Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

was more of a cleaner transition.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

If you take over the domain, make sure that you're measuring what happens through tools


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

like Search Console and that you understand how the domain is doing.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Maybe even consider removing the content and waiting for us to understand that content


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

has removed so that things are normalizing and we're clearing out the signals.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And then step by step, migrate your domain over so that as we discover the pages to be


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

moved, we also understand like, okay, so this is a new start for this domain.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Got it.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Okay.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

All right.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

How about another myth?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Yeah, sure.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

What do you have?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And then we could go into more details.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Yeah, yeah.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It goes all behind the scenes.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

How about taking a site, merging two sites into one site and thinking that one plus one


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

will equal two when that won't necessarily happen.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I've been part of a few of those that actually went very well and others that didn't go poorly


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

but it wasn't one plus one equals two.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Yeah.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So that's not as such a simple situation anymore.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Now beforehand, we talked about a site move and site move literally just means we're moving


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

everything we've got over to somewhere else.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

That's a site move.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

The moment I'm combining two sites, that's not moving two sites into one that is creating


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

a new site that is a merged version of the two.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So that is by definition not a site move.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

This means that we have to understand, okay, so now there's a bunch of more like this content


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

moves here, this content moves here, but there's like a bunch of other things going on here.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It's a completely different domain.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And or maybe not, maybe it's just like the URL structure change in some way or another,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

or there's new content moving here from somewhere else.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

None of that is as simple as a site move.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So we have to basically recrawl a lot of pages.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Depending on how large your site is, that might mean that it takes a while for us to


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

literally just get a lay of the land in terms of what content is there now.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Depending on how you set up your site structure, we might understand, okay, that's just like


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

new section of the site has been created.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Or if you're like mixing them in, then it's like, what's happening here?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Maybe other things change as well, or is it just like this new content?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So depending on how you merge the sites, you might get very different results from how


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

we are coming to an understanding of your new site structure and your new site content.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And that can go smoother or less smoothly depending on how you do it.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Yeah, got it.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Now, with the domain name change, just to hop back there.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So I'm really interested and I know site owners are interested in this and a lot of SEOs I'm


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

seeing, on what goes on in the Google machine once the site movement domain name change


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

is triggered, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Change of address is switched, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

That's activated.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Yes.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

301s are in place.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

What happens?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So what happens is that eventually we're going to be crawling what we used to know about


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

your site and we do get the signals from other sites pointing to your content there.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And we understand, okay, there's a redirect and it's not a redirect in isolation.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It is basically literally just a completely move here.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And then we have to make sure that what we knew before is true for what happened afterwards,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

because you could hypothetically have changed the site fundamentally and then again, it


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

is not a site move.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

But as more we discover that it's basically just a one to one copy and it's just like


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

moving everything over from here to there, we will basically make sure that we forward


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

the signals that we had from the old site to the new site, to the new domain, and then


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

make sure that we are getting more or less like an efficient lay of the land without


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

having to recall everything.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

You might still see like increased crawling activity, but eventually that's going to settle


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

down as we understand that the site is just a copy of what was there at a different space


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

beforehand.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And then eventually the signals will fade out and the crawling will fade out on the


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

old domain and we're just going to be moving swiftly on as if nothing happened afterwards


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

with the new signals that we have for the new domain.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Got it, got it.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And how fast do signals get passed?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

That depends on so many different things.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

If your website doesn't get crawled as much, then there's nothing that's going to make


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

that go like this.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

If there's a lot of crawl demand and crawl budget for your website, then we might actually


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

do that relatively quickly.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It can be in a day.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It can take a week.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It really depends also how many links do we have from different sites?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

How often do we crawl these?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And how quickly can we discover that everything has been moved over?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And yeah, it can take a few days up to a few weeks.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Got it.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And what does the change of address tool do differently than just having 301s?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I mean, is there some trigger in the back that Google's like, okay, the change of address


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

tool is being used.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

We know that it's verified by this owner.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

There's something better that happens there?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It tips us off that this is what you're intending to do.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So we know that it's not like a temporary thing or that it's like a mistake or something.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

You're explicitly telling us, you're giving us an additional signal saying like, hey,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

we are moving rather than us being like, hold on, that's a bunch of redirects happening


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

here.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Do we, what's happening?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Is that what's going on?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So you're giving us a more explicit signal that this is a site move so we can probably


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

reprioritize things.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

We can make more useful decisions in how we want to crawl and how we want to identify


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

if we can pass the signals on or not.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And that might speed things up because we can take a few shortcuts if we know that this


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

is an intentional switch.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Got it.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So good to do.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Right.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Okay.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

One thing I've seen, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I'm just wondering when


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

there's a site move, if there's an a reassessment of quality on a site, like when there's a


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

domain name change, is Google going, okay, well now let's reevaluate quality there.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Or if there was a URL migration, URLs all changed, would it trigger something like that?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Well, I mean that happens constantly, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I mean, if you have a page that has high quality content, that doesn't mean that this will


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

always be high quality content, which is also why having a history is not like the ends


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

of everything.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

If you have a spammy or thin content page that was bad and you improve it, we're going


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

to reevaluate the quality as well, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It constantly happens.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Site move is no different.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

But obviously when you change URLs, especially URL structure, then that tips us off to like,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

oh, hold on, we're not sure about this.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Is this the same as we had beforehand?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

If so, we can just like move the signals over to the new URL.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

If we are not sure about this, we have to make a very careful evaluation if that is


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

true or not.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So yes, it is doing that, but it does that all the time.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Got it.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So basically, I've heard before from like John and stuff like that, that they're going


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

to reevaluate a piece of content based upon its current form.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Absolutely.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So that's kind of what you're saying, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So it would make sense that sometimes, because what I've seen is, let's say a domain name


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

change happens, a URL migration, then maybe two weeks later, there's like a core update


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

and suddenly the site either goes up or down.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It's like, was that due to the change or was it something random?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I mean, you know, things always fluctuate, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So it's really hard to see the signal from the noise there and site moves, especially


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

if it really is just the site moves.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So you change your domain name or something, don't really like change the quality evaluation


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

or something like that.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Okay.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Now we spoke about signals being passed.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Can you just, for some people that might not know it, what signals you're talking about?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Right.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So to explain that in very simple terms, when we visit a site, we collect a bunch of information,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So like, how fast is the site?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Is this HTTPS or not?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Is the content good?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

What's this page about?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

All this kind of stuff, all these signals and information about the page that later


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

go into ranking.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

There's like hundreds of these factors that we look at and we collect them per page.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

If you would go to a restaurant, you kind of do the same thing, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It's like, do I feel welcome here?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Is the staff nice?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Is the food quality nice?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Is the price fair?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

These kind of things you put in your file as signals for this restaurant.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And then if someone asks you for a recommendation, you are probably using these signals that


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

you picked out.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Like, oh, if you're into Asian cuisine, that place on the 35th Street or whatever is really,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

really nice, but quite pricey.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And if you then know that this restaurant has moved, you probably want to reevaluate


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

some of these, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It's like, oh yeah, I was there when they were in the other location.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It was fantastic.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I don't know how it is in the new location.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So that's kind of the situation that we are facing as well, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

If you're literally just moving everything over, we can be like, yeah, I know that the


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

restaurant just moved somewhere else or the food truck moved somewhere else.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It's the same food truck.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It just stands somewhere else.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It's nice.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It's still cheap.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Nice.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Good stuff.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

But if something changes, the food truck now moves into a location and you're like, is


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

that nice?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Is it still the same stuff?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Is it still cheap or is it now more pricey?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And that kind of is true for search engines as well.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

