Lisa asked, I create 301 redirects for every 404 error that gets discovered on my website.


English Google SEO office-hours from December, 2022

Do too many 301 redirects have a negative effect on search ranking for a website?


And if so, how many is too many?


You can have as many redirecting pages as you want.


Millions is fine if that's what you need or want.


That's it.


Focus on what's actually a problem so that you don't create more unnecessary work for


yourself.


It's fine to have 404 pages and to let them drop out of search.


You don't need to redirect everyone.


Having 404 errors listed in Search Console is not an issue if you know that those pages


should be returning 404.


John asks, how does Google determine what is a product review for the purposes of product


review updates?


If it's affecting non-product pages, how can site owners prevent that?


Check out our Search Central documentation on best practices for product reviews for


examples of what we recommend, including in product reviews.


It is unlikely that a non-product page would be mischaracterized as a product review page,


and it is unlikely that it would have a significant effect on ranking even if it was.


It's more likely to be other ranking factors or algorithm changes that has impacted the


ranking of your page.


I bought a Google domain that came with a free web page.


I now decided to self-host my domain and I wanted to know if I should delete my free


Google page.


I don't want to have two web pages.


If you set up a domain name for your business and have since moved on to a new domain, you


should ideally redirect the old one to the new domain.


Or at least delete the old domain.


Keeping an old website online when you know that it's obsolete is a bad practice and can


confuse both search engines and users.


Should paginated pages such as "/category?page="2?" be included in an XML sitemap?


That makes sense for me, but I almost never see it.


You can include them, but assuming each category page has a link to the next category page,


there may not be much benefit.


We will discover the subsequent pages automatically.


Also, since subsequent pages are for the same category, we may decide to only index the


first category page on the assumption that the subsequent pages are not different enough


to return separately in search results.


Nacho asks, We were hacked early in 2022 and still see Search Console 404 error pages from


spammy pages created by the hacker.


These pages were deleted from our database.


Is there anything else that I should do?


Well, if the hack is removed, if the security issue is resolved, and if the pages are removed,


then you're essentially all set.


These things can take a while to disappear completely from all reports, but if they're


returning 404, that's fine.


Tarek asks, Does Google care about fast sites?


Yes.


Google measures Core Web Vitals for most sites, which includes factors such as site speed,


and Core Web Vitals is used as part of the page experience ranking factor.


While it's not something that overrides other factors, like relevance, it is something that


Google cares about, and equally important, users care about it too.


Abraham asks, Can Google follow links inside a menu that appears after a mouseover on an


item?


Hey Abraham, great question.


And yes, Google can do this.


The menu still needs to be visible in the HTML, and the links need to be crawlable,


which means they need to be proper ATAGs with an href attribute.


You can use the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console to see how Google sees the


HTML on your site and check to see if the menu links are there.


Hope that helps.


Luki asks, We use subdomains for desktop and mobile users.


We found a strange report in Search Console in early August where the desktop performance


has changed inversely with the mobile performance and the result is that our traffic has decreased.


The technical aspect of the indexing and reporting shifting to the mobile version of a site is


normal and expected.


This happens with mobile-first indexing and can be visible in reports if you look at the


host names individually.


However, assuming you have the same content on mobile and desktop, that wouldn't affect


ranking noticeably.


If you're seeing ranking or traffic changes, they would be due to other reasons.


Mark is asking, Do many redirects, let's say twice as many as actual URLs, affect crawling


or ranking in any way?


Well, you can have as many redirects as you like on your site overall.


There shouldn't be any problem there.


Just make sure that individual URLs don't have too many hops in the redirect chains


if you are chaining redirects.


Otherwise you should be fine.


Anonymous is asking, When an article has no author, should you just use organization instead


of person on author market?


Will this have a lesser impact on results?


Perfectly fine to list an organization as the author of an article.


We say this in our article structure data documentation.


You can specify an organization or person as an author.


Both are fine.


You can add whichever one is accurate for your content.


Somebody asked, A competitor is copying all of our articles with small changes.


In time, it ranks higher than us.


The EMC doesn't stop them or seem to lower their ranking.


What else can we do?


The site has more authority.


If the site simply scrapes content without creating anything of original value, that's


clearly a violation of our spam policies.


And you can report them to us using our spam report form so that we can improve our algorithms


to catch similar sites.


Otherwise you can start a threat on our Search Central Help Community so product experts


can advise on what would be some of the possible solutions.


They would also be able to escalate to us for further assessment.


Anonymous is asking, URL, page title, and H1 tag.


Do they have to be the same?


Great question, and no, they don't need to be exactly the same.


There's probably going to be some overlap in the words you're using.


For example, if you have a page that's titled How to Knit a Scarf, then it probably makes


sense to use some of those words in the URL too, like slash how to knit a scarf or slash


scarf knitting pattern.


But it doesn't need to be a word-for-word match.


Use the descriptive words that make sense for your readers and for you when you're maintaining


your site structure and organization, and that'll work out for search engines as well.


Shah asks, Is redirecting through a page blocked by robots.txt still a valid way of preventing


links from passing page rank?


Yes.


If the goal is to prevent signals from passing through a link, it's fine to use a redirecting


page that's blocked by robots.txt.


Some pages in my website collect customer information, but my site is always reported


as being infected by a virus or deceptive by Google.


How can I avoid this happening again without removing those pages?


Your site might have been infected by a virus without you knowing it.


Check out web.dev slash request hyphen a hyphen review for instructions on how to register


your site in Search Console, check for security alerts, then request Google to review your


site again after you removed any malicious files.


Some break-ins hide themselves from the site owner, so they can be hard to track down.


Rajath is asking, Is there any way to get site links on SERPs?


Good question.


One thing to keep in mind is that there's not really a guarantee that site links or


any search feature will show up.


Site links specifically only appear if they're relevant to what the user was looking for


and if it'll be useful to the user to have those links.


There are some things that you can do to make it easier for Google to show site links, however,


like making sure you have a logical site structure and that your titles, headings, and link text


are descriptive and relevant.


There's more on that in our documentation on site links, so I recommend checking that


out.


My site's domain name has two hyphens.


Does that have any negative effect on its rankings?


No.


There's no negative effect from having multiple dashes in a domain.


Bill asks, How important are unique page titles for e-commerce category product listing page


pagination?


Would it be helpful to include the page number in the title?


There is a good chance that including the page number in the information about a page


will have little effect.


I would include the page number if you think it's going to help users understand the context


of a page.


I would not include it on the assumption it'll help with ranking or increasing the likelihood


of the page being indexed.


Is it better for domain ranking to regularly post one article every day or to post many


articles every day?


So here's my chance to give the SEO answer, It depends.


You can decide how you want to engage with your users.


On the downside, that means there's no absolute answer for how often you should publish.


On the upside, this means that you can decide for yourself.


Faiz Ul Amin is asking, What is the main reason for de-indexing of sites after the Google


spam update?


Well, glad you asked.


If you believe you were affected by the Google spam update, you have to take a really, really


deep look on your content and deliberately improve it.


Check out our spam policies and read more about the Google spam update on Search Central.


Zaid asks, Can Google read infographic images?


What's the best recommendation there?


While it's theoretically possible to scan images for text, I wouldn't count on it when


it comes to web search.


If there's text that you want your pages to be recognized for, then place that as text


on your pages.


For infographics, that can be in the form of captions and alt text, or just generally,


well, you know, text on the page.


Anonymous is asking whether it's possible to completely remove a site from Google Search


because it has been hacked and leads to thousands of invalid links.


Well first and foremost, sorry to hear that your site was hacked.


Our friends at web.dev have great documentation about how to prevent this from happening in


the future.


But they also have documentation about how to clean up after a hack.


To answer your specific question, you can remove your site from search by serving a


404 or similar status code, or by adding noindex rules to your pages.


We will need to recrawl your site to see the status codes and noindex rules, but that's


really the best way to do it.


I'm missing months of data from my domain property on Search Console.


From April 2022, it connects directly to August 2022.


What happened?


This can happen if a website loses verification in Search Console for a longer period of time.


Unfortunately there is no way to get this data back.


One thing you could try, however, is to verify a different part of your website and see if


it shows some of the data there.


Anonymous is asking, I want to de-index some bogus URLs.


There's really only a handful of ways to de-index URLs, removing the page and serving a 404


or 410 or similar status code, or by adding a noindex rule to the pages and allowing Google


Bot to crawl those pages.


These you can all do on your own site.


You don't need any specific tool, but Google Bot will need to recrawl those pages to see


the new statuses and rules.


If we are talking about only a couple pages, then you can request indexing of these pages


in Search Console.


Frank asks, why is some structured data markup detected on the schema validator, but not


on Google's rich result test?


Hey Frank, this is a really common question.


These tools are actually measuring different things.


I think you're referencing the schema.org markup validator, which is checking if your


syntax in general is correct, whereas the rich result test is checking if you have markup


that may enable you to get a rich result in Google Search.


It doesn't actually check every type that's on schema.org, it only checks those that are


listed in the list of structured data markup that Google supports, which is about 25-30


features.


So it's not fully comprehensive of everything that you'd see on schema.org, for example.


