then I would definitely make sure


English Google SEO office-hours from December 4, 2020

that from a URL pattern point of view,


it's clear that these belong together.


So if you're specifically worried about search pages,


for example, then putting those in a folder with slash search


makes it a little bit easier for us


to understand all of these search pages belong together,


all of these product pages belong together,


all of these blog posts belong together.


We might be able to treat them individually


when it comes to core web vitals.


The other thing to keep in mind is


we don't have a ton of aggregated data


for every website.


It might be that for some sites, we just have few data points.


So we just have kind of for the website overall information


on the core web vitals.


And in that case, even if you use URL structures


to split things up cleanly, we might not


be able to use that grouping because we just


don't have enough data for those individual groups.


So that's something where I suspect over time, probably


we'll be able to have a little bit more information,


but it'll still be something that is not 100% such


that you can just say, oh, ignore this page


and do count that page kind of thing on a website.


Thank you.


You see something similar.


It's totally unrelated to this, but more related to grouping


when it comes to adult content, where if we can clearly


understand the adult content belongs


to this part of a website, then we can use SafeSearch


and say, well, the subdirectory or the subdomain


must be filtered by SafeSearch.


Whereas if we can't tell that that belongs in just one


part of the site, then we might say, well,


the whole website needs to be filtered with regards


to SafeSearch.


So that's also something where sometimes we


have more data points.


We can do that clearer.


Sometimes we just don't have enough data points


and we can't kind of do it that fine-grained.


OK.


All right.


I think we're kind of at time.


Maybe if there's one last question from anyone,


happy to take that.


Otherwise, we'll call it a week.


SPEAKER 2


Some SEO specialists think that we


should use white-haired techniques for white niches


if you are talking adult content or some specific languages,


including Russian language.


It's better to use black-haired techniques.


Can you reply to this and how we can create links or provide


some link building if you start from scratch,


have no authority, trust, and you want to get some links


to earn them, but with adult content, it's tough?


And do you have some suggestions what to do?


I mean, I can't suggest that you should use black-haired


techniques.


So from that point of view, I can really


only point at our guidelines with regards


to what we do recommend.


So I understand that some people might say, oh, well,


it's like everyone else in my niche is doing it the wrong way.


Therefore, I also need to do it that way.


And I don't know.


It might be that they're individual special niches where


our systems just aren't picking up


the abusive or problematic techniques well enough.


But I mean, from my point of view,


if you want to look at the long run


and not just focus on something that


might work for a couple of weeks or a couple of months,


then I would tend to focus more on that


what we have documented.


But I mean, everyone tries out different things.


And sometimes, the best advice doesn't work for you.


So I don't know.


I can't physically hold you back from doing kind of practice.


SPEAKER 2


I just want to know your level.


There's a lot of talk on online forums in general.


And it's hard to understand who really knows


what they're talking about.


It's always worth taking that with a grain of salt.


OK.


Thank you.


Dwayne, I think you just raised your hand as well.


Hi, John.


Yes.


So I have a situation where I've seen AMP particles being served


on desktop, even though we have the proper canonical setup


and we don't have self-referring AMP canonicals.


Is there something that we should worry about there?


I don't know.


Like, if you just occasionally see that,


my guess is it's more a matter of kind of a skew


from crawling and indexing, that we maybe


picked up the AMP version first and we didn't pick up


the desktop version yet.


So we might show the AMP version temporarily in the search


results as well.


But if you see that regularly, especially


for the same URLs for the long run,


then that feels like something where either we


can't understand that connection properly


or there is something going wrong on our side.


So what I might do there is maybe


post in the search help forum or the webmaster help forum


and include some of the details that you have there,


especially if it's something that you see happening


regularly and it's always the same URLs,


then that's something where the folks there


can take a look with their tools and kind


of their understanding of how things work


and otherwise escalate that to Googlers if needed.


Thank you.


All right.


So let's take a break here.


It's been great having you all here.


I'm glad this time kind of worked out.


I guess I'll set these up a little bit more regularly


on Fridays as well to try to cover that US time zone,


because it feels like during the week when I usually


have these planned on Tuesdays, there's


always so much other things happening


trying to get my time.


So maybe on Friday it will be a little bit easier.


Thank you all for joining here.


I hope you all have a great weekend.


And stay safe and hopefully see you


in one of the future Hangouts.


Bye-bye.


Bye, everyone.


Thank you.


All right, John.


English Google SEO office-hours from November 10, 2020

All right, welcome, everyone, to today's Google SEO Office


Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate at Google in Switzerland.


And whoa, that's my telephone.


Just a second.


This is awkward.


That is so funny.


You just thought.


Spot on.


Very well done.


I don't have those problems.


Oh, man.


Yeah.


It's like nobody calls me except now.


Maybe that was me.


OK, well, part of what we do are these Office Hour Hangouts


where people can jump in and ask their questions on Google


Meet, not by telephone, about their website and Google


Search.


So a bunch of things were already submitted ahead


of time.


I can run through some of those.


For some reason, it looks like people


aren't jumping into the Hangout at the moment.


That might be, I don't know, because they're all busy


or it might be something on Google's side.


But we'll kind of get started anyway.


Maybe more people will jump in later on.


Do any of you want to get started


with your first question?


No.


Come on, Barry.


BARRY SCHWARTZMAN-LOUIS, JR. What's up with the request


indexing thing?


What's with the survey?


Are you taking it away from us?


Are you taking goodies away again?


I'm not planning on taking away anything.


I think this is one of those features where


the various teams at Google really kind of love the data


that they're collecting there and love


to get these things into the index as quickly as possible.


But unfortunately, that sometimes also attracts


attention from people who are using it to try


to get spammy stuff indexed.


So one of the things that we've been thinking about


is kind of is there something that we


could do to make sure that the functionality that people need


or why they kind of use this tool is covered automatically


so that people don't need to do anything manual.


And that's something I kind of notice on Twitter


where there are lots of people who


are coming with reasonable reasons to use this tool.


And I feel like we should just be


able to handle all of that automatically so that people


don't need to do things manually.


And there are no plans to kind of disable the tool


or kind of take that away or anything like that.


But at the same time, if we can handle more of these requests


automatically, then it just saves everyone more time


and is a little bit more efficient.


So that's kind of the direction I was going there


to figure out what do we need to be doing differently so


that you don't need to use that manual tool unless there's


really an exceptional use case there.


And a lot of the things I saw that


were submitted in the forum were really kind of useful,


where it's things like, oh, if I don't do anything manual,


then it takes two weeks to get a new page index.


And from my point of view, that seems


like something that shouldn't be taking so long from our side.


So we should really kind of take some of these examples


and work to kind of improve our system, at least


from my point of view.


That was kind of the background there.


And it's not related to any of the indexing issues


that we had in the past.


It's really just people are kind of working


on this trying to figure out what the right approach is


here.


Thank you.


Next.


OK.


I will just kind of pop through some of the questions


that were submitted.


We'll see if more people can jump in as well.


Let me double check that the link is actually all posted.


Yeah, I don't know.


We'll see.


What effect does redirecting WordPress attachment pages


to media files as recommended in the Yoast plugin


have on the chance of ranking in Google Images and website


SEO in general?


That's an interesting question.


I don't know exactly what the Yoast plugin recommends


or what it does specifically there.


