't do that.


So on a category page about men's shoes


have one FAQ versus the category page about women's hats, right?


It would be a different type of question and answer.


So yeah, I guess it's about the balance between volume


of content and as well as is it actually helpful and not


duplicate or anything like that.


That's the idea, yes?


SPEAKER 2 Yeah, yeah.


SPEAKER 3 Thanks.


John, related to that, I know you also mentioned,


I think it was also in one of those interviews, where


you mentioned that footer content can also


be problematic, especially since users don't really


get to see that content sometimes,


especially if there's an infinite loading of products


or something like that.


They definitely can't get to the footer


to actually read the content.


Can you kind of elaborate on that?


Is this still not really a best practice


to do that when it comes to adding a bit of content


to these kind of commercial category pages?


I don't know.


I think, in general, adding things to the footer is fine.


I mean, it's always kind of this gray area anyway.


If you add it to the bottom of your main content


or the top of your footer, it's kind of physically


the same thing, right?


It's not a really different kind of location.


So from that point of view, I think that's kind of OK.


Yeah.


So does Google take into account how easy it


would be for the users to kind of read that content,


so it's not really just added for search engines


to understand what a category is about, but users can actually


use that content for some reason as well?


I don't think we would take that into account, apart


from the usual things like, is it actually


readable on the page, or is it essentially hidden content?


But for the most part, if it's in the footer,


then it's something we could take into account.


I mean, what happens when we render the page anyway


is we try to do that viewport expansion where


we try to find the size of the page itself.


And when we do that, usually we would see the footer there


as well.


And we would say, well, there is content here.


It might be relevant to the page.


We can definitely include that.


Yeah.


So from that point of view, I think


we would just see that and treat it


as normal content that's located towards the bottom of a page.


OK, so there's still a difference between content


that's higher above the page, like main content


that it's in the first fold, for example, versus content


that's all the way to the bottom of the page,


but not necessarily a problem per se,


just like where you think the content might be more


relevant for users as well.


I mean, for the most part, I just see that working out.


It's not something where I mean, let's just say


I haven't run into a situation where the indexing team tells


us to contact the site and say, oh, you


should move your content from the footer


to the top of your page so that we can index it better.


That's something that they would say if we really


have trouble picking up the content on a page.


But that's not like that kind of situation


is not something that has come up in the past.


No, I'm just talking about situations


where certain webmasters might know


that they need some content on these kind of commercial


category pages.


And they add a whole article at the bottom


because there's no way they would add it


to the top where it could push all of the product listings


further down the fold.


That's kind of the case.


Kind of an extreme case, but I've seen it happen.


Where they have a lot of content,


they want to add a lot of content


to make sure they target all kind of keywords.


So they put like a big chunk of almost a whole article


after the product listings.


Yeah, but that kind of goes into what


we talked about just before, where it's basically


like you're overfilling the page with essentially


textual content.


Well, it's not really a good practice.


Yeah.


Also, regarding what you say about using certain kind


of keywords over and over again, I'm


guessing Google can handle well a situation where


like you have a category of Intel processors, right?


And every product is called Intel Some Code, which


is the processor code.


And you have all of those products


starting with that brand name.


That's not necessarily a problem.


That's normal.


I think someone else had a question, like someone in chat.


I keep seeing it pop up.


But Maham?


Nobody?


OK.


Feel free to jump on in.


We have a few minutes left.


If there's anything on your mind that I can help with,


yeah, go for it, Basil.


I think you're muted, or at least I don't hear you.


Oh, OK.


In the text, let me see.


If a website is indexed by Google regularly


and were to turn into 404 or domain expires,


then would Google de-index immediately?


Usually not.


So there are two things that happen here.


On the one hand, we recrawl these pages on a per-page basis.


And some pages we recrawl very frequently,


and they will drop out fairly quickly.


Usually this is like the home page, the higher level


category pages, those kind of things.


They would drop out fairly quickly.


And the pages we don't crawl that often,


we wouldn't see that they're 404 that quickly.


So that's kind of the natural situation.


However, there are two other things that can play in there.


On the one hand, when we see a bigger change on a website,


we will try to recrawl the rest of the website


as quickly as possible.


So that can happen if we see things like a theme


changes within a website, or we see significant internal


linking changes, or we see significant, I don't know,


structured data changes across a website,


then we might say this is a significant change


on the website.


We need to refresh our index much faster than normal.


That's kind of the one thing that can happen.


We try to do that.


I mean, that happens automatically.


It's not something you need to trigger.


And the other thing that happens, especially


when a website expires or turns into 404,


is we try to recognize that the website no longer exists,


and we tend not to show it as visibly in the search results.


So it might still have a lot of pages indexed if you search


for the website directly.


But if we think that the website has expired and no longer


exists, then we will try not to show those pages in the search


results.


So the site query will still show them,


but the normal kind of queries for those pages,


they won't show them anymore.


So those are kind of the effects that play in there.


SPEAKER 2


Would you recommend working on particular pages


or improving the quality and improving the overall quality


of the website?


I'm working on particular pages.


I think both make sense, and it kind of depends a bit


on the size of the website itself.


So especially if you're talking about a smaller website,


then crawling will be unproblematic for us,


even if you have a complicated URL structure.


If you have 1,000 products and you end up


having 20,000 URLs on your website, we can deal with that.


That's not bad.


It's not great.


It's good to clean up, but it's not terrible.


On the other hand, if you have millions of products


and you have hundreds of millions of URLs


because of a messy site structure,


then that can significantly affect


how we process the products on your page.


So that's kind of, depending on the size of the site,


I would focus more on the content


or more on the technical side.


Or rather, when you have a really large site,


you have to essentially do both, right?


Yeah.


I mean, from my understanding, the page rank algorithm,


we're talking about the old school page rank from 1990,


was based on page level.


I don't know about now, but are there


any algorithms that might measure the overall string


of the domain, like, you know, Moz is a metric grid?


But could it be, you know, I don't know,


maybe the overall quality of the profile


of the old site or other pages?


I'm not aware of anything like that.


I mean, it's something where usually the crawlability is


more of a technical issue rather than a score


that we would calculate.


So it's not that we would track kind of the crawlability


or the messiness of a website.


What we might look at on a domain level


is things like, what is the overall quality of this website


so that when we find 10 new URLs from this website, what


should we do?


Should we treat them as really important,


or are they just, like, content that we've otherwise


seen on the web as well?


Thanks.


Sure.


OK.


I need to jump to the next meeting.