Do you have people that I can work with to create a functioning site?


Unfortunately, no.


We don't have a team that can create a website for you.


If you need technical help, my recommendation would be to use a hosted platform that handles


all of the technical details for you.


There are many fantastic platforms out there now, everything from Blogger, from Google,


to Wix, or Squarespace, Shopify, and many more.


They all can work very well with Search, and usually they can help you to get your site


off the ground.


Ibrahim is asking, why are some websites crawled and indexed faster than others?


This is a great question.


Much of how fast a site is crawled and indexed depends on how the site is perceived on the


internet.


For example, if there are many people talking about the site, it's likely the site's gonna


be crawled and indexed faster.


However, the quality of the content also matters a great deal.


A site that's consistently publishing high-quality content is going to be crawled and indexed


faster.


Why do Google crawlers get stuck with a pop-up store selector?


It can depend on how the store selector is implemented in HTML.


Google follows a href links on a page.


If the selector is implemented in JavaScript, Google might not see that the other stores


exist and so not find the product pages for those stores.


Anonymous is asking, if we have a staging site that is allow listing only specific developers'


IP addresses, if we upload a Search Console HTML file, which I suppose is the verification


file, will Search Console be able to verify that site?


Well, the short answer is no.


To remove your staging site from search using the removal tool for site owners, first you


need to ensure that Googlebot can actually access the site so you can verify it in Search


Console.


We publish our list of IP addresses on Search Central so you can use that list to allow


list the IPs that belong to Googlebot so it can access the verification file.


Then you can use the removal tool to remove the staging site.


Just make sure that the staging site in general is serving a status code that suggests it


cannot be indexed, such as 404 or 410.


How can we get a desktop URL indexed?


The message in Search Console says page is not indexed because it's a page with a redirect.


We have two separate URLs for our brand, desktop and mobile.


With mobile-first indexing, that's normal.


Google will focus on the mobile version of a page.


There's nothing special that you need to do about that.


And there's no specific trick to index just the desktop version.


Christian is asking, is it possible to report sites for stolen content such as text, original


images, that kind of thing?


Yes, you can report a site.


Do a search for DMCA request Google and use the report content on Google Troubleshooter


to file a report.


Is adding Wikipedia links to justify the content a bad practice?


Well, I'd recommend adding links to things that add value to your pages.


Blindly adding Wikipedia links to your pages doesn't add value.


Gabriel is asking, is there any difference if an internal link is under the word here


or if it is linked in a keyword?


Hey Gabriel, good question.


It doesn't matter if it's an internal link to something on your site or if it's an external


link pointing to something else.


Here is still bad link text.


It could be pointing to any page and it doesn't tell us what the page is about.


It's much better to use words that are related to that topic so that users and search engines


know what to expect from that link.


Niraj is asking, I follow the same pattern of optimization, but my news website traffic


is up and down.


Well, for most sites it's actually normal to have periodic traffic fluctuations.


For example, seasonality affects e-commerce sites quite a bit.


For news sites specifically, user interest in the topics you cover can cause fluctuations.


But all in all, it is normal and not something that you have to worry about usually.


Is changing the URL often impacting my SEO performance?


For example, a grocery site might change a URL from slash Christmas slash turkey meat


to slash Easter slash turkey meat.


The page is the same, the URL is just changed with a redirect.


I wouldn't recommend constantly changing URLs.


At the same time, if you must change URLs, then definitely make sure to redirect appropriately.


How does Freshness play a role in ranking?


For seasonal queries like Black Friday deals, it makes sense to update frequently as news


or deals are released.


But what about something less seasonal?


You may decide to update a Black Friday deals page frequently to reflect the latest offers


as they come out.


Remember however, that Google does not guarantee how frequently a page will be re-indexed,


so not all of the updates are guaranteed to be indexed.


Also a good quality page that does not change much may still be returned in search results,


if we think its content is still relevant.


I would recommend focusing on creating useful content and not spending too much time thinking


about how to make static pages more dynamic.


Adam asks, is there a way to appeal safe search results?


I work with a client that has been blocked from their own brand term while resellers


and affiliates are still appearing.


So first off, I think it's important to realize that safe search is not just about


adult content.


There's a bit of nuance involved there, so it's good to review the documentation.


Should you feel that your website is ultimately incorrectly classified, there's a Review


Request link in an article called Safe Search and Your Website in the Search Developer Documentation.


Danny is asking, my site name in search is reflecting the old domain's brand name,


even with structured data and meta tags.


What else can I do to update this information?


Hello Danny!


The site name documentation has a troubleshooting section with a list of things to check that's


more detailed than what I can cover here.


You want to make sure that your site name is consistent across the entire site, not


just in the markup, and also check any other versions of your site and make sure those


are updated too.


For example, HTTP and HTTPS.


If you're still not having any luck, go to the Search Console Help Forum and make


a post there.


The folks there can help.


Amir asks, while migrating a website from Blogger to WordPress, do the URLs need to


be the same, or can I do a bulk 301 redirect?


You don't need to keep the URLs the same.


With many platform migrations, that's almost impossible to do.


The important part is that all old URLs redirect to whatever specific new URLs are relevant.


Don't completely redirect from one domain to another, instead redirect on a per-URL


basis.


Johan asked, if a website gets algorithmically penalized for thin content, how much of the


website's content do you have to update before the penalty is lifted?


Well, it's generally a good idea to clean up low-quality content or spammy content that


you may have created in the past.


For algorithmic actions, it can take us several months to re-evaluate your site again to determine


that it's no longer spammy.


Vinay asks, we've set up Google Search Console for a Google-owned website where the pages


are dynamically generated.


We'd like to get insights into what we should do to fix long indexing lead times.


Well, it's interesting to see someone from Google posting here.


As you listeners might know, my team is not able to give any Google Sites SEO advice internally,


so they have to pop in here like anyone else.


First off, as with any bigger website, I'd recommend finding an SEO agency to help with


this holistically.


Within Google, in the marketing organization, there are folks that work with external SEO


companies, for example.


Offhand, one big issue I noticed was that the website doesn't use normal HTML links,


which basically makes crawling it a matter of chance.


For JavaScript sites, I'd recommend checking out the guidance in our documentation and


our videos.


Joshua asked, how exactly does the helpful content system determine whether visitors


feel they've had a satisfying experience?


We published a pretty comprehensive article called, What Creators Should Know About Google's


August 2022 Helpful Content Update, where we outline the type of questions you can ask


yourself to determine whether or not you're creating helpful content for users, such as,


are you focusing enough on people-first content?


Are you creating content to attract search users using lots of automation tools?


Did you become an expert on a topic overnight and created many articles seemingly out of


nowhere?


Personally, I think not just SEOs, but digital marketers, content writers, and site owners


should be familiar with these concepts in order to create the best content and experience


for users.


Ryan asks, bots have swarmed our website and caused millions of real URLs with code tacked


on to be indexed on our website through a vulnerability in our platform.


Should we 404 these pages or noindex them?


Either using a 404 HTTP result code or a noindex robots meta tag is fine.


Having these on millions of pages doesn't cause problems.


Depending on your setup, you could also use robots.txt to disallow crawling of those URLs.


The effects will linger in search consoles reporting for a longer time, but if you're


sure that it's fixed, you should be all set.


Brian asks, if my site is all in English and I add a single post in Spanish, will that


affect search rankings?


Hey Brian, sure, that's totally fine.


It's not going to harm your search rankings.


I also recommend checking out our guide to managing multilingual websites as there's


a lot more to cover when you're thinking about publishing content in multiple languages.


Stepan asked, in Google Search Console exists a section called manual actions.


Do Google show all penalties there and always notify domain owners when a domain is hit


with some penalties?


We have manual actions which are issued by human reviewers and algorithmic actions which


are driven entirely by our spam algorithms, such as SpamBrain.


We only communicate manual actions to site owners through Search Console.


You can search for manual actions report.


There's a page there that lists a lot of information to help you understand more about our different


types of manual actions, as well as how to file a reconsideration request when you receive


and already address the manual action.


Caroline asks, will SEO decline in favor of SEA and SMA?


I'm starting my internship and need to know if I'd better redirect my path or continue


on my way and specialize myself in accessibility.


I'm not quite sure what SMA is, but regardless, there are many critical parts that lead to


a website's and a business's success.


I definitely wouldn't say that you shouldn't focus on SEO, but at the same time, it's


not, well, the answer to everything.


My recommendation would be to try things out, find where your passions and your talents


lie, and then try more of that.


Over the years, things will definitely change, as will your interests.


In my opinion, it's better to try and evolve than to wait for the ultimate answer.


Chummy asked, does the number of outgoing links, both internal and external, dilute


page rank, or is page rank distributed differently for each type of link?


I think you might be overthinking several things.


First of all, focusing too much on page rank through building unnatural links that it violates


a policy or not.


It takes time and effort away from other more important factors on your site, such as helpful


content and great user experience.


Second of all, sites with internal links allow us to discover not only new pages, but also


understand your site better.


Submitting them explicitly would likely do more harm than good.


And that was it for this episode.


I hope you found the questions and answers useful.


If there's anything you submitted which didn't get covered here, I'd recommend posting in


the Search Central Help Community.