From my information in general, you


would have the images embedded in the individual blog


post or individual pages of your website.


And you would also have the same image


on kind of these attachment pages.


And usually, when it comes to image search,


we would be indexing the kind of the landing page,


your blog post, and the images that are linked there.


So the attachment pages are kind of something


that we probably don't need to pick up, essentially.


So my guess is probably redirecting


from your WordPress attachment pages to a media file.


Probably that doesn't change much


because we're probably not indexing or visibly showing


those attachment pages anyway.


So you're kind of redirecting the users more


than you're redirecting search engines.


But I don't know the details of what the plugin is doing there


or how WordPress, by default, handles these kind


of attachment pages.


Various country-specific sections of our website


lose visibility periodically.


Since the end of October, the amount of the index pages


has increased dramatically by tens of thousands.


The pages that take their place in the search results


are historic.


They've had and still have 301 redirects for many months.


Search Console indicates that Google is choosing


the old pages as canonical.


Thousands of pages are now not found on any URL,


not on the new or the old URL.


The sites on the same domain sharing


the language with affected sites start to rank instead.


For example, in google.de, people


see many of our Austrian pages instead of the German pages.


The pages are mapped correctly with hreflang tags and XML site


maps.


So it kind of goes on with some more details.


I think, specifically, I would need to have some sample URLs


to know for sure what is kind of happening there.


But kind of taking a step back, when


you have redirects from one page to another,


from our point of view, what happens there is we


take those two URLs, the old URL and the new URL,


and put them into a shared cluster


that we then use for canonicalization.


So we essentially say, these two URLs lead to the same content.


Which of these should we be showing?


And we use redirects to try to figure out which of these


we should be showing, but we also use a lot of other factors,


things like internal links within your website,


external links, site map files, other annotations


that you have on these pages.


All of that kind of comes together.


And with all of those extra pieces of information,


we then say, OK, for each of these pages that


are in this cluster of pages that essentially lead


to the same content, which of these is the best one to show?


And sometimes that can be the redirect source.


Sometimes that can be the redirect target,


depending on essentially what the bigger picture says.


So just that things shift from the redirect target


to the redirect source at some point,


even if those redirects have been in place for a while,


that's not necessarily broken from our point of view.


So that's not something that we would say is unusual or anything


that you necessarily need to fix.


Because purely from a ranking point of view,


nothing changes there.


It's really just the URL that is shown in search.


There's nothing with regards to different ranking there.


It's purely just the URL.


Of course, the part that's also associated with this


is in Search Console, we show the data by canonical URL.


So you will also see that shift in Search Console.


And it makes tracking a little bit confusing sometimes.


So I agree that can be annoying.


One of the things that I would recommend


doing in a case like this, especially if you're


seeing this change happen on a large scale across your website


is to double check all of the other factors that are involved


with canonicalization.


So in particular, I would look at things


like internal links, sitemap file, other annotations


that you have on these pages with regards to hreflang,


or any kind of cross-link that you have there,


and make sure that they're all aligned with the URL


that you now want to have indexed.


And the more you can make all of those factors align,


the more likely we'll choose the URL that kind of comes out


on top after canonicalization.


So from our side, again, it's not


a sign that we're de-indexing pages


or that anything is broken.


It's just we're picking the other URL


to show instead of this one.


And we're showing it in the same place.


And the same can happen with international content,


especially if the content is in the same language.


Then we might say, well, this content


is primarily the same content.


One of these pages is for Germany.


One of them is for Austria.


It's essentially the same full content there.


And in a case like that, we will perhaps, not always,


we will perhaps choose one of these pages as a canonical


because we say they're essentially the same.


They deserve to be in a canonical kind of cluster.


And there, again, we'll take the different kind of factors


into account who are picking the canonical URL.


And if you have hreflang additionally on these pages,


we will pick one of these as the canonical URL.


But we'll still swap out the URL that we


show in the search results, depending


on the user's location.


So that makes it a bit confusing because if you


look in Search Console, everything


is focused on the canonical URL.


And you don't necessarily see that we're actually


showing the other URL in the search results for users


from that location.


So my guess, again, I don't know because I


don't know which site this is.


My guess is when you're seeing this change from Germany


to Austria, for example, for your sites,


then probably that's what's happening.


And if you explicitly search in Google Germany


or with the settings for content for Germany,


I think that's with the parameter GL equals


DE in the query on top, then you should


see your pages essentially showing in the search results.


And if you hover over the link, you


should see the appropriate localized version.


So that's, from our point of view,


that's kind of working as expected.


It's not something we would consider a bug.


But it is confusing.


And we've been going back and forth


with the team that works on hreflang for a while


now to see if we can, I don't know, change that somehow.


But I don't see that changing in the short term.


Essentially, from our point of view,


it's working as intended that we fold these pages together


for a canonical cluster if they're essentially


the same content.


If they're not the same content, then we would kind of track


them separately again.


And it's working as intended that we would use hreflang


to pick the right URL to show.


And it's also working as intended


that in Search Console, you see the reports


based on the canonical.


And all of these things add up.


And they kind of make it a bit confusing to track.


Let's see.


With Burt coming out, will the importance


of the exact match keyword decrease?


So I think Burt has been working in various ways for quite


some time.


So Burt is essentially a machine learning setup,


I believe, for understanding essentially the content


a little bit better.


So the queries that people type in,


understanding those better, and understanding your page's


content a bit better.


And with all of these kind of machine learning approaches,


we try to figure out what these pages are actually about,


what the query is actually looking for.


And we try to match that a little bit better.


And from my point of view, all of these changes


that have been happening over the years,


they do lead in the direction that you


don't have to have the exact keywords on your pages anymore.


And this is something that I think


SEOs have seen kind of maybe subconsciously over the years


as well, where they realize, oh, you


don't need to have singular and plural versions on your page.


You don't need to have all of the common misspellings


on your page.


All of those things are less critical on your pages


as long as you really match what the user is actually


looking for.


So with that in mind, you could say


that it's kind of going in the direction of decreasing


the importance of the exact matches for your keywords


in your content.


But it's not that that is the goal of these algorithms.


But rather, our goal is to understand


the big, vast amount of content out there a little bit better


so that we can show the right versions to users


when they ask.


I have a question about the FAQ page schema.


I read the guidelines, and it says, text sent through schema


markup and visible text should be the same.


However, what I'm not sure about is HTML.


For example, would I be allowed to have affiliate links


in the text that is visible on the page


if I remove the A tags from the JSON data


so that the affiliate links don't show up


in the search results?


The text would be the same as per the guidelines,


but the HTML would be slightly different.


That would be perfectly fine.


So that's something where, from our point of view,


the important part is really that the text on the page


is the same.


I also double checked the guidelines for FAQ page markup


in general.


And I saw that you could even leave the links in the answers


themselves.


And I've seen some sites do that,


where if you fold out the question to get the answer,


you have a link directly in the search results.


And depending on your site, maybe that's


something that you're actually keen on.


Maybe that's something that you don't care about.


But whether or not you link the answer in exactly the same way


as you have it on the page itself,


I think that's ultimately up to you.


The important part is really, from our side,


that the text is the same.


And in particular, the goal behind this


is we want to make sure that when a user clicks on a search


result, that they're not surprised by the content there,


that they really kind of know what is coming, what to expect.


