Intro to Search for Beginners

Hello, and welcome to Search for Beginners.


Intro to Search for Beginners

If you want to learn the basics of creating an online presence


Intro to Search for Beginners

and using Google Search tools to help customers find your website,


Intro to Search for Beginners

this series is for you.


Intro to Search for Beginners

You'll learn about the various platforms and methods


Intro to Search for Beginners

for creating an online presence, and how to choose the best one for you,


Intro to Search for Beginners

as well as how to connect with developers if you need technical help.


Intro to Search for Beginners

We will explore how Google Search works


Intro to Search for Beginners

and address frequently asked questions about search and discoverability,


Intro to Search for Beginners

such as, is my website on Google?


Intro to Search for Beginners

How do I change what is showing up on Google Search?


Intro to Search for Beginners

Or, how do I correct inaccurate information about my business in Google Search?


Intro to Search for Beginners

This series will cover a wide variety of information,


Intro to Search for Beginners

some basic and some more advanced,


Intro to Search for Beginners

and can be watched in any order,


Intro to Search for Beginners

so you can focus on the information that is most relevant to you and your skill level.


Intro to Search for Beginners

New episodes will be released every two weeks, starting tomorrow.


Intro to Search for Beginners

Subscribe to the Google Webmasters channel so you don't miss any future videos.


Intro to Search for Beginners


Survey results, SEO online events, Search outages, and more! | Search Off the Record podcast

Welcome, everyone, back to the next episode of Search


Off the Record, a podcast that we're trying out.


Our plan is to talk a bit about what's


happening at Google Search, how things are handled


behind the scenes, and I don't know,


maybe have some fun along the way.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a webmaster trends analyst or search


advocate on the Search Relations team here at Google.


I'm joined here today by Martin and Gary, who are also


on the Search Relations team.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Hi, everyone.


GARY ILLYES-SELLSBERG Good day.


JOHN MUELLER Good day, Gary.


Good day to you, too.


So Gary, do you want to take us off and see where we go?


GARY ILLYES-SELLSBERG Not really.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Come on.


GARY ILLYES-SELLSBERG I guess I was thrown in the water,


so I will do it because I'm such a charming person.


So what do we do every day?


We go to Twitter.


And I make lots of jokes that I think are funny on Twitter.


John and Martin do lots of thoughtful things,


on the other hand.


But what we all do is observing what people


are doing on Twitter and what their problems are,


sometimes answering questions.


One thing that I noticed when this COVID-19 thing started


is that some people started to post much less.


Then other people started to post much more.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Did you find out why?


GARY ILLYES-SELLSBERG Well, thanks, Martin.


That's exactly where I was going.


I wanted to figure out why, or how is this happening.


And I set up a survey.


Our title previously was Trends Analysts.


So a survey is actually quite fitting for us.


And I was very surprised by the results.


I was surprised because SEO's workload actually


increased instead of decreasing, which I can't yet explain.


We have some theories why this would happen.


And it could be, for example, that more businesses moved


online, and then they needed the extra help from SEO's.


A second poll shows that people are not quite,


SEO's are not quite pitching more for businesses.


That roughly stayed the same.


That's also an interesting fact because I


would have expected that people have


to pitch more to stay afloat, to have more business,


to have more income, or to maintain their income.


But I would have been wrong if I said


that the poll shows that it stayed roughly the same


for them.


And one thing that I would have expected that got better


is that they can work more easily with developers.


Because you have an online setting,


developers are more comfortable with online setting


in general.


There are various studies that confirm that.


And I would have expected that it got easier


to work with developers.


And that was actually not the case.


Most people said that it stayed the same, roughly the same.


I guess that's good.


But then many people said that it actually got harder.


That's kind of surprising to me.


Usually, at least on our side at Google,


we do lots of video conferences.


We work with software engineers quite a lot.


And our go-to medium is video conferences.


And it works really well, I would say.


So I was kind of surprised that for SEOs,


it actually got harder to work with developers.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG as a developer, I'm surprised as well.


Home Office usually helps developers


focus a little better and also then cut out specific times


to talk to other stakeholders.


GARY ILLYES-SCHALKSEN I did you just say stakeholders?


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Steakholders, yeah.


Steakholders.


I'm vegetarian, but you can still hold a steak.


GARY ILLYES-SCHALKSEN Interesting.


OK.


JOHN MUELLER So did you see if there


are different kinds of websites that people are working on?


Or was this pretty much just across the board?


Or I guess it's kind of hard to read too much into a Twitter


poll.


GARY ILLYES-SCHALKSEN Yeah, absolutely.


This was across the board.


So it was basically everyone in my follower base, well,


and your follower base because you retweeted it.


I don't think that we have a good grasp on what kind of sites


these people manage.


I know for certain that we have big news outlets or SEOs


from big news outlets that follow us.


We know that there are WordPress plugin developers who


follow us.


We know that there are a few small businesses that


follow us, but we don't have concrete numbers


about the kinds of sites that our followers manage.


It would be interesting to see if we


can see similar changes in the usage of Search Console.


At some point, we should check up with them


or check up with Daniel, who is always


on top of the metrics there, to see if that's kind of similar


there as well, if people are using it more or more sites


or just in general.


Oh, yeah, that's interesting.


Also, if more people are moving from,


how do I put this nicely, kind of neglecting the website


to becoming an online-only thing,


like brick and mortar stores moving to e-commerce,


I would not be surprised if we would


see an uptick in verified sites in Google Search Console.


So we should definitely talk to Daniel, I think.


That sounds cool.


I guess another thing that has also taken place


with all of the coronavirus changes


now is that a lot of the events are also


moving to an online environment, away


from the personal meetups, which obviously in a lot of locations


you can't really do anymore or you shouldn't be doing,


I guess, and more towards more online environments there.


Martin, you've been to a bunch of these online events now.


What kind of things do you find work well,


or what kind of things don't work as well in an online event?


I've been to a bunch of events these days,


and I have to say, generally, they work pretty well.


I am really, really surprised.


I mean, if you ever try to do a video call with more than one


other person, then you know that that usually


is really, really hard.


But somehow, events pull it off.


So I think either the event platforms got a lot better


or people are just more clever when they do these things.


A few of these events are actually


pre-recording the talk so that you can avoid connectivity


issues and stuff.


So I think that's generally a good idea.


So that works generally well, and you


get lots of people together.


And a bunch of these events are free now,


so it is more accessible to a lot of people.


At the same time, the issue or the challenge


seems to be to actually keep people focused on the event.


So people may run into the kitchen to grab something


or might answer a phone call or something like that,


and then people miss out on what you're saying.


Whereas if they are in a crowd, then they


are less likely to direct their focus elsewhere, I would say.


So that's a challenge, I guess.


And the other thing that I observed and noticed,


and also Gary and I discussed this for the webmaster


conferences, as we can't run in-person events right now,


is that you have a very limited flow of feedback.


You do have Q&A sessions, and they work reasonably well.


And I really enjoyed the Webmaster Conference Lightning


Talks Q&A session that I did for the links talk.


That was really, really cool.


By the way, the Webmaster Lightning Talks,


that's a video series that we have on our YouTube channel


where we have prerecorded small talks with a live Q&A.