There are lots of passionate experts there who can help you to narrow things down.


And of course, if there's more on your mind, please submit those questions with the form


linked below.


Your questions here are useful to us and to those who catch up on these recordings, so


please keep them coming.


If you have general feedback about these episodes, let us know in the comments or ping us on


social media.


I hope the year has gone well for you.


For us, things have certainly evolved over the course of the year with, well, ups and


downs and a bunch of new launches.


I'm looking forward to catching up with you again next year, perhaps in another episode


of these Office Hours.


In the meantime, may your site's traffic go up and your crawl errors go down.


Have a great new year and see you soon.


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from March 31, 2020

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


Office Hour Hangouts from home.


My name is John Mueller.


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


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


where folks can join in and ask any question


around their website and web search,


and we try to come up with an answer for you.


A bunch of stuff was already submitted on YouTube.


So we can go through some of that.


But we can also go through some kind of urgent questions


from people who are joining here live.


Anyone has anything?


I mean, if not, I'll just jump into the questions


from YouTube, and you can stop me at any time along the way.


And I can always answer questions.


All right, go for it, Barry.


So I've been obviously tracking how you guys are manually


changing the search results constantly.


No, I'm joking.


But the algorithm seems to be, is it possible


that the tools that are tracking the changes to the Google


search rankings, like the 10 listings and so forth,


that there's so much change because of how maybe search


or behavior is changing that Google's algorithms are


adapting to it?


Meaning, I mean, if you look at these tools,


like the past couple of weeks, it literally


feels like there's a Google algorithm update every day


in terms of how much fluctuations there


are in the tools that are tracking it


and the webmaster saying my rankings are changing.


So is it possible that search or behavior is influencing


the algorithm itself?


I don't know.


So I haven't been watching what's


happening with these tools.


That's probably something that you see more.


But in general, we do try to adapt our algorithms


to provide the information that's


relevant for users at the time when they need it.


So that could be something where things are kind of evolving


to make sure that people have the right information


at the right time.


But I imagine that's more specific to certain kinds


of searches.


I don't think it's like we would just change all of the search


results around.


So if you're looking for a manual for washing machines,


like why would you change the search results for that?


Things are essentially still all the same.


But I do know that there are various teams working at Google


on improving the search results, and particularly


around kind of the whole crisis situation


where people have higher expectations from search,


and they want something that they can trust.


And that's probably something where


we're trying to provide, I don't know,


better quality of service or good quality of service,


at least, for those that are looking


for this kind of critical information.


So you wouldn't think it's specific to anything?


If it's not COVID-related searches,


you don't think maybe the way people are searching less for


or more for buying toilet paper versus less


for going to the movies, that would influence


how the algorithm maybe adjusts.


Does that make sense, that question,


like searchers, search trends influencing the Google


algorithm and the rankings around that?


Yeah.


I don't think that would be happening.


I mean, it's something where we always see user behavior


shifts.


And sometimes certain topics become really popular,


and we try to show the right search results


for those kind of things.


And this happens all the time.


This is one of those things where it probably


is a little bit bigger and is lasting longer


than kind of like the Oscars when they come and go.


But these kind of shifts are things


that our algorithms have to watch out for anyway.


So it's not something that I'd say


would be specific to this current situation.


Thank you.


Sure.


Just have a question, John.


OK.


So today I found out that there is


a website that is scrapping the hell out of my content.


And I found out that it's ranking very close to my website


on Google search results.


This also happens when I look for some technical solutions


for my software problems.


And I find some Stack Overflow links,


and then it doesn't satisfy my need.


I scroll down a little bit, and I


find exactly the same question with the same content.


Does Google make any kind of efforts


to ban or penalize these scrappers, or how does it work


if I want to report this website that is stealing my content?


Well, I think, first of all, if it's your content


and if it's copyrighted content, then maybe the DMCA process


is the right approach.


That's something where you need to double check things


from a legal point of view.


So I can't give you legal advice,


so I can't tell you you should do this


or you should not do that.


Actually, my website is about legal advice,


so I can handle that.


OK, perfect.


Yeah, so maybe that would be a process that would work there.


That's generally the most direct way


to resolve this kind of thing, where


if the content is taken down, then that's


resolved in search.


So that kind of just automatically works out.


Otherwise, the web spam reports are something that you can do.


In general, we do look at the web spam reports that come in,


but we don't take manual action on every single one of them,


because we try to use them to improve our algorithms overall.


So that's kind of one thing where


it's useful to get feedback like that,


but I wouldn't see it as something


where within a couple of days, you will suddenly


see that website disappear from search.


Those are generally the main approaches there.


Sometimes it's also tricky in that if we


don't have a lot of other good content


for that specific query, then we end up


showing these kind of things.


So oftentimes, if you search for a quote,


then someone else will have copied that,


and we'll show that in the search.


But that's because you're searching


for that one specific piece of text,


and it's like we have that page indexed.


Maybe we don't rank it first for that piece of content,


but it's known to us, so we would show it


in the search results if you're explicitly looking for that.


So that's something where sometimes the perception is also


a little bit skewed in that if it's your content,


you explicitly search for it, and you see some spammer also


ranking, then you're like, that shouldn't be happening.


But at the same time, maybe there's


nothing else that we would show there,


and we happen to know about this page.


So at some point, we'll just show it.


AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 Yeah, gotcha.


Thank you.


And I think another thing to also keep in mind


is that sometimes people add more information


to individual pieces of content.


So we see that all the time with our blog posts,


where someone like Barry or someone else


will take it and quote parts of the blog post


and add some more information or open things up


for comments from other people.


And from our point of view, that's


kind of a normal part of the web.


Technically speaking, you could look at that and say, oh,


they're copying the content.


But actually, they're providing something different.


It's a slightly different version of the content.


It's maybe a commentary on that piece of content.


Maybe it's just other people's comments


that are also around that piece of content.


And that's something where we would say it's not even about


like who wrote that first, like which one of these


should we rank higher.


It's just it's a separate piece of content overall that


happens to have quotes that are the same.


But essentially, it's a unique piece of content.


SPEAKER 2 Thank you.


Thank you for the clarification.


SPEAKER 1 Sure.


SPEAKER 3 John, can I jump in with a question?


SPEAKER 3 So in another Hangout, you mentioned that the publisher


or organization schema doesn't need


to be on every single page of the website.


If it's on the home page or the contact page,


that's good enough.


Now, what about if we're talking about an article or blog post


schema that's on an article?


Does it need to be on every single paginated page


of that article, or can it just be


on the first page of that article?


What are you trying to achieve with the article markup there?


I think that's kind of what I would look at there.


If there is something that you're


trying to achieve with that article markup that's


relevant to the whole set of those pages,


then put it on all of those pages.


If it's something that's just kind of the intro of the article


is relevant enough for that extra piece of markup,


then maybe it's enough to just have it on the first page.


SPEAKER 1 That makes sense.


Thank you.


SPEAKER 2 Hi, Mr. Muller.


SPEAKER 1 Hi.


SPEAKER 2 Can I ask you a question?


SPEAKER 1 Sure.


SPEAKER 2 I'm Vahan, lead developer


at Search Engine Journal.


So I'm looking at Google Discover specifications


and read how to enable the website to use


a large image in the Discover.


And it says one should use high quality images, at least 1,200


pixels wide.


Ensure that Google has a right to display your high quality


images to users either by using AMP or by filling out


the form expressing your interest to opt-in program.


So my question is, is it possible to have large images


in the Discover still without AMP?


Yes.


So I think they want to move away from that form.


And another option that you can do,


I don't know if we documented it there


or in the other documentation, is


to use the max image preview robots metatag, where


you can specify, I think, large as kind of the large preview


image.


That would also apply to Discover.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


Thank you very much.


Because I did notice that CNN websites sometimes


has a large image but doesn't have an AMP.


And I wondered that max robot image, could you please repeat?


Let me see.


Max image preview, I think it's called.


Yeah, max image preview.


Metatag.


OK.


Sure.


Appreciate it.


Let me run through some of the submitted questions.


And we can get back to more questions from you all


towards the end.


And of course, if you have any comments


to individual questions or answers,


feel free to jump on in.


Question for e-commerce website.


From March 21, we saw that Google


removed the indexing of most of our categories.


Suddenly, all of our categories are marked in Search Console


as duplicate to unique category.


And Google is picking up another canonical


or declaring not available.


When rendering the pages in Search Console,


I can see that sometimes that none of the images


are rendered, and sometimes they are.


I need to precise that we implemented JavaScript


to load the product listing in the category.


Do you think that could be the reason, even if Google


is rendering different product names with different links,


possibly for Google, this is the same page?


It's really hard to say without looking at specific pages.


But offhand, that sounds like something


that would be more of a technical issue with regards


to those pages.


In particular, if you're saying this


is a specific type of page on your website,


if there is no other reason for things


to kind of be dropped from search, then my hunch


is that for one reason or another,


we're seeing the same content for these pages.


And if we're seeing the same content,


that can either be because on your server,


you're doing something unique for Googlebot,


where maybe you're serving a page that shows a server error,


or maybe you're showing a page that says,


it looks like you're a robot.


