Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

And I think that's the problem people are just trying to group


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

pages topically maybe with canonicalization,


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

but that's not how it works.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Not how it works, no.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Thank you for confirming that.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Canonical tags and canonicalization


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

is about reducing duplication.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Yes.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

That's what it is for.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Exactly.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Awesome.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Rachel, thank you so much for being here


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

and talking a little bit about canonicalization with me.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

And I think that was useful.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

And I hope you enjoyed it.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Have a good time.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Hey, everyone.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

I hope you liked the previous episode.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Next episode, me and Glenn are going to discuss site moves,


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

right?


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting

Site moves, domain name changes, URL migrations, and more.


Canonicalization: SEO Mythbusting


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So what would you say for a publisher type of website that


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

might talk about the same topic every year?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Maybe the content's a little bit different,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

but it's largely the same conversation.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Let's say they're talking about a certain type of skincare


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

treatment, and they talk about it in 2017, and 2018,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and 2019.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Do you think they should take the same piece of content


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and update it each year, or should they have three


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

different pages for that topic?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

It depends on if it's an incremental change that


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

happened, as in if the skincare routine is pretty much


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

the same as it was last year.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

You can maybe rephrase it a little bit,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

but I would say you update the existing page


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and maybe just reposition it somewhere more prominently


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

on your website for the visitors to see.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But I wouldn't create a new page that basically


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

says the same thing, because especially when they're really


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

similar, we might just think one is a duplication of the other,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and then canonicalize them together,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

no matter what you do in canonical tags.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

MUSIC PLAYING


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Hello, and welcome to SEO Mythbusting.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

In this episode, my guest is Lily Ray,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

SEO director at Path Interactive.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And we're going to discuss an interesting topic that you


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

might want to learn more about.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

What is it that you brought for us today?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

We're going to talk about if too much content is


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

a good thing for SEO or not.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

All right.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So what is it that people believe about this?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

What is the questions that you keep hearing and wonder about?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Yeah, I think a lot of companies think that maybe content's


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

good for SEO, so we should produce a lot of it,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

because it'll help us rank for a lot of different keywords.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And maybe we should put out a new blog post


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

every single week, to the point where their website has


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

thousands of blog posts, and maybe they're not


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

performing really well.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So I think a lot of people have a question about how much


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

content should I really have, and to what extent does this


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

actually help my performance?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Oh, that's a really good question.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So I think, just going back to the basics,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

your key is to provide information to your users,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

right?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

How much content is good for that


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

depends a little bit on what you're doing.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If you're a news site, then sure, cover as much


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

of the happenings that you can.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But if your website is about a specific product,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

then there is only so much you can say about it.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And just keeping rambling on in a single page


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

is not helping you much.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Right.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So you would think that maybe having


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

a blog that talks about industry updates,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

or things that are relevant for that company are worthwhile,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

but maybe not to just produce content


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

for the sake of producing content.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Not for the sake of producing content.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If you have something like, if you


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

have a product that is very versatile,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and different users or different customers


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

are using it in very different ways,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

then this would be an interesting thing


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

to provide, basically say like, oh, look,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

our product can be used for this,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

our product can be used for that.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But just for the sake of content,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that's basically the same as having light content


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

or useless content, really.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And then you're just spending crawling,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and you're spending resources on things


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that are not performing much.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Right.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Is the presence of a blog and showing Google


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that you're producing new content something


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that helps your performance overall


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

as a kind of site-wide factor?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Not necessarily.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

I mean, it is not a site-wide factor.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But if, again, your blog or your website


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

is about something that is basically happening


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

on a regular basis, or it has a lot of updates to it,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

then that can help you bring relevant content


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

to users that would otherwise maybe not find to your website.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Especially if your users don't know about what you're doing,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

then the blog that reports on current events or developments


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

can actually help people understand that, oh, there's


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

this company that does this interesting thing.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But it doesn't change your search performance or ranking


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

or anything.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

It's just providing something relevant and useful to users


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that is going to help you.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If you're just putting it out to have a blog,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

or if you're just like, hey, we just


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

have content that keeps updating and changing


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

without actually giving value to the user,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

then that's not helping you much.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So if you have an older piece of content,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

would you recommend that if it's a high-quality piece


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

of content, do you need to go back in there and make updates?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Or should you only do that when something significant


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

has changed?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

I think you should update it if something significant


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

has changed for sure.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If nothing has really changed, what you can do instead


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

is you can write something different.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

New content has a fresh piece of content


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and just link that other piece of content to say,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

hey, by the way, this is like referring.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

This is not about necessarily search relevancy or anything,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

but it's more helping the user understand


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that there is other interesting content for them.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And it's keeping them on your website,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

making sure that they get the information they


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

were looking for.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Definitely.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Is there any way that Google tells us


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

if there's too much content and maybe that content's


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

underperforming?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Like, can we look at our crawl stats


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

to figure something like that out?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So crawl stats are a bad place to look at this,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

because the fact that we are not crawling something again


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

does not mean that we are thinking it's bad or it's good


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

if we're crawling it often.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

What's more interesting would be to look at the performance


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

report, for instance, in Search Console.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If you are seeing that you get a lot of impressions but not


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that many clicks, you might want to change something


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

about the content if you are getting


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

a lot of clicks through it, but then you see in your analytics


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that actually not much action happens,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

then you can ask yourself, is the traffic worth it


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

or do I need to change my content there?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

There's no such thing as too much content.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

It's just, again, think from the user's perspective,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

what is the thing that I want the user to understand


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and is the user interested in spending time


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

on a page where they need 27 minutes to read everything?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

You get to decide.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Definitely.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If there's a lot of content that's not necessarily


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

performing well on the website, could that


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

be something that brings down the overall trustworthiness


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

or authority of the website from Google's perspective?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

That depends a bit on what is the reason for it


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

not performing.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If it's spammy content, if it's very thin content,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

then that can bring you down a little bit in terms of we


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

might just spend crawl budget on pages


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that are in the end not performing or not even being


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

indexed anymore.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And you might actually want to avoid having spammy content


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and bad content, especially if you get


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

penalties or manual actions.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

You want to definitely clean up there.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But besides that, it is usually a good idea


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

to see, oh, this piece of content really does not perform


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

well.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Let's take it down or at least change it.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And what would you think for companies


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that have something like a Help Center


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

where there's a lot of content that answers


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

very specific questions, but maybe it's


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

only one or two sentences per page,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and maybe they have 500 pages of that nature?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Would you say that's something that they should remain indexed


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

on Google?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Or how does Google treat those types of pages?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

That's a really good question.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

That might be treated as light content, as thin content


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and not necessarily useful.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

I would try to group these things


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and structure them in a meaningful way.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If it's a question about a specific range of products,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

then you can group all these questions together to one page.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Or if you have questions in the category of troubleshooting


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

or operating the thing that you're trying to sell,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

try to group this together to have more dense and helpful


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

pages in one go.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Because how likely is it that I have exactly one question?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If I have one question, I might have a follow-up question,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

or I might have a similar question.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So putting these all together is a good idea.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So grouping it together.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

I think that's one common theme that we


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

talk about a lot in the SEO world now,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

is kind of consolidation.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So do you think there's a case to be made for one?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Maybe you have two pieces of pretty similar content,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and they would be better as one single article.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So doing a lot of merging and redirecting,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that's something that Google's kind of appreciative when


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

we do those types of things.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

We have less crawling to do.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

That's great.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

We also know where to send the users then.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And there's a chance that if you have similar things,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that these come from organizational reasons.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Like one department thinks about it,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and another department thinks about it, and none of these two


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

talk to each other.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So if you consolidate that, you bundle more relevancy


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and information in one place.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And that makes it easier for us to figure out,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

oh, yeah, this is a good site to check this out and get


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

the user this information, rather than cannibalizing


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

each other or just like being duplication.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And what about word count?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

