So that might be something where kind of like from an indexing


English Google SEO office-hours from March 4, 2022

point of view, it just takes a while to figure out,


oh, this new website is actually not spammy at all.


But if it was just purely that there was adult content there


before, then I could imagine that maybe our safe search


filters are a little bit kind of slow in recognizing that.


I do know we've taken some steps to make that faster.


But maybe we need to make that even more faster.


Or maybe there is something else on the safe search side


that is kind of sticking.


The safe search side is something


that you can check if you do a site query


and then turn safe search on and off.


You should be able to see, is there something from safe search


happening or not?


You don't see that with regards to indexing, though.


So but I can take a look at this afterwards.


And we can see if there's something super obvious


that I can let you know about.


That would be great.


I'm going to stay on the call, then.


Thank you.


Cool.


All right.


Then we're up to Nirav.


Thanks, John.


I just wanted to ask in the first business,


as I asked you about page space, so does it even matter for SEO?


I read a document back in 2010 from Google's website


that page speed is an important metric when it comes to SEO.


Does it hold true in 2022 as well, or maybe not that?


It definitely matters.


So I think one tricky part is we don't have


this notion of page speed itself.


But rather, we use the core web vitals,


which include different elements about user experience in them.


So the page speed score, I think that's


like a score from 0 to 100.


I'm not sure if I'm mixing up the tools.


Yeah.


That's something that also takes into account


a different number of metrics on the speed of a website.


And we don't use that exactly like that in the core web


vitals.


And the core web vitals we have documented fairly well.


So some amount of speed goes into that too.


And core web vitals is definitely a ranking factor.


We have that for mobile and desktop now.


It is based on what users actually see,


not a theoretical test of your pages.


And for the most part, we focus on the difference


between something that is reasonably OK


and something that is very slow.


And we have that in the different categories


for the individual metrics, where


I think we have good, medium, bad.


I forgot what the names are.


And usually, when you come out of the bad section


into the medium section, that's where


we would say, oh, this website is improving and looking


better.


What you don't tend to see is big ranking changes


overall for that.


But rather, you would see changes for queries


where we have similar content in the search results.


So if someone is searching for your company name,


we would not show some random blog


just because it's a little bit faster instead of your home


page.


We would show your home page even if it's very slow.


On the other hand, if someone is searching for, I don't know,


running shoes, and there are lots


of people writing about running shoes,


then that's where the speed aspect


does play a bit more of a role.


The other thing where speed plays in


is when it comes to crawling itself, where,


especially for large websites, if a web server is very slow,


then we can't crawl as much.


And the amount of crawling that we can do


is more around how much we can index.


It's not a sign that we would rank that website lower.


So for very large websites, speed definitely


also plays a role with regards to crawling.


OK.


So the core web vitals, what I understand,


is the subset of overall page speed.


So these are four or five important things


that you should definitely focus.


But there are other things.


So now, maybe we are at a stage wherein


we are into the green zone of that four or five things.


So it should be like, hey, we are done,


and let's not just get into over-optimizing that thing.


But still, there are certain things like Google


is showing like, hey, this JavaScript is a bit lengthy,


or you have unused JavaScript, and you should also


try top-down.


These are the solutions that we are getting.


So although we are green, and still, it


should be a good approach to follow the things.


Or maybe it's like, now we are into over-optimizing.


It sounds a little bit like you're into that zone


where you're focusing on all of the small details that make


like tiny, tiny, tiny differences.


So that might be that you call it over-optimization.


That might be kind of in that direction.


I think what I would do, though, is double check


to see if there are any kind of user facing effects


that you can still work on.


If you recognize, well, core web vitals is green,


so for SEO, we're good, but you see users jumping


from your website because of maybe an interstitial or kind


of bad accessibility on a website,


then those are still issues that you can look at.


But those would not be for SEO.


They would just be for your website overall.


SPEAKER 2


All right.


We're pretty much at the end of its time.


So I will pause the recording here.


And like I mentioned, there is still a handful of hands up.


We can go through your questions as well


after the recording pauses.


If you're watching this on YouTube,


thanks for sticking around for so long


until the end of the recording.


If you'd like to join one of these in person in the future,


we post them in the community section a few days ahead


of the event.


You can also add your questions there.


And as always, thank you for joining here.


Thank you for submitting so many questions.


And hopefully, we'll see each other again


in one of the future episodes.


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from April 17, 2020

All right, welcome everyone to today's Webmaster Central


Office Hours Hangouts.


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 people can join in and ask any question related


to the website and web search.


And we can try to find some answers.


Looks like people are still jumping in, which is cool.


There are a bunch of questions that were submitted already


on YouTube.


So we can go through some of those.


But as always, if any of you want


to get started with the first question,


you're welcome to jump in now.


Hi, John.


Hi.


How are you?


Pretty good.


I'm good.


John, I have two questions.


So one of the questions is about one of our clients.


We are trying to build a new website for them.


Now, when we did some computer research,


we have found some of our competitors,


they build the website a little bit different way.


For example, they create every single page


for every single type of search term.


For example, Garden Sheds Sydney, they create one page.


Then Garden Sheds Sill Sydney, they get another page.


And those page actually rank on Google.


And each page has a lot of content.


Now, I don't know whether it is the best practice to do or not.


Because if we try to create a page in this way,


the website will have more than 5,000 page.


So what is the best practice?


What we can do?


Yeah, so in general, if you're just


creating pages for variations of keywords


and you're all guiding people to the same content,


then we would consider that doorway pages.


And that would generally be something


that the web spam team and the search quality team


wouldn't be very fond of.


So that's something I would try to avoid.


On the other hand, if you really have unique content


that you can bring for individual variations


of keywords, then that might be something you can do.


In general, my recommendation is to try


to limit the number of pages that you have on a website


to focus more on quality and to make those pages that you


do have much stronger.


So instead of taking a website that's ranking OK


and diluting it by creating 10 times or 20 times


the amount of pages out of the same content,


make those pages that you do have much stronger


instead so that they rank better.


So that's kind of the balance where


I would tend to go more towards concentrating


the value on those pages, making them stronger,


so that they can rank better for the more competitive queries.


And if you want to expand from that,


then I think that's generally fine.


I just wouldn't go the extreme of saying,


I will create pages for all variations of keywords


because probably you're just making it


so that a page that ranks kind of in the middle of the pack,


I guess, would suddenly, because it's so diluted,


just not rank at all in the search results.


So you might appear in the search queries


for some of those keywords, but nobody's


searching for those long tail variations that often.


So it's not really that valuable.


And the last question is, this is also for the same client.


So they actually sell garden shed.


So when we search garden shed on Google,


we have noticed that first 15 websites are e-commerce websites


except our one.


So is this something Google decides, OK, for this keyword,


they will only give importance to the e-commerce website


because my client website is a little bit different.


What they do, if people see their product,


they can use the create a code option.


They contact with them and give them code.


They don't give the price on the website.


So it is a little bit different from all the e-commerce website.


So is this something Google always decides, like, OK,


for this keyword, the e-commerce website


will get the most benefit?


Is it something like this?


It's not so much that we would say for individual keywords,


we would prefer e-commerce websites,


but we do try to understand what the intent behind the query is.


And if we can tell that the intent is something


where the user wants more information,


then maybe we'll show more informational pages.


If we can tell that the intent is more commercial, more


transactional, that they want to buy one of these things,


then maybe we'll show commercial pages more.


But I think the difference that you're looking at


is more that both of these types of pages are commercial pages.


It's just one lets you buy it right away,


and the other one has maybe a more detailed process


to buy the product, which, from my point of view,


those could be equally valuable.


It's really hard for me to say that.


I would assume our algorithms wouldn't differentiate


between those two.


They would say these are both e-commerce websites.


One is just you call them, or you send them an email,


or fill out a form to buy the product,


and the other one, you go and click the button


to add it to your cart to buy the product.


But they're both e-commerce websites.


So if someone is looking for something


with a commercial intent, then both of those kinds of sites


would be relevant to show.


Thank you.


I think the bigger effect is probably


more what happens afterwards.


When people come to your site, if they're


able to convert well, that's something that's more,


I guess, within the control of the site owner,


and less something from the SEO side


that they have to worry about them.


So you are trying to tell that the algorithm decide


based on the intention of the user.


So if user prefers e-commerce website for that keyword,


that means you are trying to rank e-commerce website


for that keyword.


It's not so much e-commerce websites,


but we try to understand what the intent is.


And if the intent is really to buy something,


then we will try to show something


where they can buy something.


And a lot of times, that intent can shift.


For example, if a completely new kind of product


comes out on the market, then if you search for that,


initially you want information.


And then maybe a couple of months later,


when it's available broadly, then people want to buy it.


So the same query can at one point be informational.


And at some later time, be more transactional, more commercial


oriented.


AUDIENCE 1 Thank you.


JOHN MUELLER All right.


Any other questions before we jump into the submitted ones?


AUDIENCE 2 Sure, I just had one, actually.


So I have a few clients in the same industry.


And over time, they've actually started working with each other


naturally.