But I would like to see more discussion formats,


and I'm going to try that out soon.


But this can either be fantastic or terrible.


And I think we have to try things out now.


Yeah, I think it is a good time to try some of the new formats


out.


But it feels like, in general, the interaction


with the audience is something that's kind of missing.


So maybe there are more ways to pull that in, maybe together


with the Q&A things or the discussion formats


that you mentioned.


Maybe there are some things that we could do there


to make that a little bit easier.


I think one thing that we should think about


is how to increase attention span for the talks.


One thing, guess what I did?


I ran another poll, because that's what I do.


And what I was asking in this poll


was whether people take notes in offline events


or during offline events, and whether they


take notes during online events.


And the majority takes notes at offline events,


but not at online events.


And there is tons of science behind taking notes.


And why is that beneficial for registering and storing


information?


And if people don't do it during online events,


or typically don't do it during online events,


that might be why online events are less efficient.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG interesting.


Retention is then not the same as if you take notes,


generally speaking.


I guess another thing that I kind of notice


with all of these online events is that the speaker


lineup is a lot more diverse.


It feels like there are a lot more newer


faces that are presenting.


Is that something you're seeing as well, Martin,


or am I kind of skewed there?


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG No, I think that's generally true,


because the threshold is lower.


It's more accessible to newer speakers


as well, because A, there is just more events


popping up nowadays, events that haven't been there beforehand.


You can also, especially if it's prerecorded,


you can correct mistakes.


You can't really do that when you're on the stage.


If you are on stage and say something, then it's said,


and you can't take it back.


Whereas in prerecording, you can just edit it out and then


retake the bit that you didn't want to say


the way that you said it.


It is probably also less intimidating to just record


kind of for yourself in front of your computer


instead of being in front of a huge crowd.


So I think it is more accessible to new speakers as well.


And we are seeing more diverse lineups


these days, which is great.


That's good.


Cool.


Yeah, I hope that sticks around.


It feels like in the past, when I


would go to some of the bigger conferences,


you'd always see the same names, which


is really nice, because you get to know people a little bit


more.


But it would be really nice to just see different viewpoints


and kind of see different levels of experience, people


who are jumping in, trying new things out,


and kind of who can feel welcome to step up at an event.


Yeah.


And I think everyone has something to contribute.


So if we figure out ways to keep this vibe up


of people contributing their viewpoints


and their perspectives and their experiences, that is amazing.


And even if you're a beginner, you


might have understood things in a different way


than other people have explained it beforehand.


So your explanation might actually


help others to get into it as well.


So it's always fantastic to have new speakers.


Cool.


Another thing that I've seen come up very rarely,


but every now and then, something goes wrong.


And then I get a lot of emails.


And I wonder if maybe those numbers of emails


are sometimes correlated with what's happening in search.


I don't know.


As we know, it does.


Can you tell us a bit more, Gary?


I certainly can.


Well, we don't have many outages.


That's a very good thing.


And when we do have outages, then nowadays at least,


we try hard to confirm them.


This wasn't like this for the longest time.


For perhaps 20 years or 19 years,


outages were not confirmed typically, especially not


for SEOs and for people on Twitter.


And we wanted to change that.


Last year, we had a few bigger outages


that were very, what's the right word?


Visible, I would say.


Yeah, but internally, they were very humbling, I would say.


Exactly, because we don't have many outages.


And we were just not prepared for communicating about them


externally.


So we promised back then that we would do better.


And we started developing a protocol to figure out


what to communicate, when to communicate, whom to communicate


to, and where to communicate.


And it took a lot of time.


It took lots and lots of sign-offs.


But eventually, we got there.


And we got to test it, unfortunately, a few weeks ago,


where indexing was kind of misbehaving,


and people on Twitter noticed it.


And that's an important thing.


We have probably hundreds of dashboards.


We have thousands of metrics that we are monitoring.


Yet sometimes, we miss things.


Or on our side, it looks different than externally.


I would say that's more common.


The latter is more common, where internally, it


looks different than externally.


So in our protocol, we incorporated a clause


that if we get many tweets per hour about something going


wrong with search or tweets that, to us,


look like an outage, then we would escalate that internally.


And we would get the on-call people, basically


those whose job is to monitor the different dashboards


to make sure that search is up and running all the time.


We would escalate to them.


We would chat with them.


We would email them and make a decision


whether there is an actual outage going on


or there is just noise.


It's surprisingly accurate how people on Twitter


can notice outages.


And thanks to reports on Twitter,


we managed to mitigate outages much faster than normally


would have.


And of course, we improved our monitoring


based on the feedback as well.


But yeah, those are our outages.


JOHN MUELLER, MD, PhD Cool.


Can you say a little bit more what happened the last time?


Is that something where, I don't know, something just got stuck?


Or was there a real big problem?


I guess I will throw myself under the bus


and PR will kill me.


But yeah, let's.


Why not?


It was actually a crawling issue.


Externally, this looked like an indexing issue.


But when we started debugging it,


eventually it became clear that it was just crawling.


It was Googlebot overwhelming indexing so much


that indexing was basically drowning in new documents


to process.


And that was the cause.


And then that also prevented, because indexing


was overwhelmed, Caffeine was overwhelmed,


it was not able to export new documents to our serving


shards, which meant that from the vast majority of the sites,


we were not picking up new documents.


MARTIN SPLITT, MD, PhD So we were basically


making the request to the server,


fetching the page content.


And then between that and actually putting it


into the database for serving it to search without pages,


there was a hiccup, basically.


GARY ILLYES, MD, PhD Yeah, essentially, yes.


Basically, indexing became a bottleneck.


And it was just exporting to the indexing shards,


to the whatever you call it, database, search database.


Way too slow.


MARTIN SPLITT, MD, PhD Interesting.


So when you say documents, do you mean doc files?


Or is there, like, what particular is a document?


GARY ILLYES, MD, PhD Holy cow.


That's very hard to explain without a whiteboard


or a presentation or something.


And we were actually briefly chatting with Anna,


our producer, about this.


Basically creating an advanced series of videos


where we would go into more detail about how search works


and the different components, as well as what the document is.


If I want to simplify it, I guess,


is piece of content that was picked up by Googlebot


and processed by Caffeine slash indexing.


I guess that would be a document.


MARTIN SPLITT, MD, PhD So it doesn't have to be a doc file.


It can also be maybe a spreadsheet file.


GARY ILLYES, MD, PhD It could be any content


that Google Search is able to index at the moment.


MARTIN SPLITT, MD, PhD Oh, OK.


So HTML pages, blog posts, anything.


GARY ILLYES, MD, PhD Yeah, anything.


Eventually they turn into a document on our side.


We just call it a document.


MARTIN SPLITT, MD, PhD OK, cool.


It sounds like maybe we should put together


a video series on this to explain this


in a little bit more detail.


Sounds like something to do on our side.


GARY ILLYES, MD, PhD Yeah.


I mean, it's a fascinating topic.


And every now and then we see a need


to explain things in more detail.


We would perhaps face palm less.


But yeah, we are getting there.


MARTIN SPLITT, MD, PhD Cool.


Do you think understanding more about crawling and indexing


is something we have to worry about with regards to spam?


Or is it just a matter of taking the time


to explain things a little bit more detail?