Sorry that this one has ended up a little bit


short with all of the issues we had with the other Hangout.


I will figure out with the Hangout folks


to see what we can do to improve these going forward.


But thanks for your patience.


Thanks for jumping in on the other call as well here.


And I hope you all have a great day.


And see you in one of the future Hangouts.


Bye, John.


Cheers.


Bye, everyone.


Thank you, John.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

r


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

Hey there, great to see you here.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

Today, we have a lightning round of fast answers


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

to your questions all around domain names.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

So let's dive right in.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

Dibangshu Paul asked on Twitter whether they


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

can use a dot space domain name.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

And the answer is sure.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

Go for it.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

The newer top level domains are equivalent


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

to other generic top level domains


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

like.com when it comes to SEO.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

Pick something you like.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

There are lots of options out there now.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

Also from Twitter, Simply Life Tips


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

asks whether they should use the www or the non-www version


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

of their domain name.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

The answer here is that you can use whichever you prefer.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

Google systems have no preference either way.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

Sometimes there are technical reasons


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

to go one way or the other, but often it's


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

just a matter of your personal preference.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

Alberto dropped us a note on Twitter


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

asking whether it's possible to use the rel canonical link


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

element across different top level domain names,


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

for example, between different country code domain names.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

And yes, you can do this.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

The rel canonical link element is not


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

limited to the same domain name.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

And finally, Liz asked whether country code domain names


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

can work for a global website.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

And the answer is yes.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

While a country code domain name helps our systems


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

to geotarget for that country, it still


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

allows for global visibility.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

The only limitation is that you can't specify other countries


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

for geotargeting.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

For example, if you have a.fr website for France,


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

you could use that globally, but you


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

wouldn't be able to explicitly geotarget users in Brazil.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

Well, that's all for today's episode.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

I hope you found this useful and insightful.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

If there are other questions on your mind,


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot

please drop us a note with the hashtag AskGooglebot.


Domains lightning round #AskGooglebot


Figuring out finicky 404s

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of SEO fairy tales.


Figuring out finicky 404s

With me today is Mike King, founder and CEO of iPoolRank, where you help bigger brands


Figuring out finicky 404s

to be more successful in Google search results and the search engines probably as well.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And you are objectively the best rapper, at least that's what it says on your website


Figuring out finicky 404s

is that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I mean if it's on the internet it's true obviously.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Obviously absolutely, everything on the internet is true.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I think that's the takeaway for the episode.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But before we make that our takeaway, you brought me a little story from the trenches


Figuring out finicky 404s

so to speak.


Figuring out finicky 404s

What happened there?


Figuring out finicky 404s

So I was in a room with probably like 20 people at one of my clients.


Figuring out finicky 404s

They're like one of the car comparison sites and their C level executive, like the sponsor


Figuring out finicky 404s

for the SEO program was like, hey Mike, we're seeing a big spike in 404s and this guy's


Figuring out finicky 404s

awesome.


Figuring out finicky 404s

He's always been super supportive and everything that we're doing.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And he was like, I'm not sure why that is.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Can we figure that out?


Figuring out finicky 404s

It might not even be a problem.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Who knows?


Figuring out finicky 404s

If they just deleted a bunch of stuff.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So I'm on the spot at this point and I'm like, okay, let's figure this out.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And first they're showing the screenshot of GSE and it's like, okay, huge spike in soft


Figuring out finicky 404s


Figuring out finicky 404s

And I'm like, all right, well let's see what's going on.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Right, you see that in the coverage report in Google search console, right?


Figuring out finicky 404s

Yep.


Figuring out finicky 404s

All right.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so first thing I did is I looked at Bodify because I love the platform in that it allows


Figuring out finicky 404s

you to combine crawl data with log file data so we get a sense of how Googlebot is actually


Figuring out finicky 404s

crawling.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so I looked to rule out some of the obvious things because typically client is like, hey,


Figuring out finicky 404s

was it an algorithm update?


Figuring out finicky 404s

Very rarely is it an algorithm update.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so we're looking through trying to see if there's any rendering issues going on because


Figuring out finicky 404s

that was my first instinct.


Figuring out finicky 404s

True.


Figuring out finicky 404s

If it's like a soft 404, then it might just be rendering.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So was it rendering to be blamed?


Figuring out finicky 404s

Technically, we'll get there.


Figuring out finicky 404s

We'll get there.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So we looked through all the crawl data.


Figuring out finicky 404s

We looked at the log files and there was no spikes in log file activity, which I typically


Figuring out finicky 404s

see if it was an algorithm update.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Right.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so, you know, from there I was just looking through like, okay, was there any changes


Figuring out finicky 404s

to the pages because you can do the comparison.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Client always says no when you ask that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Did you change anything?


Figuring out finicky 404s

I didn't touch it.


Figuring out finicky 404s

It was like that when I found it.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Exactly.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so having a tool like bonafide, you can do the actual this and so on.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So nothing there.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And at that point I was like, okay, well, let's look to see if there were any like environmental


Figuring out finicky 404s

conditions because it may not have actually been this soft 404 issue.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Maybe search volume changed around those queries.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And looked at that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Nothing there.


Figuring out finicky 404s

At some point, someone in the room was saying like, hey, you know, Googlebot can crawl from


Figuring out finicky 404s

different locations.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And I was like, that's true.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Let's just take a look, another look at the logs.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And I noticed at one point the IPs changed.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So what we ended up doing is we did some like reverse lookups and things like that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Right.


Figuring out finicky 404s

See, like, okay, what's the location change?


Figuring out finicky 404s

Ah, right.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And it did.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So suddenly you guys were crawling from Traverse City, Michigan.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And first of all, I didn't know where that was.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so we looked at the site itself, put in Traverse City, and this was specifically on


Figuring out finicky 404s

their inventory pages.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So once you put in Traverse City, there's no inventory.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So to you guys, it was a soft 404 because there's nothing on those pages.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so, you know, because we even looked at the Fection render.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I mean, I don't know if that's what you call it anymore.


Figuring out finicky 404s

URL inspection tools.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Yes.


Figuring out finicky 404s

In GSC, no problems because they're crawling from presumably Mountain View or where it


Figuring out finicky 404s

is.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so we're like, okay, well, again, no rendering issues here.


Figuring out finicky 404s

What's going on?


Figuring out finicky 404s

But once we looked at the site from Traverse City, then we saw there was nothing on it.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So it's like a regional content situation where we just came from somewhere where you


Figuring out finicky 404s

don't have content.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And that's why.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Okay.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Right.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So it was like a geographical issue that when we crawled from, where was it?