But as the webmaster of these multiple sites


and that network is starting to grow a bit more,


is there anything in particular I


need to do so that Google doesn't think


I'm doing a PBN or something?


Because they're all closely related.


For example, a hotel that sells the tours of the other company


I work with.


JOHN MUELLER I think in general, that's less of an issue.


We're able to understand when sites work together,


when sites belong to the same company, all of that.


And that's generally less of an issue.


If you're cross-linking between these kind of sites,


that sounds pretty reasonable.


On the other hand, if it comes across as something that's


clearly an advertisement, then that


might be something where you just use a no-follow link.


So if you have something that looks like a banner on top


that says, you can book, I don't know, special tours here,


and it looks like an advertisement,


then I would just treat it like an advertisement.


OK.


Yeah, we don't really use any banners like that.


But we do have, say, a ticket product page


on the hotel's website.


And that goes to the tour provider, for example.


But it sounds like Google is good enough now.


It's just like, every forum I go to, people sound paranoid.


Yeah, I think for the most part, we can figure that out.


And especially if it's something that's


kind of on the edge like this, then I


wouldn't worry about it too much.


Because if we figure out that this is something


we need to ignore, then we will ignore it.


It's not that we will go in and penalize these websites


from a web spam point of view.


It would be different if this were something that were


done in a really large scale.


It's like, if you go into all other tourism sites,


and you're essentially buying links from them,


and you're doing some partnerships


with individual sites, then that would be something


where, if the web spam team looks at it,


the whole nature of this website is around unnatural links.


Therefore, we will take action on all


of these unnatural links.


But if it's this small part where you're just working


together with other companies, and the rest of your website


is kind of ranking naturally, then that's


not something I would spend too much time worrying about.


SPEAKER 2 OK, cool.


Yeah, thanks a lot.


That's good to know.


Because one of them is a hotel chain,


and it needs separate websites for each location.


So yeah, I just wasn't sure how to handle that.


Yeah, it works great.


Cool.


All right, let's go through some of the submitted questions.


And as always, if there's something on your mind that's


kind of related, feel free to jump on in.


And we should have some time towards the end


as well to catch up on other things.


When we search a brand name, Google


shows our terms and conditions, type, page, and site links.


Is there any way not to show it?


So the simple answer is, if you don't


want this page to be shown in search,


you can use a no index on that page.


That does remove the page completely from search, though.


So that's kind of the extreme variation


if you don't want to show it at all.


But that's how you can do it.


And the other approach here might


be to think about what you can do


to make it clear that other pages within your website


are more relevant.


So to make it so that the terms and condition page is still


indexed, but to make it clear, perhaps,


that maybe some related products are more relevant


rather than the terms and conditions page.


And the general approach when it comes to site links


is to have a clear hierarchy on the website


so that we can clearly understand,


this is the primary page.


This is the top level categories.


These are pages associated with that category, those category


pages, to have a clear structure on your website


rather than just everything on the same level.


So instead of focusing on kind of reducing crawl depths


to make everything as flat as possible, which is sometimes


something that people focus on, make sure


that there's a really clear structure on your site.


And that structure is mirrored across your whole site.


So wherever we look at your site,


we can understand this is the home page.


These are the top level categories.


These are the important parts of the site.


And these are pages that are related


to individual parts of this site.


And by doing that, usually we can figure out


which pages are more relevant to show as site links.


As recommended, we switched our breadcrumb markup


from data vocabulary to schema.


The website in question is redirecting users


from the root domain to the corresponding language folder.


So domain.com redirects to slash en or slash


de depending on IP address.


Search Console now shows an error under navigation


for the root folder.


This seems to happen because a crawler follows a redirect,


in this case to en, and then tries


to use the data found on en for breadcrumb markup


of the home page, which, of course, is not working.


Shall we remove the breadcrumb markup


from first level language folders


or do you have other ways of getting rid


of this error in Search Console?


So I don't really know which error you're


seeing in Search Console.


So it's really hard to say what you should do next.


In general, though, if you're talking about your home page,


probably there's not a lot of breadcrumb markup


that you need to put on your home page because there is no


trail leading to your home page.


So from that point of view, that might be an easy solution.


The other thing to keep in mind is


that if you're always redirecting Googlebot's IP


addresses to slash en because we crawled from the US,


then we might have trouble indexing your DE folder at all.


So that's something to watch out for.


Usually, my recommendation is more to use a banner


and let people go to the right language version


rather than to automatically redirect them


because by automatically redirecting,


you're running into situations like this across the whole site


where you link to one version and then


it redirects to a different version.


And then if you check it at home,


if you're based in Germany or check it at home,


it looks completely different than what


Googlebot would see when it crawls from the US.


So because of all of these things,


usually I recommend just using a banner


and showing that when you think a user is in the wrong location.


Let's see.


We do a lot of Google Ads marketing,


and we're running millions of ads.


Usually, it results in waves of requests from Google Adsbot


to have a stable user experience for customers.


We dramatically scale our infrastructure


once these waves are coming.


Is there any way to nicely throttle Adsbot?


Will it affect us negatively if we respond with 429?


Oops.


Just a second.


Will it affect us negatively if we respond with 429 or 503


to some Adbot's requests?


So in general, there are two approaches


that you can do with regards to crawling activity overall.


So Adbot runs on the same infrastructure as Googlebot,


so you can use the same tools as normal Googlebot for that.


On the one hand, serving it these kind of temporary errors,


like 503s, is a good way to automatically kind of throttle


Googlebot and let it kind of crawl less.


Another option is a setting in Search Console.


The setting in Search Console for the crawl rate


is something that we respect across all crawlers.


And we prioritize crawlers a little bit.


So if you throttle things and you


have a lot of kind of irrelevant requests,


then probably what will happen is


we will still do our important crawlers first,


and then we'll just do fewer of these less relevant requests.


And generally speaking, that probably


includes the Adbot landing page checks that are done.


So that's another option that you can do.


And finally, what you can also do


if you're seeing that things are consistently


confusing and crazy with regards to crawling,


and especially if you're seeing really high crawl


rates and your site generally is able to deal with that,


but it costs a lot of money and all of these things,


then from the Crawl Stats page help page in the Help Center,


there's a link to a special form that you can fill out,


which goes to the Googlebot team where they can take a look


and see if there's something on their side


that they need to tune specifically for your site.


All of these methods take a bit of time.


So 503s are probably the fastest way


to get Googlebot to crawl a little bit less frequently.


But usually the kind of reduction in crawl rate


will happen on the next day.


The day after that, it happens automatically over time.


The setting in Search Console also


takes at least a day to be effective.


And contacting the Googlebot team through the form,


of course, depends a little bit on how


things go on their side with regards to how quickly that


can be picked up.


So those are kind of the options there.


I'm working in travel and we're massively affected by COVID-19.


We had to stop all marketing campaigns,


and that resulted in no traffic from Google Adsbot.


To reduce cost, we also scaled down infrastructure.


A week ago, we started campaign on two of the 20 domains


that resulted in huge traffic from Google Adbots


to all of our domains and to the pages which are not currently


advertised.


The Adbot also checks the same page


on every five seconds for four to five hours.


So that last bit sounds kind of strange.


I don't know why that would happen,


but I also don't know how the Adbot setup is.


But generally, the advice here is kind of the same as before


in that you essentially limit the amount of crawling


that Googlebot can do.


You can do that in Search Console.


Probably it's probably the easiest way to do that ahead


of time if you're kind of in the state of less crawling


happening at the moment.


So that's probably the direction that I would head there.


During the course of the last four years,


we migrated our website to a new domain five times.


Wow.


OK.


After the last migration, our most important page


has dropped in rankings for all its keywords.


Other pages on the same website have recovered their rankings


without problems.


The important page was ranking for top five for several years


and during the previous same domain migrations


also recovered without problems.


Indicates that the page is meeting


the needs and the search queries of our target audience.


The migration was done technically.


Right?


This ranking drop feels more like an algorithmic penalty.


The website doesn't have any manual actions.


We have a feeling that we might be affected by a page level


algorithmic penalty.


Do you have any idea, thoughts on what might


have happened to our website?


So overall, it's really hard if you


do this many migrations over such a short period of time.


So that makes it a lot harder to kind of come to a situation


where you have clear expectations of what


would be normal in a case like this with a website


and what, I don't know, broke along the way.


If you're doing this many migrations,


oftentimes it's also a sign that something kind of shady


is around the website.


I don't I really don't know your website.


I don't know why you're doing so many migrations.


But this is something that we really commonly see.


For example, when a site is kind of in a spammy area


and they do some things on one domain


and then suddenly that domain doesn't rank that well anymore


and then they move to the next domain


and they kind of do the same things


and it doesn't work that well anymore


and then they move to the next domain.


So that's kind of something that personally I've


seen quite a bit happen.


I don't know if that's the case with your website.


Maybe there are other reasons why you're


doing so many migrations.


But that's kind of the first thing


where if I came across something like this with regards


to a website, I would be kind of cautious.


In general, we have algorithms that do all kinds of things.


It's not the case that we would have


an algorithm that would try to manually


or try to penalize a single page on a website.