If you were starting a new website today,


what technology would you use that's best for crawling,


indexing, and ranking?


What technology?


Probably HTML.


I don't know.


I mean, what do you make websites out of,


and where do you start counting where the technology comes in?


I think that's really hard to say.


I think if I were starting out with a new website


and wanted to create something new,


I would try some new technologies out


and see how they work.


It also kind of depends on what kind of website it would be.


If it's something that needs to be interactive,


then obviously you'd want to look into some of the more


modern formats, maybe even a JavaScript-based framework.


If you need something to just display content,


if you wanted to write the code yourself,


maybe using AMP would be an option there


to make really fast pages.


If you just want to get on with writing content,


you don't have time to actually figure out


all of the technical details.


Probably using a CMS, something like WordPress,


is a good approach.


And some of these systems you can combine as well.


I know there are plugins for WordPress that will make


AMP pages out of your site.


So you could have both of these at the same time.


I don't know so much how you would combine WordPress


and JavaScript sites, but I'm sure there


are plugins for that too.


But I think kind of the essence of the answer


is there are many different ways to make websites nowadays.


And luckily, most of these technologies,


they just work well in search by default.


So finding a technology that works well for you,


that works well for the people that you're working together


with, who can help you to get things set up,


who can help you solve kind of the hurdles that


come along the way with any kind of new website or business


that you roll out, I think that's


kind of what you should be watching out for.


When setting up a Data Studio report using the recommended


Google template, there's a huge discrepancy


between metrics reflected in Search Console and the Data


Studio report.


Impressions, clicks, et cetera, why is that,


and what is the solution?


I have absolutely no idea.


Sorry.


So this is something where I guess internally I


defer to Daniel, who's worked on a lot of the analytics and Data


Studio side, who might know a little bit more on this.


But another approach would be just


to check out in the Webmaster Help Forum


and see what folks there are saying.


Because the Data Studio reporting for Search Console


data is something that a lot of people do.


So I'm pretty sure there are people


who can help you to kind of get that figured out too.


I inherited a website client that


has a bit of jumbled URL naming structure.


About half the pages are listed as domain name.com


slash top level service slash specific page.


And another half are just labeled with slash specific


page.


These pages are mixed so that one top level page has


a mix of both naming structures.


Does this confuse Googlebot when it's crawling the site?


Should the naming be consistent throughout?


If I need to change the naming, I would set up 301 redirects.


I'm always reluctant to rename URLs.


But of course, if I thought my client could get more traffic,


then maybe you do that.


So from our point of view, both of these structures work.


It's not that you need to have a consistent structure


within your website.


But essentially, we need to have consistent stable URLs


for your content.


And if you find those stable URLs for your content,


if they're not changing all the time,


if you don't have the content on multiple URLs,


the same pieces of content, then essentially we


can crawl and index that site model.


So from a practical point of view, just for SEO reasons,


you don't need to make any changes here.


My suggestion, however, would be to try


to get this cleaned up a little bit,


primarily so that you can track things better.


So in Search Console, you can look at things


on a subdirectory level.


In Analytics, you can also kind of drill down


into individual subdirectories.


And if you have a clearer structure on your website,


then it's a little bit easier to figure out, OK,


is this a product page, or a category page, or a blog post,


or a news article, or what is it specifically?


And that's kind of the direction I would head there.


It's not so much that for SEO you will have an advantage,


but you might have an advantage in the long run


because you're able to better understand how


your website is standing in search


and how people are interacting with it.


I have two news sites.


I post the same content on each one,


but only one of the two appears on top stories.


Why?


I don't know why.


But at the same time, if you're posting the same content


on both of these sites, why should both of them


appear in top stories?


It seems like we should pick one of these and show it there


and not both of them.


But I don't know what the specifics are for top stories


ranking and why and when we would show individual ones


there.


Sometimes posting the same content to two individual sites


doesn't mean that you're doing exactly the same thing,


but rather maybe one site is really


seen as being critical and important,


and the other is something completely new


that you started off with.


So just because you're posting the same content


to both of these sites individually


doesn't mean that that piece of content


will be equivalent on both of those locations.


So that's kind of another thing to keep in mind,


in that when it comes to search, we don't just


look at one individual piece of content or kind


of the text on that page.


We look at a lot of different factors.


I have a website with recipes and food FAQ.


I'm making a text that I'm going to post


on the FAQ I'm making the text short because my user is


like short reading.


How to rank better with short and precise text


instead of long text recipes where


the ingredients and the how to make list


is almost impossible to find in all of the text.


I think that's a fantastic idea.


Sometimes it does get pretty tedious


when it comes to recipe sites where


trying to find the detailed information


can be pretty hard.


So from my point of view, I would definitely


go in that direction.


Essentially, when it comes to ranking,


we don't count the number of words on a page.


So it's not the case that you need


to fill your page with a long essay of thousands of words


just so that we understand, oh, this is an apple pie recipe.


Essentially, we look at a variety of different factors


for understanding the content on a page.


You can use things like structured data


to help us understand that automatically as well.


And with that, you can also make really short pages


that rank really well in the search results.


So that's something where there's


no kind of trick to ranking.


And certainly, it's not the case that you


need to fill your pages with tons of text


that nobody is really interested in.


I'm not quite sure how this initially


started with the recipe sites having a lot of text there.


I suspect at some point it has become kind of self-sustaining


in that people see these sites sometimes ranking well


in search and saying, oh, well, if this other site is doing


this kind of big background story on the history of apple


pie, then I also need to add a big background story


for my apple pie recipe.


And probably that's not the case.


What are the best Google Analytics metrics


for tracking to track for deciding using A-B testing,


what to place on the top of the website's page?


I have photography websites in mind,


so comparing things like slide shows, grids of images,


single images with text, et cetera.


I really don't know how you would best compare this


with Google Analytics.


I would ask someone from the Google Analytics team


or check in with their help forum


to try to find out a little bit more.


Kind of awkward that there's not so many people joining in.


I hope there's nothing blocking from the meat side.


But I guess we'll find out when I check Twitter afterwards.


When you add a YouTube link to the YouTube channel,


you really only see it not even when you refresh,


but you have to sort by most recent summary.


So I will just drop it on top of the description.


We'll see what happens.


OK.


Hope that doesn't mess things up.


More worry.


Does Googlebot support AVIF images, which are


significantly better than WebP?


I know that it's supposed to be evergreen bot, which


means it should support them theoretically, but just asking.


Also, when will you change your Google Plus link


on your Twitter profile?


Oh, man.


My Google Plus link, nobody's going to take that away.


Who knows?


At some point, if we wait long enough,


maybe it'll come back.


And anyway, what would I change it to?


My Twitter profile?


I think that would be awkward.


Anyway, back to the more important question of images.


I double-checked our public documentation for image search,


and we don't have AVIF images listed there at the moment.


So I don't know if we would support that.


My feeling is we wouldn't support that at the moment


for image search.


With regards to Googlebot and the evergreen side


of Googlebot, that's slightly different there.


So in particular, when it comes to rendering a page,


then we would essentially have Googlebot and the evergreen


setup, which probably would support AVIF.


However, that's just with regards


to rendering the page as we would use it for web search.


So for the textual part of search.