SEOs are always asking, is word count a ranking factor,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

which I think Google's talked about quite a bit recently.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

We've talked about this quite a lot.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And it's not a ranking factor.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If you can say what the user needs to know in 50 words,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that is fantastic.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If you need 100 words, that's cool.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If you need 2,000 words, that's also not absolutely acceptable.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

It's, again, about trying to figure out


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

what's the intention.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If you see yourself repeating yourself multiple times


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and saying the same things over and over again in the same


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

document or on the same page, what's the point?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Yeah.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Well, let's say you're in a situation where


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

you've written 500 words for a specific topic or keyword


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that you're trying to rank for.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And you see all your competitors have 4,000 words or something


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

like that.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Even though word count's not technically a ranking factor,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that's probably a good indication


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that you need longer content, right?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

I mean, it depends.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Just because other people are doing it doesn't mean


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that they're doing it right.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So if you see them rank high, that


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

might not continue to be that way just because they


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

have a high word count.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Again, try to understand what is it that the users need.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Maybe the larger word count just accidentally hits


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

the right bits of information that people are looking for


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and actually fits the query intention of the user


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

better than what you are writing.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

In this case, if you can reformulate it


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

so that your 500 words are better, then go with that.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Don't be the school kid that goes like,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

furthermore, as I was seeing, just like to fill in things.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Unnecessary language, yeah.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And what's kind of the criteria for determining if something


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

is spammy or auto-generated?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So take, for example, if you have 50 location pages for 50


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

states and you want to talk about the business, which


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

is largely the same in all those places,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

but you basically just swap out the name of the city


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and maybe add a couple of facts about that city, for example.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

How does Google perceive those pages?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

That's a really tricky one because either they


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

work or they don't.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So generally speaking, if you are using generated content


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and that is really relevant and good and a human sees this


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and goes, oh, I like this, you're


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

probably on the right track.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

That can work for these pages where


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

you have different information for different cities,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

but it's pretty much like the same kind of formula behind it.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If you have enough facts around it


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and there's relevant information in there


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that changes city to city, that might really work.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

It might also not.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If it's too similar and you basically


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

we see that in places like Germany sometimes


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that there are literally two sides of a river


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and then they are having two different pages for this,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

but they say pretty much the exact same things.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Maybe like five words are different or something


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

like that and maybe a few numbers


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

here and there, like different number of people


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

there or whatever.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Then we might just consider one duplication of the other


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and not put it in the index.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

We might dedupe it and eliminate it from the index.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And then there's not much you can do.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

If we think it's the same kind of content,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

then what's the point?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Why would we show the same content on multiple URLs?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Then we come back to canonicalization, really.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But if you have information that is good enough and different


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

enough from the other bits and pieces, go for it.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So you would encourage businesses


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that are in that position where they do need to target


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

highly localized keywords, that it's OK to have those pages,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

but really invest in making them as unique as possible.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

MARTIN SPLITT


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Can you talk a little bit more about how Google treats


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

or how does Google determine what duplicate content is?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

What's the threshold for duplication?


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

I'm actually not sure what the threshold really is,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

but I know that we are basically fingerprinting the content.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And the fingerprint is done in a way that


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

allows us to say how similar is it.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

We use different similarity metrics and figure out, OK,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

so this is pretty much 95% of this is the same thing.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Again, we see that in the German-speaking countries a lot


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

where, for instance, a shop operates in Switzerland


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and Germany and Austria.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

All of this is in German.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And then they have the same product.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And the price is slightly different due


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

to whatever reason.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Switzerland has a different currency,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

but that's pretty much the entire difference.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Maybe they use a few different words because the local


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

dialects are different.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So you have 1,000 words in each of the product descriptions


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

maybe and reviews and whatnot.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But the price is different.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

The currency might be different if it's Switzerland.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And there might be five different words or something


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

like that in that.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

We consider them all to be the same.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And then you can actually shoot yourself


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

in the foot when you're trying to canonicalize all of them.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Because we're like, that's not a helpful signal


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

because we determine that what you think


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

is individual pieces of content is actually


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

kind of the same thing.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But hreflang can help again and make sure


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that we are surfacing the right version.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So we might only be indexing and canonicalizing one of them.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But we will be showing the different versions of these


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

depending on where the person who's searching is located.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So they use hreflang when there's different dialects


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and different regions.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Definitely, if that's your issue.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

But if it's literally just the content


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

is slightly different because maybe you have different prices


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

or something like that, then we would


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

consider that the same content.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Got it.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Thank you so much for being here and talking with me


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

like through all these questions regarding content


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and what is good content and what's too much


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and what's not enough content.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And this was really helpful and interesting.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And thanks so much for making it here.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Thanks for having me.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

I think you answered a lot of questions


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

that I have in my client's house.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

I really appreciate it.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Hopefully, this will be useful for everyone out there.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And thank you very much for watching.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

Thank you.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

So the next episode, we have Barry Schwartz visiting.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

And we're going to be talking about SEO community and Google


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

and how we can make the relationship better,


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting

hopefully.


Is more content better? SEO Mythbusting


User-generated content (and building your community) | Sustainable Monetized Websites

Welcome back to the series Sustainable Monetized Websites, a series for online content creators


and content managers who also handle monetization. I'm Monetized, and I'm Organika, and in this


episode, we'll talk about user-generated content and building your community.


Organika, do you also feel there's someone missing? Yes! Where's Aurora? Aurora? Aurora?


Hey ladies! Have you seen Aurora? We haven't. And what are you doing here?


Oh, right. I'm Martin Splitt, I'm an open web cheerleader, and I received a special


invitation from Aurora to participate in an episode on user-generated content. That's


so 2008, by the way. How? Is that still a thing?


User-generated content is a great way to engage your users on your website. Let me start by


explaining what it is. User-generated content is content that users contribute towards,


and that is visible to at least a subset of other users of your site.


User-generated content can include comments at the bottom of your pages, images, video,


discussions between users, or complete pages created by users. This is content submitted


by users who operate independently from your site. Frequently, user-generated content is


different to the content that you create, and hence, it can be difficult to supervise.


Any content published in your website created by you or your users will generally be considered


together as a whole for monetization policies and ranking purposes.


Let's deep dive into user-generated content in comments, forums, photo, video, and file


sharing, and online dating sites.


Wait, did you say comments? Really? Is that still a thing people do? And what's the


deal? If you want them, enable them in your CMS or block system and you're done.


You gotta take this more seriously, Martin. Comments are a great way for site owners to


build community and readership. And because of that, comment sections are often used by


spammers who run automated programs that post spam to abuse them. If you've come across


comments that looked like an advertisement or a random link to an unrelated site, then


you've encountered comment spam. Google might not always be able to differentiate between


your content and the user-generated content on the same page, so you want to make sure


that it meets the guidelines. Otherwise, these spam comments on a page can impact your site's


rankings.


And if you allow automated spam to appear on your site, you'll be violating our AdSense


program policies and risking demonetization.


Right, so comments are valuable, but I should take care of them so that they are actually


constructive and useful.


Exactly. Remember, your content can be undone by hateful or vulgar comments from users.


Beyond violating monetization policies, this has the potential to hurt your brand and offend


your user base. That's why you should approach user-generated content with care, creating


a thriving community while minimizing the risks.


How can I stay on top of all the comments that users are posting on my articles?


There are a few things you can do to that end, like exercising active moderation. For


example, by publishing the respectful comments and filtering out the hateful or abusive ones.


Consider using a trusted third-party plugin for commenting. Many of these have robust


moderation and content filtering functionalities.


Having said that, another way to tackle this could be through a simple design change. Rather


than placing comments on the same page as your content, you can transfer comments to


a separate page with no ad code. At the end of your monetized content, place a call to


action such as user comments or view comments. When a user clicks on this, they are taken


to a new page with no Google ad code.


What about these gold old bulletin boards? Are they still around?