GARY ILLYES, MD, PhD I think spam-wise, it's


not that much of a problem to explain more.


I would certainly not explain too much about ranking


because there we can definitely have spamball vectors.


But in crawling and indexing, I don't


think that spam is a real issue or a big enough issue


or big enough concern.


Yeah, let's go with concern.


I think there we can elaborate a bit more.


And we would see the benefits of it


basically the benefits would outweigh


the potential negative effects of it.


Cool, cool.


Another thing that is quite cool is, John, you changed.


You changed your hairstyle.


What?


What do you mean?


What hair?


Oh, I saw a blog post recently about the hair outage.


About the hair outage.


Hair outage.


Oh my gosh.


What happened?


I don't know.


It was just like one of these weekends,


everything was weird as everything is weird all


the time nowadays, I guess.


In some places, harder than others, I'm sure.


And at some point, I just decided, well,


if I shave my head, it's not going


to make it any less weird or any more weird.


So it felt like a perfect time to try that out.


Fresh new summer look.


Summer look.


But you promised that you would dye your hair,


not cut your hair.


Well, actually shave your hair.


I don't know, Gary.


There was just no time to dye.


There was a, oh my god.


He didn't.


He did.


Oh god, this is brilliant.


You could say you made your hair transparent.


Yeah, I had to be transparent about my hair.


Yeah, it's true.


I mean, maybe it's all dyed in green,


and some green screen filter is just making it disappear.


Oh, yeah.


That would be hilarious.


Martin?


Yeah?


I have a challenge for you.


Oh my goodness.


OK.


I think there is a camera program that


has a bald filter where you can do that already, no?


Perhaps.


But we could do so much fun with your hair if it was green.


Anna, our producer, will really definitely not like me do that.


She told me off even before I had my hair colored.


So it's like, I'm going to the hairdressers.


I get color in my hair.


She's like, not green.


So I'm not sure if that's a good idea.


On the other hand, we are recording from home,


and I do not have a green screen here.


Or we can take Gary, who's not recording videos


at the moment, like me.


So what would be the point?


Well, you would start recording.


Yeah.


No, that would not make me start recording.


You can pretend you have a twin brother, like blonde Gary.


Blonde Gary.


I would totally pull off a blonde, OK?


Sure you would, but you are not.


That's the point.


Well, I don't want to.


Oh, come on.


But I would.


I would totally pull it off.


Excuses, excuses.


Show us.


I'm sure he wouldn't be able to do that.


That's asking too much.


Yeah, those kind of manipulations


don't work on me.


I'm sorry.


Sure.


We'll see.


I think we're kind of getting off track here.


I mean, off track and off the record.


So maybe we should take a break here.


Thank you all for joining in, for listening in


to our podcast.


I hope this was interesting, insightful, and a little bit


entertaining as well.


Thank you, Martin and Gary, for joining in


and all of the information you brought in.


And if you like this podcast, make sure to like and subscribe,


I guess, or link to us.


Of course, link to us.


Yeah, link to us.


Link to us.


That's more important.


Yeah, yeah.


But only nofollow links, please.


Nofollow link to us.


OK, cool.


And hopefully, we'll see or at least hear.


Well, no, we won't hear from you.


I guess you will hear from us in the future in one


of the next episodes.


So stay tuned.


Bye bye.


Good day.


Manual Actions report in Search Console - Google Search Console Training

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


And today, I'll talk about how to use Search Console to check


if your site has any Google search manual


actions issued against it.


This is important because if a site has a manual action,


some or all of that site might not be shown in Google search


results.


By the end of this video, you should


be able to find out if your website has any pages affected


by manual actions, and if so, how to fix them


and request Google to review your changes.


Google is constantly working to improve search.


That's why changes to our algorithms


undergo extensive quality evaluation


before being released.


The algorithms are extremely good at detecting spam.


And in most cases, they automatically


clean it up from search results.


To further improve search results quality,


Google also scans sites for cases


where its policy and guidelines are not kept.


In these cases, a human might review a website


and apply a manual action.


Following the application of a manual action,


relevant pages or entire websites


may be ranked lower or completely omitted


from search results.


There are quite a few manual action types


that you might see in Search Console,


so I won't go over all of them.


But here are some of the most common ones.


For a comprehensive list, visit the Help Center article


linked from the description.


Pure spam stands for what webmasters usually


call black hat SEO.


And it includes complex techniques,


such as hosting auto-generated gibberish pages, cloaking,


scraping, and other shady practices.


Thin content with little or no added value


is issued to websites that appear


to contain a significant percentage of low quality


or shallow pages that do not provide users


with much added value.


Structured data issues are applied to websites


where some of the markup is using


techniques that are outside our structured data guidelines.


For example, marking up content that is invisible to users,


marking up irrelevant or misleading content,


or other manipulative behavior.


If your site is affected by a manual action,


you'll receive an email notification from Search


Console to alert you.


Click the link provided in the message


to visit the manual actions report in Search Console.


Even if you miss an email, you can always


log into Search Console to check if you have any issues.


In the overview page, you'll already


be notified if you have manual actions on your site.


Click the alert to find a list of all manual actions


issued against your site and more information about them.


You can also navigate to the Messages panel


to see all manual action messages that have been sent


to your website in the past.


This might give you context on your website history,


especially if you're new to a company


or took over an existing website.


Here's how to fix a manual action on your site.


Expand the manual action description panel


on the report to learn more about the issue,


and in some cases, to review a sample of pages affected.


Follow the Learn More link to see detailed information


and steps to fix the issue.


Fix the issue on all affected pages.


Fixing it on just some pages will not solve the problem,


so make sure you leave no pages behind.


When you believe all issues listed in the report


have been fixed or not applicable,


click Request Review.


A good request does three things.


It explains the exact quality issue on your site.


It describes the steps you've taken to fix the issue.


And it documents the outcome of your efforts.


You'll get a review confirmation message


when you send your request and another one


when Google reviews it and accepts or rejects


your request.


No need to resubmit your request before you


get a final decision on your outstanding request.


If you recently bought a site that violated our guidelines


before you owned it, fix the issues listed in this report.


Then let us know in your review request


that you recently acquired the site


and that it now adheres to the guidelines.


Don't just remove the old bad content.


Be sure to add your new good content


before requesting a review.


Now that I discussed both security issues and manual


actions reports in this series, I


thought I would clarify the difference between them


because there is some conceptual overlap.


The manual actions report lists manually detected issues


that are mostly attempts to manipulate Google Search


Index but are not necessarily dangerous for users.


As a result, most manual actions reported here


will result in a group of pages or the entire site


to rank lower or drop from search results


without any visual indication to the user.


The security issues report shows instances


where your site was hacked or behavior


on your site that could potentially harm a visitor.


For example, phishing attacks or installing malware


on the user's computer.


These pages can appear with a warning label in search results


or a browser can display an interstitial warning page when


a user tries to visit them.


I hope that helps clarify the difference between manual


actions reports and manual actions reports.


That helps clarifying the subject.


That's all for today.


I hope you have a better understanding of what


are manual actions, how to fix them


with the help of Search Console, and how


to request Google to review pages you have fixed.


Don't forget to subscribe to the Google Webmasters


channel on YouTube to watch many more Search Console videos.