Can you fill out this captcha?


It could also be that it's something


where you're providing the content in JavaScript in a way


that we can't process properly.


So those are kind of the options that


would fall into this situation.


And usually, these are things that you


can double-check with the testing tools,


where you can work out, is this a technical issue


in my infrastructure, or is this something


with my JavaScript implementation that I have?


And then you can work to fix that.


What I would do here is maybe post in the Webmaster Help


form with the specifics, so some sample URLs


that you're seeing this with.


Alternately, if you feel it's really tied to the JavaScript


side, we have a JavaScript working group,


which is kind of a closed forum that you can just join in,


and you can ask questions there as well.


So those are probably the two directions I would take there.


Can you give us more details about how image indexing


and ranking works?


We know many things about HTML URLs indexing and ranking,


but when it comes to images, few things are really known.


For example, how does Google decide


to rank an image instead of another?


Are backlinks important for an image?


Does Google use Cloud Vision technology


to rank and index images?


How important is the text surrounding images?


So many things.


I feel this is almost a topic that would deserve


a completely separate hangout, so I


don't know how much detail I can go into here.


But we do have a fairly comprehensive Help Center


article on best practices for Google Images, which


includes a lot of the things that you're asking about here.


In general, what I would assume with images


is that Googlebot doesn't see the contents of the image


and instead needs to understand the context of how


it's used from your web page.


So essentially, we look at the HTML page.


We see there are some images embedded there.


There's text on the HTML page.


There's text around the image.


There's an alt attribute associated with the image.


All of this is on the web page, but it's about the image.


And for us, the combination of the image plus the web page


is essentially what we need to use for ranking.


So if someone is searching for, I don't know, a beach vacation,


then we're not going to look at all images


to see where there might be a beach on that image,


but rather we'll try to find matching web pages that


have unique and compelling images that we can show that


apply to this situation, this query


that someone is looking for.


So that's the thing that I would watch out for,


is really we primarily use a web page to understand the image,


and we always need the combination


of a web page and the image file when it comes to ranking.


Can general mistakes, such as missing a space between two


words, showing 20 products, but a heading


is showing 10 products, or placing a hyphen incorrectly


in schema, heading tags, et cetera, affect SEO?


So I guess it depends on where you make those typos.


When you're talking about structured data in particular,


since you mentioned schema, that's


something where if the structured data is


wrong with a typo, for example, then we


might not be able to process that at all.


Because structured data is something


that we process automatically.


We need to be able to process that one to one as it comes in.


And if there are errors in that structured data in a way


that we can't parse it, then we're


not going to try to interpret it.


However, when it comes to content,


if there are typos in your content,


if you have extra dashes or periods or spaces or things


like that within your content, usually that's


less of an issue.


That's something that happens on pages.


We understand that.


And I think the only case where these kind of typos


would be problematic is if with those typos, for example,


you're making it impossible for us


to understand what the primary content is on a page.


So for example, if you have a specific product


name on your website, and it's mentioned on one page one time,


and that one time it's mentioned completely wrong, maybe


with missing spaces around the product name


that you're describing, then it'll


be really hard for us to understand that this


is a unique product name that's actually shown


in an incorrect way on a page if we can't extract that out


as a word, for example.


However, if you have this product name multiple times


on a page like you normally would do, and one of them


has a typo, then that doesn't change anything for us.


We can understand that this page is about that product.


So that said, it's like, that said,


so normally things essentially just


work out with regards to typos.


It's not something where you need


to have a 100% perfect page.


I don't think any web page is completely perfect anyway.


So it's usually not a matter of something


where you need to panic if you recognize typos on your pages.


Page A is canonicalized to page B,


and page B is canonicalized to page C.


How does Google treat this?


So first of all, I think what you


need to figure out in a case like this


is what you actually want to have happen.


So do you want page A index?


Do you want to index as page B, or do you


want to index as page C?


And as soon as you work out what you want to have happen,


then you should make it as clear as possible to Google


what you want to have happen.


So if you're working with the rel canonical link


attributes, for example, then make


sure that you're consistent, that you always


point at the version that you do want to have indexed,


and then we'll try to follow that.


On the other hand, if you're using rel canonical


in inconsistent ways, if your internal linking is


inconsistent, your site map file mentions things


in different ways too, then we're


going to have to make a guess.


And it's not that you can determine ahead of time


what will Google guess, but rather it


might be we guess this way.


Might be we guess a different way later on.


It might be that it changes over time as well.


So with canonicalization, it's really


like if you want something to happen,


make it really clear to us.


The other thing with canonicalization


that people kind of forget, I think, every now and then


is that canonicalization is for us essentially a way of picking


a URL to show in search.


It's usually not a matter of things


ranking in different ways.


So if we pick one URL to show in search and a canonical,


or we pick a different URL, if the content is exactly the same,


we would rank it exactly the same.


So that kind of decision around canonicalization


wouldn't cause your site to jump up or jump down in search.


It's just, well, this URL or that URL.


In the end of February, I bought an expired domain.


Afterwards, set up all things fresh and verified


with Search Console.


Then I realized their crawl anomaly and soft 404 errors.


I tried to fix them with 301s or 410s,


but it's still showing errors in Search Console.


How can I get that resolved?


So in general, if you have a domain that


was used previously, then we probably have a bunch of URLs


that we know about from that domain.


And we'll try to recrawl them over time.


And if we notice that they don't work because they return a 404


or if they redirect somewhere else,


then we might flag that as a 404 or as a soft 404


in Search Console.


And that's perfectly fine.


I mean, these URLs are no longer valid on your website.


So Google sees errors, and we show them to you.


And then you can look at those errors and say, yeah,


that's on purpose.


I removed all of these URLs, or I didn't reinstate


all of these URLs.


So it's not something that you need


to suppress or hide or anything like that from Google.


The other thing maybe worth mentioning


is if you're using an expired domain,


just because there used to be a website there


doesn't mean that you have any kind of advantage


of using an expired domain.


So if the expired domain name is really what you wanted,


kind of as a domain name, then that sounds like a good thing.


On the other hand, if you're just picking up that expired


domain name in the hope of artificially being featured


high in search because that previous website was actually


pretty good, then that's not something


that I would expect to happen.


I want to remove an image in Google Search.


I used the Google outdated content removal tool,


submitted a request, but the status


shows removed content in Google.


When I visit the image, it's not removed.


So it's really hard to understand exactly what


you're trying there.


I would strongly recommend posting in the Webmaster Help


Forum, maybe with a screenshot so that someone can take a look


and see what is happening specifically with those pages


that you're mentioning.


One thing to keep in mind is the outdated content tool,


I believe, just updates the content


that we have indexed in search.


And if you're using that for images,


that would be the wrong thing to use there.


You'd need to remove that page from search, essentially.


The other thing to keep in mind is


that Google doesn't remove the images on the server,


but rather we can remove them from the search results.


So if you're searching for something


and that image is there, then that's


something that you could potentially remove,


depending on the situation.


On the other hand, if you take that URL where


the image is hosted and you try it out in your browser,


it might still be that it still works,


because that's something that we can control.


So those are some things to kind of keep in mind.


The other thing maybe also worth mentioning


is that, in particular with images,


sometimes the same image is used on multiple pages.


And if you remove the image once,


it might be that the same image from a different location


pops up in the search results afterwards.


And essentially, you just need to watch out for that


and then also have that other location removed as well.


In the view of the recent nofollow changes,


what is now the best practice in terms of links


to a PDF version of the same page?


Previously, we would just add nofollow


so that the original HTML would appear in the index.


But now PDFs are sitting ducks for indexation.


We can't, I guess, add a noindex instruction to the PDF


and we don't want to be perceived duplicate content


issues.


So what can you do?


So first of all, you can do a noindex for images.


That's essentially the ixrobots tag.


That's an HTTP header that you can add to the PDF files.


Well, not to the files, but to what the server returns


for those files.


And with the ixrobots tag header,


you can use any of the robots meta tags.


And I believe even in our robots text documentation,


we have examples of specifically how


to block PDFs from being indexed for probably both Apache


and ng-ix.


So I would double check that.


The other thing with regards to nofollow,


my guess is that this will continue


to work essentially the same way internally within a website


in that we just won't treat that link as being as important


overall.


However, like before, just because you have a nofollow


link to that PDF doesn't mean that we will never see that PDF.


Other people might have other links to that PDF.


We might see links from other places


in certain periods of time, or we see a normal link


to the PDF file and we'll go off and index it.


So even previously, just having a nofollow link to a page


does not mean that that page will never get indexed.


My blog is just three months old,


and my posts would sometimes keep appearing


on the first page and then suddenly disappear


after one or two days.


Why does this happen?


It's really hard to say, but my guess


is with a site that new, it's just a matter of our systems


not being 100% sure how they should


treat the new content that you're providing there.


Over time, as we understand the website better,


we're a little bit better at understanding


how new content on this website fits


in with the context of the rest of the web,


and we can work out which of these things


we should be indexing faster or slower or showing differently


in search.


But especially if it's a really new website,


then sometimes we have to guess.


And then our algorithms might say, oh, we'll


index this quickly.