But it's certainly possible that over time that the algorithms


will look at your website and rank it differently and kind


of adjust its visibility over time.


Whoops.


Now we have a coffee grinder in the other room.


The fun parts of working at home.


So from my point of view, I don't


think that's something that is kind of tied


to a penalty specific to a page.


That's something where personally I


would try to take a step back and think


about what you can do overall to improve those pages.


Yeah.


Can I just ask a follow-up question?


Because this is my question.


So.


Oh, fantastic.


Cool.


So the reason for migration is not some kind of spammer links


or something like that.


The reason is we don't really want to migrate our domain.


But there has been a problem with the legislation


in the country we have our domain in.


And so we are forced to migrate our domain.


So we are forced to migrate our website so many times.


And the website is generally doing very good.


When the government comes across it,


there is some kind of problem.


We need to resolve this way because there is no other way


to resolve it.


So we really don't know what we are supposed to do right now.


We know that it's not ideal to have these many migrations.


But since there is no other way, is there


something we can do to improve it


or to recover from these massive drops?


Yeah.


I think that's always a tricky situation to be in.


I'm happy to take a look if you want to post the URL that


you're seeing these problems with, maybe in the chat.


I can pass that on to the search quality team


as well to double check.


But usually, if you're seeing this kind of an effect


on a single page across a bigger website,


then that sounds like something where the algorithms are just


generally kind of unsure about the website overall.


And that might be kind of a side effect of all these migrations


where we have to pass the signals from one domain


to the next one.


And at some point, it can happen that something along the way


doesn't forward that well anymore.


So if some of the redirects along the way


don't work anymore, if some of the old domains


don't work anymore, then suddenly we


lose a little bit of context that we


might have had collected with more persistent setup.


But I'm happy to take a look and pass that on to the team.


You can post it here.


And I can check that out after the Hangout.


Yeah, it'll be great.


It'll be very helpful.


Thank you very much.


OK.


Cool.


Thanks.


I have a client in a highly competitive market


where being in the Mapbox can mean


the difference between success and failure.


How does the quality of the website


affect the position in the Mapbox?


So I think Mapbox probably refers to the Google My


Business listings.


From our point of view, I don't really have a lot of insight


into how Google My Business does the ranking within their kind


of local search results.


I don't really have that much insight


that I can give you there.


But I do know there are special forums for Google My Business


business owners.


I would double check there.


It's very possible that some of the folks active in these


forums have some tips and tricks and things that work well,


things that don't work well.


I doubt that there is a clear list of kind of rank.


So many people.


Yeah, I doubt that there is like a clear list of ranking


factors when it comes to Google My Business


that the Google My Business team would be able to just get.


So on March 23, we used the indexing API


to submit 50,000 salary pages that didn't contain


job posting data to Google.


During the indexing API beta, we were


told that we could use the API to submit salary pages


for purposes of the estimated salary.


On the same day, we saw our pages with job posting schema


get de-indexed.


You recently mentioned on Twitter


that the indexing API is only for job posting and livestream


structured data.


For everything else, just use sitemaps.


Could this be the root cause of our job posting schema pages


getting de-indexed?


Going forward, we will not use the indexing API


for salary pages.


Can you confirm that if this is the root cause of the job


posting schema pages being de-indexed?


I'm getting no test results.


Um, so first of all, no.


This wouldn't be the reason for kind of existing pages


to be dropped from the index.


So when it comes to indexing API,


essentially what happens is we have


to crawl those pages to see what is on those pages,


to see if the right structured data is on those pages.


And if the right structured data is on those pages,


then we can process those pages.


Whereas if we look at those pages


and don't find the right kinds of structured data,


then that's something where essentially we would just


ignore what we just crawled.


We wouldn't pass that on.


We wouldn't use that for indexing.


So in a case like this, where if you're submitting pages


with the indexing API that don't have


the right kind of structured data,


we would just ignore that.


It wouldn't negatively affect the other pages on your site


that we already have indexed.


So that's something where probably this kind of thing


that you're seeing is completely unrelated.


I have two sites that sell very similar products,


but all the branding content and product descriptions


are unique and written in the tone of the voice


for that brand.


However, the back end code and the website structure


is the same for both sites.


Would this cause duplication issues between the sites?


It might.


My feeling is that if you have two websites that are just


slightly different, then that's not


something where I would worry about that too much


with regards to duplication, especially if they're focused


on kind of a unique audience.


So from that point of view, I don't really


see a big problem here.


I think it would be different if you have


a lot of different websites that are essentially selling


the same products.


And that's something where obviously it


makes it a little bit trickier for us to figure out which


one of those pages to show.


So again, going back to the multiple websites,


if you have things that are essentially unique on their own,


so if you have these two types of websites that are slightly


targeting different things, I wouldn't worry about it.


If you have a large number of them,


then that's something that would probably be a bit different.


Would it be considered abnormal for a relatively established


site to no longer appear or receive


impressions in Discover?


Search Console is showing zero impressions clicks


after getting hundreds of clicks and thousands


of impressions daily.


This happened immediately after a rather large and early


November update that caused a stir, which


would suggest a correlation, though not necessarily


causation.


So changes in visibility in Discover can happen over time.


And we have lots of algorithms that essentially


affect large parts of search.


And that would include Discover.


So it's very possible that a site might for some time


get a lot of traffic and visibility in Discover.


And over time, our algorithms change.


And that visibility essentially goes away,


or it changes over time.


It can also happen that your site currently


doesn't have any traffic from Discover.


And over time, we recognize that actually


does make sense to show a little bit differently like that.


We're thinking of changing the main nav anchors


by removing gender-specific terms


and listing them as clean text under a dropdown for gender.


For example, we currently have men's citizen watches.


This will change to citizen's watches placed under a dropdown


menu for men's watches.


Would this affect the ranking of men's citizen watches?


Or can the crawler understand the sub-nav dropdown?


So usually, we can understand the context of pages


fairly well.


And if you're just moving things around


from kind of like direct anchor text


to more indirect anchor text, and that you're


kind of shuffling the categories around a little bit,


then from my point of view, that seems


like a reasonable thing to do.


And it wouldn't necessarily be something


where I'd assume like something negatively


would come out of that.


That said, any time you do restructure your website,


it does mean that we have to relearn the setup


of your website a bit.


And that can result in some ranking changes.


So that's something where my general recommendation


for these kind of things, if you're a little bit worried


about that, would be to test it out and try it out


on a small part of your website where


you get significant traffic, but it's not


a crazy amount of traffic.


I'm running a website that deals in beauty care


products for Thailand.


After the last Google update, I noticed


that the site ranking has dropped.


And notice that all informative, review-based YouTube, Facebook


profiles started to show up on the first line of search


results for a lot of the search queries.


My website was ranking almost all of the product pages,


category pages, and other pages.


What's the issue?


Is Google ignoring beauty products


related to e-commerce websites and prioritizes


informative sites?


If it is, then how can we bring back the ranking?


Or can you help me take a look?


So in general, these kind of ranking changes


can happen over time.


That's not something where I would say it's like,


Google's algorithms have decided to only start


showing these kinds of pages.


But rather, we try to figure out which pages to show appropriately


in search.


And that can change over time.


So that's something where it can certainly


happen that a page or a type of page or a set of pages


is ranking really well in search.


And then over time, our algorithms


try to figure out that maybe this set of pages


isn't as relevant to these user queries


as we initially thought.


And we have to kind of rethink that.


Similarly, it can happen the other way around,


that our algorithm think, well, these set of pages


actually are much more relevant now than we


thought they were before.


And maybe we should show them a little bit more visibly.


We have the same database.


SPEAKER 2


Last day in Winston.


Oops.


We have the same database for two price comparison sites


in two different countries, which we have


shown in their native language.


One site is extremely popular in its country,


while the other is just a veteran in its respective


country.


Will it change anything if we implement hreflang?


They're about 15 to 20-year-old domains.


So I think from the age itself, I


wouldn't see that as a factor here at all.


With regards to kind of just using hreflang


to make one site more visible in the search results,


that wouldn't work, primarily because what happens with hreflang


is if we show the other version of the site in the search


results, then we will swap it out based on the hreflang.


If we're showing neither of these sites in the search


results at the moment, then there's


nothing for us to swap out.


So you can't use hreflang to make a site more


popular in a country based on the popularity


of a similar site or the same site in another country.


So essentially, what you would need to do here


is really work to improve the standing of that one website


in that specific country.


And it's not something where you can just use technical methods


to kind of tell Google, like, hey,


I'm really popular in one country.


You should make me really popular in all countries.


That doesn't really work.


That's not something that users expect either.


It's something where you really need


to make sure that your website is really well-received


in that country on its own.


I've been waiting for two months to hear back


from a reconsideration request.


I submitted in February.


Is this normal?


How long should I wait?


And when should I submit again?


So sometimes reconsideration requests


do take quite a bit of time.


I think two months seems like a pretty long time.


So I don't know if that's kind of still


within the normal range.


But it's still something where I'd


say it can certainly happen, that it takes this amount


of time to be reviewed.