Stay tuned.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Search Off the Record, a podcast coming to you from


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

the Google Search team discussing all things search and having some fun along the way.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

My name is Gary, and I'm joined today by Lizzie Sesman from the Search Relations team, of


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

which I'm also part of.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Say hi, Lizzie.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Hi, Lizzie.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That's not...


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

No?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

No.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

What?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I'm just following orders.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Anyway, that was Lizzie.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So continuing with our In the Spotlight series, in which we present folks from the larger


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

search marketing community who inspire us, today we have Suzuki Kenichi from Japan.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Hi, Kenichi.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Hi, again, Lizzie, and hi, everyone.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Thank you for inviting me to the Search Off the Record.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I'm glad to talk to you for the first time since I wasn't able to travel overseas.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I hope our listeners will enjoy our talk.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Cool.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's super nice to have you.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I'm a big fan of you and your blog.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

When I was on Twitter, you were one of my favorite people to follow because you were


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

giving a perspective both from Japan and from the English search marketing region, I guess.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I just really enjoyed chatting with you.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I remember that last time I was in Tokyo, then I had a very nice Zukamen with you.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And I kind of feel like I need to ask you, when was the last time you had Zukamen?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Last time?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I don't remember.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I think it was three or four years ago.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

What?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

In Shinjuku.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Oh.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I'm sorry.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

No.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

To be honest, I don't like skinning very much.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Eri?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I was chatting with Takiaki-san, someone we worked with for a very long time.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

He was on the search team for a long time.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

He also said that he didn't have Zukamen for three, four years.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It makes me very sad.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I wish I could go to Japan and then have Zukamen with all of you.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That would be fantastic.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But maybe we should focus on something more search marketing topics rather than Zukamen,


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

because maybe some people don't even know what Zukamen is.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

What is Zukamen actually?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Is it something I can eat?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Is it Lizzy food or no?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's not Lizzy food.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's not vegetarian at all.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

The literal translation is dipping noodle.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So you take the men and then you dip it like Zuken, a soup.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And the soup is usually bone soup.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But it turns out this is not a cooking show.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So maybe we should focus on search marketing topics or even better on can it chip?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So I'm fascinated with the history of the internet and the people who work on the internet


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

or with the internet and how they encountered computers and the internet itself.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So my first two questions are usually related to that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And I would want to ask you about when was the first time you encountered a computer?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It depends on how you define a computer.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

If you include a handy simple video game, I often used to play with it as a child.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But I began to use modern computers in my early 20s.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I was over 20 years ago.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And I wasn't just a regular end user, but a trainer who educated system engineers about


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

how to configure internet servers such as web servers and mail servers or DNS servers.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I taught them how to set up, manage and troubleshoot those kinds of servers.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So you were also a server manager?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Like you were managing networks?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I was not a network engineer or server manager.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I taught them how to manage them.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But you weren't working as a network manager or network administrator or anything like


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

that?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Interesting.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

How do you get from playing video game to then instructing people about how to manage


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

networks?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So actually I was interested in computers, but it was just my hobby.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But at one time I was assigned as an administrator who used a computer at a company.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I worked for the first time after graduating my university.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I found computers excellent, wonderful, amazing.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So I had decided to learn them.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And while learning computers, I thought I should become a teacher, not an engineer,


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

because I like learning and teaching.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That's fascinating because many people I know who work in computer science have the same


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

philosophy, like some will decide to become engineers and actually do code and whatnot,


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

but others decide to go back and teach what they learned at university without actually


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

going to, without actually working with the things that they were taught.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I always find this fascinating that like how people are different and how they choose different


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

paths.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And then the internet you encountered a bit later, I assume.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Do you remember what was the first thing that you actually looked up on the internet or


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

what you did on the internet for the first time?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yeah.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So I don't remember the exact time when I started using internet, but I think it was


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

in the 1990s, I used to browse websites or send emails to my friends.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Like email forwarding?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

No, just like chatting.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So I wrote something daily, something about my daily life, not serious, not business,


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

just to communicate with my friends.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Oh, interesting.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And then you sent that as an email, it was like just chatting over email with your friends?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Oh, that's like pen pals.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes, it's what I like about it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That's amazing.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

We were just mentioning that the other day with Lizzie and how wonderful that is, like


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

the whole idea of penpalling.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Did you have like long form pen pals before and then when the internet came about, you


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

switched to emailing or was the emailing the start of this type of communication with your


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

friends?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So I didn't write actual letters, not so often, but thanks to the internet, I got contact


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

with my friends more frequently.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Interesting.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Because sending emails doesn't need stamps or envelopes, right?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

All I need was just a computer and the internet.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I never thought of that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But do you feel that emails might have been less personal than actually sending a letter,


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

like a physical letter?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes, in my opinion, email is more casual than the actual letters.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Oh, that's interesting.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Do you remember anything that annoyed you about the internet when you first encountered


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

it?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Ah, yes.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It was definitely slow page speed.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I used to connect the internet through a phone line by modem.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Do you know modem?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes, I remember modems and actually that was also my first way to connect to the internet.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I remember I had a very slow, like 14,400 kilobond modem and it was doing those sounds.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

To me, the maximum speed was 128 kilobbs.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And I had to wait more than 30 minutes until I completed downloading three megabyte files.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

The present internet has become super faster compared to the past.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Thinking back and if you were to show your child, for example, how slow it was back then,


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I'm not even sure they would believe it that the internet could have been that slow.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Because as you say, when you were downloading an image, like a higher resolution image of


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

a cat, for example, then it took sometimes tens of minutes to download the image and


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

it was loading the image in big pixels first.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And then it was refining the pixels and loading more parts of the pixel.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It was fascinating.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

The incredible amount of patience just to wait for that to finish.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yeah, so speed was one thing.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Anything else that you can think of?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

For me, one thing was, I think I keep saying this in every episode, but advertisements


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

that there was on the internet back then, all the flashy blinking things, those were


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

very annoying to me, for example.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

There was lots of spam.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I think we still have that kind of a problem though.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Pop-up things, like when you open a web page and we still haven't seemed to have gotten


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

rid of that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Maybe it's just developed in two different ways.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's less, but still an issue today.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I mean, we have the interstitials and the newsletter notifications and those things.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's like cookies, accept cookies and allow all these things to happen.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Still that similar experience where you're trying to access the content and things are


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

popping up and flashy and getting in the way.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So it evolved into more refined annoyments.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Do you remember when was the first time you launched a website?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes, I built my first website back in 2006.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It was a very small site.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It consisted of four or five pages.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I remember it was about rice.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Oh, really?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes, because my parents were rice farmers.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So I created my website about how to grow rice and how to cook rice.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Something like that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

You keep saying this is not a cooking podcast, but I feel like it's always going to return


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

back to food.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Now I feel like asking how to cook rice properly.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

We just want to focus in on the actual content about the food.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Maybe I'm hungry.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That's actually really fascinating.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So you went back to teaching again with your website and teaching people how to farm rice


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

and how to prepare rice, I guess.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes, I like teaching.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And then later you became this internet persona still teaching people about things that are


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

happening all over the search marketing ecosystem in English and other languages.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

How did that happen?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So first I tried to evolve in a field marketing to earn money, but to become a good field