You mean forums? Yes, they're still a very important place for online communities to


gather around a variety of topics.


And that is good, right?


Well, they can be an excellent way of fostering a community. People share text, images, and


videos with each other and get to know each other. Unfortunately, sometimes automated


bots invade these communities and spam users.


Yeah, I understand that, but moderating an active forum on your own can be a little overwhelming.


Well, if there's an active community, you can rely on it and create different levels


of trusted users. For example, consider giving moderation abilities to trusted community


members or limit posting for new users. As your users provide their trustworthiness,


you can progressively allow them to post directly. A variation of this could be to limit the


types of content non-trusted users can submit. For example, allow them to post text, but


not images or links.


Yeah, that certainly helps build trust in the community.


Also, keep an eye on non-textual content like photos, videos, or other files. This can be


problematic in terms of adult content, copyright, malware, or even illegal content, and therefore


violate publisher policies or cause issues in Google search.


Right, but I do like sharing my diving photos and videos with other content creators and


seeing theirs. Is there a risk there?


As with text, they can be a wonderful way to build a community around shared interests


or creativity. But you want to take similar measures as you do for textual content to


prevent unwanted content from showing up on your site.


That makes sense, because Google might not be able to distinguish between user-generated


files and those I put on the page.


Also, these services can be abused to violate copyright, spread malware, or unwanted software,


and violate publisher policies. So constant surveillance is important.


I'm a bit confused. If those things require a bit of extra care, how is it with online


dating and user-generated content? That's potentially quite sensitive, too.


Online dating sites are places where users add their photos, videos, and other content


to their profiles. They can often include revealing images that are not family safe.


While these types of images may be relevant to the website, non-family safe images are


prohibited under our AdSense publisher policies. Therefore, don't monetize pages with photos


that are potentially non-family safe or dating profiles that may have non-family safe content.


Also, if a site is primarily oriented toward ad-hoc dating, it is likely not compliant


with the Google AdSense program policies.


So let's say I were the site owner of a dating platform and users uploaded those pictures.


Would that still be my responsibility?


If you want to monetize your content with Google, you will be responsible for all content


on your pages where the Google ad code appears. This means that to participate in Google's


monetization programs, you need to ensure that all content, including user-generated


content, complies with all applicable program policies on pages with ads. Because users


can post anything, you need to ensure that what they post complies with all applicable


monetization policies.


Hola! Am I late?


No, no, no, not at all. We were just discussing what to keep in mind when having user-generated


content on your site.


Great! Did Organica and Monetized convince you already about how cool it is when creating


and engaging online communities?


Yes! And they also told me what site owners should look out for. And I gotta say, I'm


a little bit scared now of user-generated content.


Fear not! Let's look at some implementation recommendations to prevent abuse. First and


foremost, assess the risks associated with user-generated content before monetizing a


page that has it. For most publisher sites, we recommend not to place Google ad code on


pages with user-generated content. Any page that displays Google ads is subject to policy


enforcement. Google applies its monetization policies to the entire page. If, for example,


you have a comment section below an article and one of the comments a user makes contains


dangerous or derogatory content which violates our policies, your entire page could be demonetized.


To prevent this from happening, you can apply a simple design change. Move the user-generated


content, in this case, the comments section, to a different page with below ad code. Let


your users know that they can visit and participate in that section with a call to action, such


as View Comments. Unless you can actively manage user comments, this is likely the easiest


solution.


Publish a content policy on your site. Setting the rules of the game is important. Clearly


let your users know what they're allowed to publish on your site and what they're not.


Block user-generated content pages to be indexed by default so that you have control over what


pages you want the index to include.


This can be done with a noindex robots meta tag in the head section of a page, and you


can remove that once you have approved the content on that specific page.


Another great and underused way of telling Google when links posted on your site have


been added by users and not by you is to mark such user-generated content links, in for


instance comments or forum posts, as rel="ugc". That discourages comment spam and prevents


these links from being associated with your site.


If you want to recognize consistently trustworthy contributors, you can actually remove this


attribute from the links they post.


Enable your users to report violations. Next to each element of user-generated content,


add a flag or a report violation option that allows your users to report potentially problematic


content. Make sure you regularly review these reports and act on them.


Yeah, your community can support you in running a tight ship.


Definitely. In that sense, recruit moderators.


Right, because as your site grows, a passionate community will hopefully form around it, and


then you can recruit moderators to help you review content and maintain a healthy community


engagement.


Disable ad serving until a post is reviewed. Only enable ad serving when you're sure


that a post complies with publisher policies. Build or use an automated content filtering


system to detect violations. You can learn more about content filtering in the resource


linked in the description box.


Use a CAPTCHA on content submission to fight back against bots. Before users can submit


content, ensure that the human beings are not bots, for example by using Google's


reCAPTCHA.


I see. So user-generated content is not a blast from the past, but it actually continues


to be great to gather a community and engage people around the content we produce and publish.


Also, with this great power comes a responsibility to, like for instance, moderating user-generated


content, empowering trusted community members to keep the platform clean and safe, and actually


paying attention to what's happening on my site in order to make sure it does follow


the guidelines for search and ads.


Bravo Martin!


And remember, user-generated content on your site may be considered as another element


of it as a whole, so don't neglect it. But don't leave it out entirely either. It can


be a great way to foster a community around your content.


Thank you for entering our community, Martin, and sharing your views on user-generated content.


The next episode will be around tools and understanding their benefits when creating


sustainable monetized websites. Like and share this video, and subscribe to this channel


Google Search News (Nov ‘19) - Site Kit, updates in Search Console, and more

Hi everyone and welcome to the second Google Search News. I hope life is treating you well


wherever you are. I'm your host today, John Mueller, here from Google Zurich in Switzerland.


With this show, we want to give you a regular summary of what's been happening around Google


Search, specifically for webmasters, publishers, and SEOs. If you'd like to stay up to date,


make sure to subscribe to the channel. Today, we'll be covering some of the things that


have happened since the previous episode. We'll take a look at a cool new WordPress


plugin, webmaster conferences, updates in Search Console, and some other news. Recently,


we launched SiteKit, a WordPress plugin that effortlessly connects your WordPress site


or blog to a collection of Google services. SiteKit makes it a breeze to get your site


verified in Search Console and hooks up other services like Google Analytics, AdSense, and


PageSpeed Insights. With a quick look at the dashboard in your site's admin panel, you'll


have an overview of how your website is doing overall and within Google Search. Curious


to see what folks are searching for? Just want to see the overall traffic? SiteKit has


something for almost everyone to help you easily grow your online presence. I'll add


a link to the description if you're curious. The team working on Google Search Console


has dropped some hot updates recently. They're always working on making it easier for folks


like you to make great websites that work well in Google Search. The updates include


a report for speed. As you might have heard in a previous video, speed is important, but


understanding how it affects a website is really hard. We hope this report makes it


a bit easier to find bottlenecks and to resolve them. Another neat change is that now the


performance report has much fresher data. In some cases, the data we show is just six


hours old. Fresher data is or was one of the most common wishes our users had, so we're


happy that this is now live for you. And last but not least, we're now showing much more


data about videos from your site when they're shown in Search. If you're keen on finding


out more, check out our blog. We touched upon the Webmaster Conference series in the last


episode, but I wanted to give you a brief update on what's been happening there. We


recently had additions in Singapore, Bangkok, and Jakarta, as well as a unique one at the


home of Google in Mountain View, California. In all of these locations, we had presentations


from Googlers, some engineers, some product managers about features they're working on


in Google Search. We have two more events lined up this year in Zurich, Switzerland,


and in Tel Aviv, Israel. So see you there, perhaps. And if you couldn't make it, don't


fret. We're planning on publishing talks from the Mountain View event soon. And looking


into my crystal ball, it looks like we'll have more of these events next year. We have


a few more short updates for you. Here on this YouTube channel, we recently launched


a series for beginners all about Google Search. If you're just getting started or if you're


in touch with folks who are, then make sure to check them out. These videos will be rolling


out over the course of the next months with the goal of making it easier to understand


how you can grow with Google Search. Then the search results preview settings meta tags


we talked about last time are now live. If you'd like to give us information on how much


information a preview can show, then check out our documentation for how to get them


set up. If you've added other meta tags before, then these new ones won't be that different.