Figuring out finicky 404s

Traverse City, Michigan.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Traverse City.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I've never heard that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Maybe we have a data center there.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Who knows?


Figuring out finicky 404s

Apparently we have a data center there.


Figuring out finicky 404s

You didn't have any inventory for that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So how did you fix that though?


Figuring out finicky 404s

So what we did is we just default to national, like showing national inventory.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And we were very mindful that it could be considered cloaking.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So we don't do it just for Google Live.


Figuring out finicky 404s

We do it for all users.


Figuring out finicky 404s

For everyone.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Yeah.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And, you know, I personally don't believe you guys care about cloaking that much anymore


Figuring out finicky 404s

because there's so many reasons for different content to show up for different contexts.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But a client is going to be super scared of that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

They're like, all right, boom, let's make sure we show that to all users.


Figuring out finicky 404s

It's interesting that you say that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

We do care about cloaking, but cloaking has a very specific definition.


Figuring out finicky 404s

It's when you mislead the user.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So as long as you're like, we don't exactly know where you are, so we're just going to


Figuring out finicky 404s

show you the national content or we don't have inventory for your location, so we're


Figuring out finicky 404s

just going to show you national content on our homepage.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I think that's fine.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I come to a car comparison website, I see car comparisons.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So not really cloaking.


Figuring out finicky 404s

What I would be worried about is if I come to a car comparison website and now I see


Figuring out finicky 404s

ads for drugs.


Figuring out finicky 404s

That is not great.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And then that is considered cloaking.


Figuring out finicky 404s

We do care about that, but not really like.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Yeah.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And it's actually quite rare for me to see that in the wild anymore.


Figuring out finicky 404s

That a lot of people take that definition very literally.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so a client is like, oh, is that cloaking?


Figuring out finicky 404s

We can't do that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And I'm like, it's a better user experience.


Figuring out finicky 404s

What are you talking about?


Figuring out finicky 404s

Generally, the user experience should be good and consistent with user expectations.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And as long as it's that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

We had that case with a new site where they're like, oh, you're not seeing anything from


Figuring out finicky 404s

us and it's because of geolocation.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So they basically just load the local news.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And when you don't have geolocation available, then they just show nothing, which you have


Figuring out finicky 404s

to admit is a bad user experience.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I am like, no, you don't get my location.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And then I see a blank page.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Not great.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Right.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And they're like, oh, but isn't it cloaking?


Figuring out finicky 404s

I'm like, no, you're not doing something specifically for Google.


Figuring out finicky 404s

You're doing it for users who choose not to give you the location.


Figuring out finicky 404s

That's not cloaking.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So, but I see where you're going with this.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And it's interesting that that is continuously a problem where people are like, is this cloaking?


Figuring out finicky 404s

Because our documentation, as far as I know, says that it's about misleading the user if


Figuring out finicky 404s

you cloak.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So you could argue that maybe misleading the user is a bit vague.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And we should, if we are open, we're open for suggestions.


Figuring out finicky 404s

If you have better suggestions, let us know.


Figuring out finicky 404s

We're happy to take them.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Feedback is always appreciated.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So to recap, they came to you with a rise in 404s.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But soft 404s.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Well, soft 404s specifically, but they didn't change the sides.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And they were like, it's an algorithm update.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And you're like, no.


Figuring out finicky 404s

They said, is it an algorithm update?


Figuring out finicky 404s

They weren't sure.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Okay, so they weren't sure.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And you're like, no, it's not.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I mean, that's almost always my answer.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Like my default is like, it's not an algorithm update.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Or Klein is like, well, I heard there was an algorithm update.


Figuring out finicky 404s

What has changed for everybody?


Figuring out finicky 404s

I'm like, I can't tell you that the day after one is announced.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Because the reality is, you guys are a software company.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I would imagine when things are rolled out, there may be components that get rolled back


Figuring out finicky 404s

in that window.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And it doesn't roll out one or nothing.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Like it's in between somewhere.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Exactly.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so people just assume, like they read an article like, oh, these are all the things


Figuring out finicky 404s

that change.


Figuring out finicky 404s

There's an algorithm update yesterday.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And I'm just like, okay, well, what happens if they change it back?


Figuring out finicky 404s

You know, so I typically refuse to answer those questions at least until there's like


Figuring out finicky 404s

two to three weeks out of class.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And you guys have like kind of settled into what it's going to be.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And then we do our reviews.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I don't know, I have a lot of issues with how algorithm updates are handled by our community.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Because I feel like a lot of it is like, okay, well, let's look at one of these tools that


Figuring out finicky 404s

measures visibility.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And we saw visibility drop for all these sites.


Figuring out finicky 404s

All these sites have commonalities.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Here's what must have been the problem.


Figuring out finicky 404s

That's not necessarily true.


Figuring out finicky 404s

No.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And you're also not comparing what those pages look like before and after.


Figuring out finicky 404s

That's true.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Like there could have been things that they change.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Exactly.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So that's why it's so difficult for me to like engage in that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Yeah.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I don't engage in that because the web is such a living, breathing organism.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And I also find the discussions of all other things being equal, dot, dot, dot.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Very, very tricky because they never are.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Because all things being equal means you copied a website and that has its very own problems.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So yeah, that's a fun one.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And I like that you said that you use the log file analysis because I haven't heard


Figuring out finicky 404s

that being mentioned very often previously.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I know that a few people are doing it and leveraging it.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But I don't feel like it's talked about enough because I think it's such a useful tool.


Figuring out finicky 404s

It is.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But it's so difficult to get that data.


Figuring out finicky 404s

You know, it's like you have to find some person that lives in a back room in DevOps


Figuring out finicky 404s

somewhere who's like, which logs do you need?


Figuring out finicky 404s

It's like quite obviously I need the access logs, guys.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Come on.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But nevertheless, you know, just getting them is difficult.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And then if you're not using a tool like Bodify or Screaming Frog log file analyzer or there's


Figuring out finicky 404s

numerous tools out there.


Figuring out finicky 404s

A lot of you don't know what to do with them.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Or like if you don't know how to parse them yourself, then you're kind of like, OK, big


Figuring out finicky 404s

text files.