Looks like something good.


And then afterwards, we might be like, well, maybe


we didn't need to do that.


And that's usually something that


settles down after maybe half a year or a year or so.


In terms of headings, best practice,


in particular headings that currently include


internal links, is there a benefit


to moving these from the H2s to the body of the text?


So I think there is an example here.


I took a quick look, and some of the H2 headings


are links to other pieces of content.


Some of them are just headings.


From my point of view, that's totally up to you.


I don't know if there are usability issues that you


might need to watch out for with regards to headings that


are also links.


But in general, from Google's point of view,


these things don't really matter that much.


It's something we do use headings to better understand


the content on a page.


But when you're talking about those links from one page


to another page, I don't think that link being in a heading


would play any visible role at all with regards to search.


OK, we had a situation where one of our keyword website


is ranking at position two, while I guess the same keyword


is on position six for desktop results.


Why is that?


That can happen.


So on the one hand, it's possible for rankings


to change fairly quickly.


It's also possible for things to be in experiment, essentially,


where different people, when they try it out,


they might see slightly different results.


That's completely normal.


From our point of view, it's also


possible that there are different rankings from mobile


and from the desktop search results.


That's something that, from our point of view,


also makes sense.


So in particular, if we recognize


that a page is not mobile-friendly,


in that when users go to it, they can't really


use it on their mobile device, then that's something,


maybe on mobile search results, we


would show a little bit lower.


So these are the kind of things where sometimes


the mobile and the desktop search results are just


slightly different.


Can excessive div tags in anchor text


reduce rendering performance?


I have no idea how that would work out.


Essentially, with regards to rendering performance,


we use something that's very similar to normal Chrome.


So if you use the normal performance testing tools


in Chrome that you have available, the Lighthouse


test, the different other testing tools that essentially


build on the Chrome stack, and you


see that you can improve the rendering


performance of your pages, then that's always a good thing.


It's good for users.


And if Googlebot can render pages a little bit better,


then that's also good for our servers as well.


But whether or not just having excessive div tags on a page


would cause a significant difference in rendering


performance, I kind of doubt that.


But I'm sure you could create a test page that


does cause this kind of an issue.


On our e-commerce and hreff and menu filters,


then the same hreff is used somewhere


in the middle of the primary content.


Is there any difference?


Don't quite understand the question,


but I think it's kind of like if you


have the same link on the page in multiple places,


is that a good thing or a bad thing?


From our point of view, that's perfectly fine.


There's nothing special that you need


to do if you have the same link on the page multiple times.


That's kind of a common scenario that


happens with a lot of sites.


So that's not something I would see as something


that you'd need to artificially suppress or change.


Some info is about the consequences


of COVID-19 and search results.


How does Google react when such a word appears?


What's the impact on search results?


I think Barry talked about this in the beginning.


Essentially, these kind of situations,


I mean, this is certainly a unique situation.


But these kind of changes happen all the time.


I believe, maybe a couple of years ago,


we mentioned again that something like 50%


of all searches every day are completely new.


And these kind of things happen all the time.


Suddenly, something completely new comes up,


and people search for it.


And we need to figure out what they're searching for,


what does that actually mean, and which pages


would be relevant to show there.


And we need to do that in an automated way,


in the sense that we can't manually double check


every search results page that we ever show to people,


because there are just so many different variations.


And like I mentioned, so many new kinds of searches


every day.


So this is something where our algorithms,


from what I've seen, just from personally browsing around,


it feels like our algorithms are able to deal with this fairly


well.


And I think that's almost also a testament to all of the work


that the engineers and the ranking teams have been doing


over the years to make sure that whenever something completely


new comes up, we're able to deal with that appropriately.


I have an eight-month-old website


that ranks for keyword city plus SEO, position 19,


in the non-US search results or locations.


But when I check my rankings, US,


it seems I'm ranking very good.


Last month, we temporarily reached


the first page of Google.


And we started slowly losing rankings again.


Yeah, I don't know exactly what to say here.


But essentially, we do have different results


in different lens, in the sense that if we


can tell that someone is trying to find something local,


and we can tell that a specific web page is matching


their intent in a reasonable way,


then we'll flag that in the search results


and rank that appropriately.


So if you're looking for one location from one keyword


in one country, and you're looking


for the same keyword in a different country,


it's usually pretty normal that we


would show different results for those kind of things,


especially if you're asking about something


that's more locally related.


So if you're looking for, I don't know, washing machine


manual, then probably we don't need


to use geotargeting that much to figure out which of these pages


we should show.


But if you're searching for washing machine repairman,


that's probably something where it makes sense


to use geotargeting to figure out


this user located, which of the web pages that we have


would be best suited for this user at this time.


So that kind of locally search results and different rankings,


that's pretty involved depending on the kind of query.


We're a hosting provider.


Some of our customers are hosted on subdomains of our domain.


Some of these domains are 301 redirected to our own domain,


some not.


Therefore, we have some valid and many excluded


of those subdomains in our Search Console property.


Unfortunately, we can't change anything


about how we handle those customers hosting right now.


So all official guidelines for permanently removing URLs


are not possible.


The next idea would be manually removing


those subdomains in Search Console with a removal


tool every six months.


I don't think you need to do that.


So essentially, if these are pages that no longer exist


or where you have a new page that replaces the previous


page, then serving a 404 or serving


a redirect for things that have moved, that's perfectly normal.


In Search Console, we will show those


as excluded in the reports.


But it's not something that you need to manually fix.


You don't need to suppress those errors or kind of that status.


That's completely normal.


That's something we show that in Search Console


so that if you're not aware of this situation,


you can follow up there and see why are these pages excluded.


And then from there, work out, was this a technical issue


on my server perhaps or in a certain time,


or is this by design?


And if it's by design, if you really remove those pages,


if you don't want them serving anymore,


if you want them redirecting or whatnot,


then that's perfectly normal.


It's not that we will rank your website anywhere lower


just because you have pages that are currently not valid.


That's from our point of view, it's


a sign of a healthy website if you're serving the proper status


code.


So if things are gone and you tell us they're gone,


that's perfect.


In the mobile-first indexing world,


will the hidden content behind tags and accordions


still be devalued, for example, because there's a lower chance


that it'll be seen by a user?


No.


Specifically, when it comes to content on mobile pages,


we do take into account anything that's in the HTML.


So if there's something there that


might be visible to users at some point,


we will include that in the indexing.


So that's completely normal.


If we have a fragment URL in an href,


does Google completely ignore that whole link, or just


the part after the fragment?


We essentially see that link, and we will drop anything


after the fragment and just take the earlier part of the URL


and assume that's the page that we can fetch from the server,


and that's the page that we can index,


and that's the page that we will use


to forward any signals with regards


to links on those pages.


Yes.


I've seen a ranking drop on my domain since the March update,


and noticed in Search Console that many of the staging links


were referencing the live domain,


but the website has already been removed from the server


and is serving 500, but still in Google cache.


I have requested to remove the cache from Search Console.


Will this have a worse impact on my rankings?


It sounds like there are a lot of things happening there,


so it's kind of hard to say what exactly is relevant there.


I think maybe offhand worth saying


that we make ranking changes all the time,


and we try to make sure that these ranking


changes reflect what we think is relevant and useful for users.


So it might just be that you're seeing


the results of a normal ranking change


that we make kind of all the time.


The other aspect with regards to staging site,


you remove the staging site, and maybe they're still indexed,


that's something where I would make sure


that the staging site URLs are just removed properly


so that they return a 404 when someone tries to access them,


not a 500.


A 500 error is a server error, and essentially,


when we see that, it means that our algorithms will


see that as a sign that maybe they're causing


an error on your server, and usually they'll


slow down with crawling.


So that's something where serving a 500


on a regular basis is probably not something


that you want to do.


Is an hreflinks with nofollow attribute and uncrawlable links


the same for Google?


By uncrawlable, I mean something like with an on-click handler.


So we use nofollow as a signal in the meantime


when it comes to crawling, indexing, and ranking.


So that's something where the effects will vary depending


on how our algorithms kind of approach that individual link.


And things like the on-click handler


that you mentioned in the example,


that's something where usually we would not see that as a link.


So it's not that our JavaScript systems


will go through all pages and see


where is an on-click handler and what


happens when you trigger that.


Usually, we would not see that as a link.


So if you're making a JavaScript-based website,


don't use on-click handlers for navigation.


One thing that might happen in that particular example


that you have there, where you have a JavaScript


snippet in the on-click attribute that mentions a URL


directly, what will probably happen


there is we will recognize the URL in the JavaScript


that you're mentioning there.


And we will try to see if we can just index that page


individually if we haven't seen it before.


So it'll be something we wouldn't


be able to treat as a link.


But we'd find a reference to that URL.


And we might go off and index that.


So lots of kind of edge cases involved there.


But if you're using a JavaScript site, don't use on-click.


Use normal Ahrefs links instead.


And if you're using nofollow, then just keep in mind


that that's a signal.


That's not a directive.


It's not a way to block indexing of a specific page.


You mentioned in Google search news


that only index the content that is


on the mobile version of the page.


It doesn't mention hidden content behind tabs.