We have to then reevaluate what we are seeing, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So first we had a baby algorithms analogy from Gary Iesch at PubCon.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And now we have a food cart analogy for you.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It just keeps getting more colorful, doesn't it?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Absolutely.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I can see a blog post coming out about that one too.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

How about this one, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And this happens sometimes.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Let's say there's a domain name change or URL migration.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Traffic plummets for whatever reason.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

When do you revert, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

When do you roll this whole thing back?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Now only a few times in my career, and I've been through a ton of these, have we had to


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

do that?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And I know in the Google documentation it basically says you have 180 days to reverse


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

the change of address and then you put 301s all the way back from where they were coming


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

from.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It's like a total nightmare.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Yeah.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So from your perspective, when do you think, let's say a site saw a drop of 50% after a


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

migration for whatever reason.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

At what point do you go, yeah, maybe you should roll this thing back?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I think that depends on what you're identifying as the reason for what went wrong.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

You definitely want to do some diagnosis first before you do any moves in any direction.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So is it that we're still seeing the old ones and for some reason not registering that these


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

are redirections or are we just not crawling the old ones often enough so that we have


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

just hit a really nasty spot in the timeline of where we could potentially have moved?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

What's going on here?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

If you really do not understand where this is coming from and you have looked at everything


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

and you cannot explain what's happening, I would say after a few weeks, maybe like a


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

month, maybe give it a month or something and then I would consider either getting help,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

that's the best way to do it, like get some help somewhere with this stuff.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Or if you really don't understand what's happening and it doesn't get better after a month or


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

so, consider doing a reversion but only if you are really, really sure and out of options


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

because most of the times it is some sort of technical problem or it's like you missed


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

half of your redirections and we didn't really register that it was a change of address much.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Or whatever has gone wrong.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Like there's so many things that can go wrong and you can misconfigure but you want to see


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

traffic that drops off should eventually also pick up again on the other side and you want


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

to monitor both sides closely and if you really see that there's literally no pickup on the


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

other side then that's a sign that something was not well done or well thought through


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

and then you want to reconsider if you might want to go back for a while, understand what


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

happened and then regroup.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Or something algorithmically happened.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Or I mean if we did detected spammy content or you had like some issues, manual actions,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

that's also a good reason to say like okay, we don't want to get these in the mix.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So make sure that you're starting from a clean state and then you should not have to revert.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Got it.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And then on that note, so from a robots.txt perspective, there are some sites, you know


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I usually help large scale sites, sometimes they have a few hundred thousand URLs being


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

blocked by robots.txt and they want that, right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

So during the move does it make sense to open them up so Google can see all those old URLs


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

that maybe it had indexed but were blocked by robots.txt or anything or does it, would


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

you think that just...


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I would not change that.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I would just keep, like if you had a reason to not have them in the, to not have them


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

crawled, I don't see why a migration would necessarily mean that you need to have them


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

crawled now.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Okay.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

That's good to know because again some large scale sites have a ton of URLs categorized


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

as that and then they don't know what to do.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

How about problems that you see from Google's end after migration like robots.txt blocking


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

the new domain or no index across the entire new content or you know there's, or how about


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Google search console settings not being set on the new domain, you know things like that.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

It's all sorts of these things.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I think like one of the things is that some people are trying to use site moves as an


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

opportunity to change all sorts of things.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I was going to bring up that.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Which is really, really weird because like realistically you want to, if you're in an


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

unsure situation or if you're in a situation where you're not sure where you're going,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

you don't want to change all the variables at the same time because that means you have


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

a lot of moving targets and then later on if you have a problem you're like, oh no,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

is this our new URL structure or is this the new technology that we're using or is this


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

the new content that we put up or is it the site move or is it an algorithmic thing or


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

is it a penalty or what's happening here and you're not sure about this.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

If you're doing one step at a time, you move to a different domain or before you move domains


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

you're switching to a new tech stack or whatever you're doing, do it step by step.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

I think that's like the biggest thing that you can do for yourself to like keep level


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

headed.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Got it, got it.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

And does Google have anything behind the scenes, kind of like what you brought up where some


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

sites are like, well I'm going to change domain names because I've been algorithmically destroyed


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

over the past few years or to get out of manual action, you know, if some people think that


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

they're going to do that.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Back in the day people were doing that for Penguin and some people were saying that was


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

working.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

You know, so is there anything behind the scenes that when let's say a domain name change


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

happens, they go, well let's make sure that this is cool or not.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Or is it not?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

As I said, like we're constantly evaluating what happens on the page so if you have a


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

bad bunch of content and spammy links to one and then you just move to the next then we


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

might lose some of the signals along the way but basically that stays bad no matter where


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

you move.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Got it.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Okay, that's good to know.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Well I think that was probably the last, that was probably, it was a lot of information,


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

right?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Yeah, that was amazing.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Thank you so much for making it here and I hope that you all enjoyed our little conversation


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

on site moves and stay tuned for more.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Bye!


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed that episode.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

Next episode I have Lily Rea with me and what are we going to discuss, Lily?


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting

We're going to talk about is too much content a good thing for SEO.


Site Migrations: SEO Mythbusting


English Google SEO office-hours from February 25, 2022

All right.


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


Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate on the Search Relations team


here at Google.


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


where people can jump in and ask their questions around web


search.


We have a bunch of questions submitted already,


so we can go through some of those.


But there are also people with their hands raised,


so I'll go through you all first.


Or we can see how far we go.


All right.


Let's see.


Akash, you're first on my list.


Hi, sir.


Hi.


So my question is related to people also


ask a subfeature, which is present in Google.


So if a link is for any of the query,


if your particular URL has been ranked at people also ask,


right?


So is it still counted as a clicks or impression


if users click on it?


And how that feature is been added to the search console


part?


Is it like the clicks and all those things


have been tracked or monitored?


And just a follow up on that, what if the users click


on some other questions, and then your query gets


added to that particular list?


So how is this things monitored or calculated?


Is it still counted as a particular rank on the search,


or it is just people also ask, and only the clicks


and everything can be calculated?


Good question.


So the short answer is, whenever there


is a URL shown in the search results,


we do try to show that in Search Console.


So with the people also ask section,


I think it is that if you expand it,


then it shows a link to your site with that question


and the snippet there.


That means whenever someone expands that people also


ask section and sees the URL for your site,


then that is counted as an impression.


And it doesn't matter if you're the first one


and the people also ask, or people click 15 different ones


and then suddenly your shows up, that


would be counted as an impression.


And also when a click happens, that gets counted as a click.


I think the ranking, the position


is based on the overall position of that group of elements.


So it doesn't, at least as far as I know,


it doesn't count within the people also ask section


what position you are.


So let's say if any of a particular domain's URL


is in people also ask, can it also be in the search results?


Because I think.


Sure.


The Search Console, the performance report


shows from the only thing to watch out for.


So the performance report shows the ranking


of the topmost items.


So if you're listed, if different URLs are


listed multiple times in a search results page,


it tracks the position of the first one.


OK.


That's interesting.


And one more question, sir.


When you have subdomains, it could be a blog or a help forum


or resources.


So how good is Google to get properly recognized?


This subdomain is not something, a different one,


but it's a subsidiary of the particular domain, which


is only the form of a blog or could be like help forum


or resources, but not a different completely domain


which already has been sold because subdomains have been


calculated as a different domain.


So it's a part of the current domain


and not completely a new website.


And when it comes to the internal link


and when you say, you know, like you


try to map your important URLs through your home pages


and from other relevant pages.


So what if the blog page is in subdomain,


so will that home page should be considered


or the original home, like example.com


should be considered as a link from the home page


to the particular pages?