So essentially, we'd be able to load the images,


but we wouldn't use the images because it's for web search,


which is not very helpful in this particular case.


My general feeling with a lot of these newer image formats,


what I see is that as we see that the usage picks up


on the web and the number of people


that ask about these things for images,


the more we would try to find ways to implement that


for image search as well.


So my guess is over time, we'll probably support these.


And especially as browser support grows


for these different formats.


The thing I would watch out for with all


of these modern formats is that not all browsers support


the modern formats yet.


And with that, you always have to have that backup set up


anyway, where you have, I think, the picture


element in your HTML with the different image


URLs listed there, which you would use for responsive


images, but you can also use for different image formats.


So essentially, you'd always have that backup there anyway.


So if Google doesn't index your AVIF version,


then we'd index the JPEG or the WebP version


or whatever you have on your site.


So probably for image search is not critical at the moment.


I'm guessing at some point, we'll


make sure to have that supported too.


When Google announced page-based indexing,


the example it provided in the announcement


showed a featured snippet result.


Do you know if both featured snippets and the core results


in the 10 blue links will benefit


from passage-based indexing, or will it just


result in better answers for featured snippets?


We haven't heard much on that front.


I honestly don't know.


So my kind of taking a step back and just guessing


at this with my internal information,


usually what happens with these things


is we will roll them out in one particular place,


experiment a bit to find out how to best implement these,


how they best work, and then find ways to roll that out


a little bit more broadly.


So it might be that we start showing


these in the featured snippets first, because I don't know,


we showed that example, or maybe that's the clearest way


we can check this.


And then at some point, we start showing them


more in the normal search results as well.


The other thing to keep in mind is


that the name is a little bit confusing.


We called it, I think, page-based indexing.


There is really more about ranking the existing pages.


It's not that we would index something different.


It's just that we would kind of understand


these pages, these passages a little bit better,


and be able to pull those out and show them


a little bit better in the search results,


and generally be able to rank those pages a little bit


better.


So kind of a few things coming together there.


But again, kind of like with all of these newer changes


in search, usually we try them in a small scale,


and then roll them out a little bit larger over time.


Is it mandatory to have all subfolders working?


For example, example.com slash play slash movie


exists and returns a 200, but example.com slash play


doesn't exist and returns 404.


Perfectly fine.


We use URLs primarily to understand the individual


pieces of content.


It's not the case that we would try to make up URLs


and see what happens there, and kind of say, oh,


if these folders don't exist, then those pages


should be demoted in search.


We essentially see those pages as individual,


or those URLs as identifiers for those individual pages.


And if we find a link pointing there,


we will crawl it and try to index it.


If we find a link to the higher levels subdirectory


and it returns 404, then that URL is just not indexed.


It's not that everything below that URL is not indexed.


It's just that particular URL is not indexed.


So it's perfectly fine not to have all subdirectories return


content by default.


One of the things I would watch out for here,


though, is if you have a plugin that creates the breadcrumb


markup for your pages, then make sure it doesn't just blindly


link to your subdirectory level parts of your website


without those pages actually existing.


Because if you want breadcrumb markup


to appear in your search results,


we need to know that those breadcrumbs actually


lead somewhere.


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


My feeling is most plugins that implement breadcrumb markup


would just focus on the categories


that you have defined in your CMS anyway.


So probably that would just work.


A category or product page is usually


divided into components like a product title, description,


offers, reviews, similar products, et cetera.


Should we make the headings of all components as H2,


or can we make H2, H3 freely according


to the importance of the components and keywords?


Can this make it hard for Google to understand your page?


Assuming there is an H3, there must be a parent H2.


So Google is not picky and doesn't


expect a completely clear heading sub kind of structure


within your website.


So sometimes you'll have an H3 and not an H2.


Sometimes you'll have two H1s on a page.


All of these things, they just happen on the web,


and we have to deal with that.


And it's not the case that there is any advantage of having


a clearly structured headings on your site.


It's not the case that there's a disadvantage


if you don't have that.


I think it makes sense for accessibility reasons


to have a clearly structured heading set on your page.


But for SEO, it doesn't really matter.


So with that in mind, if you have individual parts


of your site separated and you have clear headings


for those individual parts, then that makes perfect sense.


The thing I would kind of watch out for here


that kind of drew my attention to this question


is your focus or slight focus on keywords here.


And headings are not a place where you just


blindly drop keywords.


They're really a place where you tell us more


about the structure of your pages.


So sometimes that includes keywords.


If those are kind of the higher level elements


that you're talking about on a page,


but you shouldn't just say, oh, this is my list of keywords.


I should map them all to individual headings


so that Google thinks my page is important for these keywords.


So that's kind of the one thing I would watch out for.


When a site is not updated regularly,


Google takes longer to discover new URLs.


Two or three days can be very relevant to be


able to show and discover.


Submitting by new URL in Search Console


is useful for many small sites.


I definitely agree there.


That said, like I mentioned way in the beginning,


I think we should be able to pick these up a little bit


better on our side, too.


So especially if you're a fairly small site


and you're using a CMS, then ideally your site


would be creating and submitting a sitemap file, which in turn


should be able to tell our systems that, oh, we should


check out this new and updated page


that you have on your site so that you don't


necessarily need to go out and submit things manually.


You said duplicate content first gets indexed,


and then the canonical is processed.


In the recent search off the record,


Gary was saying that while rendering,


the system processes the canonical tag


for duplicate content.


Can you please confirm what is the real process?


Will duplicate content get indexed first or not?


I think there are lots of simplifications


that we make when we talk about search, and some of these


are reflected in the aspects of which one of these steps


is the first one that you take.


And essentially, you can assume that both of these


are kind of correct in different situations.


So from that point of view, I don't


think it's really something that you can rely on either way,


where you say, oh, well, my page will always


be indexed like this first, and then it's indexed like this.


Sometimes we can follow a canonical link directly


and just focus on the destination page


and have that indexed immediately.


Sometimes we can't focus on the destination page that quickly,


so we first process kind of the origin page.


So it kind of depends on the individual circumstances


of a site.


Is there any reason that images in image packs,


featured snippets, and knowledge panels


register an impression in Search Console for web search?


Those images first link to Google Images


and not directly to publisher sites.


Per Google's own documentation, only links


leading outside of the search results


should register as an impression.


These images can really throw off


the reporting for many sites and cause a lot of confusion


with site owners.


Yeah, I don't know.


Occasionally, this question comes up.


But I mean, from our point of view,


we would essentially see these links as links to a site,


kind of like how an image search, when you click on


an image to expand it, we would also see that there.


So that's something where I think because of the kind


of intermediate step there where the image is first


shown in a preview and kind of expanded there,


that sometimes throws things off a little bit with regards


to how you would count that.


Because in Search Console, we don't have this notion of,


like, you clicked on it, but you're


looking at a larger preview first,


and then you're clicking to, again,


to go to the site itself.


So maybe that's something that we need to add there


to Search Console.


I don't know.


I guess the other part of the question in general


is, should we be counting these at all in web search,


or should we be essentially dropping all image links that


are shown in web search?


And I don't know.


That feels like a pretty drastic step


if we were to go down that route.


But maybe that's something to discuss with the Search Console


team again.


I see many discussions about people buying expired domains


to take advantage of links associated


with the expired domains.


What they do is build a site on an expired domain,


or they redirect an expired domain to a second domain


that they want to rank.