I think we talked about that just before.


My images are ranking good, but my content is not ranking.


I have unique content, which is helpful for users.


Structured data is good.


Unable to figure out the problem.


Everything seems good and no technical issues


on my website.


It's really hard to say what you should be doing differently


with regards to a website in general.


So that's something where I, I don't know,


almost get a second opinion.


And maybe post about that in the Webmaster Help Forum


so that others can take a look at your pages


and at the queries that you're trying to rank for


and give you some honest kind of raw advice


maybe on your website overall.


Sometimes it's useful to just get someone else's opinion


on things that you've been working on for a while.


Can I ask a question?


Sure, go for it.


Thank you.


It's about schema.


I'm just wondering, aside from the obvious schema types


like FAQ or event or how-to that may directly influence


like the snippet, do you still recommend


using some of the other schema types,


maybe things like local business or maybe more


specific to the different types of businesses or even web page?


I think you had a tweet making a joke about if pages are,


what page would you not consider a web page?


Would you use those schemas as well?


Is there any benefit to it aside from SEO maybe?


I don't know.


So the thing I would primarily watch out


for with structured data is if there


is a specific kind of visible treatment


for that kind of structured data,


then that's kind of the direct one-to-one relationship


that you're aiming for.


Everything else apart from that direct and visible treatment


is something where it kind of depends on the pages.


And the structured data helps us to a little bit better


understand the content on the page.


But it's not something where you'll have any visible effect


from that directly.


So that's like if you have different cities


and you mark them up as cities and locations,


then that helps us to better understand,


oh, this is a mention of a city, maybe not a brand, for example.


But it's not something where there


would be a direct kind of ranking relationship there.


Right, but you may look at those structured data


types to help understand the page just a little bit better.


Yeah, yeah.


So that's something where usually people


are limited by the time that they have available.


So I tell them, focus on the visible things.


And if you can do a little bit more, that's perfectly fine.


It's not a bad thing.


I just wouldn't go overboard.


It's like if you're marking up every other word on a page,


then you're doing a lot of work that doesn't really


result in anything useful for search engines.


OK, wonderful.


Thank you.


All right, maybe we can open up for more


questions from any of you all.


I come back.


OK.


So it turns out that attribute you mentioned


was already in there by the Yoast tagging


as we use WordPress.


So in the per our tests, like no AMP articles


never, ever shown the large emails.


Anything else we can do to help there?


I don't know.


It's hard to say.


I mean, if you can send me some examples


or maybe copy them into the chat here,


I can take a look with the team.


I believe it's also the case that we just don't show


large images all the time, that maybe we show them


as a small thumbnail if we think that's good enough.


But if you think you're doing everything right


and you're pretty sure that we're never


showing the large image, then I'm


happy to double check with the team


to see if there is something that either we need


to document differently or maybe that you specifically


are doing in a slightly weird way


that I can get back to you on.


We have a lazy loading.


May that affect?


It could, theoretically.


I mean, it depends on how you mark up the images on the page.


I believe, I imagine you're using the article


markup for those pages.


And the image is probably linked directly in the markup itself,


and you probably have the large image linked there.


Then probably we would just pick it up from that.


However, if you didn't have the article markup


and we had to find the image on the page,


then lazy loading is something where sometimes we see problems.


But it sounds like that's not the case with you.


Yeah, OK.


I will tweet in the Twitter a couple of URLs.


OK, cool.


Thank you.


Sounds good.


All right, more questions from any of you all.


What else did we miss?


I could ask one more, John.


On our website, our navigation, which is site-wide,


has about 10 links.


And now two of them lead off to an external partner site,


and they are nofollow links.


Is this likely to affect our ranking in any way


if those two links were there or not there?


No.


I don't think that would change anything.


So usually, we would recommend using nofollow for things


like ads or if these are placed in user-generated content


on a site.


But that's something which is completely normal.


Lots of websites have ads, so they


tend to have the nofollow links.


Or if you're using the newer attributes,


I believe that would be sponsored or UGC, for example.


But that's completely normal.


It wouldn't negatively or positively affect your website


if you had those there or not.


Even if it's in the site navigation?


Even there, no.


Sometimes people buy site-wide ads,


and using the nofollow is a proper approach for that.


Or using rel="sponsored is another way to do that.


And that's perfectly fine to have these kind of site-wide


ads.


That's it.


Thank you.


All right.


More questions from any of you all?


No questions?


Wow.


I'll ask another.


OK, go for it.


Pedro, go ahead.


I've asked one.


I have a question regarding more regarding


how is the flow of reconsideration requests


taking on this period of pandemics.


Is it operating at normal scheduled intervals


like the regular?


Can we expect the usual two, three weeks response time?


Or is it longer?


How is it affecting everything?


I don't know offhand.


But my guess would be that it's slower than usual,


just because of the way things are set up


when we have vendor teams that review these kind of things.


Then probably during situations like this,


they have to get reorganized first, and work from home,


and get all of the setups working.


So my guess is it'll be a bit slower than usual.


But I don't have any first-hand data on that.


Yeah, thanks.


OK.


Be patient, Pedro.


Your spammy sites will come back.


It's not me.


Sure, sure.


That's fine.


Your friend.


I have just a question about videos.


Is there any advantage, disadvantage


to using a local player versus YouTube


and embedding them from an SEO perspective?


I think the main difference, or I guess there are two things.


On the one hand, we have to be able to recognize


the video is there.


If you want the video to be indexed in video search


and kind of with the video snippet,


we have to recognize that the video is there.


And with a common player format, if that's YouTube or Vimeo


or whatever the common formats are,


then that's really easy for us to do.


So if you use your own player format


and you're using something that you custom made for yourself,


then we might have a little bit of trouble understanding that.


If you're using something kind of, I don't know,


open source scripts or whatever they are out there,


then probably we'll be able to pick that up.


The other thing is, especially if you're using YouTube,


the landing page of the YouTube video


might rank as well in search.


And when you're specifically looking at the videos


themselves, it might happen that the YouTube landing page ranks


above your content or below your content.


It's really kind of hard to say.


So that might be something where you say,


it doesn't matter for us.


I don't care which of these pages


is ranking as long as people find the video.


It might also be that you say, well,


my web page is the one that I really need to have ranked.


And I'd rather kind of rank a little bit lower


than to have a YouTube landing page above mine.


And that's kind of a call you can make.


SPEAKER 1


So regarding the Google Search Console API,


if I'm guessing, you know, giving the current situation,


there's probably not a lot of work


in adding new features to it.


Just wondering if you heard anything


on adding like the fresh data maybe to it


or any other developments.


We discussed the fresh data a while ago.


I don't know what the status is there with the team.


But in particular with the fresh data,


the issue we notice is we can't just


start including that by default because that would kind of


confuse the way people use the data from the API.


So we'd have to add some kind of a flag


or something like that to it.


I don't know what the status of that is at the moment.


I believe that's something that was not that far away recently.


But I don't know how things are different now.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


And also on the API front, is there any chance


there will be a Google Trends API in the near future,


given that especially right now Google Trends is a very


valuable resource to kind of see how things are moving along.


Day to day?


I don't know.


I thought we had an API for Google Trends.


Well, it's mostly a hack, a workaround.


There's a big export option.


So people just use the export URL


and get URL keyword by keyword and stuff like that.


But there's no official API.


OK.


It sounds like something we should ask for.


Yeah.


I think in general, with these kind of things,


if you can give us some really good reasons why it makes


sense, like you can post them on Twitter or anywhere


where it's kind of visible, then that's


something that's always useful to go to a team and say, look,


all these people want this.


And here's why they want it.


You should do it.


OK, awesome.


Cool.


Pedro will help me out, definitely.


All right.


So I guess we're kind of over time.


So we can take a break here.


I have the next Hangout lined up for Friday in English


and Thursday in German.


I think Martin is doing a JavaScript Hangout this week


as well, maybe tomorrow or something.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG, JR. Next Wednesday.


Next Wednesday.


OK.


You have to hold out until next Wednesday


if you care about JavaScript.


And I think we just uploaded a whole bunch of YouTube videos


from the Webmaster Conference product summit


that we did in Mountain View.


So that's another cool set of stuff to look at.


In particular, I guess the more advanced people


will be keen on listening in to Paul Horace's talk, which


I thought was really, really cool to see.


So stay safe, stay healthy, and hopefully see


you all in one of the next Hangouts again.


Bye, everyone.


Bye, guys.


Bye-bye.


Google Search News (Dec ‘22) - Search Essentials, ranking systems, and more!

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Google Search News.


I hope life is treating you reasonably well wherever you are.


December is here, and as you can see, we're back to recording in a studio.


It's been challenging, but fun to record at home.


I hope you enjoyed these from the studio as well.


This time, we're doing things a little bit differently.


I'm joined by Lizzie to help deliver the updates.


Thanks for having me.


So what are we going to talk about today?


Well, today, there's an update about revamped search


guidelines, site names, our ranking systems, and more.


And now, here to talk about search guidelines,


here is Lizzie, our technical writer, who worked on these.


Well, the biggest news today is the revamp


of Google's Webmaster Guidelines as the search essentials.