Yeah, so specifically around the links there,


I don't think we would differentiate that much.


So it's not that we would say, oh, this


is an internal link or an external link.


It's essentially just we found this link from this one page.


But then we have two home pages.


One is like a blog home page, and then you


have an additional home page, which is a proper website.


Yeah.


From our point of view, those are just pages, essentially.


We don't say, oh, this is a home page


or this is a kind of a product page or category page.


We essentially say, this is a page,


and this is what it's relevant for.


And these subdomains name as blogs and help and forum


and all resources.


Those are just categorized as the additional part


of that particular domain rather than a completely new web


technique.


That particular part of the recommendation


is completely done in Google's end.


Yes.


Thank you so much, sir.


Thank you.


Cool.


Nathan.


Hi.


I think you recently said that if there was a domain there,


where there used to be a website on it,


and then it dropped out of, it was deleted,


then there's a new website at some point,


then the links that were to the old website


don't count anymore, which seems pretty logical.


But we've got this kind of situation now.


So we've created Search Console for this new website.


And in Search Console, I do see at least one link


from the former owner that's still there.


Does that mean that this link would actually still count


as Search Console does show it?


I don't know if it would count.


But the important part, I think, with Search Console


and the link report there is we try to show all the links


that we know of to that site.


It's not a sign that we think these are important links


or that they count.


So in particular, things like nofollow links,


they would still be listed.


Disavowed links would still be listed.


Links that we just ignore for other reasons,


they could still be listed as well.


So just because it's listed doesn't


mean it's actually a relevant or helpful link for the site.


OK.


Clear.


Thanks.


Cool.


Angie.


Hi, John.


I have a question about building my mobile site on AMP.


So will it still be cached by Google the same way


as a site with an AMP version would be?


And it would appear in search results in the Google cache


viewer.


And what happens if there is an error that


invalidates the page?


Will it just not be shown at all in the search results?


So I think you need to watch out for the difference


between having pages that are purely on AMP


and pages that are kind of just paired set up.


And if a page is purely on AMP, from our point of view,


it's essentially a normal HTML page.


It can also be a valid AMP page.


And if it is a valid AMP page, then we


can use the AMP cache and kind of all of the AMP functionality


in search as well.


But either way, it's still an HTML page.


So that would still be indexed normally,


even if it's an invalid AMP page.


And the cache page should also just work normally


like any other HTML page.


I suspect it might be a bit tricky with the AMP page


with regards to JavaScript and CSS there.


I don't know how that's embedded on AMP pages.


So the caching or serving it from the cache in search


results may not be consistent.


Yeah.


So I don't know how the JavaScript side kind of plays


in there.


One way you can do this is to double-check what it actually


looks like in the cache.


And another thing you could check


is to disable JavaScript and then load the page.


My understanding is, from the AMP format,


is it would just work, essentially.


But I don't remember all of the details there.


So I'd double-check.


OK.


Thank you.


Sure.


All right.


Omar.


Hi, John.


We acquired a site that came with plenty of internal links


in the footer section of each page.


And some of these links are not as relevant.


So I wanted to ask if it is likely to be seen


as problematic by Google, because the links are not


necessarily contextual.


But they're just jumbled together in the footer.


And they're selected by a plugin.


We're scared that removing them from hundreds of pages


might mess up the site structure.


So just wanted your opinion on this.


So I suspect, for the most part, that


wouldn't cause any problems.


I would see this more as these are links on these pages.


They're normal internal links.


And look at it from the point of view,


does this help to give context to the rest


of the pages on the website?


And for example, if you have a larger website,


and essentially every page is linked with every other page,


there's no real context there.


So it's hard for us to understand


what the overall structure is.


Which of these pages is more important?


Because if you're linking to everything, then it's like,


everything is not important.


So that's the element that I would watch out for.


Whether or not they're in the footer, that,


from my point of view, is irrelevant.


If they're generated by a plugin or added manually,


I don't think that matters either.


I would just watch out from a structural point of view,


does it actually make sense to have these links?


And some amount of cross-linking definitely makes sense,


I'd say, especially if you have the setup where you have


related pages that are cross-linked,


that, from my point of view, always makes sense.


Extreme cross-linking, where you're really


cross-linking every page with every other page,


from my point of view, doesn't really make sense.


SPEAKER 2


We've reached the same conclusion,


but we're at a point where we're scared to remove all of them,


because they've not been placed by a human.


It was a plugin that was automatically placing


internal links to supposedly relevant articles


on the website.


Now we realize that a better approach would be something


that you're also suggesting, where we selectively


choose those links and then link to relevant pages.


So my question would be that if we just disable the plugin


and all these links suddenly evaporate


or they miss out from the page, would it


affect the website in any way?


Or should we just try to slowly remove links


for one page at a time or something like that?


Yeah.


My guess is it would affect how it's shown in search,


but it's impossible to say, will it be a positive effect


or a negative effect?


I think that's the tricky part there.


What I would do to try to understand


what the current situation is and what the next step would be


is to run a crawler over your website.


And a lot of the website crawlers that are out there,


they will generate this kind of a graph of how


your pages are linked together.


And then you could disable the plugin, maybe


on a staging version of your website,


maybe even on the live one for a short period of time,


crawl again, and then compare those graphs and see,


is this crawler still able to find all of the content?


And does it look like there's insufficient cross-linking


there?


And if so, then that gives you a little bit more trust


that just disabling the plugin will be OK.


From our point of view, it doesn't matter if these links


are automatically placed or placed by a plugin


or placed by machine learning or whatever.


Essentially, they're just links that we find on your website.


Makes a lot of sense.


Thank you, John.


Cool.


All right, Jason.


Hi, John.


So I have a question about hidden or invisible text.


So the support doc about the topic


addresses the intent to deceive or trick bots


by including excessive keywords to establish topical relevance.


My question is one of clarification.


Is all hidden text against Webmaster Guidelines?


And to dig into it and give a little bit of context


as to why I'm asking this question,


we have some elements we include across multiple pages


along with internally assigned identifiers for each element.


So those identifiers don't mean anything to users.


It wouldn't make sense to display them.


But as an SEO, it can make my life a lot easier if,


for example, I did a site colon search with K25987J


to ensure that that K25987J element is displaying


on the intended pages and that those pages are in the index.


Or for another practical use case,


if using dynamic search ads for my paid media folks,


they could use a page content that contains dynamic ad


target to find that text and run PPC campaigns based on that.


So I'm curious on any thoughts you may have here.


I don't think that would be problematic.


Hidden text, from our point of view,


is more problematic when it's really


about deceiving the search engines with regards


to what is actually on a page.


So the extreme example would be that, I don't know,


you have a page about shoes, and there's


a lot of hidden text there that is about, I don't know,


the Olympics or something like that.


And then suddenly your shoe page starts


ranking for these Olympic terms.


But actually, when a user goes there,


there's nothing about the Olympics.


And that would be kind of problematic


from our point of view.


I think we do a reasonable job in recognizing hidden text


and trying to avoid that from happening.


But that's kind of the reason we have


this kind of element in the Webmaster Guidelines.


Using it to display something that you don't necessarily


want to deceive anyone for, that's from my point of view,


is perfectly fine.


Also, accessibility is a common reason


for hidden text on a page where you have the tab targets set up


that way that you can tab to them,


and then your screen reader will say something about that.


But they're not visible directly on the page.


And that's also perfectly fine.


So I wouldn't have any fear or any doubt


that that setup that you described would work.


Fair enough.


Thanks.


It was a carryover from back in the day


before the rise of machine learning and AI


when you'd see this wall of white and you highlight it,


and oh, there's actual text here.


Yeah.


Makes sense.


Cool.