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

marketer, SEO was crucial.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So I learned SEO and while learning SEO, I had more interest and I learned SEO again


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

and again.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And at one time someone advised me to share my knowledge with others, say on blog or by


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

newsletter.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So I began to publish articles on my blog.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So at this point you already had a new site on a new domain.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It was not the right site.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

No site.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I have already closed it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Shut it down.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Oh, why did you shut it down?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Because no one came to the site.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Maybe that was an SEO problem.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes, but it cost money to hold the domain.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Oh, that's fair.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And when you had the right site, this was before you learned SEO?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

No, a long time ago.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And so if you had known some things about SEO, do you think that the right site would


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

have been more successful?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yeah.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Would you have done things differently, like looking back on that website?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Like what would you do differently now that you learned about SEO on the right site?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So I found I had to provide something useful and something helpful to users.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So as for the Rice website, I just wrote what I wanted to tell.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I didn't think what users needed, what users wanted.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I created it for me, not for users.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And this is, again, something that we talked about the other day, Lizzie, that there was


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

a time when people were just publishing whatever was on their mind versus researching topics


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

and making something structured.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Well, and it's interesting because in the early days, it's like, well, how would you


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

know what people are looking for?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's like a chicken and egg thing.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Like the stuff has to be out there in order to know if people were looking for that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And like, why wouldn't they want to know about rice?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It sounds like it's a good topic to write about.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Like if I'm interested in it, why wouldn't other people be interested in it?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I imagine that the culture is different because in most Asian countries, for example, you


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

eat lots of rice from the very beginning of your life.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So you probably also learn how to cook it properly.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So the topic itself is not that interesting.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

If you want to cook ramen at home, that is something that people might be interested


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

in because it's not a common thing to do.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But cooking rice, that's just like a staple food.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Like you do it every day.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So you're saying like the user intent or like the interest from users, nobody would be searching


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

for how to make rice?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yeah.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Like if I were there, then maybe I would search for it as a foreigner.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But locals, I would imagine that they learn it from the very beginning of their life,


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

how to actually make it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Cultural differences.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Can you think of things that are different in Japanese SEO versus English SEO?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Because you have a very good overview of both languages and what's published in both languages.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So there might be something that is different.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Back to that time when I got involved in SEO, that was nearly 20 years ago.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

At that time, Google US was very different from Google Japan because many of the algorithm


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

updates weren't rolled out in Japan.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

This is such a kind of a panned update.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That was 2011, 2010.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Eventually a panned update was rolled out even in Japan, but it took nearly two years.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Something like that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

There were other algorithm changes that had happened in Japan at the same time as the


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

US.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Actually, I was frustrated about it because I wrote those algorithm updates on my blog,


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

but actually they had nothing to do with Japanese webmasters.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

The algorithm updates or the posts that you were writing?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Algorithm updates.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And also looking at the search results in the Google US, there were various kinds of


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

features such as people also asked, web stories.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But compared with it, Japanese search results in Japan, lots of features.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's so simple.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yeah, that's true.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

This is something that we've been struggling for a very long time and feature teams sometimes


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

opt for launching for a smaller audience, like for example, EN US because it's easier


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

to launch and they don't have to localize certain things.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But most of the time they are working very hard to eventually launch it in other countries


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

as well.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I know for certain that Japan, for example, is a high priority country for most of Google


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

search.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But perhaps that's going to get better and you're going to see more features coming to


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Google search in Japan.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Of course, this is not a promise, but it might happen.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Are there any other challenges that are specific to the search results or SEO approach in Japan


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

compared to the US?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I said many features are different, but nowadays the gap between the US and Japan getting closer


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

and closer.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Basically SEO in the US and in Japan was almost the same.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So you think the recommendations would be the same.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

You wouldn't have a different strategy for if the site is mainly in Japanese content


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

versus in English?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

No, no.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

There are still some differences, but fundamentally we Japanese webmasters can follow guidelines


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

that are based on the US thanks to you.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Oh.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yeah, Lizzie, it's all your fault.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Oh yes.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Ah, one thing I want to improve.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Oh, I would love to hear it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Tell me more.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Translation is slow.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Usually it takes two or three weeks.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's horrible.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's one of my top annoyances.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Until Japanese documents are published.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I don't like it either.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But I'm also not translating the content.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But we are working on a project to improve the turnaround time to hopefully not be weeks


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

and instead more like four or five days.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

We're running that right now to make sure that the quality hasn't dropped.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But that is definitely something that we're trying to improve because I don't like it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

In an ideal world, everything would be pushed at the same time, especially time sensitive


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

announcements like blog posts when we put something out in English and then it has to


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

be translated from that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Just the way that our website works, we have to check it in and then it gets translated.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And so therefore it's always going to be after versus if we could do it before and then publish


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

all at the same time.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But I'm with you.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's not good.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Please, please.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Speed it up.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Hearing you loud and clear.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Actually, you are one of the few people that I see leaving feedback for us relatively often.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Not you Lizzie.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I'm talking to Kenichi.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I can see that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I sometimes find something strange.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I mean, some strange translation.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Like words.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yeah.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Words and expression.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That is so useful.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Whenever I find something strange, I send feedback to you.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Do you notice if it's like specific terms that are weird or is it a sentence construction


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

thing?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Is there a pattern that you're seeing that's like it's usually this type of issue that


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

you see with the translation quality?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I can't remember offhand.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Sorry.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That's okay.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But I'll send feedback.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

If you think about it, you can write and we're reading everything that comes into that queue.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So if you write to us and say, this word here, we don't actually use this term.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

It's actually this one.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That would be super helpful to us.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or other things where it's like maybe the sentence construction is confusing.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

We forward it to the translators so that they can then improve overall.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or use a different term in our glossary.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

They've got a term glossary so that they know, okay, for this technical term, this is the


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

word to use.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But sometimes that's not necessarily the right one.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or we talk to people in the community and then learn that, oh, actually it's this other


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

thing.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Maybe you should consider changing it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And then we have a discussion about it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Gary and Ritchie, I wonder if you really read our feedback.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

We do.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Thank you.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So we got lots of feedback and some of them are super low quality and they are filtered


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

automatically so we are not reading those.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

We are not wasting time.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I mean, we are reading them.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Well, you maybe.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But they're not actionable.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I don't know about most, but there is a portion of them that are just like, this is confusing.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or they don't tell us what exactly is confusing about it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or they're writing in to tell us they want this page indexed or something.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

They want us to take some action that we're unable to do.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But we're still reading the post.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

There might not be anything that we can do based off of that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or they're asking for specific help but then didn't give us any details about what their


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

situation is.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But the best type of feedback is when you are clearly saying, what is confusing about


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

the thing?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or like, hey, this part is actually contradicting this other part.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Then we'll fix it the next day or that day when we read it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

We read it every day.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Well, most of them we will fix the same day.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But some of them require more discussion internally.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or we have to figure out actually how it works because it might have changed since the doc


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

was published or something like that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

For example, we are looking at some confusion about Google News Sitemaps versus website


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

maps.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And I think the issue is that the Google News Sitemap doc says something like, you can only


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

have 1,000 URLs in the sitemap.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And then the website map says that you can actually have 50,000.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So it's confusing.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Right.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Like, which one is actually the limit?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yeah.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

We have to figure out if the Google News Sitemap recommendation is good or not.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or if we have to change it at all.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But yeah, we are reading every feedback that we receive.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

This morning I read something that just said, broken.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And that's it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I can't do anything with that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But still, I read it.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Even with those sometimes, if there's a snapshot though, because there's a way that you can


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

take a screenshot of a specific element or highlight something.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So if someone's highlighted a link or something like that and they just wrote the word broken,


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I can tell that they mean that the link is broken.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But that's a lot of steps to get to figure out what they're reporting.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But we are trying.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So you are very prominent, Kenichi, on the internet, especially the Japanese internet.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

If you wanted to give some tips to other people how to become so prominent, how to grow their


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

persona on the internet, what would you recommend them to do?