And finally, we recently announced that we won't be supporting Flash in indexing for


Google Search anymore. Flash has brought us lots of cool things, from those early jump


and run games to videos hosted on the web, and of course, those fancy interactive websites.


For a long time now, all of that is available directly in HTML pages with a bit of JavaScript.


Given that most browsers don't support Flash content anymore, it's time to say goodbye


to Flash. Thanks for helping to make the web into a fantastic interactive world that it


is now. Well, that's all for now, folks. Thank you for joining us. And now, on to the weather.


Well, to be honest, I don't know what to say. Depending on where you are, I see a bit of


wonderful sunshine, mixed in with some rain, snow, and windy weather. In short, there's


English Google SEO office-hours from December 10, 2021

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


SEO Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate at Google in Switzerland.


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


where people can join in and ask their questions


around their website and web search.


And we can try to find some answers.


Looks like a lot of stuff was submitted on YouTube as well.


But a bunch of people are already


jumping in and raising their hands.


So let's get started with some live questions.


Let's see.


Praveen, I think you're first up.


PRAVEEN SHARMA, SANDHU, MARTIN, MARTIN, MARTIN, MARTIN, MARTIN


So you might have answered this question in the past,


but I didn't find the reference.


So I just want to know that, as we know that for Core Web


Vitals, Google uses this Chrome User Experience Data.


So I want to know, for this Chrome User Experience Data


that Google uses for the Core Web Vitals,


does Google only consider users that


were coming from Google organic search or all the Chrome users,


irrespective of their traffic channel or source?


It's not tied to people clicking from Google search.


So it's not all Chrome users?


Well, it's not all Chrome users because of the way


that the Chrome User Experience Report collects the data.


But it's not tied to any specific source of traffic


for your website.


OK, so what kind of users will see


if this is a user that falls into that category


that we should consider for this report?


I don't know offhand.


I think it has to do with the settings in Chrome,


that you have it set up, that you're


submitting user feedback through Chrome, those kind of things.


But I don't know the exact details offhand.


OK, sure.


Cool.


All right, Christian.


No.


Hi, good morning, John.


So I've got a question.


So I have this website I'm looking for.


And we have this situation that this website hasn't


been migrated to mobile-first indexing.


And there is kind of mixed state.


We have some pages which have a separate mobile version.


And some other pages are responsive.


And the link structure is kind of unclear.


So I suspect that this might be the reason for the website


not to be migrated to mobile-first yet.


And just wanted to confirm if this is true


or if there might be other reasons for that.


I don't know.


My guess is maybe at the time where


we were migrating all of the websites over,


maybe that was causing it to kind of be held back.


But as far as I know, there's still


a kind of a batch of mobile-first indexing sites


that are just not migrated over.


And it's something where we're working


through some of the bigger sites there step by step


to make sure that they can all be migrated cleanly.


And then when we have kind of the bigger issues resolved,


then we'll migrate the rest as well.


So my guess is the website is kind


of in this holding position where it's not necessarily


that they're doing anything wrong now.


It's just back when we checked, it wasn't perfect.


OK, so you would say it's good to just wait a little bit


longer to see what happens?


Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the timeline is.


But my guess is towards the first half of next year,


we will be migrating all of the remaining sites over.


And then you'd probably see that happen.


OK, OK, cool.


Thank you.


Sure.


Akash.


Hi, John.


Hi.


One of my client's website will be down for a week


or for two weeks.


OK.


And the reason why I'm here is there


is few bugs on the website.


And that's the reason they said they


wanted to take the whole website down for a week or two.


And my question is only related, although there


will be traffic laws and so and so,


but how can I tell Google that this


is the temporary situation?


It will be only for the two weeks.


And our website will be live.


Is there anything that I could display a page showing


the website is temporary down and will be displayed in?


That the countdown is there on my page?


It's been within two weeks or the 10 days?


Something like that, can I tell to Google


that this website is currently down?


But it will be just going back live again within two weeks


or a week.


But there shouldn't be any ranking loss


or there could be a minimum ranking loss


that I could get, something like that.


I don't think you'll be able to do it for that time, regardless


of whatever you set up.


So for an outage of maybe a day or so,


using a 503 result code is a great way


to tell us that we should check back.


But after a couple of days, we think this is a permanent


result code, and we think your pages are just gone.


And we will drop them from the index.


And when the pages come back, we will crawl them again,


and we will try to index them again.


But it's essentially during that time,


we will probably drop a lot of the pages from the website


from our index.


And there's a pretty good chance that it'll come back


in kind of a similar way, but it's not always guaranteed.


So any time you have a longer outage, where


I'm thinking more than a couple of days,


I would assume that at least temporarily you


will have really strong fluctuations,


and it's going to take a little bit of time to get back in.


It's not impossible, because these things happen sometimes.


But if there's anything that you can


do to avoid this kind of outage, I would try to do that.


And that could be something like setting up


a static version of the website somewhere


and just showing that to users for the time being.


But especially if you're doing this in a planned way,


I would try to find ways to reduce the outage to less


than a day, if at all possible.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


Well, thank you so much.


That's my query.


Thank you so much.


And then I guess this looks like time.


Good luck.


Hazel.


SPEAKER 3 Hey, John.


Good morning.


It's me again.


So we want to ask some questions about Google Adboards.


So do you think a well-dissolized URL


to the Google bot in the robots.txt


will affect our Google Ads?


And maybe that cause ads won't work normally?


So as far as I know, the Ads bot doesn't


follow the normal robots.txt directives.


You have to use the user agent directly for it.


But I don't know what the effect would be on the ad side


if you block Ads bot.


My understanding is we use this as a way


to do quality text for the landing page.


And I don't know what that would mean from a quality


point of view for ads if you don't


let Ads bot check these pages.


SPEAKER 4 The reason we talk about this question


is that we recently found that Google bot crawled our ads URL


more than normal page URLs.


But we want Google bots to crawl more normal product pages


instead of these ads.


So we just think if it's OK to block ads URL for Google bot.


JOHN MUELLER Sure.


That's perfectly fine.


Blocking the ads landing pages for Google bot is fine.


Again, if you block the ads pages for Ads bot,


then that's something you'd have to check with the ads folks.


SPEAKER 4 Yeah.


That's not what we do.


So also about the Google bots, does Ads bots share


same crawl budget with Google bot?


Yes.


Yes, so that means maybe the crawl request from Ads bot


increase and maybe Google bots crawl less.


Yes, it can happen.


Usually it settles down fairly quickly.


I don't know the details from the ad side,


but my understanding is when you submit new ads campaigns,


then the Ads bot checks all of those pages.


And once that's checked, then they


don't need to be checked as often as usual.


SPEAKER 4 OK.


I see.


So if we're blocking the ads URLs in the Google bot,


but Google bot maybe still crawl too many ads URLs,


what can we do?


Maybe some measures to handle this situation,


to let the Google bot crawl more product pages?


So I think if you're blocking the ads landing


pages for Google bot specifically,


then we shouldn't be crawling the ads landing


pages with Google bot.


It would really only be the Ads bot that's crawling it.


Yeah.


Because previous time we blocked some certain pages


in the robots.txt, but we still see that sometimes Google


bots still crawl these pages, even though we blocked them.


So we just want to make sure that it's working.


It should never be the case that if we recognize the robots.txt


file that we still crawl the URL anyway from Google bots.


So that feels like either something


we would have to know as soon as possible,


or maybe some mistake with things


like upper and lower case in the URLs,


or not exactly the right path being included


in the robots.txt file.