Figuring out finicky 404s

What I do.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So I think that's the difficulty is just kind of like that lack of understanding and also


Figuring out finicky 404s

access to them.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But I find them incredibly valuable, especially for sites that are like millions of pages,


Figuring out finicky 404s

because understanding what Google is crawling and what it's not and where they're seeing


Figuring out finicky 404s

issues that, you know, you're not seeing in crawl tools.


Figuring out finicky 404s

It's one of the most valuable things that you can get.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And it's so interesting that that is so undervalued or so perceived or still is hard for SEOs


Figuring out finicky 404s

to get into, because I know that in the developer community, logging has been an ongoing discussion


Figuring out finicky 404s

for a long time and like there's a solution such as the ELK stack and then Elasticsearch


Figuring out finicky 404s

does a lot of logging things, Splunk, Greylog.


Figuring out finicky 404s

There's like so many different things that are basically sort of settling down to be


Figuring out finicky 404s

the standard solutions for logging.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Log4j being an abstraction layer above all of that from the code perspective.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Why don't more people work together to get the most out of the logs?


Figuring out finicky 404s

Because we collect all this data about what happens on our systems as any company does.


Figuring out finicky 404s

You have all these logs and not that many people are actually actively looking into


Figuring out finicky 404s

them.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And if it's for like outage monitoring or something, but you can you can drag so much


Figuring out finicky 404s

more out of it, including performance metrics.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Sure, absolutely.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I mean, the thing is, like I've been using the Internet in some form since like 92.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And so all those types of things are just native to me, like a command line native to


Figuring out finicky 404s

me.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So I'm like before we had JavaScript driven analytics, analytics was log.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Yeah, exactly.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So, you know, it's really easy for me to look at those and know what they mean.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But not every SEO has that experience.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Has that background.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Yeah.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But do you know any resources for people who want to learn more about that?


Figuring out finicky 404s

I know the built visible guys have a resource on that.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I'm pretty sure the onely guys have one.


Figuring out finicky 404s

We should write one.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But yeah, those are the places to start.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Also, like the Kibana tutorials will tell you a lot about it.


Figuring out finicky 404s

True.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Kibana.


Figuring out finicky 404s

See, I completely forgot about that one.


Figuring out finicky 404s

But yeah, that exists as well.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Sweet.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Thank you so, so much.


Figuring out finicky 404s

That was an interesting ride into geo specific content and software for us and kind of rendering,


Figuring out finicky 404s

but not really rendering.


Figuring out finicky 404s

So that was fun.


Figuring out finicky 404s

I think we're going to link all the resources for the log file analysis that you mentioned


Figuring out finicky 404s

in the description below.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And I would love to hear from you all if you use some sort of log file analysis.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And if so, what?


Figuring out finicky 404s

And if not, why not?


Figuring out finicky 404s

And why is it hard for you to get into that?


Figuring out finicky 404s

All right.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Thank you so much for being here with me today, Mike.


Figuring out finicky 404s

Thanks for having me.


Figuring out finicky 404s

And for all of you out there, stay safe.


Figuring out finicky 404s


English Google SEO office-hours from January 28, 2022

All right.


Welcome, everyone, to today's Google Search Central SEO


Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate on the Search Relations team


here at Google in Switzerland.


And part of what we do are these Office Hours sessions


where people can jump in and ask their questions


around the websites and web search.


Looks like people still are dropping in.


So good.


We have a bunch of questions submitted on YouTube,


but also a handful of people here


who are raising their hands ready to jump in and ask


a first question.


We'll get started here.


Let's see.


Akash, I think you're first on the list.


AKASH SINGHARANTA-RINGAPOLLI KARAMINAJEEVA


SINGHARANTA-RINGAPOLLI KARAMINAJEEVA


So my question is related to the paid links.


So is it like I read some of the Matt Cutts blog


and in a video that he has clearly said,


if your links get reported, if you report those links


to the Google team or so, so those links


are kind of the paid links, how Google's determined.


Or is it more of the financial things


that help Google to understand that these are the paid links?


Or more of something like seems to be a flashy or a steamy one


makes these links as a paid or the unnatural links


to the third floor?


I think the question is kind of like,


how does Google recognize paid links?


Yeah, I mean, from our point of view,


we take a lot of different things into account.


We don't give every link that we find full weight.


So even if we're not sure, something


can be somewhere in between.


But it's a number of things that we take into account there.


So it's not just, did someone report this as a paid link?


Because random people on the internet


report lots of things that aren't necessarily true.


But at the same time, sometimes this is useful information.


So it's, I don't know, a lot of things


that kind of come together with regards to paid links.


And how about the internal link, if you have an internal link


from a respective anchor text map from the header


or within the content or within the footer,


does the placement of the links within it


could be like header, body, or content?


Does it matter?


Because for most of the websites,


that header and your footer are the same.


Is it like body part content has been given more weightage?


Because that is the particular portion that changes


as per the pages, so that particular thing.


Not necessarily.


I think for internal links, on the one hand,


we use it to understand the context better.


So things like the anchor text helps us.


But another really important part


is really just being able to crawl your website.


And for that, it doesn't matter where that link is on a page


to kind of crawl the rest of the website.


Sometimes things are in the footer, sometimes


in the header, sometimes in a shared menu or in a sidebar


or within body of content.


All of those kind of linked places


are all fine from our point of view.


Usually what we differentiate more with regards


to location on a page is the content itself


to try to figure out what is really


relevant for this particular page.


And for that, it sometimes really makes sense


to kind of focus on the central part of the page,


the primary piece of content that changes from page to page,


and not so much the headers and the sidebars and the footers


or things like that.


Because those are a part of the website itself,


but it's not the primary reason for this page to exist


and the primary reason for us to rank that page.


So that's kind of the difference that we


take when it comes to different parts of the page.


And for links, it's usually more to kind of understand


the context of pages and to be able to crawl the website.


And for that, we don't really need


to differentiate between different parts of the page.


AUDIENCE 2 Thank you, Otto.


Thank you.


JOHN MUELLER Sure.


Milo.


Hi, John.


How are you doing?


Hi.


All right.


My question is regarding, like, we


have a website that is about fashion ideas, outfit ideas,


like how to wear any outfit.


It's purely a blog post article-based website.


We're not selling anything.


We don't have any products on our website.


So we have been doing quite well on Search,


trying to give valuable information to our users,


as per the user's intent.


So a lot of people lately started


asking how to buy these outfits that we give in our articles.


So since we do not review any outfit, like pants or blazers,


that's displayed in our article, we just


give ideas how to wear any outfit.


So my question is, will the Google treat it


as a classical product website, classical Google, classical


product review site?