All right.


Sergio.


Hey, John.


I have a couple of questions.


We had created about 42 landing pages


that were created dynamically.


And I actually asked for your help a couple of months ago


looking at those because they didn't get indexed.


And out of those 42, only about six of them have been indexed.


They're ranking well, they're getting the traffic, all good.


But there's then the other 95% of them


that were crawled and discovered about eight weeks ago.


And it's still not indexed.


And back then, you said to me, well, it's


only been discovered for the past 24, 48 hours.


So give it a couple of weeks.


And if it's not indexed, then come back and ask.


So it's been eight weeks.


And still struggling with that, I'm


not really sure what I can do.


Yeah.


I can share some URLs if necessary.


Yeah, if you can drop some URLs maybe with the keyword


discovered not crawled or not indexed into the chat,


I can pull that out afterwards and take a look at that.


Those are, like I just added a few of those URLs.


And yeah, like I said, they've been crawled but not indexed


for about six to eight weeks, more or less.


I mean, I can't promise that they'll be indexed


at some point in the future.


We just don't index everything from all websites.


But I'm happy to pass these on to the team


to see if there is any kind of a general problem on our side


that we need to look at there.


Yeah, that would be great.


I mean, I would like to know more or less what else I


can do to make them, if there's something


that we are failing to deliver for those pages to be indexed,


then that would be nice for us to know so that we can


make the necessary improvements.


Yeah.


That's one.


And the other question that I wanted to ask


was, we also have some affiliate programs.


And currently, we get other people to talk about us.


And we're trying to be very careful with the type


of backlink tags that they use when they link back to us


to not get in trouble.


But we noticed that some of them are not using anything.


So they would typically just use a hyperlink with the domain URL


as a do follow within their, they sometimes


create review pages about the company.


And I wanted to ask if that was seen as a problem or something


against the guidelines.


I know that they have some of the links that link back


to product pages or commercial pages.


They are using the sponsored tag.


But then at some point, there is a mention of the company


itself with the URL to the domain as a do follow.


And my question was, is that problematic?


Yeah.


So I would say, especially when it comes to affiliate links,


for the most part, if we can see that the bulk of these links


are handled appropriately, so with the no follow


or the rel="sponsored," then individual ones


that are handled differently from our point of view,


that's usually fine.


It's not going to be the case that we say, oh, there


are, I don't know, 900 affiliate links,


and they have the rel="sponsored," on them.


And two, that don't have the rel="sponsored," on them,


that we penalize the website for that or anything like that.


So I wouldn't worry about that.


I would make sure that your affiliates are


aware of these guidelines, that they


should be using these kind of tags to mark up the links.


And if you're providing any links for them,


include that by default. But I wouldn't


sweat the exceptions that happen, because it's,


I don't know, it's just common.


It just happens.


Yeah.


Cool.


Thank you.


Just one quick question regarding those URLs.


Is there anywhere I can follow up or just to kind of know?


Yeah, usually I forward those to their team,


and then they take a look.


And there's not necessarily anything


that I can give back to people that kind of say, like, oh,


it's like you have to do this, or this was a problem.


So it's more about kind of forwarding feedback


to the team.


OK.


All right.


Hazel.


Hi, John.


Can you hear me?


Yes.


Yeah, OK.


So I've got two questions.


One is about the recent pirate update.


We noticed that a document that Google sent to United States


Copyright Office, which clearly states


that websites that receive a large volume of notice


will be donated.


So we just wonder, how does Google define this volume?


Like, more than maybe 1,000 notice per day,


or maybe like over tens of thousands per day?


I don't know.


I don't think the exact thresholds would be something


that we would share either.


So I mean, on the one hand, I don't


know the details of that recent document.


I saw that briefly mentioned somewhere on Twitter,


but I don't know what the full background there is.


But thresholds like that, they can also be a bit dynamic.


And I doubt that there would be one specific number that we


would share on that.


OK.


So maybe do you have any idea that maybe which niche


that this orthogram will focus on, maybe like entertainment


or like shopping site?


My guess, so I don't know.


I probably shouldn't be guessing on these kind of legal topics.


But my guess is this is something


that just happens in general for DMCA complaints,


and not that we would have the algorithm try to fine tune


by the type of site.


So like we are in e-commerce sites,


like we notice that maybe most e-commerce sites


with many products have a high risk of infringement.


Because the products on the page is


uploaded by the seller on the site,


even though the site have strict policy.


So we just wonder, maybe we received 20 or 30 notice


per day.


We just wonder that if it can get our site


like get penalized or demoted.


I don't know.


I mean, that amount of complaints to me


would suggest that maybe you have a chance


to implement something more automatic to catch


these on your side.


But I honestly don't know if that would be enough to kind


of flag something like this.


OK.


OK, thanks.


More about the question is about the page performance.


We want to improve the page performance like some metrics


like LCP, FID.


So we want to change the way of loading item description


and like some reviews content from synchronous


to asynchronous on user side.


But for Google Both side, these contents


will still be the synchronous.


Do you think this way when we're doing this


will have any impact to the site from SEO side?


That sounds fine.


Now, that's essentially similar to the dynamic rendering setup


that we used to recommend where you use JavaScript


for the client side and you statically


render the content for Google Bot and other search engines.


And from our point of view, if it's the same content,


you're just delivering it in a slightly different way.


That's perfectly fine.


Yeah, that's very good to hear.


Thank you.


Cool.


OK.


I still have a bunch of hands raised.


I'll get back to you.


But I just want to run through some of the submitted questions


so that we don't lose track of those as well.


All right.


Let's see.


So the first question I have here is about images.


We have a question about the importance of image file names


for site ranking.


We're using an intelligent CDN provider,


which has been replacing the image file


names with unique numbers.


And notice that all the images are 404s in Search Console.


Disabling the CDN would significantly degrade


overall site performance.


Will image alt text and captions be sufficient for Google


to understand without an appropriate image file name


title?


So I think there are two things here that I would look at.


On the one hand, if these are images


that you need to have indexed in image search,


then you should definitely make sure


that you have a stable file name for your images.


That's, I think, kind of the most important element here.


You don't mention that these numbers or these URLs change.


But sometimes, these CDNs essentially


provide a kind of a session-based ID


for each image.


And if the image URL changes every time we crawl,


then essentially we'll never be able to index


those images properly.


This is mostly because for images,


we tend to be a little bit slower with regards


to crawling and indexing.


So if we kind of see an image once, and we say,


oh, we should take a look at this,


and we try to crawl it again at some later stage,


and the number has changed by then,


then we will just drop that image from our search results,


from the image rankings.


And essentially, we will say, oh, well,


this image that we thought was here


is actually no longer here anymore.


So the most important part here is kind of figuring out,


do you care about image search?


And if so, you need to make sure that you


have a stable URL for all of these images.


It doesn't matter if it's a number,


or if it's a text, or anything like that.


It should just be stable.


That's kind of the most important part here.


The other part that you mentioned


is the image alt text and the captions,


which kind of suggests that actually you're


interested in web search, not necessarily image search.


And for web search, we don't need


to be able to crawl and index the images,


because we essentially just look at the web pages themselves.


So things like the alt text, any captions, headings on the page,


all of that play into understanding


this page a little bit better.


And for web search, that's all we need.


If all of the images were, for example, 404 all the time


or blocked by robots.txt for web search,


we would still treat that page exactly the same


as if we were able to index all of those images.


It's just in image search itself, that's


why we need to be able to kind of index these images


and understand that they're stable URLs


and understand how they kind of connect


with the rest of your site.


We have a domain with a history as an escort service provider.


The site was relaunched and rebranded


and now focuses on an entirely different niche.