Does Google reset the backlinks of expired domains


so that they don't have an effect when someone buys them


and builds a site on the expired domain?


Now, I don't know.


These discussions have been around since the beginning,


when domain names started expiring,


and people tried to keep using some


that had some good history and trying to build things there.


I think initially, probably just to keep the name alive,


and then at some point for SEO reasons as well, of course.


And our systems try to understand what to do here.


And for the most part, I think we get this right.


So it's not that there's any one specific factor that we


would look at and say, oh, they're


trying to do something sneaky with those expired domains.


We need to be super cautious.


Sometimes people revive expired domains,


and they really run the old website again.


Sometimes people also pass on a website


from one owner to another.


So domain name changes ownership.


And those are all normal situations,


and it's not the case that Google


should go in there and say, oh, we


need to be extra cautious here.


So finding those situations where, essentially, people


are trying to abuse the system by picking up


expired domains that are totally unrelated to what they've


been working on and hoping to get them to rank well


in search, that's something that's sometimes a bit tricky.


And we have a lot of practice with that.


I don't think we always get it right,


but at least the many cases I've looked into there


seems to be working out OK.


But anyway, this has been around.


I think will continue to be around as long as people


can change ownership and reuse existing domain names.


It's kind of a part of the web.


I think you're done with the questions.


Can I ask one, or are there more questions?


Sure.


Go for it.


All right.


So let's go back to passage indexing


since it didn't launch, and nobody knows


what's really going to happen.


So could we speculate a little bit more about it?


So I think last week or the week before you


said that passage indexing is not really


about a webmaster, SEO, or whatever you want


to call these people today.


It's not about them changing their content,


because generally you want to make


sure your content is structured in a good way.


You want to make sure the page is structured in a nice way.


It's more about Google being able to understand content


on a page that's not structured well.


So it sounds like you say there's


nothing really to optimize for that point,


because Google is getting better with passage indexing


or ranking with the ability to understand


the page that's not so structured well,


and Google being able to say, all right,


this section on this page, even though it doesn't have


a headline or doesn't have a certain content block that we


can understand that this is about X, Y, and Z,


now we can understand that this specific section is


about this topic.


So is that a better way to look at it,


as opposed to SEOs going about saying, hey, now I


need to go ahead and make sure my pages instead of like,


a lot of people have these like hub pages


where they have a topic about, let's say, SEO.


And then SEO talks about AMP and mobile first and yada yada.


So that hub page might have a little subsection


about mobile first indexing and AMP and so forth.


So you might be able to rank that top level


page with passage indexing for AMP, for search on AMP,


as opposed to the deeper level page.


So you can see how SEOs are kind of thinking about this.


Yeah.


I guess two part question is, one is,


are you going to rank that top level page as opposed


to the deeper level page?


I assume that probably would not be the intent of this.


And two, should SEOs really do nothing


based on what we just discussed?


Oh, I mean, SEOs will never do nothing.


They're like always optimizing, right?


And I always, I'm regularly surprised by what people figure


out and where they find ways to kind of do something


legitimate that essentially is not what we expected.


So I'm not worried that SEOs will sit back and just start


doing nothing at some point.


I think they're super creative and super smart people sometimes.


But with regards to kind of focusing on a higher level


page versus focusing on the individual kind of more


detailed pages, I think that's something


that you kind of always need to look into and need to consider,


does it make sense or does it not make that much sense?


It's similar on e-commerce.


When you have a category page and you have a product page,


you could optimize that category page


to kind of be a little bit more focused on the individual


products that you're trying to sell.


That could result in that category page


ranking a little bit better for those products as well.


Is that what you want to achieve,


or do you need people to go to your product page?


That's something where, depending on your goals


and what you want to achieve with your page,


you can kind of tweak things in either direction.


In general, if you have fewer pages


and you make those pages stronger,


I think that's generally a good strategy.


It doesn't mean it's always a good strategy.


It might be that you really need to spin off some things


into separate pages and kind of talk about them in detail


because that's what people expect.


But if you can make fewer pages that are stronger,


then there's kind of less technical infrastructure


needed to maintain those fewer pages.


And if they get the same amount of traffic,


if you get conversions in whatever way


that you want it there, then that's essentially up to you.


Thank you.


And I mean, one way to kind of look at this


or to play with this a little bit is to just do A-B testing


and take some categories where you get enough traffic so


that you can measure differences and kind of build out


those category pages or those higher level pages


a little bit more and see if that changes anything for you.


People end up going to those higher level pages more.


And if they go to those higher level pages more,


are they doing whatever that you want them to do on your website


or have they changed their behavior a little bit?


And testing these kind of things, I think,


is something that you almost need


to do because there's no definitive answer that


says one really long page is going


to be better than a bunch of short pages.


Yeah.


Right.


I mean, for users, I mean, obviously,


it depends on the user.


But if somebody is looking for a specific topic about, again,


back to, let's say, just AMP around the SEO topic


and how important is AMP for SEO,


they might not want to try to find


on the page where that section starts and scroll through it.


Of course, I assume Google could be looking into that anchor


feature with the modern browsers, the target down


to the page to highlight.


But it just seems, I don't know, it just


doesn't seem what a normal user would expect.


I guess it depends.


You have to test it, of course.


So it used to be SEO is built out as many deep level pages


as possible.


Panda came out and that consolidated your content,


make higher level quality pages less lower quality pages.


And quality is very upset.


Of course, you can have very short content


that answers the question that users love.


So it seems like the focus, again,


still goes to making these higher level pages that


help answer the question on a, like you said, less pages,


more building up those individual pages as opposed


to deeper level pages with less signals pointing to it.


That seems like an SEO answer as opposed to a necessary user


answer.


Yeah.


I mean, you kind of have to balance that.


And it's probably also something where marketing in general


plays a role, where I don't know if you think back,


I don't know, how many years, like 10 years probably,


when the fad of the really long kind of marketing landing


pages came up.


That's something where lots of sites did these kind of A-B


tests where they did short marketing landing


pages and really long marketing landing pages.


And sometimes the long ones perform better.


Sometimes the shorter ones perform better.


And I think that's something that still applies to SEO.


And the user demands, they kind of change over time as well,


where if you search for AMP now, you kind of


have the expectation that they understand what AMP is


and kind of how it fits in into SEO.


But if you search for AMP way in the beginning,


then probably you would first need


to provide a little bit more context


and give a little bit more of an overview


before you dive into AMP and SEO, what the details are.


Thank you.


OK.


Wow, I think for some reason people are joining today,


but whatever.


It happens.


Let me see if any new questions showed up.


Otherwise, anything else from any of you


is definitely welcome.


Hi, John, I have a question.


My question is in regards to exact match URLs.


I work with a very large number of small businesses in the UK.


And so this is a question that we have very often.


So I'd like to hear your point of view in regards


if this is sustainable, if this is within best practices.


So we have a client who, without telling us,


he'd purchased a large number of URLs, which


is location and product.


For example, flowers, Burgess Hill, or flowers,


here with Heath, which is pretty much where he's located.


So is this a good strategy?


Is this against practices?


Because I'm a little bit confused


in regards to this client who suddenly this morning sent


us an email saying, I just purchased, really happy,


he said, I just purchased 15 new URLs.