So normally, if we block in robots.txt,


it shouldn't be crawled by Google bot.


And if you see situations where the Ads bot crawling severely


drowns out everything else, I would use that contact form


that we have in the Help Center to report problems


with Google bot.


I think you've used it before in the past as well.


Because that also goes to the Google bot team,


and they can help to distribute the requests a little bit


better, and contact the Ads team and tell


them to slow down with this website, those kind of things.


Sure, sure.


If we notice something unusual, we definitely


would report it to Google.


So another question is about 304 response code.


Do you think the 304 response code affects crawling?


Because logically, if we think if Google bot check a URL


with the same content, and it returns 304 code


at first time, and maybe there's a possibility


that Google bot may reduce the crawling for the same URL


because it returns to the 304 code.


So I think there are two things.


So the 304 is, I think, in response to the if modified


since requests, where Google bot tries to see


if this page has changed.


And my understanding is that a 304 response code would not


apply to the crawl budget side of things.


So that basically means for us, we can reuse that request


and crawl something else on the website.


So there's that aspect.


And the other aspect with regards


to crawling that specific URL less,


I don't think that would be the case.


But we do try to figure out how often pages change.


And we try to recrawl pages based on the assumed page


frequency or update frequency that we have.


So it's not so much that that particular URL would


get crawled less frequently.


It's more that, oh, we understand a bit better


how often these pages change.


And then based on that, we can update our refresh


crawling a little bit.


So if most of the pages on the site returns to 304,


so maybe it's a signal for Google


that this site has no new updated content.


Maybe reduce the crawling rate?


No, I don't think so.


No.


I don't think we would reduce the crawling rate.


We would just try to focus more on maybe the parts where


we do see updates happening.


So I would definitely not artificially hide the 304s


in the hope that it improves the crawling.


Sure, sure.


So also about the crawling issues,


since our crawling rate is back to normal,


and we notice that our crawl request from smartphone


is recovering much more faster than desktop,


could you share some lights on it?


Any possible reasons behind this?


I don't know.


It sounds like what would be expected


with mobile-first indexing, that we crawl a bit more


with mobile.


I don't know if your specific site has already


moved to mobile-first indexing.


Yeah, but then that would be normal,


that we just crawl more with mobile.


And then you would see any changes faster there.


Yeah, OK.


So it's mobile-first indexing.


So last one question is more general one,


is about 301 redirects.


Oh, we are doing some, we are taking down some useful pages


and doing 301 redirects to them.


And we just think, well, will a huge amount of 301 redirects


do harm to a site?


Large.


No, no.


That's perfectly fine.


If you're making changes on your website and redirecting,


that's perfectly fine.


So no matter how many pages we make redirects?


Yeah, yeah.


OK, that's good.


That's good to hear.


Cool.


Thanks.


That's where we all make question.


Let's see.


Reshmi.


Hi, John.


Hi.


Hi, this is the first time actually


I'm attending this session.


It's regarding to our e-commerce website.


This year only, we have launched one e-commerce website.


And for 70-plus countries, we have created a hreflang.


And our URL structure for different countries,


we have created, like we have established in UAE.


So UAE, we have like en underscore ae.


And when it comes to US, our website structure


is xyz.com slash en underscore us.


Like that we have created for 70-plus countries.


And the language is in English.


And for all the regions, our content is same.


Except for some regions, we have mentioned few cities.


Like UAE, we have mentioned cities like Emirates,


like Dubai, Sharjah, and when it comes to US.


But overall, the content is same.


And we have more than 800,000 products on our website.


And this year only, we have launched.


And for other countries also, even though our language is not


in English, we have created locales like BG underscore


BG, like for Bulgaria and all.


And initially, we have submitted all the sitemaps


for all these regions as well.


And first, we had experience that Google


started crawling our website.


And almost 350,000 URLs got indexed.


Then we have started experiencing


like the indexing of the URLs.


So we first thought it can be the speed of the website.


And then we have increased the speed.


And then again, we started experiencing,


OK, the URL got indexed.


Latest change, then again, it stopped.


Then what we did, we removed all the submitted URLs.


And then we have the URL structure like xyz.com slash en.


Then we submitted the URL.


Now we are experiencing like the indexing of the URL.


And when we submitted the website structure like slash en,


we had experience that all the index URLs are


going to the excluded list.


And we don't know what is the exact reason behind that.


What can be the reason?


Is it because of the, since the language is in English,


and we have created different, different URL structure?


And we don't know exactly.


Now the index URL is showing is only 160,000.


Yeah.


OK.


I don't know your website.


So it's really hard to say.


But overall, from what you've mentioned,


it sounds like you have a lot of URLs.


And you have those 70 different country and language versions


on top of that.


So everything is multiplied by like 70.


Yes.


From my kind of offhand assumption


is that this is just too much.


So it's not that from a technical point of view


that we can't handle that.


But essentially, you're submitting so much content.


And you have everything multiplied by 70, essentially.


And that means for us that we start somewhere.


And we start indexing some things.


But there's almost no chance for us


to get through to everything.


So usually what I recommend in these kind of situations


is start off with a very small number of different country


and language versions.


And make sure that they're working well.


And then expand incrementally from there.


And in particular, if you have a lot of English variations,


then try to make sure that you just


have maybe one English landing or English site


rather than all of the different English country


versions, which are essentially the same thing.


Because if you have fewer versions of the English


content, it's a lot easier for us to focus on that


for indexing and to kind of treat that a little bit better


when it comes to ranking overall.


So that's kind of my general recommendation


for me to be able to take their own region.


So that's kind of the thing that we've


got with regards to international versions.


It's very easy to take a website and say,


I will just make all English language countries


and create like 100 different versions of a website.


But it just causes so many problems


and makes everything in the whole crawling and indexing


and ranking cycle makes everything so much harder.


So that would be kind of the direction I would head.


It's just start off a lot smaller


and then build out from there.


So that means Google is considering as a duplicate.


I think a large part of the issue


there is that we just see all of these different copies


of the same thing.


And we don't know what you really want us to do.


We have to focus on a small part of it.


We can't do everything at once.


So it ends up causing almost more problems for your website


by having all of these different versions.


AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 That means we are going in the wrong direction.


AUDIENCE MEMBER 2 Probably or moving too fast.


I don't know.


It's something where it's very easy to take a really large


website that is doing well and say, oh, we will just


copy their system and take all of the different English


versions and language versions and do the same thing.


But if you're not in the situation


of that large, well-known website already,


then it's very different for you.


And then it's a lot harder to actually get to expanding.


So I would try to pick one English version, maybe


one other language version to start off with,


and then expand from there.


AUDIENCE MEMBER 3 Yeah, because since we want to target worldwide,


because it's an e-commerce website


and we want to target worldwide, and we want to improve our SEO,


we just targeted in this way, creating different URLs


and locating them in different countries like that.


So I think we can focus only on the main domain instead


of creating locale, right?


Yeah, I mean, that's what I would do, yeah.


And no need of going for the e- and, I mean,


the URL structure should be like www.xyz.com instead


of the locale, right?


You can have the locale in there.


It doesn't really matter.


But again, I would make it so that you primarily just


have one English version rather than all


of the other variations of English as well.


OK.


OK, thank you.


Thank you, Mr. John.


Sure.


Let's see, Gakushi, I think.


Hi.


I'm new, and bear with me if my question isn't clear enough.


But we have a website with about, say, 20,000,


30,000 pages.


And it's like a directory service,


but we have unique content.


So we put no index to probably about 2 thirds of those pages


because we wanted to kind of concentrate


what Google looks at.


But after a month or so, only less than 1%


of those pages are indexed.


And we're getting identified or discovered,


but not indexed for almost all the pages.


So kind of scratching our heads what we can do.


Made a lot of tweaks, and looks like internal linking


is all right.