Because in the picture in the article,


we started putting links to our affiliate websites,


like Amazon or other fashion clothing stores.


Just to help users, those who like any outfit,


so we give them links that, OK, you


can buy these outfits from these sites.


So will the Google treat it as a classical product review site?


Thank you.


Yeah, I don't think we would differentiate that much


with these kind of websites.


And it's not that there's kind of like a binary decision


on which type of website something is.


So from my point of view, it sounds like you have to do it.


You have some kind of review content on your pages.


It sounds like you have some kind of informational content


on your pages as well.


You have some affiliate content.


And all of these things are fine.


So it's not a case that you have to pick one type of website


and say, everything on my website is exactly like this,


and therefore I need to follow exactly these guidelines.


In most cases on the web, there is


like a lot of gray room between the different types


of websites.


And from our point of view, that's fine.


That's kind of expected.


So I wouldn't worry too much about,


does Google think this is a product review website or not?


But essentially, use the information


that we give for product review websites.


And if you think some of that is relevant to your website,


then maybe that's useful to help you to improve.


But it's not something where I'd say it's a checklist that you


have to fulfill for anything that is classified exactly


as a product review website.


All right, thank you very much.


Sure.


Hazel.


Hazel?


Oh, no.


OK.


Maybe we'll come back to you.


Feel free to jump in.


Seth, in the meantime.


Hey, John.


Hi.


So I have questions on two different topics,


if that's all right.


I'll try and make it short.


So the first one deals with local directories.


And in my opinion, local directories


don't really add that much value to people


looking for a business.


Everybody uses search engines for that.


So regarding local SEO, a lot of SEOs


try to keep the name, address, and phone number


consistent across directories.


And they use services to automatically do that.


So it's really a two-part question.


So A, does Google really care if you're


listed on a local directory and if the information that they


have is correct?


And then if you do go with one of these local companies


to automatically manage those local listings,


are you just throwing money away?


I don't know.


It's hard to say because I don't feel comfortable saying,


like, all local directories are bad


or all local directories are good because I imagine


there is quite a lot of variance between these kind of sites.


So from that point of view, I don't


want to frame it as yes or no kind of thing.


The other part with regards to the exact same name, address,


and phone number, I don't know how much that plays


into Google Business Profiles, the new name,


the local listings and that part of things.


One place where I have seen a little in that direction, which


might not be perfectly relevant for local businesses,


but just generally in us kind of recognizing


the entity behind a website or a business.


And for that, it does sometimes help to really make sure


that we have consistent information,


that we can recognize that this information is correct


because we found it in multiple places on the web.


Usually this plays more into kind of the knowledge graph,


the knowledge panel side of things,


where if we can understand this is the entity behind


the website and kind of there are different mentions


of that entity in different places


and the information there is kind of consistent,


then we can trust that information.


Whereas if we find kind of conflicting information


across the web, then it's a lot of difference.


And I remember, especially a few years back


when we started with the local business structured data


on pages, we ran into that every now and then,


where people would have a local profile with opening


hours or phone numbers.


And then on the website, they marked up something


that is conflicting with that.


And on our side, we kind of have to make a judgment call then.


We don't really know what is correct.


On the one hand, in the tool, you said,


this is your opening hours.


On your website, you're saying this.


What is actually correct?


And in those kind of situations, it's


easy for our systems to get confused and use


the wrong information.


Whereas if you find some way to consistently provide


a correct information everywhere,


then it's a lot easier for us to say, well,


this is actually the correct information.


We should definitely show it like this.


And whether or not you use a tool to do that,


or if you just have a handful of mentions on the web


where you're listed as a local business,


you probably don't need a tool.


But kind of just regularly going out and making sure


that the information about your business, about your website,


is correct.


I think that is kind of relevant and helpful.


OK, perfect.


Thank you for answering that.


And then do you have time for another question?


Sure.


OK, so this one deals with links.


And let's just say that you're doing everything


correct the right way.


You're following all the rules.


You're not doing any link exchanges or anything crazy


like that.


Let's say there's a few websites that already are linking to you.


And it could help your visitors if you'd link to them also.


So assuming that you're getting some value


from those backlinks, which Google could be ignoring those,


you never know.


But assuming that you are getting some value


from those backlinks, could you possibly


lose some value if you link to their websites?


Or are you pretty much safe where you're not


doing anything crazy so Google understands you're


just doing it to help people?


No.


No, I think if you're doing reasonable things,


that's perfectly fine.


It's also kind of natural, especially


if you're a local business, you link to your neighbors.


Or if you're mentioned in the news somewhere,


you kind of mentioned that on your website.


I was featured here in the news.


And essentially, you're linking back and forth.


It's kind of the reciprocal link, essentially.


It's a natural kind of link.


It's not something that is there because you're doing


some kind of crazy link scheme.


So from that point of view, I think


it's easy to overthink it.


And if you're doing something naturally,


if you're not making weird deals behind the scenes,


then I really wouldn't worry about it.


OK, perfect.


Thanks, John.


I appreciate it.


Sure.


All right.


I don't know, Hazel, if your microphone works now or not.


OK, we'll come back to you, I guess.


Michael.


Hi.


So let me preface this by first saying


that I am not starting SEO cop, a site devoted


to policing search industry.


But that said, you see it all day long.


There are a lot of fallacies and misconceptions


about different practices in SEO.


You need to write 2,000 words to rank,


or having a.edu will help you rank and homicide.


Key words, that was one recently.


Quote, eat score.


All that kind of stuff.


So my question is, and I apologize


for putting you on the spot, but there's


some things which are kind of inaccurate,


some things which are wholly made up and not tied to reality.


What, if I could, what things would you, if you could,


debunk that you see on an almost daily basis that


makes you sort of scratch your head and say,


can we put an end to this myth or this inaccuracy?


I mean, maybe it's not for today.


Maybe it's for a thread down the road.


But there are things that you see probably every day,


and you say to yourself, oh, that's not true.


Yeah, I don't know.


I always find this very challenging.


On the one hand, it's possible to put together


a list of myths and kind of say, this is completely wrong.


And but at the same time, I also see a lot of people


have good intents.


And sometimes they promote things


that do absolutely nothing.


And they, on the other side, do things


that do have a positive effect.


And from my point of view, I don't want to really call them


out and say, oh, look at this stupid person who


believes this thing.


Because they're trying to do the right thing.


Maybe they're confused.


Maybe they didn't realize it had no effect.