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes, first you need to be familiar with SEO.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So my first recommendation is to follow Googlers in the search version team.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So they are John and Martin and Daniel and Lizzie who often post tweets.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And just following them is not enough.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Ask them when you have any questions.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

They are always kind enough to help us.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And second, attending conferences is a great opportunity to run SEO and just don't sit


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

on a chair and gradually listen to a talk.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So engaged speakers praise their presentation and ask them a question.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So the more you engage with others, especially high skilled SEOs, the more chances you can


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

get to get to prominent because you can publish, you can share your thoughts, you can share


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

your knowledge, you can share your skills with others.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

This is almost like instruction about how to be a better student to then become the


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

teacher.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

So if people wanted to find you, if they wanted to chat with you, then...


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes, you can find me on Twitter.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But unfortunately, almost all my tweets are posted in Japanese.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

My blog is also written in Japanese.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But you can use Google Translate to read my posts.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or if you are learning Japanese like Gary, my posts are suitable for you.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That is true.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

That is very true.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

You are using a simple language, so it's very, very, very useful for that.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Okay, so we can find you on Twitter.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

We will link to your handle in the podcast description.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

But to also say it out loud, Suzuki K at is the handle where you can find Kenichi.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And with that, thank you very much for joining us.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And I hope to see you this year in Tokyo for some good salad somewhere in Shinjuku.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I look forward to seeing you in person sometime in the near future.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Same.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

All right.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Thank you for joining us here, Kenichi.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Yes, thank you for inviting me.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Next time on Search Off-Director, we'll be getting an insight into sitemaps.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And that's it for this episode.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Thanks for joining us here, folks.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

We've been having fun with these podcast episodes.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

I hope you, the listener, have found them both entertaining and insightful too.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Feel free to drop us a note on Twitter at Google Search C.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

Or chat with us at one of the next virtual events we go to if you have any thoughts.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki

And of course, don't forget to like and subscribe.


The Story of Kenichi Suzuki


Search Console Help Center

called


Search Console Help Center

Search Off the Record, aied podcast coming to you by


Search Console Help Center

Search Off the Record, a podcast coming to you from the Google


Search Console Help Center

Search team, discussing all things search,


Search Console Help Center

and maybe having some fun along the way.


Search Console Help Center

My name is John, and I'm joined today


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by Lizzie from the Search relations team


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of which I'm also part of.


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As a special guest, we have Josh Cohen, the amazing tech writer


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from the Search Console team.


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And that makes it no big surprise


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that in today's episode, we're going


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to be talking about the Search Console Help Center.


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Hi, Josh.


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Hi, how are you?


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I'm waving.


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If hopefully everybody can see that.


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Can hear it.


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It's an audible wave.


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Yes, we will describe it for the listeners.


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He waved semi-enthusiastically.


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It was a good wave.


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It was definitely a good wave.


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Yeah, 10 out of 10.


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Cool.


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So Josh, I think you've been around for quite some time.


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Can you tell us a little bit about how long


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you've been at Google and what your path towards tech writing


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has been?


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Sure.


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So I started in 2006.


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So you can do the math.


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I worked at a different company before then.


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And here, I've done all sorts of documentation,


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external and internal.


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When I first started, all of the writers at Google


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could sit around a table and have lunch together,


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and we sometimes did.


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I worked on a bunch of different internal platform documentation


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for Google engineers.


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I later on moved to, I did some additional external stuff.


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I've done API documentation externally.


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This is the first sort of more end-usory product


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that I've worked on.


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I think I may have even worked on the first, first, first,


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at least with the first, first, first version of Search Console


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because Search Console itself, I think,


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is something like 15 years old or longer.


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And it came out of the Seattle office,


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which is where I started.


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And later on, another writer started there.


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And I think they may have been working on Search Console


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there at the time.


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And I was actually working with Vanessa Fox, who was, I think,


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known to the SEO community, who was my direct manager, writing


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manager when I was there.


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MELANIE WARRICK-VABRINian Whoa.


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We had Vanessa Fox on the podcast a few episodes ago.


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And she's telling us.


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And she didn't mention me?


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No, she didn't mention you.


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We're going to have to have her back so we can find out


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why she regretted to mention that.


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But she was telling us about sitemaps


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and then how it became Webmaster Tools.


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So when you were working on it, was it


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still Webmaster Tools, I guess, probably?


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So the first time, I didn't work on that.


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I worked on more internal stuff.


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And she was working on external stuff.


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And because it was hers, I don't know what it was called then.


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But it was called something very basic, I'm sure.


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Sitemaps.


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Yeah.


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The branding was just like sitemaps tool


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and then sitemaps help center.


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And then I later on, because I've been here so long,


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I was the first writer on Android


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before it was even published.


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I was the first or one of the first writers on cloud.


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I did a bunch of documentation in a lot of really core


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infrastructure that is still used today,


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though I don't know if any of my writing is still there


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because things get renewed and updated so often.


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Bigtable, if there's any programmers listening,


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I was the first writer on Bigtable.


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So I've had a lot of opportunity to work on different areas


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in Google as a writer.


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So I guess that means you're providing


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the documentation for the engineers


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to make the search algorithms.


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So ultimately, you're kind of like the boss


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behind all of the search algorithms.


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Would you say that's correct?


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I say that's correct to myself.


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But actually, I'm just reporting on the news.


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I don't have a lot of direct input on sort of search


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and ranking, that type of stuff.


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Mostly what I'm doing is documenting


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how it affects Search Console as a product.


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I specialize in the Search Console product itself.


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So the things I document specifically


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are the Help Center for Google Search Console.


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So if you're reading it, that's all my lovely pros.


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I also work on the email messages


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that we send out and the user-facing text


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in the product and tool tips.


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So anything that deals with sort of like search or ranking


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or stuff like that, that's kind of out of my domain,


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unless I'm reporting something on how we are reporting search


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in the Help Center.


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So cool.


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And since you've been here so long,


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surely you've met the founders as well.


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I have.


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When I was in the Seattle office, that long ago,


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Larry and Sergey used to visit the offices much more often.


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And they came up and visited.


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And there were about 30 or 50 of us in the lunchroom.


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And they came and talked to us.


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And I had lunch with Larry.


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I've also bumped into Sergey a few times,


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just like walking through the halls in Mountain View.


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He would say hi.


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And I bumped into Eric Schmidt a couple of times,


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walking through the hallways or in micro kitchens here.


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Wow.