What I would do also in a case like this


with the reconsideration requests


is to check in with the help forum


to make sure that at least the site that you have,


the way that you have it set up now is as correct as possible


with regards to the issues from the web spam site that came up.


And oftentimes, the folks in the Webmaster Help forums,


they have a lot of practice with all kinds of different sites.


And they can help you to figure out


how to make that actually work a little bit better.


I have anchor text and backlinks from adult content sites.


And some of my pages rank as high as position one


for clearly adult content queries,


as evidenced by the search results.


Is disavowing the adult content sites the best thing to do?


I don't have any manual actions.


You can definitely disavow these links if you want.


In general, just because you have links from adult sites


and just because you might be ranking


for some of those queries doesn't


mean that you would not be ranking for the normal queries


on your website.


So this is something where people often


feel that this is kind of like negative SEO


because I rank for these queries I don't want to rank for.


But at the same time, this wouldn't negatively


be affecting the queries that you


do want to rank for, which probably


aren't these kind of queries.


So from that point of view, that's


something disavowing them probably makes sense.


It kind of reduces the possibility


that your site would rank for those queries.


But just because it's ranking for one set of queries


doesn't mean that it won't rank for other kinds of queries.


It's not that we suddenly assume that your website is


an adult website, too.


Looking to get access to the 3D AR for Google search


and Google Ads program have applied through the form,


but I haven't heard back.


I have nearly 1,000 products that we can upload


for retailers who really need the extra help at this time.


That's really cool.


If you can send me a link to your site,


I can double check with the team.


I know the team that works on structured data


has been really busy with a lot of the coronavirus launches


that have happened recently.


So it might be that they're a little bit stretched thin


in this regard.


But I'm happy to take a look and see if there's something


that we can do to speed things up in general there.


Maybe that's also something where we can just


help the team with better documentation


to set the expectations a little bit clearly.


Are there ever webmaster events that are in North American time


zones?


They always seem to happen at 3 AM for me.


I do two of these during the week, one of them


towards evening my time, which is more US time zone friendly,


and the other one here on Friday mornings,


which is more time zone friendly for the Asia APAC folks.


So depending on your location, one or the other


is probably a good match.


Is redirecting a root domain a bad practice?


I found it's kind of common for multilingual sites,


since every language has their own subfolder.


They have one for en-US, too.


So they usually redirect the root folder to en-US home page.


For example, ibm.com will redirect to ibm.com slash usen.


Is that a bad practice?


If so, how should we handle this?


Also, IBM seems to put their root domains as x-default,


even if it's a page that's being redirected.


Is that a bad idea?


So actually, the x-default setup for something like this


is something that we have documented and recommended.


So if you have a redirecting home page,


then that is generally a good match


for people who aren't within the hreflang set


that you currently have.


So for example, if you have pages


for English, French, and German, and someone


with a Spanish browser comes to you,


then it's usually a good idea for us


to send them to your redirecting home page,


because from there, you can best make


that choice between where they should be guided to.


So that x-default part is essentially something


that we would recommend there.


Redirecting home pages in general,


like I mentioned before, is something that personally I


don't like that much, because it makes it a lot harder


to diagnose issues.


Technically, you can do it.


You just need to keep in mind that if you're redirecting


Googlebot from the language versions themselves as well,


then it's possible that we would not see any


of the non-English versions.


So if you just redirect the root of the home page


to different language locations, like slash DE and slash EN,


and if people go directly to any of these language versions,


then they're not redirected, then that's generally OK.


The hard part is really if you redirect people


from the German version to the English version,


because you think that the English version is a better


match for them, then it's very possible


that Googlebot would have a lot of trouble finding and being


able to index any of the non-English content.


But that's kind of the second step there


from the redirecting home page.


What I usually recommend instead is


to have a kind of a country picker,


either as a country picker page, which


is also kind of tricky with regards to usability,


or if you can recognize that a user is coming


from a different location to show a banner on top


and say, hey, it looks like you're coming


from an English-speaking country.


Here's a link to our English home page,


or here's a link to the English version of this current page,


and let the user make that decision.


That usually makes it a lot easier, on the one hand,


for users, on the other hand, for search engines


as well, because then we can crawl and index


all of these different versions, and we don't kind of


get sent in the wrong direction.


OK.


Running towards the end of the Hangout,


still a handful of questions left,


but maybe I can switch over to questions from your side.


If there is anything on your end that's still pending.


SPEAKER 2 Hey, John.


JOHN MUELLER 1 Aye.


SPEAKER 2 Yeah, I represent a pharma e-commerce brand in India.


I had a couple of queries regarding that.


So one of the queries is, we see a lot of difference,


discrepancy in location-specific keyword rankings.


So we are an e-commerce brand.


We operate across the country.


But we see that for a general keyword, which is not location


specific, we are ranking probably fourth in one city,


but not in top 50 for a different city.


Yeah, that can happen.


SPEAKER 2 So what are the issues or the causes


or the solutions that you would recommend for this?


I mean, usually that's a sign that our algorithms believe


that users really want local information


for those kind of queries in those specific locations.


And that's something, if you don't


have that kind of local information, that kind


of local content, then that makes it possible for us


to say, well, maybe we should show more local content instead


of this kind of more general version of content.


So from that point of view, it's not something


where I would say you're doing something wrong,


but rather it's like our algorithms believe


that maybe your site isn't as relevant for those queries


in those specific locations.


And if you think that it is relevant for those queries


and those locations, then that's something


where you need to make sure that it's


lot clearer on your website that it is relevant for those


queries and locations.


SPEAKER 3 OK, one specific thing that we have on the website


is that our default location is a particular city.


And for that particular city, the rankings are quite good.


And that city is actually visible on the website,


and that is indexed by Google as well.


So do you think that this could be a problem wherein


all the cities have all the users from different cities


like are exposed to this particular city?


So should we remove the city and make it generic?


Do you think would that solve the problem?


That might help, yeah.


So if there is one kind of city that you're already


highlighting, and that's something


where I could certainly imagine that that makes


it a little bit trickier.


So I know, for example, we had similar issues,


or I don't know if there were issues.


But I saw similar things with some,


what is it, classified sites in the US


where they would show different content on their home page


based on the location of the user.


And they would try to do that on a city level.


And that meant every time we crawled the home page,


a lot of the content that they were presenting


was based on San Francisco and Silicon Valley kind of area.


And that essentially made it so that, for us, the home page


was very San Francisco-oriented.


So even though they had content for all other locations,


it was something where they were focusing so much on San


Francisco with regards to the content that we thought,


well, probably this is a website specific for San Francisco.


So that's something where, similarly, if you really


focus on one city on your website,


then it might be that we look at your website and say,


well, this is really focused for that one city.


Maybe it's not so relevant for other cities.


And if you can reduce that focus or make it so that, at least


by default, that city is not something that's


standing in the foreground, then probably that


would help to even things out a little bit.


SPEAKER 2


So since you are in pharma vertical,


we are focusing a lot on EAP elements to add on the website.


So would you say that adding those elements on top


of the page compared to the bottom of the page,


does it have an impact on the overall rankings


that Google might consider?


I wouldn't see that as something as a primary ranking factor.


But for users, that probably does make a difference.


That's something where I would primarily focus on this


as usability as a conversion factor


and less as an SEO element.


SPEAKER 2 All right.


Thanks.


One last question that I had was, I'm really sorry.


This is the last one.


So this is regarding duplication on the website.


So we have multiple molecules, a composition of the medicines,


and we have similar content for multiple pages, which


has the same constituents and the same elements in them.


So say that duplication in these aspects


would not cause an issue, or would you


recommend that we should try to make it unique or add more


elements so that the overall page gets a bit more


unique than before?


I don't know.


I would try to look at it more from the point of view of what


people are actually searching for.


And I really don't know that area so much with regards


to what they're actually searching for.


If people are searching for very specific variations,


then that might be something where it makes sense to include


that on your website.


But if you just have all of these variations


and people are primarily searching for the category


of molecules, in this case, then maybe it


doesn't make sense to include those smaller, lower-level pages.


This is also something that you can probably test fairly well


on your website, where you take one section of your site


where you're receiving enough traffic so that you have


some reasonable numbers to compare,


and then you make kind of an A-B test there,


where you take a small set of those pages


and you do them in one way.


In a small set of pages, you do them in another way.


And then you see, what is the overall traffic


to this set of pages versus that set of pages?


Got it.


Thank you so much.


Thank you.


Sure.


That's it.


All right.


Any other questions from any of you all?


Hi, John.


Hi.


Hi there.


Yeah, just a question about duplication of code.


So we have two sites, and they both


target the same similar or pretty much the same products.


But the branding for both sites is different.


The content's different.


The product descriptions are different.


Everything's pretty much unique, other than the code.


The back end and the site structures are the same.


I just wanted to know if that would cause


an issue between the sites in regards


to ranking or duplication of code.


Usually, that would be OK.


I mean, especially if you're targeting


different types of users, then that's


something where I wouldn't really worry about that.


That seems reasonable.


OK.


That's good.


One other question.


We've got quite a large navigation for both the sites.


And we target male and female with different products.


