And the super fast would be the RAM.


Language complexities in Search index selection and more! | Search Off the Record

Like part of our serving index is on RAM.


Then we would have another tier, for example, for solid state drives, because they are fast


and not as expensive as RAM, but still not like the bulk of the index wouldn't be on


that.


The bulk of the index would be on something that's cheap, accessible, easily replaceable,


and doesn't break the bank.


And that would be hard drives.


Or floppy disks.


Why are we back at floppy disks?


What about tapes?


Because I like them.


Well, you're wrong.


They are awful.


So if you, okay, let's do an exercise.


And I will pick Martin because he's being mean to me again.


Oh, no.


Let's do an exercise.


Like if I tell you a news document from big news site, where do you think we would store


that?


Probably in the tier that is the fastest.


So probably in RAM.


But what if it's an old article?


What if it's like a news article from last year?


That's a very good point.


Those would probably end up on solid state drive.


Basically we would put them on cheaper storage.


But then let me say a PhD thesis from 2007.


Where do you think that would be?


PhD thesis from 2007.


I'm guessing that it's not one of the more popular ones that gets requested a lot of


times.


We can probably put it on a slower tier.


Yeah, that's correct.


Last time I was actually inspecting some of the index charts that we have.


I stumbled upon a huge chunk of PhD publications.


You stumbled across my blog?


Yes.


Your blog is also in the lowest tier for very good reasons.


I have index tiers as well.


That was the worst pun.


Okay, I'm done.


I'm not talking anymore.


So you already said that for English language, we have a lot in the index and then for some


of the harder to understand and process from a computer point of view, process languages,


we might not have that much content.


Is that also a problem?


When we say like, oh, we want to select content in a language with a relatively small community.


Let's say like the rumanche stuff, right?


I think there's like 60,000 people speaking rumanche, which is one of the official languages


here in Switzerland.


Do we have enough content to actually fill the search results from that language?


That's a very good point.


And generally speaking, we don't.


And one of the things that we've been trying to solve for the longest time was to get creators


create more quality content.


But that's generally not my desk.


That's Cherry's desk.


Right.


So we would basically need to have content to help beginners create things for the web


and make something that's interesting and useful in their own languages.


Is that kind of the direction, I guess?


We should have something like a Search for Beginners series.


I don't know.


What do you think?


We have the Search for Beginners series on YouTube channel.


Oh, so cool.


Tell us more, Cherry.


Well, apart from like running events and doing all these things, we do have the Search for


Beginners video series.


It's an animated video series.


And as the name suggests, it's mainly for beginner people who are new to SEO and webs


in general.


We know that the web ecosystem is not always driven by webmasters or developers.


There are other stakeholders involved.


Sometimes SEO know very well what should be done, but business owners or even developers


don't see the value or understand how much effort or time SEOs need to put in to have


an amazing work for the business.


So you can see that there is the gap between people of different roles.


So this series aims to bridge that gap.


And we also hope that beginner people, they start watching these things graduate.


Then other series on our channel will start to make sense as well.


It is at the same time also for savvy people to use and send over to others.


So we were hoping that it would make it easier for you to explain things to people you work


with or people whom you are trying to convince.


So by beginners, is that younger people who are just getting started putting stuff online,


or do you mean normal businesses, I guess, that just haven't put much thought into creating


a web presence?


I guess it's more the latter, right?


Yes.


So actually, we are starting from very, very new people who even have the content, but


content is not online yet, or people who had websites a long time ago just for the sake


of having it.


And they never update the website, they will maintain anything.


So those are the people.


And basically, this is just the first series.


So we are also aiming to, like I said, the aim is also to bridge that gap.


So the gap is pretty big.


We're starting from something really basic.


And we're hoping that in the next season, it will get more and more advanced and in


the end, they will get crossed over to other contents that we're having on our YouTube


channel.


Cool.


So there'll be, I don't know, search for beginner that explains how to set a rel canonical and


make JavaScript indexing.


I guess that'll be kind of long run steps there.


And how do you make sure that it works well for people of all languages, different backgrounds,


kind of thing?


Is it available in multiple languages?


Or what did you do there?


Well, it really does take time to produce something in an animation format.


We specifically chose this series to be an animation format just for that reason.


Well, firstly, it's definitely a better idea to look at nice illustration and listen to


delightful voice over and maybe watching me talking about stuff for like three to five


minutes.


So illustration also could also explain certain concepts more clearly since there is animated


pictures that go along with the content.


And more importantly, the benefit of being on animation format, it's also that we can


do subtitles in many languages, right?


If you realize the search for beginners series, you would see like there are subtitles in


many languages, such as Indonesia, Korean, Japanese, and outside Asia, we have Portuguese


as well and many other languages.


But like I said, it does take time to produce something in animation format.


So it's generally more suitable for content that doesn't change too much over time and


also content that is not time sensitive.


So definitely not things about updates and all these.


OK, cool.


So I don't have to do my Google search news in animated format.


I guess that would be really tricky, getting everything done there.


I mean, what all is involved with creating an animated series like that?


Do you basically just write a script and then send it off to someone to animate and then


you get everything back and it's fantastic?


Or how does that work?


No, John, like fantastic.


It's yes, it's overrated.


And also, if you were to do like these updates things in animation format, it's just going


to be a nightmare.


It's going to take you a really long time.


So the whole process starts from, well, we select the topics that is good.


So we basically select topics that we think is not going to change too much over the time.


And also topics that is being asked often and also things that I said, like things that


would bridge the gap between audience.


And then we start with script writing.


That's not only me doing that.


So actually, Martin was also helping out with script writing as well.


Yeah, it was huge fun, but also a lot of work because it's so hard to take yourself out


of the knowledge that you have and basically like try to see it with fresh eyes and then


try to come up with analogies.


And also you can't use your gestures or mimic to transport it because it's going to be an


animation.


So yeah, that was an adventure.


And that was one of the first things that I did.


And I was really, really happy to be part of the project with Cherry.


Thank you.


Thank you, Martin.


And your help has been really, really great.


One thing also, when you write script for animation, it's more tricky because it's more


mundane, I would say, because you then have to write like the exact words instead of what


we usually do, which is like just putting out the bullets there and just say something


out from the bullets.


The script also has to be reviewed after that in different aspects.


So the aspect of domain expertise, whether the content is accurate and all that, and


also to keep the content interesting and also to make sure that the language and the style


is also easy for illustration.


Certain things that you say or certain words are not easily changed into illustration.


Then we do voiceover.


We go to another review of voiceover.


Then we go through illustration and storyboarding, another review again, and then it goes through


animation and another review again.


And then we go on to publishing.


Wow.


OK.


So you end up with a short and easy to understand video and nobody notices all the work that's


behind it.


Kind of frustrating, but I think like in a lot of situations when you really work hard


to make something really good, it's often a sign that you're doing it reasonably well


if people can't tell how hard it is.


Like if you, I don't know, when I see like Martin do some magic tricks and he's practiced


them a lot, it looks like super easy.


And then you're like, oh yeah, I can probably do that.


That's no problem.


And then when you try to start doing that, you're like, oh my God, how does this work?


It's like so clumsy when I try to do it myself.


So I think it's kind of cool to see how creating a series like this to make it easy for people


to understand, it's still so much work involved with getting all of that there.


And I guess most of these were recorded before everything around coronavirus started, like


given the time that you mentioned there.


Well, to be honest, I don't remember my life before this coronavirus thing, but yes, it


was before this unfortunate time and we're planning to do second series.


So that would be after this.


But yeah, I think Martin has also been doing a lot of things like for videos these days,


right?


As in how are things?


Oh my, yes.


It's been fun.


And I think I mentioned this earlier that when we had a studio and we had professionals


that helped us record things, everything was so much nicer and easier in terms of how quickly


you could turn around a recording that has become more tricky.


But at the same time, while each video production has probably become a little more tricky,


we also do produce more because lots of people invite us or me specifically to webinars,


which is basically like an online kind of meeting that is recorded and where you have


like a more or less scripted conversation.


Some of these webinars are basically unscripted and they are really thrilling and exhausting,


but also rewarding afterwards.


But a lot of people also don't know how much work really goes into it because yes, sure,


from the production point of view, it's just a few people talking about a topic in front


of a camera and then recording that.


But if you have to come up with answers to the questions from the top of your head in


topics so complicated as like indexing and rendering and crawling where lots of systems


are playing together, that can be really, really tough.


And you don't see that.


It looks like, oh yeah, this is a natural casual conversation, but it's actually quite,


quite tricky.


And I've seen a bunch of webinars from other people that were really good.


So there was this five hours of technical SEO that SEMrush did with a bunch of guests.


That was usually pretty cool.


Lots of different sessions there.


We had a search engine journal webinar on passage ranking.


That was intense, but also really, really good from my perspective.


So yeah, doing these well is super hard work as well.


And these are basically you talking to a host or is it more like a small panel or what kind


of webinars do you tend to run into?


I've seen both of these formats.


So I've seen webinars where I am invited and then interviewed and I've seen smaller panels.


I personally prefer the smaller panels because I feel like, yes, sure, I have one perspective,


but I only have one perspective, which is my own.


And having like different perspectives on a topic is generally more interesting, I think.