Or maybe they saw some correlations


that weren't kind of casual but kind of just, I don't know,


random correlations.


And I don't know.


I always kind of struggle with calling those kind of things


out.


But maybe we should do more to kind of highlight


some of the common myths.


I think the other aspect there is also


that some of these myths are kind of technically myths.


But they have some rooting in reality as well,


where we might say, I don't know,


keyword frequency is not an SEO ranking factor kind of thing.


But at the same time, if you don't mention words


at all on your page, then it's like,


that's not going to do your website much good.


So it's like, well, one keyword mention is OK.


And 100 is too much.


And is there a number between that is optimal?


No.


You can't go out and say, well, all keyword mentions are bad.


So that's, I think, always kind of tricky.


But I don't know.


I think if you see things where you run across them,


you're like, oh, this makes absolutely no sense.


Maybe just send them our way.


And maybe we can start collecting them


and see what we can do in that regard.


Sometimes it also just makes sense


to kind of focus on the positive things instead and to say,


instead of calling out the bad things,


because it kind of almost starts a discussion


about the bad things, focus on the positive things


that you can do.


I mean, yeah, in no way ever would want to call.


So now it's just sometimes I feel like if someone believes


it, they're going to start, you know,


you're at sort of a fork in the road.


They're going to start just going down the long road,


like, oh, I need to write 2,000 words.


And so I'm going to just fill it with fluff that's not.


And then they come back later, and they say, hey,


I wrote this really long story.


Why am I not ranking it?


It's like, well, you could have written in 300 words


if you stuck to the facts or whatever it is.


You know, that's sort of where my intent is,


not to call anyone out or say you're getting it wrong.


It's more of, if anything, to sort of demarcate


what our best practice is.


And you know, this is more myth than it is reality.


So you shouldn't go down this road.


Now, I think also overall, when I look at the SEO industry,


it feels like a lot of the myths from the old days


are kind of gone and a lot less popular.


And most of the people that are active in SEO,


they kind of find good information out there.


And they publish good information.


And it seems a lot more focused on, I don't know,


actual help rather than kind of these weird myths where


it's like, oh, if you do this, like the 2,000 word thing


that you mentioned, I find a lot less of that.


So that's also kind of a positive thing.


But we'll see.


Thank you.


Cool.


All right.


Neil.


Hi, John.


How are you?


Hi.


Mine's got a specific question.


We've got several websites within a group.


We've recently published a regional website


that we're coming to a bit of a loss


with because the site was originally indexed with Google


and held good ranking.


But over the last couple of months or so,


it's dropped and dropped and dropped and dropped and dropped


for its main home page to the point


where now it's pretty much nonexistent within search


itself.


We're comparing with Bing, and it's


exactly where we expected to see it within Bing itself.


The site's stable.


It's got good content.


It's got good relevant content for your users.


But we're a loss.


We're completely at a loss as to why Google has physically


dropped the site.


And it is literally just the main home page


of the site that's not appearing.


Where can we get help from?


There's obviously something in the site


that Google doesn't like.


But again, referring back to Michael's point,


searching the web and trying to find solutions online,


there is so many things that are saying, yes, do this or do that


or do this or do that.


What is the right and wrong thing?


When in reality, we're spending hundreds,


we've spent thousands of hours on this website


to build great content for local businesses,


even touching on what's left with them.


With regards to business directors,


we've got a cracking solution to that.


But we want people to be able to find it by its brand name.


And the only reason they're going


to find it by its brand name is by actually searching


for the site itself, of which Google's dropped out


the rankings.


And we can't understand why.


There's one possible cause, which we're just


waiting on Webmaster Tools to catch us up a little bit,


just so we can double check it.


But everything else that we're putting into it,


we believe absolutely 100% that we are good, relevant content


for you.


But we can't understand why Google's dropped us.


But Bing have kept us literally P2,


which is where we'd expect to be.


JOHN MUELLER-HARTMANN, MD, PhD No.


I can't really compare it to Bing


because they're a completely different search engine


and they do things in different ways.


So that's always kind of tricky.


What I would recommend doing here


is starting a thread in the Webmaster Help


Forum with the details.


So with your URL, with the queries that you're looking at,


and kind of the changes that you've seen there.


So that folks in the forum can take a look at that


so that they can escalate it from there


if they're saying, well, this looks really weird.


Something is kind of weirdly happening.


AUDIENCE MEMBER 3 So to interrupt there,


will we get a positive response on that, though?


Because again, I think I've said,


I do go through the forums and I do have a browse through.


But again, I think it refers back to what is a right


or what is a wrong answer.


Because potentially, somebody could post something onto it.


We then spend many, many hours adjusting, altering,


and it doesn't make a jot of difference.


JOHN MUELLER-HARTMANN Yeah, I mean,


that's something that's always possible in the forums


because it's a community forum.


And most of the people who are active there,


they've seen lots of things.


So they have a lot of insight into the kind of problems


that are common on websites.


And they can recognize things that are really standing out.


So I would definitely not see it as something


where any answer that you get in the forum


will be 1,000% correct.


Because these are essentially volunteers


that are helping out to share their time and expertise.


But at the same time, they can also escalate things.


So if there are issues where it's clear within the forum


thread that something weird is happening here


and someone else needs to take a look at that,


they can escalate that to a community manager who can then


also escalate it to the search team


to have someone take a deeper look into what exactly


is happening there.


DANIEL PICKENBERRY-WILSON It's almost


like we need a direct contact so we can just email across


and say, look, this is the issue, this is what's happened.


Either A, what are we doing wrong?


Or B, what are we doing right?


Or C, is it something that we've completely and utterly


messed up on and missed?


And because we're so involved in the project


and we live and breathe it, it's just something


so stupidly simple that's staring us right in the face


that we just can't get them to get the representation from.


But it's heart-rending to see the site just drop and drop


and drop and drop and then disappear,


yet other pages within the site are ranking where


we would expect them to be.


But without the brand name there,


we can't then move on to launching the site


and going on to Google AdWords and all the other things which


are associated with getting the initial stage set there


to be able to move forward.


JOHN MUELLER At the moment, we don't have any email support


for web search in particular.


The forums, I think, are kind of the best place


to start because it's also something


where the common issues, they are known.


And there are things where folks in the forum


have seen lots of weird cases and been able to help there.


So that's really kind of the first place to go.


Right, OK, well, thanks for your help.


We'll try the forums.


PIRAL PANDEY Hey, John.


JOHN MUELLER Hi.