We want to clean the navigation.


So it's like you have the products listed underneath men's.


So you have men's watches, men's jewelry.


But instead, just have the product terms,


rather than gender specific with the anchor text.


Would that have an impact in rankings for those pages?


My guess is we would still figure that out.


And probably, it would be pretty neutral overall.


But it could, depending on how your site is structured now,


it could be a pretty big change in the way


that your navigation is set up, that your hierarchy of the site


is set up.


So that could be something that would have an effect there.


My recommendation there would be to try


to test that, if at all possible.


Like before, to take a significant part of your site


where you get enough traffic that you can compare things,


and try that variation versus the current variation,


and see if that has any effect there.


And my general feeling is probably the overall effect


will be minimal.


So that's, but it's really hard to say offhand.


Sure.


That's great.


Cheers.


All right.


Hi, John.


Hi.


This is just one question.


I just thought I could get you in, Saithan.


So we have two pages.


One page is for a particular keyword.


We have the home page ranking for it,


as well as the dedicated page ranking for the same keywords.


OK?


So what we are observing is that the competition that


is ranking for that particular keywords have their home page.


And we have the same keywords.


And even though they do not have a dedicated page,


we somehow seem to rank somewhere.


So we consider targeting our home page


for that particular keyword, and redirecting that specific page


to the home page.


That's something you can do.


It's not something where I would say you would always


want to do that.


So it's fairly common that both a home page and maybe


a category page or a product page


rank for the same kind of query.


And it can happen that one of these pages


ranks more visibly than the other one.


But essentially, that's something


that you can control a little bit based


on the amount of content that you have on your site,


based on the hierarchy of your website.


And that's something that you can control in a way


where you can make the decision on what you would


like to have happen there.


So if you feel strongly that your home page is the much


better page for this kind of query,


then make sure that it's really clear to all search engines


when they come to your website that the home page is


the right page to show for that query.


And similarly, if you want people


to go to a product page or a category page instead,


then make it clear that this is really


the page that people should go to for that specific query.


For example, if you have exactly the same content


on your home page, or if you have


a full set of the multiple product categories


that you have on your home page as well,


then sometimes it's hard for us to tell which of these pages


is the better one to show to users.


So this decision is essentially up to you.


And if you choose to have one or the other pages


to be shown visibly, or you prefer to have it more visibly


shown for individual queries, then you


need to make that as clear as possible.


Got it.


So the environment, for example, the landscape


in which that entire arrangement is there,


should that not be a concern for us?


Because what we observe was that the competitors,


even though they do not have a dedicated page,


their home page, when that seems to be


of the highest authority or of a highest strength,


happens to rank for that.


So shouldn't the landscape be something


that we need to consider for this?


JOHN MUELLER I wouldn't worry about what your competitors are


doing, because maybe they're doing it wrong,


or maybe they don't want to have this happen,


and it's happening accidentally.


I would really think more about what you want to have happen.


Like, which one of those pages do you


want to have ranked in the search results?


And maybe it's your home page.


Maybe you want everyone to recognize your brand,


your overall company for this query.


That's fine.


That's your decision.


Maybe you prefer to have people go to a product page


where they can convert quicker.


That's another option.


But essentially, that's a decision that you can make,


and that's one where you can focus on your metrics.


Like, what do you really want to have happen?


Do you think people need to find out about your company?


Maybe the home page is better.


Do you think people would be interested in just going off


and buying the product?


Then maybe the product itself is better.


SPEAKER 3 Thanks, John.


Thank you very much.


Take care and stay safe.


JOHN MUELLER Sure.


Thanks.


You too.


OK.


Let's maybe take a break here.


I'll set up the next batch of Hangouts,


and hopefully they'll be a little bit less disruptive


along the way.


If you have any questions along the way,


feel free to drop me a note on Twitter


or to join us in the Webmaster Help forums as well.


Thank you all for joining in.


I wish you all a great weekend.


And stay safe.


Stay healthy.


Don't do anything crazy.


Like, go outside, I guess.


All right.


See you, everyone.


Will removing “.html” from my URLs help my site? - SEO Snippets

Today's question comes from James in the UK.


He asks, will removing.html from my URLs help my site?


URLs are important for search engines like Google.


Do they care which endings your URLs use, though?


The answer is no.


Google uses URLs to identify pieces of content.


Whether your URLs end with.html,.php,.asp,


or just have words in them doesn't really matter to Google.


All of these URLs can show up in search in the same way.


That's it.


If you need to change your URLs, for example,


if you move to a new content management system that


doesn't allow you to use.html URLs at all,


keep in mind that this change would be


a restructuring of your website.


You would need to redirect the old URLs to the new ones.


This kind of change can take quite a bit of time


to be reprocessed.


So picking a time when you're not dependent on search


is a good idea.


And because it can take time, we don't


recommend doing this kind of change on a whim.


When making URL changes, pick URLs


that you're sure can last a longer period of time.


We love sharing these videos with you.


SEO explained | Search for Beginners Ep 8

Your website should attract new potential customers.


One way to do so is by showing up in search results.


Methods of making your website appear when people search for the things you sell,


like children's clothes, are called search engine optimization,


or SEO for short.


Think of it this way.


SEO is like a shop window display.


You want to make the shop window display interesting and attractive.


SEO is about using the right words


and serving relevant information to your potential customers on your websites.


This can be done in a few different ways.


Make sure your website contains useful information,


like inventory, selection, pricing, location, and hours.


Other best practices include create short, meaningful page titles.


Use page headings that convey the subject of the page.


Include a detailed about us section that includes contact information,


a description of your business, countries where you operate if relevant,


and if it applies, store locations and opening hours.


If your website contains images and videos,


make sure you describe them with alt text tags and other attributes


to ensure that Google understands what they're about


and that users with disabilities can also access the content.


You should also make sure to use images to illustrate what you are selling


and describe the items using keywords such as brands, colors,


and descriptions of the items.


Additionally, you'll want to pay close attention to image accuracy,


descriptive wording, and relevancy of page titles.


You should also use the techniques and checklists we've mentioned


in the previous episode to ensure your website appears in search results


when people are looking for your products.


We've talked about positive methods to increase the visibility of your site,


but there are also not so positive methods.


These include things like adding invisible text to a website


to trick people into viewing content.


This, as well as other devious techniques designed to deceive indexing algorithms,


are often described as black hat SEO and should be avoided.


Google has many ways to detect techniques that intend to manipulate search rankings.


These safeguards help ensure that search results remain relevant and accurate for users.


As such, most of these black hat techniques don't work


and in the long run will amount to a waste of your time and money.


Google provides tools to help you manage your SEO.


Sign up for Search Console to see how your website is performing.


Search Console is a free tool provided by Google


to help you run your website and monitor its performance.


It even sends you emails in case there is a problem, so you can focus on your business.


If you don't want to do this alone, you can hire a professional.


In the next episode, we'll talk about how to find and hire a great SEO expert.


Do you have any comments about this video or this series?


English Google SEO office-hours from March 19, 2021

Hi, everyone, and welcome to today's Google SEO Search


Central Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a developer advocate at Google.


And part of what we do are these Office Hour Hangouts


where people can jump in and ask their questions around search


and the website.


A bunch of things were already submitted on YouTube,


so we can go through some of that.


But as always, I think it's always


need to get some live questions first.


So if any of you want to get started


with the first question, feel free to jump in.


All right, let me see.


I think some people are raising hands,


so I'll just go in that order.


Kit, I think.


Oh, I can't hear you.


I think you're still muted.


You can hand me now?


Yes, perfect.


Yes, OK.


I have a question.


I have a blog about the lives I say my new business experience.


After I finished writing, I often send to the editor-related


magazine for the post-its.


What should I focus on?


Read many links on chat one review table and review table


magazine.


I saw some article on many magazine number one or number


two, OK?


Do you understand what I say?


Not quite.


I think you're writing content, and then you're


submitting it to other sites?


Yes, I submit it to other sites.


I'll send it to social media sometimes.


I send to the magazine.


What should I sell one magazine with many buy, many magazine


with a few content?


Do you understand what I mean?


A little bit.


Tricky.


It's tricky.


OK.


Sorry.


So you're submitting your the, so you're writing something


and putting it on your website?


Is that correct?


Yes.


I moved on my website, and I sent it on some website


to link back to my website to have more, I mean,


more backlink to my website.


Yeah.


In general, if you're publishing the content on your website


and you send information about it to other people


and they think it's good content and they link to you,


that's fine.


That's fine.


I think it's something where you have


to try to find the balance between sending everything


to everyone and really trying to focus on finding someone who


understands what you're writing about,


who thinks that it's good content that you're creating,


and then links to you.


So I think that's generally fine.


What I would, I don't know, try to avoid doing


is just republishing your whole content on other sites.


So kind of like guest posts, something like that.


For us, if you're the one who is publishing


the content on someone else's site,


then we would try to ignore those links


and try to say, well, you're putting the content there.


It's not a natural link, essentially.


Rather, you put it there.


So that would be something that you would want


to use nofollow for the links.