The part I kind of like as well with multiple people in a panel is that on the one hand,


you have the official Google point of view, but there are lots of other points of view,


which could be just as important for people who are running websites, which are just not


things that, I don't know, we would talk about because maybe we just don't have any expertise


there or maybe we just focus on one small aspect.


But for a website overall, you need to focus on things like users as well and the bigger


picture of how it integrates into the web and into search.


So I find that super useful to have more diverse voices in these panels.


Absolutely.


And the nice thing is that because you're basically just recording from your computer,


you don't have to fly people somewhere.


You don't have to have fancy equipment.


It's really, really nice that this gives an opportunity to so many different people to


join these.


Cool.


Yeah.


I don't know.


Should we do more of these from our side as well?


Maybe invite some people?


Yeah, why not?


Okay.


I mean, there's lots of smart and amazing people in the community.


We should probably give them a stage.


Cheri, how have the webinars been going for you?


Have you been doing any as well?


Yes, I've been going to many of them, but mostly for Asian markets.


So the native language that I speak and English for other markets in Southeast Asia.


It's been great.


Obviously, not as good as if we can have it in person.


But yeah, I think it's a good way to at least still stay in touch with the communities and


these things.


Cool.


Yeah.


I don't know.


I kind of like the aspect of being able to join more of these events than if you needed


to travel.


But being able to travel again will be fun or scary.


I don't even know.


I don't know what to think about it.


Gary, when is your next conference planned?


I don't have anything planned.


Like literally anything.


Come dive with me.


I'm not diving with you.


You are diving in frigid waters.


I just don't.


But yeah, going back, you could also travel and join online conferences.


It could be an extension of what we've been normally doing instead of like a replacement,


because as a replacement, I don't think it will ever work with the setup that we currently


have.


If we have telepresence, like for example, if I could have a hologram of Martin in my


living room drinking coffee, then sure, that would be awful.


But otherwise, I don't think it will happen.


All right.


We will need to work on holograms.


That sounds like a plan.


Yeah.


I kind of like the aspect that suddenly more events, well, I guess like all events have


to do stuff online.


And hopefully some of this will continue to be online so that people have at least a chance


to join some of these events without needing to travel.


I think meeting a person is always super cool.


But at least being able to join in, even if you can't make it, that would be really nice.


I would wish that virtual events are more experimental though.


Like most of them are basically just transferring the on stage talks to a virtual video call


kind of situation.


And I find that very unsatisfying and very unhelpful.


The hallway track is where the magic usually happens, at least for me at conferences.


And I would love to see more experimentation.


I know there are a few tools that are experimenting with this.


But I'm seeing so many very boring online events, not in the sense that they don't have


good content.


The content is amazing.


It's just, what's the benefit of being at that event if I could just watch the same


video on YouTube?


I would love more experimentation with more interactive formats and quizzes and all this


kind of stuff.


Right.


I mean, we talked about this roughly when Corona started hitting.


We had many one on ones with Martin about this, where basically I was the devil's advocate


and saying that online events, why are we just not creating YouTube videos that people


can watch whenever?


And to me, that feels still the same.


Basically, most of the things that I hopped in and then very quickly hopped out were basically


just a glorified YouTube video or any other platform video, Vimeo video.


And to me, that's just not worth it.


Basically, as a speaker, you are set up for stress because you have to make sure that


your connection will be constantly good during the talk while if you do a pre-recording,


for example, I think Moz did that and I thought that was brilliant, that they pre-recorded


the talks or some of the talks, I don't know.


And then they cut it together into the experience, the conference experience.


And that was good.


But the point is that it was still not the same.


It was rewatchable all the time and it was just a set of videos.


So I think what we need is an area within your apartment where you can stand in line


and wait for mediocre food.


I will have bananas, thank you.


Or some other place where you can chat with other people or you're almost forced to chat


with other people because you're waiting there.


It's like, maybe there will be some food left.


So I'm aggressively introverted.


So even now I'm being forced to talk to people.


I'm sorry.


I know I'm not.


So when I go to a conference, it's draining, but then that's where I get the ideas from.


Like for example, someone tells me that the site colon operator was behaving weirdly.


And then they show me on their phone how it was behaving weirdly.


And then in my brain, I quickly make a connection like what could possibly go wrong there.


And then when I come back to my desk, then I can start looking into the idea that I had.


And it's like, I don't even know, like a harvest of ideas when you go to these conferences.


Basically you will get so many ideas that some might be bad, some might be good.


But the point is that you talk to many people, they give you lots of lots of ideas, and then


you have something to work on essentially for the next couple of quarters or a year


or 10 years even or whatever.


But online this somehow is not happening.


Like even if you go into a chat room where there's just like five people and you are


talking to each other, this whole experience of video chatting, it's so much different


than normal chats somehow, like face to face chats.


Because for example, if Martin now interrupts me, then suddenly my reaction will be to stop


because that's how videos work online.


Like it will just feel weird.


But when we are face to face, then we might actually talk over each other, but we still


understand each other.


It's just so vastly different.


And then body language, like you miss all the body language.


OK.


Now, so...


That was my rant.


That was your rant.


OK, cool.


So I can see once we can start traveling again, you're just going to live in an airport and


visit...


No, airplanes.


Airplane.


Visit all the events.


Woo hoo.


Cool.


Well, that's been a lot of stuff today.


Thank you all for joining in.


Thank you for making it over and joining us as well, Cherry.


We've been having fun with these podcasts, and I hope you, the listener, are liking these


as well.


And if there are topics that you think we should be talking about more or differently


or different people that we should invite, feel free to drop me a note on Twitter or


chat with one of us at a virtual event, like without talking over each other, hopefully.


And of course, don't forget to like and subscribe and share this podcast with others if you're


having fun with it as well.


Thank you and bye, everyone.


Bye.


English Google SEO office-hours from May 14, 2021

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


SEO Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate at Google here in Switzerland.


And part of what we do are these Office Hours,


where people can jump in and ask their questions


around their website and web search.


As always, a bunch of things were submitted on YouTube.


We can go through some of those.


But it looks like people are already raising their hands


to get started.


So I guess we can get started with you all to start us off.


Let's see.


Sun Koon, I think, is the first one.


Oh, we can't hear you.


Oh, no.


Something doesn't seem to be working.


OK.


Otherwise, see if you can get it working again.


I think I heard you before.


So it must be close.


But we can go back to you as soon as you're ready.


No problem.


All right, Mohak.


Hey, John, how are you?


Hi.


So I come to your Office Hours about a month and a half back.


And you gave really good advice, Salient, as always,


where you asked me to cut down on the number of pages


and focus on value and unique content and not on scale.


So ever since then, we cut down drastically on number of pages.


Well, we went from like 500,000 to five pages.


And now those pages are buffered with a lot of useful tools.


And they have 100% conversion rates from those pages


to app downloads, which is phenomenal.


But what we've been struggling with


is that even with all that engagement,


and I just posted a link on the chat as well,


those pages always rank at number seven and number eight


pages.


And what I'm concerned is that because no one ever


goes to Google page seven or eight,


how will Google ever get the signal


that those pages are more engaging and better


at answering user intent than pages that always rank first?


And so I don't actually see a clear path


to ranking higher on Google, even with creating


really high-engaging pages.


OK.


So I'd have to take a look at your pages


to see if there's something specific that I


can help with there.


But in general, this is the kind of process,


it takes quite a lot of time to see things kind of change


in that regard.


And that's less a matter of Google seeing signals


that people on page six find this a great result,


but more a matter of us recognizing


that across the web, this is actually


something that is relevant and that we


should be showing more visibly in the search results.


And I think concentrating your pages on fewer or your site


on fewer pages makes a lot of sense


and helps to make it so that you don't have to collect signals


for each of these individual pages,


but rather it's like everything is nicely concentrated there.


But that's still something that I would assume would still


take quite a bit longer.


So again, I don't know your website.


I don't know exactly what all you're doing there.


But my guess is if you're making a change going


from several thousand to a handful of pages,


then that's something that would take a couple of months,


at least, for things to settle down.


Maybe, I don't know, up to a half a year,


something along that line.


And that's just with Google waiting to see where


things are settling down.


But in the meantime, you can still


do things to help promote your website, to work on things,


to make things that are interesting for people


to link at, make it easy for people to link at them,


to bring people to your website so that they understand


that your website exists so that they, in turn,


can also link to your website.


All right.


Thank you.


And then one more question.


Separately, we also noticed that we're a Visa tech company.


So we noticed that a lot of people search for embassies


and foreign embassies near them.


But a lot of the pages right now, directories,


are stuffed with keywords and actually hold valuable


information right at the end.


So we created better pages where we answer the user intent


directly.


And our objective is that users get to those pages


and leave those pages immediately.


So they find the phone number or the address.


But on the Searchmaster Forum, people


perceive those pages as thin because they


have very little content.


There's just phone number, map, address.


And we haven't stuffed them with a lot of content.


And is it necessary to stuff pages with content


so that they rank higher?


Or all that matters is entering user objective and intent?


You don't need to stuff the pages with content.


But I do think, again, I don't know those particular pages.


But I do think with this kind of content,


you have to watch out for not just providing


commodity information.