PIRAL PANDEY So we have a website


which had a malware attack back in December, last December.


And we have cleaned it up.


And we made sure there is no security issue in the Google


Search Console.


But the index pages, the unwanted pages


which was indexed, the result of malware


is still being shown in the search results.


And I double checked.


We have a proper 404 setup.


And I was just wondering what else can we do so we can just


clean it up from the search results.


Because there is a lot.


And we can't use, actually, the temporary removal tool


because there are hundreds and thousands of URLs which are


being shown in the search results.


So yeah, that was the situation.


OK, so I think, first of all, I would double check


that these pages are actually removed.


Because some types of website hacks


are done in a way that if you check manually,


then it looks like the page is removed.


But actually, for Google, it's still there.


So I would check with the Inspect URL tool,


some of those pages, just to double check.


Is it really completely cleaned up?


Or is there something left over that it's trying to hide?


And I think that's kind of the basis of everything else.


Then for the rest, there are two kind of approaches


that I recommend.


On the one hand, I think the best approach


is to make sure that the more visible pages are manually


removed.


That means searching for your company name,


for your website name, searching for your primary products,


those kind of things, and seeing the pages that


show up in the search results, and making sure


that anything that you don't want to have shown


is not shown.


And usually, that results in, I don't know,


maybe up to 100 URLs where you're saying,


well, these are hacked, and I want them removed as quickly


as possible.


And for those, use the removal tool.


That's essentially the fastest way to clean things up.


The removal tool takes those URLs out within about a day.


So that's, especially for things that


would be visible to your users, that kind of


helps take care of that.


The other part is the URLs that are remaining.


They will be recrawled over time.


But usually, when it comes to lots of URLs on a website,


that's something that takes a couple of months.


So on the one hand, you could just leave those be


and say, well, they're not visible to people


unless you explicitly search for the hacked content


or do a site query of your website.


And they will drop out over time.


And just leave them be for half a year,


and then double check afterwards to see if they're actually


completely cleaned up.


If you really want to try to resolve that as quickly


as possible, you can also use the removal tool


with the prefix setting.


And essentially, try to find common prefixes for these hacked


pages, which might be a folder name or a file name


or something that's in the beginning,


and kind of filter those out.


The removal tool doesn't take them out of our index.


So it doesn't change anything for the ranking.


But it doesn't show them in the results anymore.


So that's one way you could go past just the more


visible pages to try to clean the rest up.


Personally, I don't think you need to clean up


all of those pages.


Because if users don't see them, then it's like, well,


technically, they exist in the search results.


But if no one sees them, it doesn't really change anything


for your website.


So from that point of view, I would


focus on the visible part, clean that up.


And when that's done, just let the rest kind of work itself


out.


Yeah, that happens actually for a few websites.


Which are being mentioned in the Google search


console search central guidelines.


They're following that.


They're avoiding duplicate.


They have a quality content.


And they have not duplicating or doing nasty stuff.


But they're valid pages.


But sometimes it took ages to index those URLs.


And people just come up and say, OK, look at this URL.


It's valid.


And we've been requesting this for a long.


We have internal links set up.


And the overall website is quite old.


And they have good reputation across the website.


So they're just following the basics.


So I wish we have a tool or something


that we can use it to help people to index them faster.


Yeah.


Yeah, it's interesting.


You bring both those sides.


On the one hand, how do I get stuff out of search?


And how do I get stuff into search?


Maybe you should be able to trade between those two sides.


That would be an interesting idea for a tool, I guess.


So I think overall there is the submit


to indexing tool or functionality in Search Console.


That's kind of what we recommend for these things.


But at the same time, we just don't index everything.


And it can very well happen that you


have something that is valid page,


but we just don't index it.


I think one of the reasons that kind of goes in that direction


is nowadays almost all pages are valid pages.


And it's really hard to set up a CMS where you produce


pages that are invalid.


If you use WordPress or any of the common systems,


it just produces valid pages by default.


And from a technical point of view,


we can't index everything on the web.


So we have to draw the line somewhere.


And it's completely normal for websites


to have parts of their content indexed and parts


of their content not indexed.


Usually over time, as we understand


that this is a really good website,


and if it has a reasonable internal structure,


then we can pick up more and more.


But it's not a guarantee that we'll index everything


on the web.


So that's, I think, always something


to kind of keep in mind.


And especially in Search Console,


it's easy to look at the reports and say, oh,


these pages are not indexed.


Therefore, I'm doing something wrong.


But from our point of view, it's normal


that not everything is indexed.


It's just a lot more visible nowadays, I think.


AUDIENCE 1 Yeah, that's what we've been telling to those


people with the problem.


Normally, if you just talk about WordPress, for example,


yeah, they do have common pages.


So we definitely respond them, OK,


these pages are identical.


So the content is indexed already, the main content,


and the same thing you were suggesting.


But sometimes we just, it's nail biting to see some URLs


and decide.


I mean, they don't want to, they don't


want to trick the Google, they just have valid pages.


And we check everything, the site map,


they request it as well.


Seems like everything then we wish,


there should be something which we just press


to help these people.


Because that is important pages for those websites.


Yeah, I think it is tricky because everyone wants


all of their pages indexed.


They just want to click something to get it done.


Yeah, it's hard sometimes.


Yeah.


All right, yeah, that was my thoughts.


Thanks.


OK, we still have a bunch of people with their hands raised,


but also a lot of things submitted on YouTube.


So I'll just run through some of the YouTube questions,


and then we'll get back to more people with their hands raised


as well.


Let's see, can you give an update or recommendation


for emojis used in title and meta description?


Are they affecting SEO or not?


We're currently using some in our metadata and headings


for blog pages.


So you can definitely use emojis in titles and descriptions


on your pages.


We don't show all of these in the search results,


especially if we think that it kind of disrupts the search


results in terms of it looks misleading perhaps


or those kind of things.


But you can definitely keep them there.


It's not that they cause any problems.


I don't think you would have any significant advantage


in putting those there because at most, what


we try to figure out is what is the equivalent of that emoji,


and maybe use that word as well associated with the page.


But it's not that you get an advantage for kind of like,


oh, you have a colorful title kind of thing.


So from that point of view, if you


like to have these in your titles and descriptions,


go for it.


If you don't want them there, then that's fine too.


I don't think it kind of hurts or harms SEO or kind of helps


SEO in any way.


When comparing data in Search Console interface


with the data retrieved from the API,


is it the case that the API data should


be considered more reliable?