We might be restricting ourselves a little bit


by the canonical setting, but they don't look wrong.


So in the end, we kind of figured,


going through your videos and stuff,


it might be a site quality issue because there


are predecessors with kind of similar content that


are already indexed.


And yet, we do have very unique content.


The problem may be that that unique content is not text.


It's data.


And it looks like a lot of the quality


is assessed by sort of things that's readable by human being.


But our service is really focused


on a number that is very valuable.


And we're just wondering what we can do.


Should we kind of try to squeeze in text, which isn't actually


central to what we do?


Or are there things that we can do


to tell Google that that is actually valuable to people


who visit our sites?


OK.


I think, in general, having numbers on a page is fine,


and it's something that we do see as being kind of part


of unique content on a page.


So just because a lot of the content is kind of numerical


wouldn't necessarily mean that we would see the whole page


as being duplicate.


So it's hard for me to kind of estimate what kind of site


it is with regards to kind of like you mentioned


as a directory type site.


From a quality point of view, I do


think that matters quite a bit in terms of how much we


actually index from your website.


So that's something where I would probably still


focus on that.


If you're saying the site is like 25,000 pages large,


it feels like something that we should


be able to index if it's something


that we would consider to be reasonable quality website.


And when it comes to kind of the quality assessment,


it is something where we do look at the content of the page,


and we try to make sure that it's not duplicate.


But we also try to understand the bigger picture of that page


within kind of the context of the rest of the web.


So that sometimes makes it a little bit trickier.


SPEAKER 2 Right.


Just as a follow up, we're getting


discovered and not indexed rather than crawled and not


indexed for those 99%.


Should we differentiate between those two?


Because our site is not that big,


and this can't be a crawl budget issue in my view.


In that case, are those two designations


pretty much the same in that it's just a quality issue?


Again, I don't know your website,


so it's hard for me to say offhand.


But if it's something where you're


seeing kind of the clean URLs being


listed in the discovered not indexed report,


essentially the URLs that you do want to have indexed,


then to me that sounds like it's really less a matter of like


Google can't go off and crawl that many URLs because, again,


with like 25,000 pages, most servers that


are kind of reasonably sized can easily allow that kind


of crawling on a regular basis.


And it's probably really more a matter


of our understanding of the overall website quality.


And with larger websites or if in the discovered not indexed


report you see that there are lots


of different variations of URLs, like with parameters


or with upper lowercase, those kind of things,


that can be a sign that the internal linking is


kind of messy and that we're having trouble finding


the right URLs to crawl.


But if we're showing the right URLs in discovered not indexed


report and it's a reasonably small website,


then to me that kind of more points


in the direction of the overall site quality.


Right.


So do you think we should try to add text in there?


What we show is really a directory of companies,


and we show what a stock price means


in terms of future growth of that company.


So it's a number.


But there's not a whole lot of sort of readable text


that goes with it.


It's just a number.


Does this $20 stock mean 10% growth or 15% growth


is what's valuable?


We can add it.


We do have a description, but it's


common to all those companies.


And we've got to figure out what to do


if we were to squeeze in unique text per each company.


But should we head to that direction, do you think?


I don't think the text will affect how we index the pages.


So from that point of view, it's something


where if you see the text affecting how users kind of look


at your pages and are able to interact with your pages,


then sure.


But that's more a matter of trying


to figure out what users are actually looking for


and where you can provide unique value to your users.


But just kind of adding text to pages, I don't think,


would affect how we would crawl and index those pages.


If it's something where you're providing numbers like,


I don't know, like the stock numbers there,


that's something where I would also


try to figure out what you can do to make sure


that what you're providing is unique


and provides value to users and do something maybe


along the lines of a user study to figure out what is it


that we can do to make our website such


that users recommend it to other people as well.


And kind of that it builds up almost like, I don't know,


trust or something from the user point of view.


And a lot of times, those are not purely technical things


that you change on a website.


Where you change a design or you convert some of the text,


some of the numbers into text, for example,


it's really a matter of kind of the overall setup


of the website.


Great, thank you so much.


Sure.


Let me run through some of the submitted questions,


and then we'll get back to the giant number of people


who have their hands raised.


Wow, so many today.


Let's see.


Does Google have any trouble indexing sites


that have a mobile version on a subdomain,


for example, example.com and m.example.com?


And then the question goes into, they're


seeing a lot of pages indexed without contact.


So from our point of view, we don't have, well,


at least as far as I know, we don't have any problems


with m.domains in general in the sense


that this is one of the supported formats


that we have for mobile websites.


We don't recommend the m.setup.


So if you're setting up a new website,


I would try to avoid that as much as possible


and instead use a responsive setup.


But it is something that can work.


So if you're seeing this regularly with your website


that we're not able to index your mobile content properly,


then to me, that would point more


at an issue on your website where


when mobile Googlebot is trying to crawl,


it's not able to access everything as expected.


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


to try to clean that up.


The one thing that throws people off sometimes with m.domains


is with mobile first indexing, we switch to the m.version


as the canonical URL.


And it can happen that we show the m.version in the desktop


search results as well.


So you also need to watch out for not only redirecting


mobile users from the desktop to the mobile version,


but also redirecting desktop users from the mobile


to the desktop version.


And again, that's something if you


have a responsive design setup, you


don't have to worry about that.


So it's another reason to go responsive if possible.


Would I be penalized if I don't set the rel sponsored or rel


nofollow for my affiliate links?


Probably not.


So from our point of view, affiliate links


kind of fall into that category of something financial


attached to the links.


So we really strongly recommend to use this setup.


But for the most part, if it doesn't come across


as you selling links, then it's not


going to be the case that we would manually


penalize a website for having affiliate links


and not marking them up.


It is a best practice, and I strongly recommend doing that.


But it's not something where I'd say


we will go off and kind of manually take action


on these sites.


A few months ago, we made a CMS migration,


and our URL structure completely changed.


All of our URLs execute 301 redirects to the new addresses,


and we have improved technical indicators.


After that, we realized our organic traffic dropped a lot.


And immediately after the URL has changed.


Is that what we should expect?


What time does it take?


So when you move from one domain to another,


it's very easy for us to just transfer everything


from that domain to the new one.


And that's something that can be processed within almost


like a week or so in many cases.


However, if you change the internal URLs


within your website, then that's something


that does take quite a bit of time.


Because essentially, we can't just


transfer the whole website in one direction.


We have to almost reprocess the whole website


and understand the context of all of the pages


on the website first.


And that can take a significant amount of time.


And during that time, you will almost certainly


see fluctuations.


So my kind of like offhand guess would be you


will definitely see at least a month of fluctuations there,


perhaps even longer, especially if it's a bigger change


within the website itself.


The other thing is when you change your CMS,


oftentimes things that are associated with the CMS


also change.


And that includes a lot of things around internal linking,


for example, and also the way that your pages are structured


in many cases.


And changing all of those things can also


result in fluctuations.


It can be that the final state is higher or better


than it was before.


It can also be that the final state is less strong


So that's something where changing a CMS


and changing all of the internal linking on a website,


changing the internal URLs on a website,


changing the design of these pages,


these are all individually things


which can cause fluctuations and can cause drops and perhaps


even rises over time.


But doing that all together means


that it's going to be messy for a while.


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


waiting to see what happens is something


you almost have to do.


But at the same time, I would also


recommend really from a technical point of view


trying to understand all of the differences


between your new version of your website and your old one


and try to figure out which of these changes are better


and which of these changes might be worse


and which things you might want to clean up.


Archive.org is a great way of looking at your website


in the past.


So I would use that to try to figure out


what things looked like before, how the internal linking was


set up, what anchor text were there, what headings,


what kind of text was there, all of that.


Another thing to watch out for with these kind of migrations


is oftentimes there's embedded content


that you don't think about directly because it's not


an HTML page.


And a really common one is images.