And I'm like, right.


So yeah, I'd like to hear your point of view in regards


to that.


Thank you.


So usually there are a few things


that come into play with these exact match domains.


On the one hand, we may see them as doorway pages.


If you have a lot of these domains leading


to the same content, then it's possible


that we will just say, oh, we will just


index your primary content and drop those doorway pages.


So it's not that there would be a disadvantage of having those.


It's more that why you don't have any big advantage


of using those.


So that's, I think, the primary aspect


that comes into play there.


The other thing is that sometimes these kind of domains


can make sense for non-SEO reasons.


For example, if you're doing local marketing campaigns,


you might have kind of an easy to remember domain name


that you can point people at.


You can make a sign with all of these things.


And people can go there.


They get redirected to your main site.


And that's essentially fine.


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


With regards to doorway sites or doorway pages,


usually it's something where the amount of pages


or the amount of doorway sites that you're creating


is really significant.


If you're talking about 10, 15 sites, then I don't think,


even if the web spam team looked at that manually,


they would say this is a big problem.


If you're talking about 100 domains,


then that's something where the web spam team might kind of look


into a little bit closer and say,


what exactly is happening here?


I've seen cases where there are, I don't know, 10,000 domain


names that were involved in this kind of a setup.


And then that's really something where


you spend a significant amount of money


on all of these domains to keep them running.


And if the web spam team says, oh, we will just


index one of these, then that's a really big problem.


But if you're talking about 10, 15 domain names,


then it's probably not an ideal investment.


But it's still not something where I'd say it's like,


you're completely throwing money out the window.


Sometimes it can make sense, even just for non-SEO reasons.


Brilliant, thank you.


Bye, everyone.


Bye, John.


Bye.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of the JavaScript Q&A


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

sessions.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

My name's Martin Schwitt.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I am a developer advocate for Google Search Central


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

or Google Search Relations.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I am based out of Zurich.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And I'm running these on a fortnightly, which is to say,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

14 days frequency basis.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And if you are here, you might have seen that on our community


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

tab of the YouTube channel.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We post these threads where you can ask us questions.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Or you just happen to join the video.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If you post comments on the video, that's great.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But don't post questions there because I won't necessarily


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

see them.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I just disconnected one of the two lights


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that are shining upon me.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So that was a good job.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Well done.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

These are live.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And I don't really cut the recordings either.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So there's that.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It's great, isn't it?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I'm really, really excited to see


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that we have lots of questions.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

However, I noticed that a bunch of the questions that


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

were submitted are not necessarily


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

JavaScript-specific questions.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I might skip these in the future.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I might address some of them anyway.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But if you have non-JavaScript SEO questions,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

feel free to post them into the general JavaScript Q&A


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

with John, who's also on my team.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But yeah, without further ado, I'll


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

go through the questions on YouTube.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And then I'll open the floor to live questions


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

from my fantastic audience today.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Laidui Bin is asking, does it affect my website


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

if there are more than 300 other websites who are just


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

copying everything, including images and stuff?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

They just changed the domain and copied everything


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

from the website.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's not really a JavaScript question.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But yes, it does affect your content,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

especially if you don't think that's the canonical source


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

of it, like the original source.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We are not lawyers or anything, so you


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

would have to take legal action.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

You can learn more about that if you


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

look for DMCA, which is a mechanism to deal


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

with exactly that kind of situation.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Ankur asks a question that is JavaScript-related.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Hi, Martin.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

In case of dynamic rendering or a server-side rendering


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

version which Googlebot crawls, and you recently


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

clarified the function-wise, it does not


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

have to be similar to the frontend or have add to cart


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and stuff.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But in terms of designing content,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

does it have to be exactly the same as frontend?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

No.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

No, it doesn't have to be the same.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I just think it makes it a lot easier to have one code base


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that don't do what you're supposing to do


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

or suggesting to do, because it makes your surface area a lot


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

larger and means that you have to test more stuff


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and that there's more chance of things going wrong


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and you're not noticing because it only happens


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

in the crawled version.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So if you can avoid that, I would avoid that.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But it can definitely be slightly different


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

when it comes to JavaScript elements for interactions


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and stuff like that.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So it doesn't matter that much.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

OK.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Cosmos asks if JavaScript SEO isn't very useful.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It is quite useful.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If you're using JavaScript heavily,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

you might have very JavaScript-specific questions,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

such as the question that we just got from Ankur.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Very strange crawl behavior.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Not really JavaScript-specific, but let's dive into it.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So Timo is asking, we can observe more crawls


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

in Search Console that successfully crawl


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

the HTML pages but do not load individual files,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

like JavaScript, CSS images, and fonts.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

The error for 30 out of 80 resources could not be loaded.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

The description is other error.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I'm guessing that's very likely in the live test,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

or it might also be in the crawled page


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

when we actually crawl.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Not a big deal because we are caching resources


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

like CSS images and JavaScript files quite heavily.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So normally, that isn't really an issue.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

The server logs of Cloudflare, we


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

see that the Google crawl terminates the connection


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

before the files were successfully downloaded.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Yeah, that's because we are caching them.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And if they don't come out quite quickly,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

then we don't really have to wait for them.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So even if the download time is only 300 milliseconds


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

on average, we probably cancel it


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

because we are just taking them from the cache.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So that's not something that you necessarily need to worry about.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It's just something that happens.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And unless you have any specific issue,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

then I wouldn't worry about it.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Resmaa is asking a question as well.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We keep getting no index coverage issues on GSC


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

for pages that have no such tags.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Our developers from various departments


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

have doubled and triple checked for any hidden no index tags.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

What could we do to rectify the problem?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Actually, it's quite nice.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

She asked this question on Twitter before


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and also sent me two URLs.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

One URL happens to be indexed.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

The other URL I'm still investigating.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Normally, when this stuff happens, what happens


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

is that there is some sort of A-B testing framework


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

or something that actually injects a no index


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and some variations in some cases


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

when Googlebot crawls it.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So for instance, there was one person


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

who still had an experimental setup, no experiments running.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But then for 20% of the requests that Googlebot made,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

we got a no index.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And the 80% was the other version


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that doesn't have a no index.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That is bound to cause trouble.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So it could be that.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And I've seen that on this page, there's also some testing


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

framework running that might be injecting this.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But I haven't seen a no index yet.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I have to say that.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I haven't seen a no index yet either in the code.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

In this specific case, it might be something else.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I'll look into this and post back on Twitter.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But in general, if we say there's a no index,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

it's very likely that Googlebot just actually saw a no index.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And if you can't reproduce that, that's


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

probably somewhere in your stack where you don't expect it.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

A-B testing frameworks being a big one.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

CDNs sometimes do this as well.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But I'm looking into this specific case


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

because I'm not exactly sure what's happening there yet.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Then there is a question related with e-commerce SEO.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Also not really a JavaScript question.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So they basically just have a URL, xyz.com such battlefield.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And then eventually, you have to change this URL.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And then you have to have a different URL where


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

this game actually comes up.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That leads to a 404 page.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

How does this affect SEO?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Well, if it's a 404 page, then it


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

will show up in search engines.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's not a problem.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's not something that you need to deal with.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If you want to forward signals from the old version