All previous backlinks have been disavowed,


and we've been in contact with a long list of providers


who have all reviewed our site and unblocked us.


Within the search results, though, we're still getting


flagged for explicit content.


Is there a way to get reconciled via Google?


How do we go about this?


So for the most part, this kind of understanding


of which content we would filter by safe search


is handled automatically.


And if we recognize that a site has changed significantly,


then essentially we will treat it differently in the search


results as well.


And over time, we will essentially


remove that safe search bit for the site or for those pages.


So depending on when you make this change,


it might be that you just need to be a little bit more patient


and it'll settle down properly.


If you want to, you can also send me a URL.


I don't know if you're here in the chat


or if you want to add it to the question itself.


And send me the URL of your site,


and I can double check with the team here to make sure


that everything is lined up.


In the past, it used to be a lot more focused


on older content.


We keep things in the safe search list for a longer time.


But essentially, a lot of that is completely automated


in the meantime.


And if your site changes significantly,


then we should be able to take that into account.


I have a question about targeting the same keyword


on two different pages.


One is a feature page, and the other


is an informational piece about that feature.


Is it OK to target the same main keyword on those two


different pages?


So first of all, it's totally OK to target whatever keywords


that you want.


From our point of view, we're not going to hold you back.


The thing I would watch out for is kind of like,


are you competing with yourself?


And that's almost more of a strategic question


rather than kind of a pure SEO question,


and definitely not something where we'd say,


there are guidelines that you should not do this.


But it's more that if you have multiple pieces of content that


are ranking for the same query with the same intent,


then you're essentially kind of diluting


the value of the content that you're


providing across multiple pages.


They're competing with each other.


And that could mean that these individual pages themselves


are not that strong when it comes to competing


with other people's websites.


So that sometimes is something that I would watch out for.


If you have two pages and they're


both targeting the same keyword and they


have very different intents, then from my point of view,


that seems kind of reasonable.


Because people might be searching for that keyword


with kind of like extra text added for one intent


and extra text added for the other intent.


And they're essentially unique pages.


And it can make sense for either both of them


to appear in search or kind of the best matching one


to appear in search.


So that's kind of my take it on there.


And like I said, it's not something that we require


or that is like OK or not OK.


It's really a matter of kind of your strategic positioning


on how you want to appear in search.


Is there a good ratio or consideration


on Google's side when it comes to the amount of pages?


In other words, are positions of high traffic rankings,


high traffic ranking pages hurt by many,


let's say 50% of total pages on our domain not being indexed


or being indexed but not receiving traffic?


So I guess the question is more around like I


have some set of pages that are very popular and a lot of pages


that are not very popular.


And that kind of describes the average website


where you have a variety of content and some of it


is very popular and some of it just isn't that popular.


So from our point of view, that's kind of perfectly fine.


Also, just the bulk number of pages


I think is a misleading metric because it's


easy to have a lot of pages that are not being seen


as very important.


And then they don't appear a lot in search.


And that can be perfectly fine.


If you have five pages like that or 100 pages or 1,000 pages,


if they're not showing up in search,


they're not causing any problems either.


So from that point of view, it's sometimes tricky


just to look at the bulk number of pages versus the pages that


are actually being shown in the search results.


The other thing maybe also to keep


in mind with a question like this


is sometimes it does make sense to concentrate more


on fewer pages just to kind of get that strategic advantage


of having fewer pages that are stronger


rather than having a lot of pages where you're essentially


diluting the value.


Like if you have these 1,000 pages


and they each provide a small tidbit of the bigger picture,


then those 1,000 pages are probably


going to have a hard time in search.


Whereas if you can combine a lot of that into, I don't know,


maybe 10 pages, then those 10 pages


will have a lot of information on them


and maybe a lot of value kind of relative to the rest


of your site and maybe have it easier


to rank for kind of broader search terms around that topic.


Let's see.


Google documentation shows that using parameters


for locale-specific URLs is suboptimal,


but none of the cons look like real deal killers to me.


The three cons listed are segmentation is difficult.


Users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL.


And Search Console geotargeting is not possible.


But there's nothing listed there that


indicates that parameter locale-specific URLs


would cause problems in crawling indexing the ranking.


So my question is, do URLs like this present any real issue


for Googlebot?


So I think there are a few things kind of that


fall into that, which are kind of in that graph


and in the document as well.


On the first hand, from a crawling point of view,


these kind of URLs are perfectly fine.


For the most part, if we can tell that the parameters


that you're specifying here, like you have locale


equals Ja-Jp, if we can recognize


that these parameters are useful parameters,


then we will try to crawl and index


all of those pages individually.


On the other hand, if these locale parameters


that you're providing are a lot of different locales,


and then when you load the page, it says,


oh, we don't know that language.


Here's the English version.


Then our systems might learn that actually this locale


parameter is not so useful, and we start to ignore it.


So that's kind of the one thing to watch out for there.


The other thing that is mentioned in the cons


is geotargeting.


And in Search Console, you can do geotargeting by subdomain,


by the main domain itself, and by subdirectory.


And you can't do geotargeting based on URL parameters.


So if there's something where you need to have geotargeting,


if you really, really want to make sure


that Google understands that these pages are actually


uniquely targeted for this specific country,


then I would really recommend making sure


that you have some setup that uses at least subdirectories


so that you can verify those separately and set


the geotargeting individually for those pages.


When it comes to geotargeting, it


isn't something that you need for all kinds of content.


In particular, if it's something where


you have content that changes subtly


based on different locations, or if you have content that


essentially is just in different languages,


then probably you don't need geotargeting for that.


On the other hand, if it's something


where it's really unique to that location


and you can tell when users search for something that


matches your site that they're looking for something local,


then geotargeting definitely makes sense.


So for example, if you're searching for washing machine


repair, then probably geotargeting makes sense


because you want someone local.


If you're searching for a washing machine repair manual,


then geotargeting doesn't make any sense at all


because that manual isn't specific to that country.


It's something that's available everywhere.


And that's kind of the one thing to look at there,


whether or not you actually need geotargeting


or if it's essentially more the language targeting that you're


trying to do.


And for language targeting, having that just in the URL


parameter is perfectly fine.


Let's see.


I mean, international sites are always tricky.


So it's also something where I would


try to get some help from someone who's


worked on other big international sites


just to make sure that you're not doing anything otherwise


kind of problematic that you might need to watch out for.


The hard part, I think, with language and international


sites in general is it's very easy to go down


the route of saying, well, I have all of these countries,


all of these languages.


I will just create a million versions of my pages.


And then you're stuck in that situation, again,


where you have all of these different versions of pages,


and Google has to figure out which ones of these


are actually useful.


And finding that balance between having fewer pages


and having enough to kind of cover the need for your users,


that's sometimes tricky.


I'm trying to make sure that our SEO rankings don't take a hit


while we roll out our new search results page for some context.


Our searches can result in 10,000 results


and have filtering and sorting functionality.


My question is, does Google treat these pages within web,


or how does Google treat these pages within websites?


How do the search results affect the overall ranking


for the website?


And is it enough to just be submitting sitemaps for ranking,


or should we take additional consideration


to help Googlebot to gather all of the reachable URLs?


So I think maybe the last question first,


I would not rely on sitemaps to find


all of the pages of your website.


Sitemaps should be a way to give additional information


about your website.


It should not be the primary way of giving


information of your website.


So in particular, internal linking is super important


and something you should definitely watch out for


and make sure that however you set things up,


when someone crawls your website,


they're able to find all of your content,


and not that they rely on the sitemap file


to get all of these things.