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OK.


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Oh, and if anyone knows who Vint Cerf is,


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he's like one of the foundational people


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in the development of the internet.


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And he's always wearing a three-piece suit.


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And he's like the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet.


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And I accidentally stole his desk once.


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He was visiting the Seattle office.


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And back then, you would reserve a desk.


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And I came in.


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And I saw a desk because I was, I think, visiting as well.


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And I just sat down on it.


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And Vint Cerf walks up.


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And he says, oh, I thought I reserved the desk.


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I guess I was wrong.


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And he walked away because he's such a gentleman.


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He would never say anything or bump someone away.


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So he went and found another desk.


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And it was so embarrassed.


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But he's such a nice guy.


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Oh.


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Oh, man.


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So Vint, if you're listening, I'm


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coming clean after 15 years.


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And I'm really sorry about that.


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It was his desk.


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He was correct.


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Yeah.


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Cool.


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So does your input drive any of the changes in Search Console?


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Because surely, you know the users almost best.


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The real product driving comes from our product managers


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here and helped along by our UXR.


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My input into the product and the usability of it


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comes from is almost like a stage 0 user.


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When I'm looking at a new feature or report,


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I'm looking at the mocks done up by the UX designer.


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And I have to step through that and often


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think in terms of what's real is I


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know nothing about this and what this is.


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And so I have to learn about it from sort


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of a zero level of background.


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And I will provide feedback on it based on,


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I don't understand this.


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What does this mean?


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How am I supposed to understand this or use this?


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And I'll provide that feedback in the early stages


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to the UX designer.


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And sometimes we come across things


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where it either doesn't make sense


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or we'll see strings or information that either,


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like I'll suggest, well, do we need this?


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Do we need to expose this here?


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And sometimes the answer is we don't.


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And sometimes we'll hide it or the reverse of, yeah,


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I guess we do need to.


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Or sometimes I'll ask questions that the engineers don't even


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necessarily know the answer to.


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And people have to scurry back to the whole search stack team


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and ask them, what does this really mean?


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And do we have solid data that we can report here?


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So that's my effect on product development here.


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How do you decide what's the right level of information


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to give to people?


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Because I can relate to that, how you're describing.


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Sometimes the engineers want to put so much stuff in there


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about the background, how they came to this number.


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And sometimes that can be too much information


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or overwhelming.


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Yeah.


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Would you include everything in the tooltip,


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but then the tooltip becomes somehow not useful


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if it's got everything but the kitchen sink in there?


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So I am perfect.


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And then I come in as a naive user.


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And I'm shooting at is someone who


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I don't want to generally aim at product experts.


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If people want to put too much information,


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I can push back a little bit and say,


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do people understand this?


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Or do we need to rename the string?


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Because yeah, it's an industry term.


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But is everybody really going to be familiar


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with this industry term?


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And sometimes I win these battles, and sometimes I lose.


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And if I lose, then I just have to document it


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a little bit more carefully and explicitly in the Help Center.


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Sometimes I'll suggest places for additional tooltips.


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I've also pulled out tooltips that I think are extraneous.


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Like this is just repeating information


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that's obvious in there.


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And people don't want to see too many tooltips in there.


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Or at least you don't want that litter all over the interface.


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And if we could pull something out because we don't need it,


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I'll recommend that.


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Although generally I lean towards


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don't assume that people understand it just


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because the engineer understands this.


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And also the technical expertise.


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But what's interesting here is that the engineers


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aren't necessarily the product experts here.


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In fact, a long way from it.


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The engineers are front end UI engineers,


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and they know very well front end UI engineering.


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The search stack is an entirely different team,


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and they have to learn that information by talking to them.


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So like Google's behavior with HTTPS,


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they only learn about this through the search team


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and through the teams that are asking


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us to build these new reports.


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Well, often I'll ask our engineers questions,


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and they won't know that information.


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And they need to go back and ask the people generating


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this data.


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So they're quite often learning this information


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the same way that I am.


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The difference often is that our engineers are just


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looking to create the report and make the report usable.


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And they're not thinking about the larger aspect of


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do we understand this data?


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Is this data understandable to the users?


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And I'm thinking about it from that perspective.


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And so I can provide that feedback


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and also have to cover that aspect of it in the terminology


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that we use in our user text and also in the documentation.


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So cool.


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And with that much input in the documentation side of things,


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do you have your name in any of these documents?


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Or is this kind of like the curse


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of being a tech writer at a big company


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that you're always anonymous?


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Yeah, it is the curse.


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I think I had my name on one external doc and everything


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I've written here.


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If I were ever to try to prove that I've


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written external documentation, it would be a hard sell.


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Occasionally, I do sneak my name into docs in various ways.


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I've done it.


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I don't have as much chance here.


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But when you have a list of output,


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I've put messages or my name in the first letter


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of each of the lines of query output.


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I've done that.


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I've put my wife's name in some of the examples for podcasts


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or something like that in other products that I document.


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So occasionally, I manage to sneak it


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in in a sort of a cryptic manner.


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But yeah, it is sort of lonely, an anonymous path to stardom.


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But it is a little bit different than working


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on internal docs, like in terms of publishing something


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I remember when I switched from writing internal docs


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to writing something that's externally visible.


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And it's like search.


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People are tracking every line that we're changing.


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It feels kind of scary when you put it out there compared


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to writing for internal engineers.


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It's like, oh, we can publish it.


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And you know them.


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You kind of know who would be reading it.


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And it may be like 30 people or something compared to.


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Yeah, the risk is much lower for internal.


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And that was something I did miss.


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Externally, you have to be conscious of every nuance.


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People can really, a lot of people are reading it.


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And people can misinterpret it or think,


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you know, like Google means this when it doesn't.


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And then news gets out.


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And people will get it wrong.


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And it has a lot of risk of making us look bad


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or people misunderstanding what's going on,


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whereas internally, they can just reach out and get


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clarification or something like that.


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And so you don't have to worry about that so much internally.


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Plus, I can put a lot more monkey pictures


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on my internal docs than I can externally.


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So do you use Search Console for the Search Console Help Center?


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I don't very much.


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Findability has not been a problem for the Search Console


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Help docs in that it's pretty easy


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to see that our documentation is definitive for the product


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itself.


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Sometimes what we have is a problem of over visibility


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in search results in that people sometimes drop into our docs


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when they're actually looking for something else.


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You can see that in the user comments.


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But I mean, I think it's pretty easy for Google's algorithm


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to realize that when you're looking for Search Console


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docs, that the Search Console Help Center is going to be


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relatively authoritative for that.


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I'll use it occasionally to see real spikes or dips in docs


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and then try to track down exactly what's going on


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and realize, oh, some external event happened


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or something like that.


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But pretty much everybody looking in my docs


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when I look in Search Console, I see, yeah,


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people are looking for Search Console,


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and my docs are coming up.


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So that's pretty accurate.


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Do you see confusion happening with the consumer support


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dot Google dot com Help Center that's using Google Search


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compared to using Search Console?


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Do people get confused ever?


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I don't think so.


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I think, Lizzie, you've done a lot of good SEO


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there that I think the developers.google.com slash


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search is coming up in the more general search-related topics.