So if you're talking about things like addresses


and phone numbers, that information


is available on so many different sites.


That's maybe even directly available directly


in Google My Business.


I don't know.


But that's something where essentially the information


that you have there is the same that everyone else has


because it's like a fact.


And because of that, you need to find a way


to provide significantly more value to users than just


the facts that everyone else knows.


So that's something where maybe you can build out those pages.


Maybe there are other parts of your website


that you need to build out to make those pages less


critical for your website.


But you kind of need to watch out for that situation


where the information that you're providing


is essentially exactly the same as everyone else has.


And then from Google's point of view, it's like, well,


we can point at any of these sites,


and users will be happy.


So you kind of have to make something


that goes beyond just that.


SPEAKER 1 – Understood. That's really helpful.


Thank you, John.


JOHN MUELLER – Sure.


Let me see.


Who's next?


Max.


MAX – Hi, John.


JOHN MUELLER – Hi.


MAX – I see a discrepancy between the Core Web Vitals


report and the Page Experience report in Google Search Console.


So for example, if I look at the Core Web Vitals report,


we've got 4,000 URLs that are being listed as good.


However, if I look in the Page Experience report,


we have zero URLs listed as good.


Now, if I look at the buckets, so a URL is a good URL.


It says the URL has a good status in the Core Web Vitals


report.


The URL has no mobile issues according to the mobile


usability report.


The site has no security issues.


The URL is served over HTTPS, and there


is no ad experience issues.


Now, all of these points are ticked.


It passes all these points.


So how can there be 4,000 good URLs in Core Web Vitals


but zero in Page Experience?


Surely, should that number not be the same if it will pass?


I don't know offhand why there might be a difference there.


There might be something with regards to timing.


There might be something with regards to the grouping


of these pages.


One thing I would do there is check in Page Speed Experience


directly and see if you also have field data there.


So in the Page Speed Insights tool,


you can test individual pages, and it will show you


the lab scores.


But it also shows you if there's field data for those pages


available.


And that can give you a little bit of a sense of,


is there actually information that Google


would have available to show in the Page Experience report?


Yeah, so if I click into an individual URL in the Core Web


Vitals report, the ones that are listed as good,


and you get a list of examples, and if I click into that


and give it more information, it says,


I think, that there's not enough real-world data for this page.


There's a little icon.


It says not enough real-world data.


But doesn't there have to be real-world data


for these pages to appear as passed in Core Web Vitals?


I don't know.


I don't know why you would see that difference.


I have made a forum or post in the Google Help forum.


It has a bit more explanation, but it hasn't really


had an official reply.


So perhaps I could share that with you.


You could look in a little bit more detail if you wanted to.


It has a bit more of an explanation there.


OK.


If you can send me the forum link,


I'd be happy to pass that on to someone from the team.


You can take a look.


OK, thank you.


Sure.


One situation where I could imagine that happening


is if we used to have field data for a set of URLs


on your site, and for some reason,


we don't have that much field data anymore for the site,


then we might know the URLs, but we don't actually


have data for the URLs.


But I don't know how you would check for that offhand,


so I am happy to pass that on to someone from the Core Web


Vitals team.


John, you don't group URLs by type, do you?


Because we've noticed something similar, that category pages


also don't have enough Chrome views in order


to give perfect data.


But we get messages saying these are similar pages that.


Yeah.


We do that.


We do that with the Chrome User Experience Report data,


the field real-world data, essentially,


where we try to recognize when there


are pages that are similar enough that we could group them


together.


And then that could be some, I don't know how


that would look in practice.


It could be something where all of your category pages


are in one group.


And we say, well, these pages perform similarly.


So if we find a new URL that is also part of this group,


we don't have to have data for that new URL.


We can rely on the data for the group overall.


OK.


Just sort of throw that in there.


Yeah.


And I think that sometimes throws things off a little bit


in the sense of we might have one group, essentially,


for a site, but that could contain thousands of URLs.


So in the report in Search Console,


I think we would report that as thousands of URLs


have this problem.


And then we just show that one part of the group, essentially.


But not seeing any data at all in one report


and seeing a lot of data in the other report,


that feels kind of weird.


All right.


Cool.


Sagar.


Hi, John.


Hi.


So I attended your last Office Hours session,


and I raised a question regarding


the about the full content.


What kind of content?


Sorry.


I didn't catch it.


About the full content.


Duplicate content.


OK.


Content about the full.


Above the full.


Yes.


So recently, one of our main keywords have been deranked,


and the changes that we did on our page


was like we had some quantity banner image,


and we have just removed that content and no changes apart


from that.


So that might be the reason we have been deranked.


I think if you make that kind of design change on your website,


where suddenly the content moves up or suddenly the content


moves down, you would generally see


that as a fairly soft change, like a very small change.


So if you're saying that your whole website is essentially


no longer as visible in search anymore.


No, no, no.


It is visible.


Initially, we were at first position.


Now we have moved to second after that change.


Yeah.


I don't think you would be able to tie it back to that change.


That feels like a fairly, I don't know,


almost like a subtle normal change in search


that can always happen, that a site moves from position one


to position two or position three,


and then to position two, and then position one.


Like these kind of changes are fairly common.


Thank you, sir.


Sir, one more question.


Sure.


In local SEO, does map details play a very vital role?


I have no idea about local SEO.


Like do you mean Google My Business, essentially?


Yes, yes.


Like if I have a keyword like support digital marketing


course, Melbourne, and I have a location with that.


So in that case, I have an institute in Melbourne.


So the map details play a very vital role


as far as directory submission and other submissions


are concerned.


I don't know how Google My Business would handle that.


It feels like it would matter, but I honestly don't know.


OK.


Akash, I think.


Hi, sir.


Hi.


So let's say we are ranking for hundreds and thousands


of keywords, right?


And if we create some more few pages,


so is there something like that value


that we have generated from the thousands and hundreds of pages


that we have already built and getting ranked for them,


is it being passed on to some of those pages?


And that can also help.


In order to rank again right from scratch,


there could be some SEO value which


is like collected through time of like six months or one year


or 10 years.


And then it's been again passed on to those pages


where we can rank those pages much easier,


rather than working hard and hard.


Is something like an SEO value being shared across your website


or the pages that are getting ranked?


So if I understand your question correctly,


is it essentially, is there value


in having a long-term presence in search,


like in being visible for the long-term in search?


Yes, and then those things are like passed on


for other some new pages that we have created and then getting


ranked, because few things that I've noticed,


we have been ranking for hundreds and thousands


of keywords.


We have done the best content currently


till the end of the year, and that's the reason we are ranking.


So seems like there are few pages which I just,


I think, got live 15, 10 days before,


and they just started getting ranked.


My assumption would be like there's


something like SEO value of perception


that people have about our domain or website.


I don't know if they produce some good content or better


content, and that can help for other pages


to be ranked much better.


OK, so I mean, if you build out a website


and it becomes successful and it does well in search,


then obviously new pages that you


create which are linked from within your existing website,


we understand a little bit more about those already.


So that's something that, in general, is always


a good thing, which is also one of the reasons why


I recommend focusing on making one really strong website


rather than a lot of individual small ones.


So essentially, building out a big and strong website,


I think that always kind of makes sense.


But whether there is an inherent value or kind of like domain


authority or something like that associated with a domain,


I don't think I'd say that.


But essentially, you're building something strong.


It has a good reputation.


People like it.


Search engines like it.


So when you add new content, they


assume that it's similar to the old content, which kind of


makes sense.


So I think that kind of my website or my thing


has some values on the internet, on the server,


and something like that.


I'm honestly not quite sure what exactly you're asking.


Because it sounds like you already have a big website,


and it's working well.


So I'm not quite sure what you would do differently


or what kind of help you're looking for.


Sure.


No worries.


Thank you so much.


OK.


All right.


Clint.


Hi, John.


My question is around or is focused


on an e-commerce website.


So we're making several changes to layout, UX, et cetera.


So essentially, moving with the times from adaptive


to responsive design and focused on mobile parity, et cetera.


One of the pages in particular that will be changing quite


a bit is a key category page.


So on the desktop experience, currently, it's


very much informational.


Whereas on the mobile experience,


currently, it's more focused on just the subcategories,


et cetera, et cetera, the mobile accordions and menu items.


So given the fact we're already being crawled predominantly


with the mobile crawler, and it's a relatively small change


that's happening on the mobile experience,


it's actually going to be better because it's essentially


going to be turning into a product listing page.


Should we be concerned about ranking changes and impact


given that scenario or given the fact that it's on mobile,


we're already being called with mobile sites?


It is the thinner content of the two experiences,


greatly so, that at the end of the day,


it's actually going to be better.


And we shouldn't really worry with the fact


that, yes, we've got a ton of content on the desktop sites,


and that's going to be moved over to another page.


Now, I think that sounds like you're on the right path.


In terms of the migration from more thinner category pages


to more informational category pages,


I think that makes sense.


One way you can double check which page Google is indexing


is to look at the cached version of the URL.


So if you take one of the category pages


and you look at the cached version in Google,


you should be able to see, is it the mobile version


or the desktop version, especially


if you say that there is content differences at the moment.