And from that point of view, being


able to go to these kind of category pages,


perhaps, and being able to actually find


all the products that are in individual categories,


I think is super useful.


Being able to crawl through the category pages to the product


is also very important.


Search results pages, I think, are


a little bit of a unique area because some sites use


category pages, essentially like search results pages,


and then you're kind of in that situation


where search results pages are essentially like category


pages.


If that's the case for you, I would


watch out for everything that you


would do with category pages.


The other thing with search results pages


is that people can enter anything and search


for something, and your site has to do all the work to generate


all of these things.


And that can easily result in an infinite number of URLs


that are theoretically findable on your website


because people can search in a lot of different ways.


And because that creates kind of this set of infinite pages


on your website, that's something


that we try to discourage where we'd say,


either set these search results pages to no index


or use robots.txt to block crawling of these search


results pages so that we can focus on the normal site


structure and the normal internal link.


So I think those are kind of the primary aspects there.


If you do want to have your search results pages indexed,


then my tip would be to make sure that on the one hand,


you have one primary sort order and filtering setup set up


as a canonical.


So if you choose to provide your pages by relevance,


then if you have a sort filter for by price up or down,


then I would set the rel canonical of those filters


to your primary sort order.


And similarly for filtering, I would perhaps


kind of remove the filter with the rel canonical.


Doing this, make sure that we can more


focus on the primary version of your pages


and crawl those properly rather than that we get distracted


by all of these variations of the search results pages.


And the other thing I would watch out for


is that you create some kind of an allow list


or some kind of a system on your site


with regards to the type of search queries


that you want to allow to be indexed or crawled.


So for example, if someone goes to your website


and searches for, I don't know, Canadian pharmaceutical


or something like that, and you're not


a pharmaceutical website, you probably


don't want that search page to be indexed.


Even if you don't have any products that


are available that match that query,


you probably don't want to have that indexed.


So having a list of the allowed searches


that you do allow to have indexed makes that a lot easier.


And make sure that you don't accidentally


run into this kind of spam situation


where someone is spamming your search results


and then you have to clean up millions of pages


that are indexed and get rid of them somehow.


So many things to keep in mind with search results pages,


wow.


Let's see.


The next one I have here is, my website


had a drop in visitors due to poor Core Web Vitals.


Now I'm back on track, but came to know


that the page experience update is now


slowing out also for desktop.


What is the page experience ranking to desktop,


and how important is it compared to the other ranking factors?


So like on mobile, the page experience ranking factor


is essentially something that gives us


a little bit extra information.


These different pages could show up in the search results.


And in situations where we have a strong, clear kind of intent


from the query where we can understand that they really


want to go to this website, then from that point of view,


we kind of can ease off on using page experience as a ranking


factor.


On the other hand, if all of the content


is very similar in the search results page,


then probably using page experience


helps a little bit to understand which


of these are fast pages or reasonable pages with regards


to the user experience and which of these


are kind of the less reasonable pages


to show in the search results.


And that kind of situation helps us there.


With regards to the desktop rollout,


I believe this is going to be a slower rollout again


over the course of something like a month, which


means you would not be seeing a strong effect from one day


to the next, but rather you would see that effect


over a period of time.


You would also already see that in Search Console


in the reports for page experience and Core Web Vitals,


you would also already see that on desktop


that everything is rich, for example,


and that you need to focus on that.


So from that point of view, with the desktop ranking change,


like with the mobile one, I wouldn't


expect a kind of a drastic jump in the search results


from one day to the next as we roll this out.


Like at most, if things are really bad for your website,


you would see a kind of a gradual drop there.


Let's see.


And now how important is it compared


to other ranking signals?


I think we looked at that briefly.


The other thing I might kind of caution against


is kind of the first sentence that you had,


that your website dropped due to poor Core Web Vitals.


I suspect, for the most part, websites would not


see a kind of a big visible change when


it comes to Core Web Vitals.


Even if your website goes from being kind of reasonable


to being kind of in that poor bucket in the Core Web Vitals


from one day to the next, I would not


expect to see that as a kind of a giant change in the search


results.


Maybe changing a few positions, that


seems kind of the right change there.


But I would not see it as a page going from, I don't know,


ranking number 2 to ranking number 50 like that,


just because of Core Web Vitals.


If you are seeing a drastic change like that,


I would not focus on purely Core Web Vitals.


I would try to take a step back and look at the overall picture


and see what else could there be involved,


and kind of try to figure out what


you can do to improve things overall,


rather than just purely focusing on Core Web Vitals.


Because Core Web Vitals is something


that does take a lot of work to get right.


And it is sometimes hard to get all of these things lined up.


But it's also, like I mentioned, something


which is more of a subtle ranking factor and not


like a super strong one.


So it's something where, if you're seeing strong changes,


I would recommend not spending too much time on the Core Web


Vitals side, and rather trying to figure out


what is the bigger change, or where is that coming from


for your site.


Can you think of a reason a site's rankings in Google


would fluctuate so much?


Top five rankings for a host of keyword, one weekend,


and then out of the results for about two weeks,


and then seeing it ranking on and off like this for months,


no technical issues, all other pages


on the site that share the same page template


have consistent ranks.


I don't know.


It's hard to say without an example.


It sounds a lot like, I don't know,


like things overall for the site are going well,


and just one individual page is kind of jumping in and out


like this.


And when that happens, usually that's


a sign that for one particular ranking algorithm


factor or one particular part of our rankings,


the page isn't super clear in the good set or in the bad set.


And then our algorithms are kind of on the edge there.


Without knowing the site and without being


able to jump in and look at some of the details there,


it feels like something where our systems are not


sure about the relevance overall or perhaps even with regards


to kind of the spamminess or the quality overall of the site


or of that particular page.


So that might be something I'd look at there,


but it's really kind of hard to say


without seeing the examples.


All right.


Maybe we can jump back to some of the live questions


since we still have so many people with their hands up.


I also have some more time afterwards if any of you


want to stick around and kind of go


through the rest of the questions.


Let's see.


Larry, I think you're up next.


Hey, John.


How you doing?


Hi.


I work with a very large health care provider in the US,


top five.


So we're talking thousands of providers,


hundreds of locations.


I'm building out schema, and I'm doing it exactly


like it should be done.


I'm doing symptoms, treatments, health insurance


that's accepted, everything like that.


I'm building it out and then testing it


in the schema validator.


But then when I go over to the rich results test for Google,


it doesn't validate.


When I go to Google Search Console, it's not showing up.


So I'm guessing that it's wrong, but I'm building it


to a tool that I thought was going to be correct.


So what should I do to actually get this to validate?


Yeah.


So I think there are two main things that


kind of play a role here.


On the one hand, the validator on schema.org


is set up to validate all kinds of theoretical schemas


that you can provide with schema.org.


And that's kind of the superset of all functionality.


And the validator in Search Console


is based purely on functionality that has visible changes


in Google Search.


And that's usually a very small subset of the bigger schema.org


kind of set of things that you can mark up.


So for example, if you're marking things up


that don't have a visible effect in the search results in terms


of maybe like shows stars or shows a video or something


like that, then that would be something


where Search Console would say, well, I don't see anything


that here, which might kind of fall into that category


that you're seeing there.


The other thing that sometimes plays a role with regards


to elements that do have a visible effect


is that on schema.org, the requirements


are sometimes not the same as in Google Search.


So schema.org will have some required properties


and some optional properties.


And it kind of validates based on those.


And in Google Search, sometimes we


have a stricter set of requirements


that we have documented in our Help Center


as well to kind of say, well, we would


like to show it in this special way in the search results.


And we can only do that if we have this set of information.


So from that point of view, on the one hand,


if Google doesn't show it in the search results,


then we would not show it in the testing tool.