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I think the confusion is not so much


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like the Help Center versus Dev Site


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and whatever random product on the internet or Google thing


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that people are looking for.


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So I see feedback in the docs about things like,


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why is Netflix not showing up in Google Search?


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Or another thing like that?


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Or where's my porn?


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I get a lot of that.


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Yeah, I get a lot of that as well.


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There's lots of porn questions like,


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why is Google shutting this down?


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All these safe search type questions.


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And I do a lot in my docs to try to make sure


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to route people to the correct set of docs


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when they're not getting them.


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So up at the top, I often have to have in big and black text


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like, do you own this web page?


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Because people are often looking to do things on a web page


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that they don't own.


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And all of our stuff is you could use Search Console


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for a web page that you do own.


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And people skim over that type of stuff.


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So the big confusion actually that we have in our docs


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is between Search Console and web search.


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So people who are just looking for web search type questions


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will often get somehow into Search Console


Search Console Help Center

and ask web search, again, the porn questions with safe search


Search Console Help Center

or other questions about like.


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Instagram.


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They'll be like, this is my photo on my Instagram page.


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I want it removed from search results.


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But you're not the owner of Instagram.


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So what page would you go to in order


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to get that photo removed of yourself?


Search Console Help Center

So even if we put the banner that's like,


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do you own this page?


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They're like, yes, this is my Instagram.


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What do you mean?


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And sort of confused about what we mean by website owner


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is like, I don't know how to make it more clear.


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Yeah, so ownership of the page and also just stuff that,


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you know, also unfortunately a lot of people


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don't realize, again, that the big question we keep


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emphasizing is Google isn't going to remove stuff just


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because you ask it to.


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And people are very cranky about that answer.


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And again, Search Console can only


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help you if you own the page where it's appearing


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and you are registered on Search Console.


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And it's a very narrow set of requirements.


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And people don't realize that because they


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haven't looked carefully enough at the doc


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that they're commenting on.


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I mean, and that's kind of like an interesting issue


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because you have to then put all of these banners on there


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that's like, are you using the tool in this one specific way?


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You can only use the removals thing


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if you meet X, Y, Z criteria.


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Don't use it for these circumstances.


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And everything above the fold is like,


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are you sure you want to be using this tool?


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And at the end of the day, is that really a docs issue


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or is it more of a product thing?


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Yeah, yeah.


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And people often are in panic mode when this is happening.


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They're unhappy, and so they're not necessarily reading clearly


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or something like that.


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We have all got that sort of advertising blind spot


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where you could put it in a little dialog box


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up at the top, these important questions,


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and people will blank them out thinking it's an ad


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Have you come up with other creative ways


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to tell people, hey, stop reading,


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or you're in the wrong place?


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If a banner is going to be sort of blocked out with ads,


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how else can we sneak attack them?


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You know, I'll put in a prerequisite sometimes


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and then like a one, two, three question,


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like hopefully that people will read prerequisites,


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like are you in this case?


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If so, go here, like to another doc.


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Are you in this case?


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If so, go here.


Search Console Help Center

And yeah, it's in black, bold,


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or sometimes red, bold, or something like that.


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And I also sometimes will put a little thing,


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a little graphic on the side, but it is a question.


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I mean, I wish we had a better mechanism in the feedback


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to indicate that also sometimes the problem


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is that it's a problem with the product itself


Search Console Help Center

and not the docs.


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And I like to hear feedback about the docs.


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Product feedback, there's a different mechanism.


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If you're using the product,


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there is a feedback link right in the product


Search Console Help Center

that the team should be able to see.


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And that should really be focused on the product.


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You know, the stuff that I see,


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feedback in the Help Center,


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isn't the best place really to put feedback


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about the product itself.


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So it sounds like you're going through


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all of this feedback, which like,


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sometimes the external perception is,


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well, there's a feedback link,


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but nobody ever looks at it anyway.


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But it sounds like both of you are essentially


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going through all of this feedback


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and getting all of this grumpy mail


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and trying to improve the documents based on that, right?


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Yeah.


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I mean, I'm curious, Josh,


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like how often do you look at the queue


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and do you get it?


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I mean, for me, I have like a filter


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and I see the emails every day.


Search Console Help Center

Is that the same for you or do you sort of batch it,


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like look at it only when you are like mentally prepared


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for hate mail?


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Yeah, yeah.


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Some of the stuff will really like curl your hair


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that you get.


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You know, so if people are providing feedback in the docs,


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I would recommend one,


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it's okay to point out the problems,


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the negative aspects of it,


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but remember that a person is reading that


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who doesn't want to just go home and cry.


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And two, that it's really focused


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on exactly what the problem is.


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And again, three, if it's feedback about the docs,


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try to make it feedback about the docs.


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If it's about the product,


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use the feedback link within the product itself.


Search Console Help Center

The feedback, I will go through about once a month


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through the docs feedback and try to scan through it.


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There's quite a lot of it.


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So I will often look just in terms of like


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generic heuristics of like,


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well, it's all negative, unfortunately.


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And part of that really is just a feature


Search Console Help Center

of the feedback mechanism.


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There's no way to say, I am happy with the product


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and let me tell you why.


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It's unfortunately you only get


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the additional feedback text link.


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If you say, I am unhappy with the docs,


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but what am I getting for specific pages?


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Am I seeing like a large amount of feedback


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for specific pages?


Search Console Help Center

And then I can sort of scan through that type of stuff.


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Every once in a great while,


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something affecting the product happens


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that I'll realize is a problem with the product.


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If I see people are having problems


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understanding like tool tips


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or that somehow I can get out of that,


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it's not clear enough that the product UI text


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is a little bit misleading maybe.


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But again, it's generally a scan once a month.


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It's more high level stuff.


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I know in general,


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the docs that people are having problems with,


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and these are quite often product features,


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which is verification.


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Verification is always something


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that users are having a problem with.


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And I know that the docs are gonna reflect


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the difficulty of verification.


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And so I spend a lot of time redoing the steps


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for verification, realizing I can only make it so simple.


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But occasionally, I will get feedback that people that I see,


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oh, obviously by looking at this, it's confusing.


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Maybe if our viewers have particularly pertinent feedback


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for any of the docs,


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they could put in a hashtag feedback


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and I can look for things like that.


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So I know that it's just not some random person ranting


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about Google stealing all their information


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or being an evil company or whatever.


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Someone is tracking their Android phone


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or their husband is stalking them.


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Like you see some really weird stuff in there.


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So just try to keep your feedback focused.


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And yeah, I will skim through all of that stuff


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and try to get something out of it once a month.


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Do you have any specific advice


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for what kinds of feedback would be good?


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For example, if they're saying something sort of general,


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like this is the most confusing piece of documentation


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that I've ever read in my life.


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And then they just sort of leave it at that.


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Would that be actionable for you?


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For me, if I could say like,


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what are you trying to do that you're having trouble with?


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I think that would be the most important thing


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is like I'm having trouble doing X


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and then at least gives me some context as like,


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okay, maybe the docs need to be sharpened up


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about people who are doing this or that type of thing.


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Or if you're seeing a mistake


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or something that's misleading in the doc, that's useful.


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I also get feedback sometimes from you or Gary


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who are hearing directly from product experts


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or other channels.


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I'll get information that way as well about the product.