The search essentials start off with the technical requirements,


which are minimal.


These are followed by the spam policies,


covering various things to avoid.


They include new sections for misleading functionality, scam,


fraud, and copyright and harassment removals.


The search essentials also include a limited set


of key best practices for search.


If you're making websites for Google Search,


the search essentials are, well, essential.


And now, back to John, who's going to tell us about site


names.


We recently launched a new way of showing site names


in the search results.


Site names make it easier to identify your website.


The change makes site names much more visible


while giving your page's title link a little bit more space.


This feature is currently available on mobile


in a specific set of languages.


Your site may already be using the appropriate structured


data.


Read our documentation to find out more.


Also, with this change, your site's favicon


may be more noticeable.


So it's good to double check that too.


I've been seeing a lot about ranking updates.


Can you tell us more, Lizzie?


LIZZIE HARTMANN HENRY-TANNERIYA RASMUSSEN-MILLER-SCHABAURINER


Ranking third in this episode is the Google Search ranking


systems documentation.


We've talked about ranking updates before.


And what good is an update without the system


that's being updated?


So now, there is a guide to Google Search's ranking


systems.


The guide covers over 20 systems,


including some that are retired.


Was it Panda or Penguin which looked at links?


You can find out here.


It's also a great reference if you write about Google systems.


Feel free to link to those specific sections.


In addition to the ranking systems guide,


we have a list of ranking updates.


The list includes dates for the rollout and completion


of each update.


It helps you to double check changes on Google's side


when you see changes on your site's performance.


And finally, we have detailed documentation


on newer systems, like for helpful content and product


reviews.


We do realize that change is hard.


So we do our best to let you know about these updates.


It's important that you have the information you need to be


successful with Google Search.


For more input on changes affecting your website,


I recommend the Search Central Help community.


And if there's anything unclear in the documentation,


feel free to send us feedback.


And now, over to the external world of SEO.


It's always inspiring to see what people in the community


are up to.


This time, it's a video series by Shelley Walsh


that features interviews with people


from the early days of SEO.


Making websites that worked well in search engines


was different when there were fewer websites, fewer


guidelines, and when search engines were less sophisticated.


There's a video with me in there too,


but I found them all fascinating so far.


Check out Shelley's videos and give her a thumbs up


for the work put into these.


And if you're nostalgic for Webmaster Tools,


we had Vanessa Fox as a guest in the Search Off the Record


podcast.


Vanessa managed the first Search Console team


back when it was called Webmaster Tools.


We had a fun time, so take a listen.


We're now almost at the end.


Stay tuned for a few short updates.


On the Search Central blog, we published a deep dive


into Search Console's data filtering and limits.


The reports have a lot of data, but what do they mean?


If you like numbers, check it out.


On our YouTube channel, we launched a new series


called SEO Fairy Tales with guests from the industry


explaining how they solved tricky problems.


It's fun and insightful.


Also on the YouTube channel, we published an interactive video


about the right to be forgotten.


It's fun and worth trying out.


And if you want even more, the team


has been back at events around the world.


We were recently in the UK, Austria, Barcelona,


and even Singapore.


For more on the upcoming events, the calendar


is in our search documentation.


And that's it for this episode.


Thank you for tuning in to the Google Search News.


And thank you for joining us here, Lizzie.


LIZZIE HEMMINGSEN-MCCRAY, JR. Thanks for having me.


I hope this video is useful and entertaining.


Please add your feedback and comments here.


We read them all.


If you subscribe to this channel,


we'll make sure to let you know when another episode is ready.


Bye.


LIZZIE HEMMINGSEN-MCCRAY, JR. Bye.


Take four, I think.


Hey, snowman, you look just like Santa.


We have updates about ranking updates


and ranking about updates.


Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.


SEO for ecommerce - Google Search Console Training (from home)

Hi, I'm Daniel Weisberg, Search Advocate at Google.


And in this video, I'll discuss the main questions


you should be thinking about


if you're responsible for an e-commerce website.


Have you implemented basic SEO for your site?


Can Google find and show your website properly in search results?


And how is your website content performing in Google search results?


Google Search Results


Before we get into Search Console,


I would like to give a few best practices


for e-commerce websites to succeed in search.


Some of the tips here require changes to the website,


so you might need the help of a developer to implement them.


The first step to help people find and navigate your e-commerce website


is to clearly publish all of the products you sell,


whether in-store, online, or both.


This will help Google index that information


and serve it to users searching for products to buy.


Typically, this means creating pages on your site


that explain the products you sell.


These pages are commonly referred to as product detail pages, or PDP.


Here are some tips to create good content for those pages.


Add product pictures that clearly display the product


with muted or transparent backgrounds and from different angles.


This helps your website visitors decide what to buy


and may attract Google users searching for product images.


Add a detailed description of the products


and emphasize any features and specifications.


This helps users find your products by searching for the details


both on your internal search and on Google.


Add information on purchase details


such as availability, price, shipment, and taxes.


This will inform users on how to pay


and when they can get the product delivered.


And add customer ratings and reviews


to help shoppers with their product research and purchase decisions.


While working on your product detail pages,


we also recommend adding product structure data to them.


This will enable Google to provide enhanced search and image results


for your site.


If you implement the markup properly, users can see price,


availability, and review ratings right in Google Search results.


Read more about product structure data


in the link provided in the video description.


You may also want to upload your complete product inventory


to Google Merchant Center,


both for products sold online and offline.


This approach has a few advantages.


You can update data faster, like prices and stock levels.


You can supply richer data


like locality information for inventory.


And you have more control over data


by pushing it to Google when it changes,


rather than waiting for Google to crawl your website.


In case you have implemented structured data


and uploaded a fee to Merchant Center,


Google will generally prioritize the data from the fee.


Check the link in the description to learn more about Merchant Center


and to find the supported languages and currencies.


While not really related to search,


you should consider setting up Google Analytics ecommerce tracking


to better understand your users' behavior.


This will enable you to analyze your site's average order value,


ecommerce conversion rate, time to purchase,


and other interesting information.


These are just a few tips on ways to optimize your ecommerce website.


But there is lots more to learn.


Check out the links in the description for more resources.


Now, let's talk about Search Console.


I'm assuming you have verified your website in Search Console already.


If not, check out my video explaining all ways to verify your website.


It is important to make sure that your structured data is working as intended.


When Search Console detects a new structured data type on your site,


you'll see a report summarizing errors, warnings,


and valid items of that type in your Search Console property.


And site owners will get an email


saying that Google detected a new data type on your site.


After implementing product structured data, as I mentioned a while ago,


open the product report on Search Console.


By default, you'll see the trends for error items in the main chart.


But you can also click Valid with Warnings and Valid


to check their trends in the chart and more details in the table.


Errors disqualify your structured data from being used in rich results.


But the page can still be shown for relevant search results


as a plain blue link.


For example, if your markup is missing the price,


currency, or rating value fields,


those will show up as errors in Search Console,


and you won't get a fancy rich result.


But you can still get a plain blue link.


Warnings can provide a somewhat reduced experience for users,


but your products may still show up as rich results in search.


Examples of warnings would be missing description,


review, URL, or brand.


Check the link to the rich results status reports in the description


to learn more about errors and warnings.


To get more details on specific issue,


click an item in the table to open a detailed report.


Here, you'll see the date when the issue was detected,


the number of affected instances over time,


and examples of pages where Google detected it.


You can click a sample URL to check instances of the error


in your HTML code.


Now that you know what needs to be fixed,


you have two options.


Make the required code changes yourself,


or share the details with a developer


that can perform code changes to your website.


You can do that by creating a link using the Share button.


After you or your developer have fixed the error,


click Validate Fix, and Google will validate your changes.


In addition to the Search Console interface,


you can also use the rich results test


to check structured data validity of a given page on your site.


This tool can check the syntax of your structured data,


and in some cases, provide a sample of what the result


might look like in Google Search.


After setting up your pages and seeing them get indexed,


your next step is to monitor their performance.


You can check out my previous video on the performance report


for a more comprehensive overview,


but I thought I'd give some e-commerce specific tips in this video.


First, open Search Console and navigate to the performance report.


You'll find a series of tables and charts


showing how your website is performing on Search.


You should look for patterns in your data


that show how important a specific segment of traffic is.


Here are four ideas you can start with.


Check the queries driving traffic to your website.


Are people searching for your business name, specific products,


or the general kind of product you offer?


Consider adding content to certain areas of your site


to optimize your performance on Search for queries you want to focus on.


Check the click-through rate, or CTR,


for your most important product detail pages.


If you see that the CTR is low for those pages,


meaning that users are not clicking on your search results,


consider writing better descriptions or titles


or adding structured data to those pages.


Check if a specific group of pages are not driving product results,


which could uncover opportunities to enhance your structured data implementation.


For example, you might find that some products are not driving rich results,


which could point to a specific template that is missing structured data.


And check search appearance to see in a glance the volume of traffic


coming to your website through product rich results.


To understand your product rich result performance over time,


click Product Results in the table to add a feature


including only the search result type.


This will update your performance charts


to show your product results traffic by queries, pages, countries, and devices.


That's it.