And based on that, you can judge a little bit better,


is it going to be transitioned from the desktop version


to a better mobile version, or will it


be transitioned from the thinner mobile version


to a better mobile version?


And that should give you a little bit


of a sense of, is this going to be more of a positive change


or more of a negative change?


SPEAKER 2


Hey, John.


Hi.


So there's a website I probably asked in February


that is taking actually longer to index.


And the current situation is I have 170 pages, valid pages,


and search console.


But when I check it through site column,


it just says three, four, sometimes five pages.


So that has been happening from three to four months now.


I'm not sure what the correct way to go from now on.


It's actually an e-commerce website.


And it has less than 500 product pages.


So yeah.


So in general, I would not worry about the difference


between what a site colon query shows


and what search console shows.


In practice, a site colon query is not


meant to be used for diagnostics purposes.


So sometimes you do see quite different numbers.


And for some sites, you see much lower numbers.


For other sites, you see like 100 times larger numbers.


And essentially, the numbers we show in the site query result


are optimized for speed and to give


kind of a sense of the website.


But they're not optimized to be comprehensive.


So that's where the search console numbers would come in.


I think in general, if you're talking about a site that


is about like 500 pages or so.


And after a period of several months, only like 100


are indexed.


That seems like something where probably you


could do a lot better with minimal extra effort.


So that could be something where what I would, first of all,


check is just the technical side of things


to make sure that technically everything is OK,


that the website can be crawled.


There are some website crawling tools available.


I think they're even free for very small websites


where you can check your site to see if it's crawlable or not.


And if it's well crawlable, then the next thing


I would consider trying to figure out


is what you can do to promote your website a little bit


better.


And that could be something like encouraging users


to come to visit, maybe by buying ads,


maybe by working together with someone else for a while.


Just to kind of get the ball rolling.


It could also be if you're an e-commerce site,


or especially if you're a small business, a local business


site, maybe there are local chambers of commerce


that would be interested in linking to your website


to give you a little bit of extra information


so that when our systems look at your website,


they say, oh, this is actually a legitimate small business.


We should try to index everything.


Because especially if you're talking about a smaller website


with a couple hundred pages, that feels like something


where we, if we have a little bit of a hint,


then we'll go off and get all of that.


If you're talking about an e-commerce site that


has 500,000 pages, then obviously,


if we get all of those pages or not,


it's like that's a totally different story.


But with 500 pages, it feels like something


that our systems, with a little bit of extra incentive


to say we should at least check it out,


we should be able to get a significant part of those


indexed.


AUDIENCE 1 Alright, so another thing which


was happening to this website, it


has a few hundreds of errors in Search Console.


That was due to setting noindex meta tags


earlier in January.


Then what I did, I just removed the noindex


from the product pages.


And there are a few unwanted pages still


that we want to noindex, and we kept it noindex to those pages.


Now when I start validation, it keeps


on failing because few of the pages that


is at the top of the report, those are noindexed.


And the bottom of the pages, the product pages,


all are when I checked it through a live test.


It just validates and available for Google crawl.


But still, it shows under the error section for a long time.


JOHN MUELLER I think the transition from noindex


to getting content indexed, that could be a reason why things


take a little bit longer.


But the validation tool in Search Console


is not something that I would say would be holding you back.


It's more a matter of we use that tool as a way of giving


you extra information.


So just because the validation fails for that,


and the other URLs are OK, I don't


think that would be holding your website's indexing back.


It's more Search Console is a little bit confused


because you said you fixed the issue,


but you didn't really fix the issue.


And then we don't know what we should show you as an error,


because we want to help you to fix these issues,


if there are issues.


But if you're saying some of these are noindex by design,


then Search Console will be a bit confused for a while.


But that's fine.


SPEAKER 2 All right.


So I'll check the traffic.


Basically, this site has a social media presence earlier.


It has a good presence and good following out there.


Then they launch the website.


So we are getting good traffic already on the website.


But yeah, the website is not as playing a trick


since last January.


So yeah, I'll double check the things.


But any advice would be helpful.


Yeah.


I do think switching from noindex


to index that can make things take a little bit longer


and get a little bit confusing.


But it's been a couple of months now.


So it feels like that should be slowly settling down.


I would still try to see what you


can do to actively promote your website a little bit better,


especially if you have a strong social media presence.


Maybe there are things you can do with your users


there to encourage them to promote the website for you


as well.


Because I feel, especially a smaller website


with a couple hundred pages, it doesn't take a lot for us


to say, oh, we can spend a little bit more time here


to index more of this content.


With really large websites, with very competitive websites,


that's kind of like a different story.


But with small websites, small e-commerce shops,


I think we should be able to pick that up


a little bit better.


Sometimes it just takes a little bit more.


All right.


Thank you so much.


Sure.


Veen, yes.


VEEN GADADYAJ.


Hey, John.


We recently had this situation where


we were ranking in our first position


for a particular keyword.


But when we started running ads for the same keyword,


our organic page just didn't appear in not even


in 100 results.


So right after we stopped running ads,


keyword is back to number one position.


So I know this Google Ads shouldn't


affect your organic results.


But I'm curious to know if there is any other particular reason


for this to happen.


I don't know why that would happen like that.


But it would not be related to the ads.


So that's something where these systems are completely separate


on our side.


The ranking within the ads, the ranking within Search


are completely separate systems.


And there is essentially no real connection there.


And I get this question sometimes.


Like in this way, if I run ads, then my website


disappears from Search.


But I also get the same question in the other way.


It's like if people run ads, then suddenly their website


ranks higher in Search because they're paying for something.


And from our point of view, we work really hard


to differentiate ads and Search, so much so


that even when large advertisers go to their ad manager or account


manager and they have the small Search question,


we push back on that.


We don't give any answers at all when it comes to questions


from clients or partners.


So that's something where I would definitely not expect


any kind of ranking change, especially something


as visible as that.


Because I think that would also be something


that lots of other sites would see and would be kind of a bit,


I don't know, super obvious.


So the ranking change that you saw there


seems like something that would be totally unrelated to the ads.


SPEAKER 2


Let me go through some of the submitted questions.


And then I'll get back to more of the live questions


as well.


Let me just see.


Refresh the page here.


Will no indexing a page that already had external links


remove the ranking benefit that the website was


getting from those links?


Assuming that the linking pages are indexed.


Pretty much, yes.


So from our point of view, links are


tracked between two canonical URLs.


In other words, one URL links to another URL.


And we kind of have that connection there.


We have some understanding of what


is happening between those two URLs.


And if one of those URLs becomes non-canonical,


if it becomes non-indexed, if it drops from our systems,


then essentially that link disappears.


And that could be if one of these pages turns into a 404,


if it gets a no index.


All of these things are reasons for us to say,


well, this page no longer exists.


Therefore, the links that used to go to this page


are no longer relevant.


And from a kind of like taking a step back,


it kind of makes sense.


Because if someone is recommending something


very specific on a website, and that something very specific


doesn't exist anymore, then they're


not recommending anything anymore.


Because it doesn't exist anymore.


On the other hand, if they're recommending the whole website


overall and pointing at the home page,


then obviously that's something that


remains valid as long as your home page continues to exist.


Does the FAQ still work?


I assume this means the FAQ structured data.


And from what I know, that continues


to exist and continues to work.


What usually tends to happen with some of these structured


data types or rich results types is that over time,


we try to fine tune how often we show them just to make sure


that we're not overloading the search results with all


of these, I don't know, bling and extra functionality that


just confuses people in the end.


So what often happens is when we start a new type of rich


result, people will kind of reluctantly try it out.


And then if it works well, then everyone tries it out.


And then suddenly, the search results page


is totally overloaded with this type of structured data.


And then our systems and our engineers


work to fine tune that a little bit so that we continue


to use that structured data.


We just don't show it for all sites all the time,


which kind of makes sense, similar to how


we tune the snippets that we show for websites


and tune the rankings and tune the search results overall.


So that's something where, from at least as far as I know,


I don't think we've turned off any of the FAQ rich results


types.


Then the second question here is,


the H1 is already on my post title.


Can I still use it inside the post?


So I assume it's like a text in the H1 and in the title,


not the H1 tag itself, because I don't think you


can put an H1 tag in your title.


From my point of view, sure, you can definitely do that.


So the title of a page and the headings on a page,


they give us a little bit more context


about what this page is about.


And you can use that functionality


to give us context, and users expect a bit of context


as well.


And sometimes it's the same text on both of those places.


In particular, the title of a page


is not extremely visible on mobile.


So it's something where, if you want


to give some context for the page overall,


then don't just show it in the title of the page,


but also show it visibly on the page itself.


And using a heading like an H1 or an H2 or whatever,


that's something that you can definitely use for that.


So just because a bunch of keywords are in the title


doesn't mean you can't use those keywords elsewhere on the page.


Can signed exchanges significantly


improve Core Web Vitals, in particular, LCP,


even if LCP is more than six seconds?


So I know a little bit about signed exchanges,


but I don't know all of the details.


From what I know, signed exchanges


are a way that we can prefetch content from your website


and serve that to users ahead of time


so that they essentially have a part of your pages


already loaded in the browser's memory


when they go and click on your search result.