But if you create something that's really fantastic


and you send a notice about it to other people


and they say, oh, this is nice, and they link to you,


that's essentially fine.


Yeah.


I have one more question.


I have a user's data array content.


Every day, I have 2,000 content upload to my website.


However, among them, there are 500 to 900 duplicate content.


It's OK.


Some people buy, for example, some people


post a content to buy a house, to sell a house, to sell a house.


On this is two, and on this is one.


But they just rely on the access, not about some policy,


not change.


If that's OK, I should ask them to rewrite their content,


their content to what you need.


So then.


So just to check that I understand, you have users


that are posting things on your website as well?


Yeah, and they sometimes post the same thing


on lots of other websites as well?


On just one, just my website, every day, every day.


Oh, they post the same thing.


The same thing.


But duplicate around 800 to 900%.


They change some lines, some paragraph to make it different.


Yes.


Is that OK?


I should ask them to rewrite.


They can take more or change, contain


or not upload content anymore.


Yeah.


I think it would make sense if you had more unique content


and valuable content.


So not just taking the same thing


and rewriting it and then doing it again,


but rather trying to find something new


that they can add.


And if these are users that are posting on your website,


from Google's point of view, it's still your website.


And it's still you are publishing all of this content.


And where the content comes from, that's between,


that's your problem, essentially.


So if you are just republishing what users are submitting


and you're saying, this is all good content,


I want Google to value my website based on it,


and then if that content is bad or if it's


a lot of duplication, if it's not so useful content,


it's still Google sees you saying,


here's my website with all of these things.


So especially when it comes to content that is made by users,


I would try to find a way to recognize


the good pieces of content and to highlight


that within your website.


And the pieces of content that you think are duplicated


or too simple or not good, then maybe those


are pages that you could say you add a no index to them


by default or you make them less visible within your website.


Asking users to create better content, I think,


is very hard because most of the time,


they're doing this for free for you.


And if you go and say, I have strong rules


and you must work on my rules, then


maybe they will just go away.


But if it's still something where you can say,


this is content that I feel is valuable


and make it visible to search, and other parts you say,


well, it's OK if users are active here


and if they like it here.


But this is not something that I want to put in search.


AUDIENCE MEMBER 1


On what percent the tool content on what I can duplicate,


1% or 10% to 20% are lower?


We don't have any fixed numbers for that.


It's something where you have to think about it from your side.


If users go to your website, what you would want to do there?


AUDIENCE MEMBER 2


One more question.


My company recently developed new business translate.


These salespeople of our company will always separate websites


for sales and marketing.


On this website, content on this website


will be from my main company website.


For example, some tips to help people solve problems


or introduce our products.


As I said, it's relevant for my Google Smart Policy.


This is a problem.


Just help people.


I copy my website.


I have many salespeople.


Each sale, I give them a website.


And they use content of my company


to sell on their website.


Yes, they sell sales skills, not content skills.


So they should know it could be.


JOHN MUELLER I have a lot of trouble


trying to follow along.


But maybe if you can type the question into the chat,


then I can follow up there.


AUDIENCE MEMBER 2


Yes, yes, yes, yes.


OK.


Thanks.


Wait a minute.


I copied it.


Yeah.


I'll take a look.


All right.


Robin.


ROBIN LESPAGNARD Right, I'm muted.


So this is something that hit me the other day.


So there was an old function, I think,


back in 2015, which was basically


google.com slash ncr, which allowed


you to access the American index without from another country,


basically.


So you could get the American results.


And since I'm sitting in a global function,


I'm working in a global capacity from Sweden,


I would like to sometimes be able to see


how the Americans are experiencing the Google


results, and also the Brazilians and other countries.


Is there any way to force Chrome or a browser via some URL


to use the local index?


Because I can get.


So I have put in some custom search engine in my Chrome


browser to use the American index.


And it seems to get the American organic results.


But I would also like to get the ad results


from other countries.


Yeah.


I don't know.


So the ncr is essentially no country redirect,


which was in, I don't know, early days,


maybe a couple of years ago, when we had the different


country domains where we would redirect automatically


to a local version.


And that's what the ncr version does there.


We don't have different indexes for search.


So it's not that there is different content that is


indexed depending on the location.


The one thing that I usually do to see the results


from another country without doing anything fancy


is to use the hl equals and the gl equals parameters.


So the hl is for the language, and gl


is for the geographic location, I think.


And with those, you kind of get an approximation


for the specific country versions.


What you don't see is city-level information.


And I think what you also don't see


is the geographically limited ads there.


So things like the local search results,


where you have the map and all of that,


that's not visible there.


In Chrome, there is a way that you can specify the location


that your browser gives.


I don't know if that would be enough to do.


So somewhere in the developer options,


you can specify like Chrome should use this location


if an app asks for the location.


Yeah, someone just linked to it.


Fantastic.


That might be an option.


The other option that I know lots of people do


is just to use local proxies and just do it essentially


that way, because then you know that you really


have local settings, local IP address, all of that.


I think search isn't trying to go out of its way


to make this hard for you.


It's just that lots of people have really weird browser


settings and IP address combinations,


and we try to work hard to make it as easy as possible


to get the results that are nearby.


And then sometimes that means that if you


want to act like you're somewhere else,


it's a lot harder.


My points.


Yeah.


All right.


Thank you.


But just since you are saying that you have basically


the same index, so even though I am in Sweden,


if I use Google FR and google.com


and try to force Google to be the American Google,


I get slightly different search results for the same phrase.


Yes, so the rankings will be different.


The rankings will be different.


OK.


So yeah.


Yeah, the rankings will be different.


Also with hreflang, with the country language location


settings, we might swap out the URLs.


So we have one URL index, but we know there


are different country versions.


We might swap that out.


So that's also something that you would see.


But from an indexing point of view,


I think it's been quite a while since we


had anything like country or regional specific indexes.


What obviously also happens is we


have a bunch of different data centers, and sometimes one


of them is a little bit out of sync or doing some experiments


and then has slightly different things in the index.


But that's not explicit to different countries.


Yeah.


All right.


Thank you.


That's clear.


SPEAKER 2


Sure.


OK.


So John, in Google dot FR and google.com version,


and if I add that GL equals to that particular country


and dot com version, why the reasons are different?


Because both of these things are saying the same thing,


like google.com for India, and I am using GL equals to IN.


And then I'm going to google.co.in.


I am also seeing that in organic,


the ranking is different.


Or it should be the same.


It can be different for lots of different reasons.


So that's something where lots of things


play into the localized rankings.


And sometimes that's as simple as you're


in different experiments and we're trying things out


with rankings.


And that's why you can sometimes see different things.


But even when we try to recognize a city level


information and try to improve the local search


results for that, that's another really common reason


why you would see that now.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


OK, thank you.


SPEAKER 1 Sure.


Let me just go back to your question.


Thanks for posting that.


So the question is, my country created a business strategy.


Each of our salespeople is equipped


with a separate website with a sales kit.


And the information is essentially copied


across the different sites.


Would that be in violation of Google's spam policy?


So for something like that, depending


on the number of websites that you have,


it might be that the web spam team says


this is like doorway pages.


And if that's the case, then especially


if it's tens or hundreds of these websites,


yeah, that's something where from a web spam point of view,


it might be kind of tricky.


Also with our algorithms, it might be kind of tricky.


What I would recommend doing if these websites are mostly


used in a way that the individual salespeople point


at that website, or they have it on their business card,


or they have it in their email, or something like that,


is to make it so that you have one version of your website


which is indexed.


And the other versions use the rel canonical


to point at that indexed version.


So the individual versions can still be accessible.


People can still go there.


You can still track the activity,


what is happening there.


But for search, we combine everything


into that one central website.


And that has the advantage of your central website


being much stronger.


And also that the individual versions are not indexed.


And with that, you don't have any trouble with the web spam


side, with the policy side.


AUDIENCE 1 OK.


It's being in a sale website.


I just can't even go to main website.


Yeah, yes, yes, yes, I can.


Exactly.


All right, thanks.


Sayid.


Thank you, thank you, thank you.


Hey, hi, John.


Hi.


John, my question is regarding duplicate content


or copied content.


So we have two sites.


And I want to merge contents of the two sites into one.


And we are marking one of the site as no index.


But we are not using 301 redirect


as we want the existing customers which


are coming to the other side to view the same content.


And if I use the same content on my other side,


will that be counted into copied content or duplicate content


since both the sites are indexed?


And is the same content which is just


available on a different location?


Yeah, I would also see that as something


where you would want to use a rel canonical to pick one


of the URLs to show and to make sure that things are


concentrated on that one version.


So with two copies, I don't think it would be a problem.


But you're kind of spreading yourself then.


It's like instead of making one strong page


for your piece of content, you're saying,


I will spread it out further.


And that means all of these pages


have it a lot harder to rank in search as well.


So making one strong page usually is better.


What if I mark no index on one of the pages?


Sure.


That works too.


Yeah.


I think with the rel canonical, you


have the advantage that you're forwarding


all of the information, the signals that that page gets.


And with a no index, you're basically saying,


I don't care about any of these signals.


I will drop them.


OK, cool, John.