And on the other hand, if the requirements are different


and Google's requirements are stricter


and you don't follow those guidelines,


then we would also flag that as, I don't know, an error


or a warning in the testing tool.


Is there any way to tell what the items are that are not


recognized by Google?


Or is it just a hit and miss with trying to do it?


Because this thing is extremely well built out


so that the search engines would completely


understand everything that's in there is on the page,


just having frustration with doing this.


Should I be building two sets of schema, one


that Google recognizes and then the others


that it doesn't recognize?


You see what I mean?


Yeah.


You could theoretically do that.


I think it depends on what your goal is with the structured


data that you're providing.


If your goal is really, I just want this visible in search,


which is kind of the people that tend to come to us


because they're focused on search,


then usually you would just provide whatever Google needs


and specify that.


We have the different types of features


that we support in the search developer documentation.


I think there's a big compilation there.


That's something where usually my recommendation is sites


should go there, look at the features


that they think are relevant, and then implement


just those features.


Kind of going the other way around and saying,


well, I'll implement everything and then


see if there's a feature that matches there,


that's sometimes a bit trickier.


It's just more work, I think.


If there are specific things that you're


trying to do with the structured data for other providers,


for other search engines, or maybe you


have an internal search engine that runs over your site


or some kind of, I don't know, other system that extracts


information from your site, then you


might have other requirements there


that you want to take care of.


And it can happen that you have one


set for your general structured data


and one set specific for the search results.


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


Yeah, most of my limitation is in the medical web page


because schema says you can do all this stuff.


And when I do it, then it doesn't validate.


So I'll do that last thing you mentioned


about taking a look at that.


And that's called the search developer documentation.


Yes, exactly.


OK, thank you.


Cool.


All right, Dave.


Hi, John.


I work on a fairly large multilingual site.


And in April last year, just all in one go,


all of our translated content moved from valid


to excluded, crawled, currently not indexed.


And there it has stayed since April.


We've gone through, because it happened all at once,


we thought maybe there was some systemic change in our side.


We get a massive change to our posting platform, content


management system, et cetera.


We've gone through the code extensively.


We can't find anything.


We can't find any change to content.


We don't see any notes in the Google search release


notes that look like they're going to be affecting us,


as far as we can tell.


We've also been pretty thorough going through


and just doing best practice searches with Search Console.


We've cleaned up our hreflangs, canonicals, URL prams,


manual actions, and every other tool


that's listed on developers.google.com


slash search.


I'm just about out of ideas.


I don't know what's happened or what to do next


to try to fix the issue.


But I'd really like to get our translated content back


in the index.


JOHN MUELLER I think you posted the question as well


with a link to a forum thread.


Is that you?


JOSHUA BERGSTADT I did, but a little bit more detail as well.


Yeah.


JOHN MUELLER OK.


Now, I took a look at that briefly before


and passed some of that on to the team here as well.


One of the things that I think is sometimes tricky


is you have the parameter at the end with the language code,


I think, hreflang.


Whatever.


JOSHUA BERGSTADT That's right.


JOHN MUELLER From our point of view, what can happen


is that when we recognize that there


are a lot of these parameters there that lead


to the same content, then our systems


can kind of get stuck into a situation,


well, maybe this parameter is not very useful,


and we should just ignore it.


And to me, it sounds a lot like something around that line


happened.


And partially, you can help this with the URL parameter


tool in Search Console to make sure that that parameter is


actually set.


I do want to have everything indexed.


Partially, what you could also do


is maybe to crawl a portion of your website with, I don't


know, a local crawler to see what kind of parameter URLs


actually get picked up, and then double


check that those pages actually have useful content


for those languages.


In particular, things like a common one


that I've seen on sites is maybe you have, I don't know,


all languages linked up, and the Japanese version says,


oh, we don't have a Japanese version.


Here's our English one instead.


Then our systems could say, well, the Japanese version


is the same as the English version.


Maybe there are some other languages


the same as the English version.


We should just ignore that.


And sometimes this is from links within the website.


Sometimes it's also external links, people


who are linking to your site.


If the parameter is at the end of your URL,


then it's very common that there's some kind of garbage


attached to the parameter as well.


And if we crawl all of those URLs with that garbage


and we say, oh, well, this is not a valid language.


Here's the English version.


Then it, again, kind of reinforces that loop


where systems say, well, maybe this parameter is not


so useful.


So the cleaner approach there would


be if you have kind of garbage parameters


to redirect to the cleaner ones or to maybe even show a 404


page and say, well, we don't know what you're


talking about with this URL, to really cleanly make sure


that whichever URLs we find, we actually


get some useful content that is not


the same as other content which we've already seen.


JOSHUA BERGSTROM, MD, PhD, FIDELIN CHAMBER,


FIDELIN CHAMBER, FIDELIN CHAMBER, MARTIN CHAMBER,


MARTIN CHAMBER, MARTIN CHAMBER, MARTIN CHAMBER,


version of a site to another language


version of the same site on the page,


but we use hreflang attributes in the site map


to try to indicate that.


Is that sufficient for that use case,


or do I also need to provide very easily discoverable links


to the translated versions?


Ideally, you would have a link to the translated versions.


And usually what happens with sites


is you don't need a link from every page to every page.


I mean, that's kind of the best practice anyway


that you can switch between the languages directly on the page.


But for crawling, you don't necessarily need that.


But rather, as soon as we find one page that is in French,


from there we can usually crawl out and see, well,


here's the rest of the site in French and pick all of that up.


So that's something where sometimes it's enough to have,


I don't know, in the footer of the home page,


like this site is also available in these different languages,


and you just directly link to those individual languages,


kind of the home page.


And based on that, we can actually


discover the rest of the site.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


And then one last follow up.


I think you said local crawler is a tool I should try using.


I'm not familiar with that.


Where do I find that?


JOHN MUELLER There are a number of kind of crawler tools


that you can buy or download and use directly.


I don't know all of them.


Like I know I'm a streaming frog or something.


But theoretically, you could also create your own


and just kind of like crawl with Python or something like that.


But yeah.


SPEAKER 2 Got it.


OK, sorry.


I thought you were referring to a particular tool.


OK.


All right.


Thank you very much.


JOHN MUELLER Cool.


We still have more questions with people with their hands


up, and I'll get to you right afterwards.


I will just pause the recording for now.


Thank you all for sticking around for so long.


And thanks for all the questions that you submitted and asked


here.


If you're watching this recording on YouTube


and you'd like to join one of these sessions,


watch out for the community section of the YouTube channel.