And by doing that, essentially, it significantly


can improve the speed of your pages


because it doesn't require that much back and forth


with the server itself when someone actually clicks


on a search result and it starts displaying in their browser.


So for example, if the HTML content is already preloaded,


that helps us a bit.


If the CSS and JavaScript files are preloaded,


that can significantly speed things up.


If you have things like bigger images on the page


and they can be preloaded, that also


helps us a little bit there.


And this is something that I think


is super hard to measure because you


tend to measure a single URL, not the transition of going


to a search results page, searching in the background.


It prefetches everything.


And then clicking on a result and then


seeing the prefetched result, that's


super hard to measure with tools like PageSpeed Insights.


But with signed exchanges, that's


something that I think we're headed more and more


in that direction.


It is also something that I think


we had in similar ways without the privacy-preserving nature


of signed exchanges in that we would prefetch content


through the search results page from a server.


And the server itself would see that as a normal request.


And it would skew analytics and confuse people.


And then, I don't know, with cookies,


what all was happening there.


And one of the things that I recall from there


is that one of the hard parts was


trying to find the balance between when we should do this


and how much content we should prefetch like this.


Because you could imagine a situation where everyone


has signed exchanges.


And then when the search results page loads,


we could prefetch, I don't know, 10, 20 results


that are shown on a page and all of the CSS


and JavaScript and images.


And that probably doesn't make sense.


On the other hand, maybe just prefetching the first result,


maybe that's a little bit too limited in the long run.


Maybe we have to find some balance in between there.


So I assume that's something that will still


be worked out.


And over time, as we see more and more sites implement this,


then we'll be able to figure out what the right balance is


there and maybe even have some tools that give you


a little bit of insight into what


is actually happening there.


With regards to Core Web Vitals, because we


use the real-world data for Core Web Vitals


when we use that in search, this is


something that would be taken into account there.


So if you're using signed exchanges


and it significantly improves the speed


for a significant number of users of your website,


then that could be reflected in the Chrome User Experience


Report data.


Can you please confirm that PageSpeed insight score isn't


a ranking factor, but it's a vital tool


for diagnosing possible speed issues that, when fixed,


might lead to better user experience on a website?


It seems kind of like a trick question,


because there are multiple things that come together here.


On the one hand, we don't use Core Web Vitals


as a ranking factor yet.


That, I think, is coming in June or later this year, at least.


So that's kind of the one aspect there.


Then the Core Web Vitals are only a part


of what we show in PageSpeed Insights.


And in particular, the PageSpeed insight score,


kind of that 0 to 100, that is not


something that maps specifically to particular Core Web Vitals.


So that's kind of something slightly different.


And also, the score that you see in PageSpeed Insights,


that's based on lab tests.


So essentially, a live test that you're doing of a page,


which gives you some insight into how this page is


performing, but it doesn't give you insight into what users are


actually seeing.


And the what users are actually seeing part is the field data,


and that is what we would use for ranking


when Core Web Vitals becomes kind of a live ranking factor.


So kind of the, I don't know.


I don't know if there's a short answer for this.


But one version essentially is within PageSpeed Insights,


you do see some data that we would, in the future,


use for ranking with regards to speed and usability.


But you also see a lot of other data in PageSpeed Insights.


And that other data is more for you as a site owner


to figure out where are the problems


and to give you some mechanisms that you can iterate


on your website to speed things up.


How do you do SEO for question and answers


for educational websites?


For every question separate, a separate page, or blog,


or club, or topic-wise question and answers,


because there are many websites which are providing solutions


for questions, then there will be a greater


chance of duplicate content.


So how do you deal with that?


And also, which HTML tag is recommended for every question?


So lots of questions here.


It feels like questions about questions and answer sites


is almost very, a bit meta.


But anyway, I think the balance between should you


have one question and answer on a page,


or should you have a lot of questions on a page,


or should you kind of group everything by topic,


that is something that you need to figure out


for your own site.


And for some sites, if you have a lot of content,


maybe having one page for each question and answer


makes sense.


For other sites, if there are kind


of shorter questions and answers,


then maybe grouping them together makes sense.


And that's something that, from Google's point of view,


we don't have a strong preference.


We say you should do it like this,


or you should do it like that.


You really need to figure out what


works well for your site, what works well for your users.


With regards to structured data, I


think you can do it both ways.


So I'm not 100% sure how this maps.


But I think you have the FAQ markup and the Q&A markup


that you can use if you want to use structured data.


I'd double check the documentation


because I might be confusing it with something else just now.


But in this structured data documentation,


you see the different types of structured data


that we have there.


The thing to keep in mind is that just because there


is a type of structured data for something


does not mean that that is the optimal setup of a website.


So if, for example, there were only structured data


for multiple questions on a page,


that doesn't mean that you should always


put multiple questions on a page.


So that's something to kind of keep in mind.


The other part that you have there


is what if other people have the same answer


or the same question on their website


with regards to duplicate content.


And I think that's similar to the person who


asked earlier today about the embassy locations


where you have an address and a phone number.


That is something where if you have a question and answer


pair, which is essentially commodity information, where


essentially it's just a fact.


It's like, I don't know, did Barack Obama exist?


And the answer is yes.


That's something where, obviously, if people


are asking for this and you're giving them the answer yes,


then that's an answer.


And other people might have that too.


But you need to find a way to kind of differentiate yourself


from everyone else who just has this fact as an answer.


And that's something that you can


do with additional content for individual questions maybe.


That's something that you can do with the way


that you structure information on your website.


That's something that you could do


with the functionality, the usability of your website


overall.


But that is something that you should keep in mind,


where if you're focusing on information that is essentially


on lots of places on the web, then you


need to make sure that you're not just doing the same thing


as everyone else.


Because if you aren't just doing the same thing


as everyone else, then our systems will say,


oh, we already have this answer once.


Why should we show the same answer again


in the search results page?


It doesn't really make much sense.


So that's something always to keep in mind there.


Depending on the type of site that


might also play a role, for example,


if you have math problems, where it's like, what is 2 plus 2?


Then you could just give the answer there.


But I don't think that would be very useful for people.


So I would not see that as something where it's like,


I will take all the numbers in the world


and make kind of an addition table


and make individual pages for that.


I don't see that being as super useful for search.


And then the last part about HTML tags,


I don't think we have a kind of a preferred HTML tags


for questions and answers.


So is questions and answers just content, or is it special?


It's just content, essentially.


Yeah.


You're simplifying it.


That's me.


Perfect.


Well, you stick with the same people saying,


I'm creating this content.


Should it be a blog or this or that?


Well, it's content.


So whatever.


Exactly.


Join in next week for simplifications to answers.


John speaks for 10 minutes, and then Rob is like,


it's just content.


Oh, man.


OK.


Let me see if I can find a question


that I can answer quickly.


We see two versions of our site appearing in Search Console.


One is HTTP, and the other one is HTTPS.


What is causing this, and should we fix it?


So this one is E. It's essentially


happening because someone submitted both of those versions


in Search Console.


And if you didn't do it, then maybe someone else


did for you.


And in practice, this doesn't cause any problems.


Probably all of your data will be concentrated


on one of those two versions.


And essentially, the value that you get out


of having both of them listed in Search Console


is if for one of those versions something goes wrong,


you'll get information in Search Console.


One way to get the same amount of information


without having them listed twice is


to use a domain verification, which would automatically


include HTTP and HTTPS.


The slight downside of a domain verification


is that I think not all of the older Search Console tools


are available for domain verification.


So having them verified individually


still kind of makes sense too.


Whew, that was shorter.


OK.


And let's see.


I have a question about button, text, and hyperlink.


I have a blog where I have a list of some artists


and buttons for each of them as view profile.


And I also have read more anchors for every post.


Is it possible that this would be considered


duplicate content or spammy internal linking?


What's the best practice?


So I think, first of all, depending on the way


that you implement this on your website,


if it's a button element, then we would not necessarily


see that as a link anyway.


That is something that could work for users.


But we essentially need to process


whatever JavaScript is associated with that button


element to see what is actually happening there.


And Googlebot doesn't click on elements on a page by default.


So we would not see what you're doing afterwards.


Like if someone clicks on a button, JavaScript is called,


and then it redirects to a different page,


that's not something that we would necessarily see.


So from that point of view, if the only navigation


within your site were with buttons,


that would be a problem.


However, since you also have these read more links, which


are essentially, it sounds like normal HTML links going


through the same page, essentially we


would see that and say, oh, this is a normal link.


And then we can crawl that and follow that normally.


So that would be completely normal internal navigation.


If you had both of these elements as links,


so if the button to view profile and the read more link


were both normal HTML links, then that


would also not be a problem.


It's not an issue if you have multiple links


to the same page from one of your pages.


So in practice, what would happen


here is we would try to combine those two links


and just essentially treat them as one link


and follow those kind of normally within your website.


The one thing I would recommend here,


though, is that you use a good anchor text instead


of read more.


So it's very tempting to kind of have these read more


links on a page and pointing to a more detailed page.


But our systems do take into account the anchor text


of a link.


And they use that to get some context of the page


that you're linking to.


So if the anchor text is just read more,


then that doesn't tell us anything.


It's like we find the link.


We can follow the link.


We can crawl that.


That's perfectly fine.