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

of that URL to the new version of the URL


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and the content is pretty much the same,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

then you can use a redirect.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If it's different pages, then the old page just went down.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Does it have a 404 page?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Things be removed all the time.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's what happens.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It's OK.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

No worries.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

No worries there.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Anas is asking a question as well.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It is a JavaScript-related question indeed.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I've seen on numerous occasions that the PageSpeed Insights


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

recommends to reduce unused JavaScript


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

for external JavaScript like Facebook, Google Tag Manager,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and Google Analytics, which reduces our LCP considerably.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So large is kind of a pain considerably.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Is there any way to work out those external JavaScripts


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

since I don't see how we can modify or work on JavaScripts


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that are not hosted on our domain thanks in advance?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Yes.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's a tricky one.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's generally you have to always do a very careful


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

or take a very careful look at your third-party dependencies


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

because they probably carry a lot of functionality


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that you are not using.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

In a previous company where I worked at


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and where this was important for us, for instance,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

for Analytics, we used the Analytics API.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So we actually did not really load JavaScripts


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

for Google Analytics directly.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We basically just sent events using


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

our own little bit of JavaScript so that we could control


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

the amount of data or, sorry, the amount of JavaScript


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that we needed to actually ping events back to Analytics.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That comes with pros and cons.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

The pro is, yes, we have reduced the JavaScript size.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

The con is if the API changes or if we are using it incorrectly,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

then we might lose Analytics data.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So that's a little bit tricky.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But in general, do due diligence on your third-party scripts.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If it's something that you absolutely need,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

then just you have to swallow the pill of them


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

carrying around a little bit of luggage.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If you don't really need them, then reconsider


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

if you have alternatives that you could use instead


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that might be smaller or work with the APIs directly


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

if their client library is very, very bad.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Then we are having Kashi asking, what is the recommended time


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

to first byte or initial rendering


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

recommended for crawling a page by Google crawlers?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

There's no such recommendation.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It doesn't matter.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We have noticed that the public facing pages


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

are getting indexed to Google, but not 100% of them.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We suspect the response time of our web pages


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

is on the higher side.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I think, in general, reducing your time to first byte


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

is good for you users.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So as fast as you can make your website as good,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I would say for time to first byte,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

probably sub-second is what you should be aiming for.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Maybe like a second is a good general thing.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But it's, again, not specific for Google crawlers.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's just specifically not making people


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

wait for your content.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If it's not indexing, it could also just


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

be that we are not super interested in some


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

of the pages, or some of the pages have quality issues,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

or we're not seeing the content properly.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So we won't always index all the pages of your website.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's a normal fact of life and not necessarily something


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

related to website speed.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Andre is asking about A-B testing as well.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We may run A-B or A-B-C-D, so multivariate testing,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

on home page and other pages on our site.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And some of these A-B tests involve very significant changes


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

of content.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And they are now varied that we might consider that cloaking.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I don't think that's the case unless your content is


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

horrendously different, as in like topically completely


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

different and separate from each other.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I don't think this will be a cloaking issue.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So I would not worry about A-B testing too much.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If it's just changing the design and changing the content


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

a little bit, but the page, let's say


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

like a page about toasters continues to be about toasters,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

you should be fine.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Image Googlebot caught my sight more often than smartphone


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Googlebot.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Should I worry about this?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

No.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And again, not a JavaScript-specific question.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Is there any specific name for getting links


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

from pages that are not often already have links?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Someone suggested internal linking,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and I'd say plus 1 to that.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Yeah, then the question Udi is asking, or Udi,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I'm sorry if I butcher your name.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Does Googlebot index hash URL content?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Does Googlebot index content wrapped in tabs,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

like reviews and QA tabs?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Hash URL content, as in if I change the hash,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

the content completely changes and loads different content.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That usually does not work.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But if the content is in the HTML and just not shown,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and if the hash changes, the different content is shown,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

then that should generally work.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's the case with tabs and carousels and stuff like that,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

or accordions, where different sections open and expand


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

depending on what the hash is.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But the content is all there.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That does not pose a problem.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

All right.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Those were the YouTube questions.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I see that someone posted in the chat.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Lee posted in the chat.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If we're using pre-render, the cached page for Google


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

crawling has a wonky layout.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Due to an error on the pre-rendering,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

would that impact our indexing for that page in particular?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

No.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

The index, if it's just the layout,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

it doesn't matter too much.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Also, the Google cache is not necessarily


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

working properly all the time with JavaScript websites,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

so I wouldn't worry about that too much either.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If you see any weird things going on,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

then that's worthwhile investigating further.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But it's just a weird preview doesn't really matter that


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

much.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

All right.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

In that case, I open the floor for questions


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

from the audience and see if anyone raised their hands.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

No raised hands so far.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But you can also just speak up if you want.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We are a small group today.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

OK, Martin, I have a question here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So recently, I was helping a user


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that had an e-commerce.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And when we look at the mobile-friendly test,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

the problem that they were having


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

is that our pages are being considered canonical.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So it looked like a canonical page.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But when we were going to look at the mobile-friendly test,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

all we could see was the buyer page, right?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We could see the menu and things.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So for Googlebot, it looked like the same page.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And the product data itself was not loading.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So I suspect it was some, I don't know,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

some JavaScript resource that was not being loaded.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Do you see this often?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

How would you go by troubleshooting this


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

if you were the website owner?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Where to look first?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And it will disappear in mobile-friendly test somehow.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I don't know.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Yeah.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So that does sound a lot like clients


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

like JavaScript not doing its thing properly.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And the very first thing that I would do


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

is I would look in the rendered HTML


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and make sure that the content really is not present.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If it's not present, I would try to find out.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I would go into my developer tools in the browser


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and basically start blocking URLs that look like they


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

are loading the content and then basically try


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

to figure out which API call is actually


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

responsible for loading the content that is now missing


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and then check with Google Search Console


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

if these properly failed.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Don't necessarily do the live test,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

because the live test is very, very impatient


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

with these things.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So you might actually get error there when there is not


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

actually a problem with it.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So you sometimes see it's false positive.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But basically, I would try to figure out and hunt down


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

why these network requests haven't been successfully done


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and haven't successfully loaded the content in.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Sometimes in the Search Console, if you look at View Crawl Page,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

you also see console messages and error messages


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that might give you a clue of what's happening there.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

You can also use the Resources page


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

to see why something hasn't been loaded.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And then you should already see more bits and pieces


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that might help you.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It could be something as simple as a developer or someone


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

blocking it in robots.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It could be like, oh, we don't want the API requests


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

to be done by robots, which is unfortunate,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

because in rendering, exactly that happens.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And then if we can't, then we can't see the content.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It can be that the API is too slow.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It can be that there is a back-end problem that it


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

doesn't always load.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It could be that there's something in front of your API


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that blocks robots.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

There's a bunch of different things that can


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

go wrong in these situations.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And you would have to then basically go step by step


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

from, is it in the HTML?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If it's not in the HTML, did we even


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

try to make the network request?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If we made the network request, why did it fail?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And then if it failed, is this something


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that is on Google's side?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Is this something that is on our side?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It's very likely it's something in between your back-end


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and us.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And that can be like a CDN.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That can be like a DDoS protection layer.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

There's many, many different things


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that can get in the way of that.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But yeah, I would start looking in the rendered HTML


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and then in the JavaScript console


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and then in the network layer, and then basically work