Thanks.


So I have another question.


So this question is regarding the content which


is included in the first fold.


So that is available on desktop but not on mobile.


So once we have mobile indexing, what


would be the effect?


So why we don't have on mobile is the reason,


because we don't want our users to be


overwhelmed with the junk of content


while they are browsing the page.


Since the screen size is smaller,


and we have very real less real estate to display our product.


So how do I go about this?


Yeah.


So if it's not available at all on the mobile version,


we will not index it.


So from our side, it's a fairly technical thing.


Essentially, if it's not in the HTML on the mobile version,


we don't have a chance to index it.


So that's something where you have to decide,


is the content important for your website?


And if so, you should also show it to your mobile users.


If you say the content is not important for my website


but it's nice to have, then of course,


you can do things like have it just on the desktop version


but not on the mobile version.


But then you kind of have to take into account,


this content won't be used for search.


John, what if I add the same content in a collapsible table


or collapsible tab so that it's also available


and does not hamper my user experience as well?


So will this be treated in the same way


as a non-collapsible format on desktop?


That's perfectly fine.


That's something that a lot of sites


do to take a bigger UI and try to combine it


into a smaller version.


I think I would just be careful from usability point of view


there to make sure that it's actually usable.


Because just taking a big website


and combining it into a small version, you can do that.


But sometimes, it's not as useful for users.


And sometimes, that leads you to think about,


well, if this piece of content is so important


and it needs a whole big section,


maybe I should make a separate page for it.


And then you can confirm, is that content actually useful


or not?


OK.


Cool, John.


Thanks.


Thanks for answering that.


Sure.


James.


Hi.


Thank you for taking the time.


So I look after a news website that specializes


in gaming content.


And we get plenty of traffic in terms of organic search


and from stuff on guides and things like that,


and plenty from social feeds to do


with interviews and features.


The one area that we have a lot of difficulty from


is reactive news.


Because we don't show up at the moment in a news tab or top


stories.


We were accepted on Publisher Center around December 2019,


but we've not had any kind of success since then.


And traffic, from all I can tell, is fine.


The website is quite healthy because we'll appear quite


highly in search results.


But it's obviously in news things


where we're a little unsure as to what we could maybe


be doing extra to ensure that we're maybe


being making the website set up as best as it can


to potentially be included in news tab.


So I didn't know if you had any advice on that.


I don't have much insight into what particularly the news


side is watching out for.


So I don't really have a ton of help that I can give there.


With regards to Discover, that's usually


something that would be independent of news.


So that would be something that you could appear in,


even if you're not visible in news.


The one thing with Discover that I'm kind of aware of,


where the team is looking into algorithmically determining


which content makes sense there, is the content guidelines


that we have there, which are a bit kind of different from just


pure web search kind of content guidelines.


Because we want to make sure that the content that we're


highlighting there is not clickbaity,


that it's really high quality content, all of these things.


And sometimes I've seen sites that


have some parts that kind of fall afoul


with these guidelines well.


I mean, it's essentially an editorial decision.


It's not like we're saying it's a bad website.


But some parts don't align with those guidelines.


And other parts do align with those guidelines.


And our systems might look at that overall and say, well,


we're not sure.


And then they wouldn't include it in Discover.


Because for us, the bar to be shown in Discover


is a bit higher, just because we're proactively showing


that content to users.


So it's not like someone is explicitly


looking for the content there before we'll show it.


But rather, here, you should take a look at this.


And then because of that, we're a little bit more critical


with regards to what we show.


Just as a very brief follow up, so the only thing


that I had noticed, and it was something


that I'd checked with a few other publishers as well,


is that around September time, there's


like a two-day weird spike where,


if you look at the whole 16 months for the site,


it's completely zero.


And then there's sort of a two-day period


in the start of September where suddenly it goes like that


and then drops off.


And I've noticed this from a few other publishers as well.


So I don't know if it is simply something that's kind of,


we are doing everything that maybe we need to,


but it's just waiting for, I know that's probably not


as simple, but like a switch to be kind of turned on.


So is it just the case, if you think,


of just kind of bearing with and kind of waiting it out?


So what I would do is maybe post in the news publisher forum


or in the Search Central forum in general,


just to get some insights from other people,


especially with regards to the kind of inclusion in the news


mode question, just to make sure that you're not


missing anything that the news side would be watching out for.


With regards to Discover, I think


it's really tricky because you don't really


see what kind of like how close you are kind of thing.


And with Discover, I see a lot of times


the traffic is very binary in that either you're


visible in Discover and then you get a lot of traffic


or you're not visible in Discover


and you don't get any traffic.


And I assume that's what that spike was that you saw there.


That's like, well, oh, we showed it,


and then you got a ton of traffic.


And then our algorithms are like, oh, wait.


I think from when I'd looked on Search Console,


it showed up as it was the search type was news.


And I think I remember seeing at the time one or two stories


that were just all of a sudden in top stories.


And I think a lot of the team thought, yes, fantastic.


It's happened.


But then, like I said, a lot of publishers from what can seem


to work out did kind of just dip off after two days,


and then it's gone back to like a flat line.


I don't know.


I'd really suggest getting some input from other people.


I think, I don't know, Mihai might have some ideas as well,


but uh-oh.


I woke him up.


He's active in the forums.


It's something where sometimes there are small things


that you can do, and sometimes it's just


our algorithms waiting to collect enough positive signals


and then suddenly everything is good and working well.


AUDIENCE 1.


Cool.


Thanks very much.


Sure.


Ritu.


Hello, sir.


Hi.


Hope you are doing well.


Yes.


You too.


Yeah.


Yes, sir.


I have a few questions related to my website.


Actually, I'm working from last one year,


and my website Alexa ranking was that time 63,000.


And now it is 5,000.


After six months, I have worked for it.


Now it is 5,000.


I got a lot of achievement on it.


But my domain authority, it is not enhancing.


It was 43 that time before last one year, and it is only 45.


And we are getting very good organic traffic for all this.


But there's no effect on domain authority.


Can you tell me what can be the reason behind it?


Where are you not seeing any changes?


Sorry.


Yeah, I have in domain authority.


Oh, domain authority.


OK.


Yeah.


I don't know.


So essentially, we don't use Alexa rank.


That's kind of one thing.


So I think if you're tracking your website there,


I think that's perfectly fine.


It's something that is sometimes useful to compare.


We also don't use domain authority.


Domain authority is also a metric created by a third party.


I have no idea what they count there.


So I really can't speak for that.


But if you're seeing good traffic in search,


then it sounds like you're doing things well.


So if the domain authority metric


is really important to you, then I would try to,


I don't know if it's from Moz or someone else,


but check in with them to see what they're doing with that.


But it doesn't have any effect at all on search.


So it's something that they're doing on their side.


And it's not meant to be something from Google's side


that we would worry about.


OK.


So one question related to toxic links.


Actually, I'm getting so many toxic links for my website.


So I have simply uploaded a Diso tool.


But it is not reducing the number of toxic links.


It is doing very slowly, like a little bit.


It has reduced only four links out of 126 links.


It is reducing very slowly.


So it is a processor of the Google Earth.


So I think, first of all, for most websites,


you don't need to worry about toxic links.


It's something that our systems, when they run across links


that they think are bad, we will primarily ignore them.


So it's not something that individual links that you


find, which are not good, would be


counted against your website.


So that's kind of the first step.


So for the most part, probably you


don't even need to worry about that.


With regards to the disavow file,


we use that internally to ignore those links


after we've discovered those links


so that they don't have any effect at all on your website.


It's kind of, I think, a guarantee.


If you're worried about these links,


you can use the disavow tool.


However, they still appear in Search Console.


So if you go to the links report in Search Console,


they will still be there.


So it wouldn't be that you submit


a bad link in the disavow file, and then a couple of days


later it disappears in Search Console.


It would still be there.


So kind of that connection between the disavow file


and the link report in Search Console,


that's something I would not worry about.


But again, just about the links in general,


especially if you're seeing individual links that pop up


and you say, oh, this looks like a spammer dropped a link


or whatever, I would completely ignore those.


And instead, focus on your website


and just keep moving forward and kind of ignore


all of those automated spammy things that are happening.


Because these spammy links, they happen to every website.


And Google system has seen them so many times over the years.


We're very good at just ignoring.


AUDIENCE 1 OK, so one more question related


to core web issues.


Nowadays, we are seeing we are getting lots of core web


issues.


And I have seen the update also in Search Engine Land related


to it.


It affects on our ranking for the website.


If we're having so many core web issues,


if we are going to resolve them on a time.


Yeah, so the update is currently planned, I think, for May


to take effect in search.


And that's something we call it a ranking factor.


It does have an effect in the search results.


But I think for many websites, the relevance


of the content is still the primary topic for ranking.


So it's something where I think it's


useful to make a website faster and make it better for users.


That always makes sense.


There will be a small ranking bonus attached to that.


But a lot of times, you get a lot of value


out of just making your website much stronger.


So improving the content overall,


creating something really fantastic


that people want to find in search,


the relevance aspect of your website, I think,


is still very important.


So not to say core web vitals doesn't matter.