That's where we kind of link to the individual sessions


that we do and where we also post the URL to join these


live.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Hello, and welcome to another JavaScript SEO Office Hours


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

today at this beautiful, sunny, yet a little cold March 24,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

My name is Martin Splitt.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I'm a developer advocate at the Search Relations


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

team here at Google.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And I'm here to answer your questions.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So let's start with the questions


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that were submitted on the YouTube


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

post for these Office Hours.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

First question comes from Ralph Metzler.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Hold on, I'll just quickly let someone


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

in who wants to join as well.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Ralph Metzler is asking, does Google only


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

consider initial page loadings when it comes to Core Web Vitals


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

or will it use consecutive loadings as well


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

in the statistics?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

As far as I'm aware, also consecutive page loads


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

will be part of the Core Web Vitals statistics.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's unclear how exactly we are going


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

to use them when it comes to the page experience signal.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That bunch of details are still being worked out.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But in general, I would assume that also


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

the consecutive page loads are counted as well.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Then we have a question from Andrew Berg.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

If I have links in raw HTML but they are not


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

present in the rendered HTML, will Google still


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

crawl them properly?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That's a clunky CMS navigation question, apparently.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

In general, the more robust things are, the better.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Which means there should not be a discrepancy between crawled


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

HTML and the rendered HTML, which


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

means it's fine to add things.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's also hypothetically fine to remove things.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But then what is the one that you want us to see?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Unclear.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

The good news is it probably still works.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I would just not rely on it, but it probably still works.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Because we are looking at the initial HTML


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

to extract URLs for crawling.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So we probably do see these URLs already


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and then are able to figure out the structure.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It might also be that because someone commented on that,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

yeah, it seems to be that way.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That could also be because of the site map that you submit.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But in general, I would expect this to work,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

even though I do say do not rely on this,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

because that is a detail that might change in the future.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But as far as I'm aware, as of today, that should work.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I would still argue it is better to be consistent.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So if there are things in the initial HTML


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that you want to be taken care of


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

or you want to be taken into account,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

they should also be in the rendered HTML.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Removing things from the rendered HTML


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

might mean we might not see that in the indexing infrastructure.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

In this specific case, because it's about the links,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

it should still work, because we do link extraction twice.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

We do it in the rendered HTML as well as in the initial HTML.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But again, implementation detail.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

OK, so thanks to those two for submitting questions


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

through the YouTube thread.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Now you get the opportunity to ask questions live


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

for those who are live here.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And I think there's already one in the chat, which is nice.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

You can unmute yourself and talk to me afterwards.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

There should be also a Raise Hand button at the lower menu


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

bar, where you have all the different bits and pieces


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that you can use to raise your hand so that you don't have


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

to worry to actually speak in if someone else is speaking right


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

now.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So Yannick is asking, is there anything


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that speaks against the use of server-side rendering?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Can you recommend this type of prerendering for future


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

projects?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

There's nothing that speaks against using


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

server-side rendering.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

In fact, it might actually make things faster for your users.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It definitely makes things more robust.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

There's nothing per se that is bad about server-side rendering.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Just make sure that you implement it properly


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

so that it doesn't come to any side effects.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I can definitely recommend that for future projects.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I think if you are starting a project anew,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

it is the best and easiest moment to actually get


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that implemented, because retrofitting that


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

onto projects that are already in progress


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

is a relatively hard task.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So yeah, I would recommend that for future projects.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

There's nothing that speaks against server-side rendering.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And now I see that Dave raised his hand.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Hi, Dave.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Hi, Jarett.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah, I was having a robust discussion


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

with some developers.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's around they've got a framework that


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

server-side renders and hydrates.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And like a lot of them, that provides


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that puts most of the content in a big JSON string kind


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

of thing at the bottom.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I don't necessarily see it as a problem at all,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

but they're obsessed with stripping this out for Google


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and other bots.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

They're saying, yeah, it'll save loads of page weight


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and all this kind of stuff.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

To me, it seems like a lot of fragility and problems,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

potentially.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But is there any benefit from doing that?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Is there any benefit from removing it?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I wouldn't imagine it would be a problem if it wasn't there.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah, I think you're right there.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I don't think it's a problem to have that huge JSON


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

string at the bottom, particularly


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

because it doesn't really hurt.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yes, it might hurt because it gets parsed,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and parsing takes time.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

But on the other hand, if it's at the lower end of the page


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

then we have already seen pretty much everything


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that we need to see anyway.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And I agree with you that creating different code


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

paths for bots is inviting fragility because you then


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

have to remember to test that code path very carefully.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And you might not necessarily see the issue when it arises


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

unless you very, very carefully monitor your search console


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and everything around that aspect.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I don't think they're going to win much with it.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And then I come back to my mantra that is,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

don't fix what's not broken.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So unless they see a very specific issue


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and have very good reason to believe


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that removing the JSON string is going


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

to fix or alleviate that issue, then I


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

would not spend the effort.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Thank you.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

You're welcome.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

All right.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Opening the floor for further questions.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Don't have questions.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That was a short office hour session.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

We're not even 10 minutes in.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

People are leaving already.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Someone was trying to call.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

That's lovely.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

They may have thought otherwise.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Right.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with some commentary.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I recently checked how things have


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

progressed in the terms of JavaScript rendering from 2018


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

when I joined Google to today.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And I'm really, really happy to see how far we have gotten,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

how well the evergreen Googlebot has worked and is working.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And yeah, very, very happy to see that we are seeing


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

fewer JavaScript-related issues.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Most of the JavaScript-related issues


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that are being reported these days


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

turn out not to be JavaScript-related issues


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

or only peripherally linked to JavaScript,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

such as blocking out resources that JavaScript needs


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

to actually build the content.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So that's technically not JavaScript-related then,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

because it's just blocking the resources.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Like, why is my image not being indexed


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

while you are disallowing us from crawling it, for instance?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Any further questions while I have you all here?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's a bit of a follow-up on that one, really,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

on that comment.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Is that generally because you, as Google,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

are getting better at handling JavaScript or education


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and people are better at building things?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And you've seen less issues with things like Ahrefs not


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

being used and stuff?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

MARTIN SPLITTENBERG


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I think it's twofold.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I think, on one hand, the Chrome team does a really great job


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

in educating developers in terms of how to have a,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

they like to call it the well-lit path,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

so that you basically just use the tools out of the box,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and the tools just happen to make the right decisions


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

for you already, rather than things like frameworks


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

reinventing how links should look like and stuff like that,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

which was a problem a couple of years ago.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And the other thing is that we are also definitely


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

getting better at actually understanding and working


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

with JavaScript.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

I think the leap from Chrome 41 to an evergreen Chrome


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

in the web rendering service was a huge factor,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

because pretty much the entire JavaScript ecosystem


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

has moved on.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And we were kind of stuck in time


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

until that big leap forward happened.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And it's not that we just sat on our hands not doing anything.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It was that we were trying to figure out


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

a sustainable strategy for us actually


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

keeping pace with Chrome.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And I think we have achieved that,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

as has been shown through the updates


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

throughout the last two years at this point.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So I think it's both developers getting better in terms


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

of educating themselves.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's also us educating them.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And also the tooling ecosystem kind of


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

becomes better by just making the right choices by default.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

We kind of see that throughout all the frameworks.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So Angular has now chosen really reasonable defaults.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

React has been using reasonable defaults for a long time.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Vue.js has recently made good progress


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

towards actually changing away from fragment URLs,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

for instance.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So that's pretty cool and very reassuring to me.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Cool.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It's interesting.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yeah, and it's not going to go away,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

because I mean the JavaScript ecosystem keeps moving.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And I already see spots in WRS where we could invest more


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

should the ecosystem require that investment.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So that's going to be interesting to follow and see


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

where we're getting.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Yannick is saying, if 85% of my web pages


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

are rendered server-side and 15% are not,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

will Google render less often the JavaScript


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

version of the website because of the difference


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

with and without JavaScript not being enough?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

No, no.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

It turns out that these heuristics and stuff


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

are pretty shaky, flaky, and hard to debug.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

So pretty much every page gets rendered.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And it doesn't matter if there is much of a difference or not.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

There are heuristics for pages where we are very sure


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

that it's not going to change overnight,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

but it's very, very few pages being affected.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Any further questions?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Anyone else?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

Tamas or Eric or Adil or, well, Yannick has asked,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

do you have questions for questions, Tito?


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

TAMAS GARNIERI-GRITTSCHNIDT II Yes, I would have a question.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Sure.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

TAMAS GARNIERI-GRITTSCHNIDT II So it's regarding the pagination


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

and this Load More button.


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

And as far as I know, by pagination,


JS SEO office hours March 24th, 2021

it's important that Google can find a static link