But for example, if the link were read more about xyz,


then we would automatically know when we find that link, oh,


this other page is going to be about xyz.


So we can kind of categorize that a little bit ahead


of time already.


So that's something, like if you're


looking for optimizations and it's really currently


a read more link, that would be something


that I would recommend doing.


I also noticed this on my site when I kind of like tried


to clean things up a little bit.


In Lighthouse, within Chrome, if you,


I think it's the accessibility report or the SEO report,


not 100% sure, if you run that report on your site


and you have links that just contain read more,


then that will be flagged as something


that you should improve.


So that might be something to try out there as well.


OK.


Will the new Core Web Vital signal


be a live, ongoing signal?


For example, if my pages are rated as poor


when the update rolls out, but a few months later,


I managed to improve them, will that be taken into account?


Or will we have to wait until Gary pushes a button?


So my understanding is this would


be live based on the current data,


because that's kind of the way that we can, I don't know,


run this kind of a pipeline in the sense


that when we get new data for Core Web Vitals


from kind of the field data for individual URLs,


then we can automatically take that into account


in our systems.


I don't think it would make sense for us to kind of keep


a cached version of all of those signals


and only use the old data for that.


So the thing to keep in mind, though,


is that the Core Web Vitals data that we use from the Chrome


User Experience Report is, I think, 28 days old.


So it's not that if you improve your site today,


tomorrow you will see a ranking change.


But rather, if you improve your site today, then in 28 days,


we would have information about how your users have


been seeing those pages since then,


and we'd be able to take that into account at that point.


With regards to kind of like moving


between the different values of the Core Web Vitals,


I think we'll have to see how strong that effect is.


But in general, we tend to differentiate between pages


that are in the bad bucket.


And kind of then from there, there's


a needs improvement bucket, which


is kind of like that yellow zone and then the good bucket.


And essentially, as soon as you pass from bad


into needs improvement, then things


start to improve in search.


And I think, at least at the moment,


it's not planned for there to be further iterations


within the good bucket.


So kind of like between needs improvement and good,


things will slowly get a little bit better.


And then once your pages are completely in good,


it's not going to be the case that tweaking milliseconds


will change anything with regards to ranking.


Obviously, for users, that might be a different story.


Maybe you can see things like conversion rate changes


if you improve things by a couple of milliseconds.


But that's more something for you


to care about than something for search


to specifically care about.


OK.


Wow, we still have more questions and some raised


hands.


So maybe we can get a few raised hands,


and then we can hang around a little bit longer


and see what else pops up.


Let's see.


I think, Shashi, I think you're on top of the list.


Hello, John.


Hi.


Actually, I have an e-commerce website


where the number of URLs is more than lacks.


But what I've seen that I submitted the sitemap on Jan


and still not showing the coverage report.


So what are the things that causes this issue?


All the sitemaps contain approximately more than 5,000


URLs.


And nothing is being indexed?


Or what are you seeing?


No, URL is indexed.


But the coverage report is not showing.


The daily crawl rate is approximately 600, 700.


But when I'm going to check the sitemap coverage report,


it's still zero.


Not two, actually.


Yeah.


I wouldn't necessarily worry about that.


If we're able to index your pages normally


and you see them in the index coverage report overall,


then the tie to the individual sitemap files


is something that can vary over time.


So I wouldn't necessarily worry about that.


But actually, it also affects the performance


of websites on search engines.


Actually, my view of the sitemap showing report on Jan


and my website working good on search engine,


after they stop showing the coverage report,


my website also start affecting on search engine.


Like the sitemap processing there


wouldn't be tied to anything with regards


to ranking of your website.


So I see the sitemaps issue.


I see that every now and then.


And usually, that's more a matter of, well,


Search Console is just not showing you that information.


But it wouldn't be affecting your site's ranking in search.


If you are seeing changes in ranking,


then that would be kind of separate from that.


What action I should have to take to fix this?


If you're seeing ranking changes,


I mean, I would focus on the ranking changes, not


the sitemaps part, to be honest.


But if you're seeing ranking changes,


then kind of like everything that's around ranking changes


or improving a website overall, those


are kind of the things that you should be focusing on.


And in many cases, kind of normal ranking changes


can be completely normal.


And it's not a sign that you're doing something wrong.


It's just that our systems kind of


have reevaluated the relevance of your website overall.


And that means you need to kind of almost take a step back


and think about what you can do to significantly improve


the quality and relevance of your website.


OK.


Is changing titles and meta descriptions


do any kind of effect?


I think you can use some of that to tweak things a little bit.


But if you're talking about ranking changes so strong


that you're seeing them overall, then I


think just tweaking titles and meta tags


are not going to give you kind of what you're looking for.


Tweaking titles and meta tags makes it easier


for us to recognize what is actually on a page.


But it's not going to change the overall visibility


of the website significantly.


So I think tweaking these things, working on them,


always kind of makes sense because it drives


you to think about more like, what is the focus of my web


page?


What is the focus of my website overall?


But it won't necessarily fix an issue


where your website has dropped in visibility significantly.


And I noticed that my website CSS


is still run on HTTP 1.1.


So is it affecting any kind in SEO?


No.


Thank you.


Thank you, John.


OK.


Let me pause the recording here.


I still have a bit more time.


So if any of you all want to hang around longer,


that's fine too.


But for those of you watching the recording,


thank you for watching.


I hope you found this useful and found some questions


and answers along the way which were


insightful and relevant for what you're looking at.


And maybe I'll see you all in one of the future Hangouts.


All right.


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from July 21, 2020

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


Office Hours Hangouts.


My name is John Mueller.


I am a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google here in Switzerland.


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


where people can join in and ask their questions


around their website and web search.


And we try to find some answers or make sure


that we pass some feedback onto the team here as well.


I hope you're all doing well, that you're


enjoying summer if you're in an area where you have summer


at the moment, or I guess fall or winter


if you're in the southern hemisphere.


I hope you all find some time to take off in between as well,


despite all of the crazy situations around coronavirus.


Bunch of stuff was submitted already.


But if any of you want to get started


with the first question, you're welcome to join in and jump


in now.


Hi, John.


Hi.


Maybe you remember that in the last Webmaster,


I asked you about the problem of the Fabicon that disappeared.


Now it's three months.


And I was suspecting that was related to the site


not being indexed in the root, because subdomain


for each language.


And you told me to wait still a couple of weeks


to see if something changed.


And I waited, but nothing happened.


So still, the Fabicon is not showing.


Now it's about three months.


So maybe there is something weird.


Maybe I can drop the site in the chat.


Yeah.


If you can drop it into the chat,


I'm happy to pass it on to the team to double check.


Here it is.


Because I don't know if it's, I mean,


it can be related, because I double


check that the guidelines of Google should be followed.


The dimension of the icon, I think it's fine.


And so after so long, it's strange.


Because I think that the Fabicon can input the click to rate.


I imagine because people, maybe it's


more likely to click on an icon instead of the generic word


icon, maybe.


I don't know.


I think that would be hard to see


if that's directly the case.


I think it probably helps people, especially those


that understand the site already.


But I don't think it would change much in behavior


for generic users that don't know your site yet.


But still, regardless of what exactly it would change,


it seems like this is something that we should


be able to fix on our side.


AUDIENCE 1 OK, I put it on the chat.


Cool, thanks.


Yeah, I saw you also mentioned kind


of like what the problem is.


That makes it a lot easier.


Because I get the chat transcript afterwards.


And sometimes I have to puzzle which site was what.


But that's perfect.


OK, thanks.


AUDIENCE 2 Hey, John.


How are you?


Hi.


OK, my question is regarding something


which is called entity corrosion.


Like if you search for something like mobile games or video


games, Google shows us a corrosion at the top in SAP.


So like what we can do or how we can optimize to be there


or how Google pick these entities?


And is there something that we can


do to optimize our website or to improve our chances being


in there?


Essentially, it tries to understand the entities


on the page directly.


So it's not that you have to do any special kind of markup


or do anything specific on your pages,


but more that we understand that this


is kind of an entity that is talked


about on the web in general and is not


something that's just limited to your specific website.


So in practice, that means when we crawl and index


the whole web, we find a lot of these items.


We can recognize that they're talking about the same entity.


They have same information.


And then based on that, we can try


to figure out where this entity fits


in with the rest of the web.


But it's not that you need to do any special kind of markup


or kind of add code to your pages for that.


So it's basically about the signals


that Google collects from different sources.


Yeah, yeah.


It's from information that we recognize from across the web.


Because it's important to us to understand


that this is not something that's


unique to one particular site, but rather,


other people understand that this is an entity.


And based on that, we can say, well, we should


treat it as an entity as well.


OK, OK.


Thank you.


Hey, John.


Hi.


How's it going?


Pretty good.


How are you?


I'm doing great.


Thank you very much.


John, I have a question regarding the URL inspection


tool.


Are there any sort of crawling issues at the current time,


especially with new sites?


Not that I'm aware of.


I know that sometimes we have fluctuations in our pipelines


that things get a little bit slow.


And sometimes that ends up being visible in the URL


inspection tool.


But I'm not aware of anything broader


that's kind of blocked there.


Are you seeing specific problems at the moment?


Or?


Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, the new sites


that you're working on.


We've seen it 10 times.


OK, so you're submitting the home page for indexing,


essentially?


It's not getting in there.


Yeah.


Hard to say.


Yeah, it's hard to say.


But I think the important part also with these tools,


especially when you're submitting things to indexing,


is that we just don't index all content that we see.


And sometimes we see things in the URL inspection tool.


And our system's like, oh, we don't know if we


need to index this right away.


But the more signals that we have about content,


the more likely we end up going there and trying


to get it indexed as well.


So especially if you're seeing things like new sites not being


indexed immediately, then I would


tend to give it a little bit more time


and maybe try to work on other ways to make that site known,


which could be a variety of different things, I guess.


Like working with the sitemap file,


making sure that everything is lined up properly


from a technical point of view, those kind of things.


It's like a crawling issue or an indexing issue.


We submit it.


Nothing happens.


It's searched on so.


And it couldn't be searched on.


I think we've tried this for multiple sites,


but it's not working out.


I don't know.


It's hard to say.


I'm not aware of anything that would mean


that that's blocked completely.


I think if that were the case, then we


would see a lot of complaints on Twitter and in the forums.


So it might just be something temporary


that you should try it again a little bit later.


If you're seeing this regularly happening,


then I just recommend starting a thread in the forum


together with your URL so that folks there


can double check to see if things are kind of aligned


with regards to crawling and try with their own tools.


Or maybe they have general feedback for the site overall.


AUDIENCE 1 Sure.


Thank you very much.


JOHN MUELLER Sure.


All right.


Any last questions before we jump into the submitted ones?


AUDIENCE 1 I have a question, John.


Hi.


AUDIENCE 1 So actually, I have two questions, actually.


So my first question is, recently,


when I Google my brand name, on the first or second page


of the results, there's a site review website that pops up.


And it has the rich results snippet


with the rating and stuff.


And it's just a lot of user-submitted reviews


about the website.


And I'm not sure what impact this actually


has, whether directly or I suppose


there would be an indirect impact if a user sees


the reviews and they are looking for reviews about the website.


So I know there is that aspect of it.


But I was wondering if there is any other sort of aspects


or any sort of other impact on my site based on links


that are maybe shared in the reviews


or I know Bert can sometimes be used to kind of understand


context of a page.


So if there's a negative sentiment generally


on the page, could that have any sort of impact


on the performance or ranking of my website?


JOHN MUELLER I don't think you'd see any effect


on the ranking of your website from that.


I think, at most, what might happen


is that people stumble across that in the search results


for your company name.


They're like, oh, what does this mean?


And then they get lost in that website.


But it's not that the existence of such a page


would negatively affect your site.


Even if there are some negative reviews on there,


I mean, on the internet, there are all kinds of things.


So that's something where I wouldn't directly


assume that that would have a negative impact.


Sometimes it makes sense to try to create


other kinds of content that go up, especially for things


like a query for your company name.


But it's always a question of where you invest your time.


If people are already searching for your company name,


they kind of know where to go anyway.


So it's not always straightforward to say,


oh, you should create more pages with your company name on it


just so that you can cover the whole search results


with your favorable content.


Right.


OK.


So basically, you don't need to worry about that too much.


Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it.


OK, good.


And then I had another question.


It was, yeah, OK.


So my website has a forum.


It's located on a subdomain of the main property.


So it's not part of the same domain.


And it's a really old forum.


So there's, I think, over 100,000 users.


And I'm realizing recently that a lot of these users,


maybe more than 90% of them, are very new.


And they're abusing the user profiles for link building


schemes, essentially.


And I'm wondering what this could do to my sub,


whether the subdomain, sorry, the forum, or whether it could


affect my main site at all.


And I know the subdomain is sort of seen differently


from the main site.


But it links, I would say it links pretty well


to the main site.


Like, we have the nav menu that goes to all the main categories


on the main site.


And a lot of the users submitted content,


a lot of the posts and stuff will also


include links to the main site.


So there's a lot of pages.


So I'm wondering, should I go in and clean up all those links,


remove all those user profiles?


And if so, what's the best way to handle that?


AUDIENCE 1 Nofollow, no?


Yeah, I think nofollow is definitely the first step


I would take there, especially if you're


unsure about those profiles and people are using them


for link building.


Then making sure that those pages have nofollow on them


sometimes makes it less interesting for people


to abuse the forum for that.


So that's the first thing I would take there.


But I would also try to see if you can find ways


to algorithmically recognize this abuse and spammy content


and noindex it by default.


So that might be something where if you


can tell that a user has been around


for a certain period of time, or they've contributed positively


to the forum, then make their profile indexable


and otherwise keep it noindexed, these kind of things.


Because on the one hand, the links


can have an effect there, that our algorithms might


look at this and say, if we can isolate those profiles,


then we can just ignore those links.


If we can't isolate the profiles, which


is often the case, then maybe we'll


be ignoring all of the links from the forum.


And if this is on a subdomain, then it


might be that our algorithms are not


able to completely understand the relationship


between the subdomain and the main domain,


and they ignore all of the links across the whole domain.


So that's something where I try to clean that up


as much as possible.


It's probably something where you


don't see an urgent or critical change if you make that cleanup,


but it would have kind of a longer term effect.


If we can really understand this is good content,


and this is what you want to have published, and it's tied


to your other website, which is also really good content,


then that helps us a lot more.


Versus if we understand, well, this website is OK,


and this one is filled with spam,


and it's like they're connected, so should they kind of be


forwarding signals back and forth,


or should they be completely separated from our side?


It's hard to say.


OK, but so just to confirm, so you're saying there is a risk


that the main site's links could be seen as spammy as well


because of the sort of a lot of spam on the subdomain?


Yeah, it's not so much that we would see them as spammy,


but our algorithms could learn to ignore those links.


And essentially, that's something


that automatically happens.


We see a lot of user-generated links on a site,


and we think, well, probably the webmaster


isn't aware of what's actually happening here.


We'll just ignore these to kind of be on the safe side,


and that might end up with us ignoring


the other links on your site as well, which is probably not


what you want.


Right, yeah.


OK, and then the other thing is a lot of these profiles,


I notice that there are amongst our most backlinked pages,


so they're getting like hundreds of thousands


of on top of hundreds of thousands of backlinks


from very low quality, more spammy type of sites


from the people who put the links in the user profiles


clearly buying the links or something.


So is that something to be worried about?


Should I disavow those links?


Should I just leave them?


I don't think you really need to do anything there.


If you noindex those profile pages in the end,


then that all kind of disappears anyway.


But that's a really popular tactic, and a lot of times


that's just completely automated,


that people will drop links here and they


see they're not nofollowed, therefore they'll


start building links to those profile pages.


And a lot of times that's just some scripts


that keep running forever.


So it's not, I wouldn't say it's something


that you need to urgently worry about,


because we see that all the time as well,


and we can usually deal with that fairly well.


AUDIENCE 1 OK.


So adding nofollow and noindex to those pages,


I wouldn't then need to disavow the backlinks themselves?


OK.


And they will, if I noindex them,


those backlinks should just disappear on their own


over time, or will they always be there?


JOHN MUELLER I imagine they will remain for a while,


even after they drop out of the index.


But essentially, they wouldn't have any effect there,


especially if the pages are nofollowed,


then they essentially stay there and they don't get forward


to the rest of the site.


And it's also something where I don't think you


would be seeing any positive effect from those backlinks.


So it's not that you have to worry about causing a problem


by cleaning up the spam.


AUDIENCE 1 OK.


Thank you.


But John, I just-


JOHN MUELLER Sounds like a lot of work.


Yeah.


Skuruk?


SKURUK CHANDELAKOTA John, follow up to that,


because you also mentioned that there are some low quality


sites that are good.


I don't know.


People have this whole DA thing and this thing.


There are sites, low quality ones,


that you were mentioning in a Twitter feed that are OK,


right?


Like startups, for instance.


JOHN MUELLER Oh, OK.


Oh, I see what you mean.


So if it's just random sites linking to your site,


that's usually less of a problem.


So just because it's a site that is less known


doesn't necessarily mean that it's a problematic site.


But in the case of these kind of profile links,


that's something where these automated tools essentially


build link networks across all of these user generated sites


and try to promote their stuff that way.


And that's something where I'd say it's not


like low quality links.


It's just pure spam that we can essentially ignore.


But in her case, if she wants to really clean it up,


she can build an AI tool and then kind of filter out


the explicit words or give away badges maybe to users


that are making it more interesting.


I think it's possible to do a lot of things,


but probably just taking a really rough approach


and saying, using something really simple,


like has this user contributed multiple times


to the forum over the course of maybe a couple of months,


that automatically catches all of those really basic spam


bots.


So that's something where I don't


think you need to do anything really fancy, magical.


It's something that's probably fairly easy to implement.


So moving forward, disavowing pretty much, that's it.


There's no need, because your algorithm just


is very good at it.


I think for these kind of things,


I definitely wouldn't worry about disavow.


Because these are all similarly kind of affected user generated


content sites.


And that's something we've seen since, I don't know,


before I joined Google.


Those bots have been around.


Those scripts have been around, dropping links in forums


and profile pages.


We have a lot of practice with that.