It is a factor that we take into account.


But there are lots of factors that we use for search.


So it's not something where I would


say you should stop working on your website completely


for the next couple of months and only make it faster.


But sometimes there are simple things


you can do to make it faster.


Sometimes it takes a lot of work.


So finding that balance is something


that everyone has to figure out on their own.


SPEAKER 2


Is there any points which we need


to consider to resolve these type of issues?


Like, I did research on it.


I got some points for it.


But it is not working.


These are very common points.


I'm not getting it.


So I think the most common point of confusion


is the difference between the data shown in Search Console


and the data in the testing tools.


So the main difference there is the data in Search Console


is based on what users would actually see.


And it's based on the data collected from the past 28


days.


And the data in the tools, when you run a test of your pages,


is a live test, where you're testing right now.


And it's a theoretical test, because we


don't know in the tools what your users have


as a connection, as devices, all of these things.


We don't know.


So we have to guess in the tools.


And that means that sometimes in numbers


you see in the live tool and in the data


that users see is different.


For search, we use the data that users actually see.


So that's something where the data in Search Console,


I would use that as a guide to recognize,


oh, I have a lot of problems I can work on,


or I don't have a lot of problems.


And then with the live tests, you


can figure out this is how I can improve for this problem.


So that's kind of the two sides there.


And depending on the type of website you have,


sometimes things like using different plugins


or removing plugins, they can make a big difference.


So our documentation has all of these technical details on,


like, here's how to make your HTML faster


and how to make your JavaScript faster.


But a lot of times, especially if you're


working on a system like WordPress


or a lot of these other platforms,


just disabling plugins that you don't need


or swapping out plugins against simpler ones,


sometimes that makes a very big difference


with regards to speed.


So that's something you can try it out.


You can use the testing tools to see what it looks like now.


Maybe switch off some plugins to see


if that makes any difference and then test again.


And if you think your website is still


OK with those plugins switched off and is a lot faster,


then maybe that's a simple approach to fixing it.


AUDIENCE 1 Thank you so much for your time.


JOHN MUELLER Sure.


Let me run through some of the submitted questions as well.


It looks like we can still answer live questions forever.


I'll be on here a little bit after the recording as well.


So if any of you want to stick around, ask more questions,


then feel free to do so as well.


Let me see.


So I think the top question I can't really answer much.


So the question is, for the past seven years,


the domain that Google's organic visibility


has grown in multiple countries.


And it goes into why.


Why is this site ranking so well?


And I think, first of all, we tend


not to talk about other people's sites and why they're ranking.


So that's always kind of tricky.


And second of all, I think kind of the underlying assumption


that Google domains must be doing something


behind the scenes to get this kind of ranking,


I would question that very strongly.


So in particular, when teams at Google


go to anyone who's working on search


and they ask a search-related questions,


they get pushed back automatically.


We have very strong policies around that.


We call them the honest results policies,


which we use primarily with regards


to the ad side of the business as well, where


if someone who's working with an advertiser


comes to someone at search and says,


this person is paying so much money to Google


and they have a ranking question, can you help them?


Then we need to make sure that we push back on that


and that we say we can't help with these kind of questions,


with anything search-related.


And the same thing applies to any internal team.


So regardless of which team it is,


how important it is to Google, if they


go to anyone who's working on the search side,


they will get pushed back.


And sometimes we see that escalate a little bit


in that they add their boss and their boss's boss and boss


and, I don't know, some vice presidents or something


like that.


But essentially, this policy is extremely strict


on Google's side.


And we do not circumvent that to help any particular side.


And it goes so far that I almost feel


that the folks who work on SEO at Google,


they almost have a disadvantage compared to other people


in that they're stuck in this weird world where


if they went and asked through the usual channels


that we tell them to use, it would look totally awkward.


Because these people from Google are


asking these other people from Google


about this basic question.


And therefore, they're almost stuck in the situation, well,


OK, maybe we won't ask.


And that goes so far as questions


about how do I verify my site in Search Console.


And it's not even about ranking a lot of times.


So from that point of view, I would strongly


question if Google Domains has any kind of secret insider


knowledge with regards to search.


How things are ranking, obviously, I


think Google is a very strong brand,


has very strong websites.


And any strong company might have some advantages


in that regard if they work together.


But it's not something where from a search point of view,


there's any inherent advantage to any given Google property.


And I think sometimes you even see this very visibly.


And we sometimes see case studies


that are made externally where they're like,


why is this Google property not showing up at all in search?


And it turns out, well, they're using JavaScript in a way that


breaks search completely.


And anyone can figure this out.


But these Google engineers, we thought


they were really smart people.


They didn't figure it out.


And these things happen.


So it's something where I think sometimes you'll


see Google sites doing really well when they do things


properly.


And sometimes you'll see Google sites not appearing well


at all in search just because they're


struggling with the same things everyone else is


struggling with.


Let's see, the next question is about Chrome user experience


report data, also the Core Web Vitals data as well,


similar to the previous question.


And it goes into the aspect of, well, there


are these big differences with the testing tool versus what


I see in Search Console.


And the testing tools are sometimes really weird.


I don't have any specific insights


into this particular issue here.


And it looks like it's also being raised directly


with the Chrome team.


So I think that's fantastic.


I think that's about the best approach


to take there because we use the Chrome data as a basis


for the data that we show.


So that's something where essentially it's, I think,


going in the right direction.


I'm not, I don't know, I think it's tricky with a lot


of these Core Web Vitals issues.


And I see various questions externally about them


where they're like, how do I figure out what is actually


the problem here?


Or is there even a problem here?


Is it just the testing tool that is broken?


And I think a lot of that we still


need to get critical feedback on these kind of topics


and make sure that things are aligned before we have


everything ready to roll out.


So it's a bit of a rush, I think, on both sides.


But it's coming together fairly well, I think.


How can we help speed up the mobile first indexing


for our site?


Our site is adaptive and mobile friendly,


but Google is still using a desktop cloud.


I totally wouldn't worry about this.


If your site is, from what you can tell,


when the mobile version is used, has all of the content


that you need, then it will switch over.


So we have the deadline, I think, set for,


or we essentially had it set for March.


I think there's still some technical details


with the last sites that we're working out


so that we can switch them over in an optimal way.


But at some point, it'll just be switched over.


If that's still in March or maybe in April


or maybe even ends up in May, I don't know.


But we're going to be switching over all of these sites.


And if your site is ready, then that will just happen then.


I think, from what I heard from the team,


we're currently in a state where we're not automatically


moving sites over anymore, but rather kind of saving


all of these up for that last moment


and then switching a lot of those over at once.


So if you've improved your site so


that it is usable for mobile-first indexing,


then that'll just happen.


And if it's already showing the same content on mobile


as on desktop, then you wouldn't see any effects.


It's not that you would have a ranking boost or any kind


of improvement in indexing because of that.


Even though breadcrumbs help provide a better user


experience on the site, do they also


give crawlers better context that will translate


into improved rankings?


Probably not.


So with breadcrumbs, you're essentially


providing links to the higher-level parts


of your website.


And for the most part, I would assume


that you already have links to the higher-level parts


of your website in the usual UI.


So probably just purely from a crawling point of view,


we would not get additional information just


from the breadcrumbs.


However, breadcrumbs are shown in the search results.


So it's more like you're getting a special UI in the search


results for these breadcrumbs and not


that you're getting better rankings


or that you're getting better crawling from that.


So I think it still makes sense.


It's just I wouldn't see it as this one trick


to improve your rankings.


What are the best practices for obtaining site links


from Google when someone is searching for your brand name?


We don't have any markup for site links.


You can't force them to appear.


Essentially, we try to pick those up


when we think we have multiple pages from your site which


are relevant when a user is searching


for your company's name.


And we will all show them together.


So essentially, the site links that we show


are normal organic rankings that we would show.


And we just show them in a slightly different way


because it makes sense to kind of group them together.


To make it easier for us to understand which pages belong


together, you can work on things like the internal structure


of your website so that it's easier for us


to understand which pages belong together,


that you have clear anchor text for your internal links.


But these are all things that you should be doing anyway.


So it's usually not something specific


that you'd need to do to make these site links appear.


If I have links in the raw HTML but they're not


present in the rendered HTML, will Google still crawl them?


So it's an odd CMS navigation question.


I would not guarantee that they always be picked up.


So if the rendered version doesn't have them


but the raw HTML version does have them,


it's possible that we will use the rendered version for this.


We also sometimes use the raw HTML version,


depending on the current status of that page.


But it's not guaranteed that we would transfer elements


from the raw HTML version to the rendered version


if the rendered version removes them.


So that's something where probably you


will see fluctuations between us seeing those links


and us not seeing those links.


So if you think these links are important for your website,


that we can crawl your website better,


then definitely make sure that they're visible to users


as well in the rendered version.


Upcoming site move, they plan to gradually push new site over


to users over a month, starting at just 10%


and select regions.


What would be the best way to handle this?


Should we block Google entirely until a majority of the users


are getting served a new version?


You can do that either way.


So the thing I would try to avoid


is that you end up in a situation