I hope this video helped you understand a little more


about how to succeed on Search if you're an e-commerce website.


In summary, make sure to check the SEO basics in your product detail pages,


consider uploading your complete product inventory to Google Merchant Center,


implement product structured data to be eligible to Google search rich results,


use Search Console to monitor structured data issues,


and analyze your website performance with rich results.


Don't forget to subscribe to the Google Webmasters YouTube channel


to watch our upcoming Search Console videos.


Penalties (and next steps) | Sustainable Monetized Websites

Welcome back to Sustainable Monetized Websites,


a series for online content creators and content managers


who also handle monetization.


I'm Aurora, and I work in policy transparency at Google.


And these are my two co-hosts, Organica and Monetized.


Don't look so blue.


They have done something slightly wrong,


and I've given them a timeout.


In this episode, we will talk about what happens


when you get a manual action or a policy violation on your content


and what you can do to fix them.


Let me start by saying,


if your site violates the Google Webmaster quality guidelines


or any of our Google publisher policies,


you might get a manual action or suspension in your content monetization.


Like in soccer or football, depending on the offense,


you might experience a yellow card,


a temporary timeout, or a red card,


a permanent removal from the game.


Let's kick this off, shall we?


Google issues a manual action against the site


when one of the reviewers on our web spam team


determines that pages on the site are not compliant


with Google's Webmaster quality guidelines.


Most manual actions address attempts to manipulate our search index.


The result? If a site has a manual action,


the affected pages or the entire site will be ranked lower


or omitted from search results with no visual indication to the user.


Let us give you some history on why manual actions exist.


Ever since such engines were born,


bad actors have tried to trick their way to the top of the results page.


This is not great for users because relevant pages are not relevant.


This is not great for users because relevant pages get buried


under irrelevant results,


and it's bad for legitimate websites because they become harder to find.


For these reasons, we've been working since the earliest day of Google


to keep search results clean and in turn fight spammers,


helping people find the answers they're looking for


and helping legitimate websites get traffic from search.


Our algorithms are really good at detecting spam,


and in most cases, we automatically discover it


and remove it from our search results.


However, to protect the quality of our index,


we take manual actions in some cases to deal with spam from our search results.


And what are some of those cases?


Spam. It can take the form of pure spam, user-generated spam,


which you can learn more about in episode 5,


spammy free host, among other examples,


misleading or incorrect structured data,


unnatural links to or from your site,


thin content with little or no added value.


You can learn more on episode 4.


Cloaking. Showing users one thing and showing search engines


something completely different.


Significant content mismatch between web and AMP pages.


Sneaky redirects.


Google News and discover policy violations.


Organica, I gave you a yellow card.


Do you now understand why?


I am, well, apparently I have spammy content on my site,


but we talked about this in previous episodes.


I think I was hacked.


Well, it's still your website,


and you're responsible for what you publish.


Whether your site has been hacked or not, you need to clean that up.


That said, if you really think you've been hacked,


check out the links about security issues in the description box below.


In any case, if your site is affected by a manual action,


we will notify you in the manual actions report


and in the Search Console message center.


Creating a healthy digital advertising ecosystem is not easy.


We need to balance the needs of users, advertisers, and publishers alike.


Our team of policy specialists will disable ad serving to a page or site


when they find that a Google AdSense, AdMob, or Ad Manager account


is not compliant with our program policies.


This is done to protect users and advertisers.


It is important that you review your notifications


to learn the exact reason why ad serving was disabled.


And what am I supposed to look out for?


As I was saying before, maintaining trust in the ads ecosystem


requires setting limits on what content publishers can monetize.


All publishers are required to adhere to our policies and restrictions.


What's the difference between them?


Google Publisher policies outline the types of content we won't monetize


through any of our publisher products.


Some examples include policies against invalid traffic


or content that is illegal, sexually explicit, or dangerous, or derogatory.


This is content that would never be allowed to show ads.


And if you try to do so, you will receive a red card.


By contrast, Google Publisher restrictions outline the types of content


that don't necessarily violate policy,


but that may not be appealing for all advertisers,


such as tobacco or recreational drugs.


This means that publishers will not receive a policy violation


when trying to monetize content about those topics,


but instead the content will be labeled with an inventory restriction


and will likely receive less advertising or sometimes no advertising at all,


as the advertisers determine the demand.


This could be more like a yellow card.


Monetized, I gave you a red card.


Do you now understand why?


Well, I suppose I tried to monetize content that is not policy compliant,


but I understand now. What can I do?


Keep creating great content monetized


and make sure you only try to monetize those sections, pages, or sites


that comply with our program policies.


Organica, monetized, I have the feeling that you both understand


why you were penalized.


Let's take a look at what steps you need to take to get back on the game.


For manual actions, you'll be notified on the Search Console Manual Actions report.


Follow the information provided in this report to understand and fix it,


and make sure you extend the changes to all affected pages


and all different penalties if you receive several.


After you've fixed all issues listed in the report,


submit a review and do it with care.


In your reconsideration request, state the exact issue


that led to the manual action on your site,


describe the steps you took to fix the issue,


and document the outcome of your efforts.


And when will I know the outcome?


Reconsideration reviews may take up to several weeks.


In that time, continue working on your website as you normally would.


You will get a confirmation message when you send your request


to inform you that the review is submitted.


Resubmitting the same request before getting a final decision


won't change the outcome or the review speed,


so please refrain from doing so.


For monetization issues, visit the Google AdSense, AdMob,


or Ad Manager Policy Center, accessible from your account.


Each issue comes with information on its type, impact,


where it's been found, and how to fix it.


Policy violations are marked as must-fix,


while publisher restrictions are not,


as the available inventory for that content will be limited,


but not suspended.


You can request reviews for most content-related violations,


such as dangerous and derogatory content,


directly from the Policy Center.


Some issues may require you to request a review outside the Policy Center,


filing a form through the Help Center, Play Store, or Search Console.


Once you fix your issues, make sure to write a good review request


by first understanding the issue.


Visit our Help Center to review our policies


and seek advice from our Help Forum if you need more information.


Second, check your entire site thoroughly.


Bear in mind that the examples provided might be present


in more than one page or section of your site.


Third, tell us what changes you've made.


Acknowledge that you understand the issue


and describe in detail how you've addressed it.


You may also choose to stop serving ads in the problematic inventory altogether


by removing the ad code from the page, section, or site affected.


After you've removed the ad code,


the issue will disappear from the Policy Center within a week.


And finally, understand the big picture.


Keep in mind that our policies are designed to protect the entire ecosystem,


which includes publishers, users, and advertisers alike.


And when will I know the outcome?


After you fix an issue and request a review,


it may take up to a week for it to get reviewed.


In some instances, it could take longer.


You'll be notified about the outcome of the review


via email and through an in-product notification.


Remember, manual actions and publisher policy violations


are in place to ensure the quality of the content


and the safety and health of the ecosystem.


Receiving one or more can get you temporarily or completely out of the game,


so it's important that you understand what caused them


and that you take remediation seriously.


In the next episode, we'll talk about copyright,


how to report infringements, and how they can affect your content.


Don't forget to like and share this video


and subscribe to this channel so that you're the first one to get new videos.


English Google SEO office-hours from December 24, 2021

All right.


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


Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate on the Search Relations team


here at Google in Switzerland.


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


where people can jump in and ask their questions around SEO,


even on Christmas Eve, I guess.


It's cool to have so many of you here.


And we have a bunch of questions submitted as well.


But people are already jumping in to raise their hands.


So maybe we'll get started.


Wow, it's like almost everyone is raising their hands.


So crazy.


OK.


Let's see.


Eve, I think you're first on my list.


Hi, John.


Hi.


Thanks for your time for question in regards


to paywalled data or paywalled content.


Basically, at the moment, we have a website


with a lot of articles.


And everything is accessible to Google.


And we would like to add a paywall there.


But we would also like to only show the paywalled content


to Google with the structured data snippets you have.


Is it considered cloaking if, for example, I only show this


as I check whether it's Googlebot,


and I only show then the structured data


and the paywalled data, but then to the regular user


in order to really properly hide it,


I don't show the data at all, and I


don't show the structured data?


Or is that fine?


That's fine.


Technically, it would still be considered cloaking


because you're showing something different.


But from our policies, that's acceptable.


Because users would see then, if they go through the paywall,


they would see the content that you're showing to Googlebot.


Yeah.


Cool.


That answers my question already.


Thanks a lot.


Great.


Easy one to start with.


Let's see.


Vahid, I think.


John, am I on?


Hello, John.


Hi.


Hello.


Nice to meet you.


I have two questions.


At first, I want to ask about DMCA report,


Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the United States.


I want to know if someone copy text content from my site.


Can I report for DMCA to remove his site from Google search


results?


Maybe.


So the reason I say maybe is because this is essentially


a legal process, and I can't give you legal advice.


So it's something where if you feel


that this is the appropriate way to handle this,


if you check with your lawyers that everything


is OK in that regard, then feel free to do that.


The DMCA process is such that it's tied to individual pages,


though, so not the whole website.


So if you see a copy of one of your pages


and you think the DMCA process is the right way to handle it,


then that copied page is the one that you could report.