But it's something where we can try


to get it as much as possible.


But if you can take care of it by cleaning it up on your side


and preventing it in the first place,


that's always a much better solution.


So John, follow up on the backlink quality things.


We know that if there's a page that's


high authority, then how about a backlink to link that page?


And that link to my website's pages,


they will pass link juice and page authority.


So my question here is that you know


that how page link work is largely


based on what those source pages backlink,


that passing link juice to me.


But in the situation that, let's say


that there is a page, let's say, the other website,


and they have very great content, and they rank.


For example, they talk about breast cancer


and write very good content about that.


They have zero backlink.


And they rank very well, perform very well.


And that page linked to my article about breast cancers


too.


So it's very semantically related.


And they rank very well, perform very well,


but they don't have any backlink.


Would that link benefit my page?


I think if people are linking naturally to your site,


then I wouldn't worry about if they benefit your page or not.


If people are recommending your site as a good resource,


that's always a good thing.


So I wouldn't worry too much about how much value


I'm getting out of this random link that someone has added,


because you can't really control that yourself anyway.


Yeah, I understand what you're saying.


What I want to actually ask about this question


is that we know that backlink is highly concentrated


on the source pages backlink.


But do source pages content also participate in the algorithm


of the backlink quality?


I don't quite follow.


What do you mean?


So we know that backlink is available when the source


page have backlink, right?


We all know that.


But is the source page quality also payroll here?


I think that always plays a little bit of a role.


I think it is very easy to try to isolate links and just


focus on page rank and things like that.


But page rank is a little bit more


of a problem, but page rank is just one really small part


of the bigger Google algorithm.


And when we see recommendations from other websites,


we try to understand what that recommendation means.


How is that website interacting with the rest of the web?


What are the anchor texts involved?


What is the text around those links?


All of that plays a little bit of a role


with regards to understanding how this page should


be treated.


So it's something where it's easy to go in and say,


well, this link counts so much page rank,


and that's what I want.


But there is always just so much more than just pure page rank


out there.


I see.


Thank you so much.


Sure.


OK.


Let me run through some of the submitted questions


so that we don't lose track of them completely.


It's totally awesome to see so many active people here


in the Hangout, though.


Let's see.


Is there any impact on COVID-19 on the visibility


in event schema rich results?


We have an event discovery platform.


We've been getting consistent visibility


for our events and rich results for many years.


In March, it suddenly went to near zero.


We were not able to correlate this


with any Google public announcements,


tried to post on Webmaster Forum, but that hasn't helped.


So I'm not 100% sure if we made any changes with regards


to events, but I have heard something similar


from other folks as well.


Hi, John.


I'm here on behalf of the retreat partner, MVJ.


Oh, OK.


OK.


How are you?


Your question.


Awesome.


So I'm not 100% sure if anything particular happened there,


but I have heard something similar from other folks.


We have implemented online attending mode changes


in our rich, I mean, schemas and all.


But I don't think there's an effect broadly like this.


We consistently got one left for one point,


I mean, more than one left with your party through event rich


results.


So my question is, this happened suddenly.


Is there any reason or something else?


My feeling is we shifted essentially most events


over to kind of the online events,


and that's something that we started doing a little bit


more.


But I don't know what the general plans are here


or if this is something that might


be different from region to region.


It's really hard to say.


I would try for open event schema rich results


and type my brand name, all events.


So still, my events are not showing there.


So is there any blocking from your side?


I don't know if we have anything specific kind of holding back


events at the moment.


My feeling is that it's something


that we're essentially trying to do organically now,


but I don't know if there's anything specific happening


there.


I haven't heard from other people who run events


with regards to event markup recently about this,


so it's hard to say.


But I think in the Webmaster Forum,


you also included your site's URL.


Is that correct?


Yes, and my second question is, I'll ask in the Webmaster


Forum.


So some SEO experts suggest me what


works of events are not actually events.


It's business promotion.


So is this correct or not?


What's up?


Workshop.


I don't know, depending on how you frame it.


I do see sometimes that people frame things


as events that are not actually events.


If it's something, for instance, like an online course


that you have or a site that is currently taking place,


then that's something we wouldn't see as an event.


This type of workshop, we already


mark as a block through robots and no index, no follow.


Still, I have a question if there is any genuine workshop.


So still, this workshop will count as a promotion


or something like that?


If it's blocked by robots text or no index,


we wouldn't index it.


So I would be happy to.


No, no, no.


My question is low quality workshop


are no index by our side.


But quality works of our content promotions or not?


I think it depends on how you frame the workshop.


I don't think, like, I wouldn't think that.


Every, yeah, because every competitor


are using this workshop event right 10 times, everyone.


Yeah.


So I would not focus on what the competitors are doing.


And just because, especially if you


know that this is something that you shouldn't be doing, then


I wouldn't just copy what the competitors are doing


because it's actually not really going to help


your website in the long run.


No.


I just ask you.


Everybody is doing workshop and all this kind of stuff.


That's right.


OK.


Cool.


I think for these kind of questions,


where we are not sure if this is the right markup for that,


then that's something I would definitely post in the Webmaster


Health Forum because the folks there


have seen a lot of kind of edge cases


where they realize this is maybe problematic, maybe not


problematic.


So what's your suggestion?


What can I do for get my traffic back?


I think get your traffic back seems


like a different question than the kind of rich results


in the search.


If you're talking about getting traffic or rankings back,


then that feels like something where


you'd need to work on the website overall rather


than just focusing on the rich results types.


OK.


Cool.


Thank you so much.


Sure.


Yeah.


We added the no sitelink search box tag on our home page


for over two months, but we still


see the sitelink search box in the search results.


What's up with that?


I don't know.


If you can send me the URL, either dropping it


as a comment in the YouTube comments there


or send me a note maybe on Twitter,


I'm happy to take a look at that with the team.


Usually the sitelink search box settings


do take a little bit longer to be updated,


but over two months seems a little bit long.


We're planning to launch a microsite.


Which do you prefer, subdomain or subdirectory?


If you say subdomain, should I have


to create a separate sitemap, or can I use the same sitemap


of the main domain?


And finally, what are some things


to be considered when creating a microsite?


So from our point of view, you can


use either subdomain or subdirectory.


I realize there is a lot of contention in the SEO sphere


about subdirectories and subdomains,


but essentially either one of those would work from our side.


I think in practice, I would try to use a subdirectory


for this kind of thing, because it


sounds like you're trying to create a new view


of your existing content.


It's not that you're trying to create something completely


separate, but essentially it's like a landing page or maybe


a handful of landing pages that are connected


for a specific product that you're already selling


or a service that you're providing on your main domain


already.


Then I would just try to tie that in with your main website.


The advantages that you have there


is that from a technical point of view,


everything is a lot easier.


You can use your CMS and just create


a bunch of subdirectories and pages, and you're done.


Whereas if you create a subdomain,


then you suddenly have a separate host name


that you have to maintain, or you


have to watch out for things like redirects.


You have to verify it separately in Search Console.


If you're not doing domain verification,


you have to watch out for sitemap files.


All of these extra hassles that are involved with a subdomain,


if you're essentially creating something that's essentially


part of your main domain.


If this is something that's completely


separate from your main domain, then maybe a subdomain


is a good approach, maybe even a separate domain


is a good approach.


Maybe still a subdirectory is also fine.


But if the way you frame it here as a microsite for something


that probably you're already doing in some way,


I would definitely go for a subdirectory


and keep it as easy as possible, make it easy for you


to maintain, make it easy for you to migrate,


should you need to make changes over time.


That's kind of what I would focus on there.


SPEAKER 1


So if I'm doing the same thing, I'm just publishing more articles, but it's related, but it's not quite the same thing.


And I'm thinking maybe there would be different audiences for the new thing


than for the existing content.


Like, is that kind of where I should do a subdomain instead


of a subdirectory?


Yeah, I think the situation that you mentioned


in the beginning where you had a forum and kind


of the main website, I think that's


a perfect situation for something like a subdomain.


Because those are clearly kind of separate entities


or separate items that you're kind of maintaining,


the people going to the forum might not be the ones that


go to your main site.


And similarly, the ones going to your main site


might not be the ones that would go to your forum as well.


So that's kind of, I think, an optimal situation


for something like a subdomain.


Also, from a technical point of view,


it's a lot easier to maintain because they're


completely separate back ends involved, all of that.


If you're just publishing content, I think for the most part,


I would just keep it on the main domain.


If it's just informational content,


I try to keep it as simple as possible.


If you have things like, I don't know,


consumer-facing side of an e-commerce site and then


a dealer login, maybe that dealer login section


would be a separate subdomain.


But even there, sometimes from a content point of view,


it makes sense to keep it all on one side.


But yeah.


So I think if it's really just about different types


of content and not different functionality,


I'd try to keep it together on one side.


AUDIENCE 1 OK.


Even if I have sports and then, I don't know, politics,


it would be like it would still be OK to have one site.


OK.


JOHN MUELLER I think that still makes sense.


Because then you can build up that combined site overall,


over time.


And that gains value as a bigger group.


Whereas if you split things up into subdomains,


then you have these small islands


that are somewhat connected but more loosely connected


rather than tightly connected to your main site.