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

my way through to find out what's causing


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

these requests to fail.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Yeah, looking into the DevTools calls, it's a good idea.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Yeah, thanks.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

You're welcome.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Andrei has raised his hand.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Muted.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Feel free to unmute yourself.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Ah, there we go.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Yeah.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I was the one asking questions about ABCD tests you answered.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Thank you very much for that.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Another question that I have is about how


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

to go about improving the FID metrics on CoreVitals.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Because basically, with the rest, like CLS or LCP metrics,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

it's a bit more straightforward.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So you look at the lab data, and you understand what is more


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

or less needs to be fixed.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But with FID, I'm sort of a bit stuck here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Because when I look at a good Google Search console,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

most of the pages that I have, they're


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

like thousands and thousands.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But I just took a very good, maybe about 100 or even


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

couple of hundred pages sample.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And all of them are showing low FID score, maybe less than 100.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But at the same time, Google is reporting that this metrics is


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

not acceptable.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And I was trying to go through the time-to-force byte approach


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and maybe see what would be the things to improve there.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But at the same time, it's not really clear.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And maybe you can have some tips like how to troubleshoot that


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and where to look for.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Yeah.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

FID is indeed a tricky one.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

The first input delay is usually something


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that's really hard to measure properly in lab data.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It's more easily seen in real user metrics.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

In general, FID blockage, if it's under 100 milliseconds,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

it should actually be fine.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It should be considered passing.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If it is lower, it's weird.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's weird.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

If it is lower than 100 milliseconds,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that is under the threshold.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So I'm not sure why it would complain about that then.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I mean, hold on.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Google Search Console reports the metric


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

to be higher than 100 milliseconds.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And when you measure it's lower than 100 milliseconds,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

is that what's happening?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Yeah.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

For example, I'm thinking we have about 80,000 pages


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

reporting that FID is not passing the Corvo Vital


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

threshold.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Right.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So I took a sizable sample of these pages.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And all of them are showing, let's say,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

0.50 milliseconds, 70 milliseconds.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But all of them are showing lower metrics


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

on PageSpeed Insights.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So I sort of even don't know how to start.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

You broke up there and then.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But I think, ah.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Oh.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Ah.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

OK.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

You came back now.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I'm not sure if it's my internet connection.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

How to start improving on this.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So I think very important to notice is, again,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

FID mostly comes from real user metrics.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And it's really, really hard to replicate in lab data.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I have a feeling that what might happen


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

is that you have a bunch of users


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

on devices that are a little more limited than the devices


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that you are using.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So I noticed that when I was looking


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

at websites that were mostly used by people on lower end


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

mobile devices, these are a lot more sensitive to FID issues


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

than, let's say, pretty much the laptop I'm working on,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

for instance.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Or from Google, we get the Pixel phones.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

The Pixel phones are relatively smooth as well.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Latest iPhones are probably also fast.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But then older generations, especially older Android


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

generations of lower power specifications


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

are definitely struggling with this.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And then it's worthwhile to sample,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

to basically get a performance profile of the website


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and have a look at what is going on in the mainframe.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And depending on what your website does,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

this can be all sorts of different things.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

This can be some sort of template instantiation.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

This can be when DOM manipulations are being


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

done by the JavaScript.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Anything that blocks the main thread, not the mainframe,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

the main thread is usually also what, if it takes longer,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

is causing FID issues.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So taking a performance profile in the DevTools


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and having a look at what is going on


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

in the main thread of your website


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

is actually a good first point of contact


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

or first point of call.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And if you see, let's say, I don't know,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

it might be something that actually causes,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

like some DOM manipulation causes massive layout


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

recalculations.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And that also doesn't necessarily


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

have to be the JavaScript.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It can also be like a tiny spike of JavaScript


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and then a massive block of layout recalculations


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and then paint.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Paint doesn't matter.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Paint doesn't happen on the main thread, but layout does.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So whenever you're doing something


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

that is heavy lifting on the, that's actually, hold on.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Let me see if I can find an example.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Because I think I have a, why is my laptop getting so slow?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Shit, I can't remember that.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Hold on.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I'll find the website real quick,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and then I'll show you what I mean by that.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Actually, I don't really have an example for that specific


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

thing, but I do have an example for a similar problem.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So that's what it's called.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So I need to go to GitHub.io slash.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And then I think, no, it doesn't.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

What do you mean it doesn't have the thing?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

OK, let's try that again.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Slash main thread.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I think that's probably leading to success here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And it does not.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

GitHub goes like, no, I don't know what you're


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

talking about, which is great.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But I do have this posted somewhere.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

OK, hold on.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Let's try that again, because I think I'm on the wrong.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Now let's put in parallel.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Where is it?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Because I know I have that somewhere.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So the point is that with websites,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

the biggest issue really is that your entire JavaScript


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

runs on the main thread.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And that's where all the interactions work or happen


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

as well, which I hear this.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Ah, ha, ha, ha.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I named it differently.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And I'll share my screen real quick.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Hold on.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I want to share a tab.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And now, so there is a website that the whole purpose


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

of this website is to load an image


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

and do edge detection on it.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And that looks fancy and fine and nice and lovely.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But the moment I move this, you see


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

like I tried to drag it up here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It doesn't even let me.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It takes seconds for it to respond.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I drag it down here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And 121, 22, yeah.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

1, 1,000, 2, 1,000, 3, 1,000, 4, 1,000,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

5, roughly five seconds.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It takes until the website actually allows


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

me to interact with it again.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And if this were a real world website, which I really, really,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

really, really hope it is not, I mean,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

this is a test website for sure, then we


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

can see this behavior by, actually,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I don't want to see the news down here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

I actually want to see.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We can reload the page and try to see what happens here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So it's loading.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And then round, like roughly after five seconds,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

it actually did show the thing, but it continued running.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And here we see, like, you see this, actually, hold on.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Do you actually see what happens in the DevTools?


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

No, you don't, because I only shared the, ah, dammit.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Hold on.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Let me actually share the whole window,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

because you can't actually see the DevTools


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

if I'm sharing a tab.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Good job, Martin.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Well done.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Smart guy here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

Not.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So let's run that again.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So we are reloading the page.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

We are reprofiling the page.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

After roughly three seconds, the image popped in.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And after roughly eight seconds, we get the website.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And now you see, like, this huge bar of red up here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And that means that the website has been laggy.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

In this specific case, it meant it didn't take any input.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And it didn't take input from, I would


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

say this is around one second to roughly three seconds.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So for two seconds, this would be a first input delay


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

situation.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And I think, so that's first contentful paint was also


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

delayed by this.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And I don't see any events for the other bits and pieces,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

but whatever.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And we see here that it's all JavaScript.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So we painted this green blob here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That's painting the picture.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

That doesn't matter, because that


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

happens on the graphics card.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

But then there's, like, a lot of JavaScript going on back here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And this JavaScript is exactly what is causing the problem.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

So if we are dragging this up a little bit,


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

we see there's a load event.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

There's a first contentful paint event.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And all of that happens very, very late in the process.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And it didn't even notice that there was a first input delay


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

issue, but this website definitely


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

has a first input delay issue.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And it also warns us here.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

It says long task, took 2.2 seconds.


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

And then we can see why this is happening


JavaScript SEO Q&A September 15, 2021

by digging in a little deeper.