And if you don't redirect your old image URLs,


then we have to reprocess them and find them again new


because we don't have that connection


between the old images and the new ones.


So if your site was getting a lot of image search traffic,


that can also have a significant effect.


And setting up those redirects probably still makes sense,


even if you've moved after, I don't know, a month or so.


I don't know what the timing here was.


Then I have a not a technical question,


but a career question.


What is your advice for someone interested in pursuing


a career in SEO?


What should they focus on if they already started learning


and are familiar with the basics?


How to go from there to become great at SEO?


I don't know.


I don't get these kind of questions often,


so I don't have a perfect answer lined up.


From my point of view, what I kind of like about SEO


is that there's so many different angles where


people can kind of dive in and understand a little bit more.


And oftentimes, people have interests in, I don't know,


figuring out what to do with regards to content


or figuring out trying to understand the audiences that


are involved, trying to understand


the technical details of a website,


maybe even going into the direction of JavaScript


and developing things.


And all of these are, I think, really neat angles.


And they're all important for SEO.


It's not that one of these is going to go away


and suddenly you'll be stuck.


So my recommendation there would kind of


be to figure out which of these angles you really enjoy doing.


And try to figure out ways to do a little bit more of that.


One of the things I've recommended


in the past, which might also be appropriate here,


is to take part in the different webmaster and SEO forums.


So Google has, I think, a help community as well.


And there are definitely others out there as well.


And the good part there with all of these forums


is that you see a lot of different scenarios.


And you run into situations where


you see where you can kind of dive in and try to understand,


well, what is the problem here and how could I solve this?


And whether or not you actively take part in the forum


and kind of post your suggestions there,


at least the opportunity to look at individual situations


where you see, well, there's a problem here.


How can I try to figure this out myself?


I think that is really valuable.


And that's really important in the long run


because a lot of times you will see the same kind of problem


come back over and over again.


And if you understand the patterns there,


it's a lot easier for you to jump in and say,


well, this is the same pattern as I've seen before.


And that means I need to double check these three or these five


things first.


So I think that's always really valuable to kind of see


and practice a little bit more.


But again, there are so many different options


and so many different directions that you could take.


It's hard to say, you need to do this one thing


to become better at SEO.


Let's see.


I have a situation with a site where


the main navigational links is visually different


from the mobile and the desktop versions.


The mobile version is slimmer, and the desktop version


has more links.


Looking exclusively at crawling, the desktop is more helpful.


For technical reasons, we can't hide the desktop links


in the source, and the site is on mobile first indexing


already.


Is there a chance that Google might think,


I'm trying to game the algorithms by keeping


this more link-rich navigation even though it's invisible


to mobile users and bots?


So I think overall, this is a fairly common setup


for responsive design in that you have kind of both variations


visible in the HTML.


And from that point of view, I don't


see it as being super problematic,


but it's probably also not super clean


because you kind of have to maintain both variations


of the UI within the same HTML rather than having just one


variation in the HTML that you adjust,


depending on the viewport size of the device.


So from that point of view, I don't think you would be


penalized for anything like this.


Well, definitely not penalized because it's


a very common setup.


It's probably not optimal, but it's also not


something where I would say you need to jump in and fix that,


by the way.


So that's kind of my assessment there.


My question is about dealing with outdated blogs


on our platform.


We have about 450 blogs, some of which are 45 years old


and therefore out of date and have almost no traffic on them.


Do you recommend deleting them because they hurt


our general search rankings?


What's the best way?


Delete all without traffic at once


and request index deletion at Google,


or do you recommend step-by-step approach?


So I think with blogs, you probably mean blog posts,


so individual pages, not whole sets of pages,


because I think if you have so many different sets of pages,


it's probably a bigger change.


But with 450 pages, say more or less, where you're saying,


well, these don't get a lot of traffic,


should I just delete them or not, from my point of view,


probably that's something where you can just


make that call on your own.


I don't see that as being something


where from an SEO point of view, you


would see a significant change, unless these are really,


really terrible blog posts.


The main thing, however, I would watch out


for is that just because something


doesn't have a lot of traffic doesn't mean that it's


a bad piece of content.


It can mean that it's something that just gets traffic


very rarely, maybe once a year.


Maybe it's something that is very seasonal,


that overall, when you look at it from a website point of view,


it's not very relevant, but it's relevant, I don't know,


maybe right before Christmas, for example.


So from that point of view, I would


say it's fine to go through a website


and figure out which parts you want to keep and which parts


you want to clean out.


But just purely looking at traffic


for figuring out which parts you want to clean out,


I think that's too simplified.


But again, from an SEO point of view,


removing 450 pages from a larger website,


that's a tiny change.


And I wouldn't worry about when you do that


and how exactly you do that.


Delete them whenever you recognize


that they're no longer valuable.


Delete them all at once.


That's also an option.


With regards to submitting them with the removal tool


as well in Search Console, that probably


wouldn't change anything because the removal tool in Search


Console just hides the page in the search results.


It doesn't actually remove anything from the website.


So that's one thing you don't have to do.


But again, otherwise, I would just


think about which pages you want to keep,


which ones you want to remove, and go through it like that.


Would a query string at the end of an image source URL


have a negative effect for SEO?


We use it for cache invalidation when an image is edited.


So no, it wouldn't cause issues with regards to SEO.


But with images in general, we tend


to recrawl and reprocess them much less frequently.


So that means that if you're regularly


changing the image URLs linked in your website,


we would have to kind of refine those again and put them


in our image index again.


And that tends to take a lot longer than with normal HTML


pages.


So from that point of view, if you can avoid doing that


too often, I would recommend doing that.


If it's something that happens, I don't know, very rarely,


and where you're saying, well, it doesn't really matter too


much how things are processed in image search,


we don't rely on image search for traffic to our website,


then from that point of view, that's totally non-issue.


The thing I would avoid, especially here with image URLs


is that you embed something that changes very quickly.


So something like a session ID or just like always today's


date, because that would probably change more often


than we would reprocess the image URLs.


And then we would never be able to index any of the images


for image search.


Let's see.


Maybe I'll just go back to more live questions,


since we have so many people here.


Bruno, over to you.


Hi, John.


Thank you for this opportunity.


John, we are from a news website here in Brazil.


And we have a question about a problem


that we are going through in the last few days in our website.


We're going through a huge drop in the delivery of our content


through Google Discover.


And now Google Discover is our main oxygen channel.


But in the last 10 days, the delivery of our content


through Discover has dropped to practically zero.


Our normal audience was kind of 1,000 active users


in real time.


And now it's about 90 or 100 active users.


And we didn't change anything technical or editorial.


In our search console, we did not report any problem.


We have all Core Web Vitals ratings very high.


In our Crooks reports, it's OK to 2% or above 80%.


Our website is 100% AMP.


And we don't know what's happening.


What do you think could be happening with us?


Can we do something to fix this problem and discover?


We don't know what's happening.


Yeah.


I think it's always tricky with Discover


because it's, at least what I hear from people,


it's very binary in that either you get a lot of traffic


or you don't get a lot of traffic from Discover.


And that also means that any changes there


tend to be very visible.


So my main recommendation is not to rely on Google Discover


for traffic, but rather to see it as an additional traffic


source and not as the main one.


When it comes to Discover, there are a few things


that kind of play in there.


You mentioned some of the technical things


that I think are good practices.


One of the things that also plays in there is, for example,


the core updates also play a role.


We recently had a core update, maybe


from a timing point of view, that


matches what you saw there.


So that's something where if you do see an effect from the core


update, then I would double check the blog post


that we have about core updates with the large number of tips


and ideas that you could think you could focus on.


The other thing is with Discover, in particular,


we have a set of content guidelines


that we try to stick to in an algorithmic way.


And depending on the website itself,


it might be something where some of these content guidelines


of your website is kind of borderline.