And then there's some more specifically around that.


I think overall, just as an answer there,


is the data in the API and the data in the UI


is built from the exact same database tables.


So it's not that there is any kind of more in-depth or more


accurate data in the API than in the UI.


The main difference that you have with the API and the URL


is that in the API, you can get more rows of examples


than you can when you download things.


So sometimes that is useful, especially if you


have more detailed information.


The other thing that is perhaps a little bit confusing


with the API and the data in Search Console


is that when you're looking at a report in Search Console,


you'll see numbers on top that give you so many impressions


or so many clicks overall.


And the data that we provide in the API


is essentially the individual rows


that are visible in the table below the overall data


in Search Console.


And for privacy reasons and various other reasons,


we filter out queries that have very few impressions.


So in the UI in Search Console, on top with the number,


we'll include the aggregate full count.


But the rows that are shown there


don't include the filtered information.


So what can happen is that if you


look at the overall total in Search Console,


it'll be a different number than if you


take the totals from the API, where you take all


of these rows and add them.


So that's something where it's a little bit confusing at first,


but essentially it's the same data.


It's just kind of presented in a slightly different way


in the API.


We have FAQ schema on quite a few pages


that don't show any technical errors in Search Console.


Are there non-technical reasons why


Google doesn't show our FAQs in the search results


below a post?


Could it be a trust issue with the content on our site?


So FAQ rich results are essentially


similar to other types of rich results


in that we have several levels that we


take into account before we show them in the search results.


On the one hand, they need to be technically correct.


It sounds like these are technically correct.


On the other hand, they need to be


compliant with our policies.


I don't think we have any kind of significant policies


around FAQ rich results other than that the content should


be visible on the page.


And the third issue that sometimes comes into play here


is we need to be able to understand that this website is


kind of trustworthy in that regard,


that we can trust this data to be correct.


And that is sometimes something where


kind of from a quality point of view,


we're maybe not convinced about a website,


and then we wouldn't show it.


But those are kind of the three steps that I would look at.


Kind of like technically correct,


is it compliant with our policies?


And then if that's all correct, then I


would think about like, well, what


could I do to significantly improve the quality


of my website overall?


We would like to expand existing pages with more up-to-date


content, for example, on seasonal topics and events.


What do we do with such pieces of content


when the seasonal event like Black Friday is over?


Should we just leave sections on the page permanently


or remove them after the event and add them again next year?


Yeah, I think from our side, it's totally up to you


how you deal with this.


Kind of keeping the pages there is fine.


Removing them after a while is fine


if they're no longer relevant.


Essentially, what you would probably see overall


is that traffic to these pages will go down


when it's not seasonal.


And if people are not looking for Black Friday,


then they're not going to find your Black Friday pages.


And then it doesn't really matter


if you have that page or not because you're not missing out


on any impressions there.


And if you make this page noindex


or if you make it 404 for a while


and then bring it back later, that's


essentially perfectly fine.


The one thing I would watch out for with seasonal pages


is that you reuse the same URLs year after year.


So instead of having a page that is called Black Friday 2021


and then Black Friday 2022, just have


a page called Black Friday.


And that way, if you reuse that page,


all of the signals that you have associated


with that page over the years will


continue to work in your favor rather than you


having to build up new signals for every year


for a seasonal event like this.


So that's kind of the main recommendation I have there.


But if you delete these pages when you don't need them


and just kind of recreate the same URL later


or if you keep those pages live for a longer period of time,


I think both of those are essentially perfectly fine.


And especially about kind of competitive seasonal events


like Black Friday or maybe Christmas or, I don't know,


other holidays, it is something where


I tend to see sites create those pages a little bit ahead


of time, even if they don't have a lot of content


to share there yet, just so that they


can start kind of building up some signals for those pages.


And that could be with regards to internal links


and external links, kind of marketing efforts or whatever.


Just kind of by having those pages a little bit ahead


of time, even if you don't have a lot of content on them,


it's a little bit easier to kind of be there


when it is suddenly season.


Let's see.


How big is the impact on Google ranking


if I have a bad CLS score?


FCP and FID and LCP have good scores.


Only CLS is not so good.


We don't have anything like a fixed number


with regards to how strong these scores work for a website.


So it's really kind of hard to say how bad is it


or how big is the impact.


From our point of view, we do take these metrics into account


when it comes to the Core Web Vitals and the page experience


ranking factor.


And we try to look at them overall.


And we try to focus especially on the area


where you're kind of in that reasonable area with regards


to these scores.


So if you're not in the, I don't know what they call them,


poor or bad scores, that section.


And as soon as you're kind of out of that bad section,


then that's something that we can say, well,


this is kind of reasonable and we can take into account.


We don't have any fixed kind of rankings or kind of like,


I don't know, algorithmic function where we say,


well, we take 1 half of FCP and 1 half of CLS,


and we take 1 third of this into account.


It's really something where we need


to look at the bigger picture.


And it can happen that over time we kind of like change things


around a little bit to make sure that we're


flagging or kind of like treating the page experience


of pages appropriately.


And especially with regards to the page experience ranking


factor, that is something where from year to year,


we will make changes as well.


So I would expect, I don't know, whenever


they review this, they'll probably


pre-announce some other changes or other factors that


come into play here, similar to how we introduce the desktop


aspect of that as well, which we talked about, I think,


like last year sometime, and it's coming into play later


this year.


Let's see.


Another one that kind of goes into Core Web Vitals.


Can Core Web Vital scores be a site quality issue


that limits crawling or limits how many pages on a site


end up being indexed?


I don't think so.


So it's really kind of hard to look at this without looking


at a specific website.


But essentially, the Core Web Vitals kind of


plays into the page experience ranking factor,


and that's more of a ranking factor.


That's not a quality factor.


And in particular, it doesn't play in


with how much we actually crawl and index from a website.


In some cases, there is a little bit


of a relationship between how fast the page is


and how fast we can crawl it.


But it doesn't have to be that way.


So that's something where usually these sides


are less connected and not completely tied together.


So in particular, when it comes to page experience,


because the time it takes for a page to actually load


depends on so many factors, more than just that one request


to the server, it can be that maybe you


have fonts on this page, or maybe you


have large images that are pulled in from other sites.


All of these things are elements that


play into how fast the page loads for a user,


but don't actually map to how fast we can crawl a page.


Obviously, if your server is so slow


that any request made to the server


takes a couple of seconds, then that's


something where I'd say, well, your page will be slow,


and Google's crawling will be slow,