So for example, I don't know the content guidelines all by heart,


but I think there is something around clickbaity titles


or clickbaity content in general or kind


of adult-oriented content, for example.


And it might be that your website is kind of borderline


there with regards to how we kind of evaluate


your website in that regard.


And then it can also happen that our algorithms say,


oh, well, a large part of this website


is just clickbait or kind of one of the other categories


that we list in the content guidelines.


And then we will be a lot kind of more conservative


with regards to how we show the website in Discover.


So those are kind of like without knowing your website,


that's kind of the direction I would head.


On the one hand, the core updates, kind of


think about that.


On the other hand, the content guidelines that we have.


And then finally, I would still make sure


that you don't rely on Discover for your business overall


because it can change fairly quickly.


And it's something where often they're not


pure technical reasons behind those changes.


OK, OK, thank you.


Cool.


Brian.


Hi, John.


Hi.


Nice to meet you finally.


Yeah.


OK.


I have a couple of questions.


First one, on a Reddit post a few weeks ago, I believe,


you mentioned that having less than 30 pages


would make Google consider the website less authoritative.


And what, I know that that links it open to SEOs writing.


You have to have minimum 30 articles to rank, et cetera.


But my question concerns the other extreme.


What about one page sites?


I think you can make good one page sites.


So from that point of view, I'm not too worried about that.


I think the Reddit post, as far as I remember it,


was something along the lines, I created 30 blog posts


and they're really good.


And therefore, my website should be authoritative.


And from my point of view, if you going off


and creating 30 blog posts does not automatically


make your website authoritative.


And especially for the higher or the more critical topics,


it's something where you can't just


create 30 blog posts on a medical topic


and then say, I am a doctor.


I've written 30 articles.


So that was the direction I was headed there.


And for a lot of websites, it's not


that you need to be seen as an authority.


You essentially put your content out there.


If you're a small business, you're selling something.


You don't need to be an authority.


And especially things like one page websites,


they're often very focused on this one thing.


And you don't need to be an authority


to do that one thing, to sell, I don't know, an e-book


or to give information about opening hours for a business.


It's just information.


So from that point of view, having a one page website,


I think is perfectly fine.


With regards to starting out with a one page website,


I think that's fine.


I would just think about, well, where


do you want to go from there at some point?


Maybe you do want to create more pages.


And try to find a way that you don't paint yourself


into a corner by saying, well, I have to put everything


on one page all the time.


But rather, expand when you see that it fits.


OK, the second question is actually more of a hypothetical.


So for international SEO, say you


have a site that is basically generally well established.


They have links going to it, all that stuff.


It's generally good from an SEO standpoint.


But at one point, they decided to go their international URLs


and set up into one domain.


Say, for example, it would be something


like media news United States as opposed


to the international URLs and the international setup.


What, aside from the obvious, from things


like links being combined, maybe not being redirected properly,


stuff like that, what else would Google all of a sudden


decide to drop traffic 90% after that implementation?


Assuming that everything was done 100% correctly,


which is likely not to be the case on a larger


site like that, what would happen


to cause Google to drop traffic like that in such a scenario?


It's hard to say.


So usually what I would do in a case like this


is try to figure out if things have settled down or not.


Because if it's in this flux period,


it's really hard to determine what things should be like.


And then I would try to dig into both individual pages


and individual queries.


So in Search Console, figure out what, I don't know,


the top 50 queries were.


And look at the top 50 queries now.


And see, are there certain queries which have dropped?


Is it more a matter of everything overall dropping


slightly?


To try to figure out, is this based


on individual parts of the site?


Or is it like an overall change?


And the same thing on a page level as well.


Often what I find when I look at things on a page level


is that individual pages that used to get a lot of traffic


suddenly don't work anymore.


They're like 404, or they got redirected incorrectly,


or something like that.


And then it's something where it's suddenly


not clear what actually happened there in that you see,


well, some of these top traffic pages are gone now.


Then, of course, the overall traffic


would be kind of visibly affected by that as well.


But usually going and trying to find ways


to figure out what the details were of that change that


helps to understand a little bit better which direction people


should start looking.


Thank you, John.


Thank you very much.


Cool.


Thanks.


All right.


David.


Yeah, hi.


Last one in, I guess.


So I posted this also in the comments.


So I have a small website.


And it's a couple of hundred URLs only.


It's a software company.


And it's a small team producing content like white papers


and health articles and blog posts.


And it has been going well for a long time.


And suddenly now in November, the posted pieces,


the published pieces are not indexed anymore,


not all of them, which is very sad because they're


writing nice little pieces for Black Friday,


how to write a newsletter for Black Friday or for Christmas.


And then we're sitting there and seeing


that Google is calling them or discovering them.


We see that in the Search Console.


But they're not indexed.


So I tried everything.


I looked at the technical issues.


The linking is good.


So my question is, is there a paradigm shift


that Google is saying, well, thanks


for suggesting these new, publishing these articles,


but we don't want it right now?


Is there something new that has changed recently?


Not really, at least not that I know of.


But I think what I see a lot with regards


to a lot of the indexing questions


that I get nowadays is from a technical point of view,


it's very easy for websites to make websites that just work.


You set up WordPress, and then essentially all of the SEO


is done for you.


It just works.


And from our point of view, this means


that it's less often a case that there's


a technical problem with a page, that it doesn't get indexed.


That means all of the content that we get


is essentially technically OK.


And our systems have to be a lot more critical with regards


to the overall quality of the website, the quality


of the pieces of content that we get.


And then it's something where additionally in Search Console,


we give you all of the information on things


like discovered, not indexed or crawled, but not indexed.


And then suddenly you see all of these problems,


and it seems like something that people have to fix.


So from that point of view, it feels


like it's kind of normal for us to get a lot more


of these indexing questions just because, well, a lot of content


is kind of OK.


And we still can't index everything on the web,


so we have to make a cut somewhere.


That said, if you're really looking in situations


where you're seeing this is a smaller website


and the content is really reasonable,


and it's not something where they're just


rewriting news articles from other people's sites,


I would love to have example URLs.


So if there's any other things.


SPEAKER 2 I pasted them actually in the comments.


SPEAKER 1 OK, perfect.


Perfect.


SPEAKER 2 I would love to hear your,


because you could say it's not a big deal to understand


that Google cannot index everything.


And we do rank for some of these topics,


for example, Black Friday 2020.


We rank for that.


And now we are the new piece, Black Friday 2021,


what to do with your customers.


And it's a handwritten piece.


So the question would be there, should we just


lay off the content team?


Because it's really expensive to produce content.


I mean, they're writing on those pieces a couple of days.


Those are nice ladies.


They're sitting there and writing those content.


And then they're not getting indexed.


And we're not getting any traffic from Google for that.


So basically, the management is asking me, well,


why should we do that?


There's no sense in producing good content


if we don't get that part of the traffic


that we get from Google normally,


because Google says, well, we just don't want it right now.


This is so tricky, isn't it?


Yeah.


I mean, that's why these examples are really useful,


because we do bring them back to the indexing teams


and kind of like say, well, what is wrong here?


Why aren't we picking this up?


This is something reasonable.


We should be doing a better job at that.


And especially when things are not good


or there's something technically wrong,


but I just don't see anything.


And again, it's not a site with millions of pages,


but we have 500 pieces, I think, and they're all handwritten.


And it has always worked.


Just suddenly, in November, it stopped just


during the time of the core update.


So I was afraid that Google is busy with other things


right now, really.


It shouldn't be.


But I mean, having these kind of examples


is really valuable for me, because going to the team


and saying, oh, people are complaining


that content is not being indexed,


and I don't have any examples for you,


then they'll be like, well, we can't do it anymore.


We could use content I have the OK from the company


to use this in public.


So it's OK.


OK, cool.


I mean, you can also send it to me privately


if there's anything that you or anyone else kind of runs into.


Great, what's the best way to send it to you, email or Twitter?


Twitter is probably easiest.