You'll see an enhancement report only for rich result types


Rich Results & Google Search Console | WMConf Lightning Talks

that we detect on your site.


See the documentation for a list of rich result report types


that we currently support.


By default, issues are sorted by a combination of severity


and number of pages affected.


If you see an error that seems like the result of a bad template,


fix it first.


Then continue fixing other issues that are unique to each page


following the order in the table.


Click an issue in the table to see more details about it


as well as a list of URLs affected by it.


For URLs which you'd like to further explore in depth,


click the small inspection icon close to it.


This will run a URL inspection for this page.


You'll find three main sections in the URL inspection results.


In the presence on Google Card, you'll see a verdict on whether or not


the URL can appear in Google search results.


In the coverage section, you'll learn where the page was discovered,


when was the last crawl, and by which user agent,


and whether the page is included in the Google Web Index


or another version of it was chosen by Google.


In the enhancement section, you'll find any structured data details


along with AMP and mobile usability warnings and errors.


You can use Search Console to dive deeper into the issue and debug it.


Take a look at the results and try to identify


what needs to be fixed in your page.


Once you fix your issue, go back to this page and click Test Live URL.


This runs a test against the live page for information


similar to the indexed URL.


This is very useful to test live if an issue still exists


even after you've fixed it in your site.


Now go back to the issue page on the structured data report


and click Validate Fix.


This will trigger a validation process for the current issue.


First, Google will check a few sample pages.


If the issue exists in any one of them, validation ends,


and the validation state remains unchanged.


If the sample pages do not have the current error,


validation continues with state started.


When all errors or warnings URLs have been checked


and the issue count is zero, the issue state changes to Pest.


You can see the progress of validation requests


by clicking the Validation Details link in the Issue Details page.


I've spoken a lot about errors and warnings.


Now let's talk about something nice,


optimizing and growing your search traffic.


In order to do that in Search Console,


I recommend using the Performance Report,


which provides you with plenty of data about your traffic from Google Search.


In that report, you'll find a search appearance tab


just below the main chart.


You'll see in a glance the volume of traffic


coming to your website through rich results.


Some rich results have dedicated filters.


For example, how-to and FAQ rich results.


To understand your rich results performance over time,


add a filter to the report for the specific search appearance


you want to examine, such as videos or product results.


You can do that by clicking a row in the table of the search appearance tab.


This will update all your performance charts


to show only rich results traffic by queries, pages, countries, and devices.


Look for patterns in your data


that show how a specific segment of traffic is performing.


For example, you may find out that a specific group of pages


is not driving rich results,


which could point at opportunities to enhance your structured data implementations.


You may also notice a drop in rich results performance


if your structured data implementation was affected by website change.


I hope that now you have a better idea


of how Search Console can help you optimize your search appearance on Google.


If you liked this video,


make sure to check out the Search Console training series


in the Google Webmasters channel.


You'll love it.


And I look forward to seeing you at one of the upcoming Webmaster conferences.


Stay tuned.


Google Webmasters


The search is a great way to get started


with Google Webmaster.


If you want to learn more about search,


you can go to the search.google.com


and search.google.com.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Hello and welc-


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK, no, that was the time.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Hello and welcome to the JavaScript SEO Office Hours


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

today, May 12, 2021.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I'm really, really happy to see so many new names and faces


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

here in the live recording and a bunch of really good questions


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

on the YouTube thread for these.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Let's start with a question asked by Polina Kogan,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

a question about dynamic rendering and cloaking.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Say that there is a single page application e-commerce website


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

with certain restrictions that wants


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to implement dynamic rendering.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Would it be considered cloaking if it


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

has a single meta description for all products in the source


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that is served to the users but individual meta descriptions


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

per product served to Googlebot?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

If it was the title, this is something visible to users,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

so serving different content to users,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

then Google would be clear-cut cloaking.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But I wonder if the situation is different if we are talking


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

about meta descriptions.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

In general, I would say none of that


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

is terrible enough to or misleading enough


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to be considered a clear-cut cloaking.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I would advise against it because it is easier


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to not have a setup to just do that if you


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

have to have a dynamic rendering setup for some other reason.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And that's just an implementation detail.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I wouldn't worry too much about it.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But in general, I think it's better


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to serve the same meta information,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and that's titles and meta descriptions,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

both to bots and users.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That being said, I don't think that qualifies


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

as cloaking in this case.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Then we have a question from Philip Martinez.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

We implemented pagination using JavaScript


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to make a page appear as though it's loading more content


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

from the same page when it's actually


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

loading content from a different page.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The question is if there's any difference between having


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

the href URL be absolute or relative,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

so like slash topic page equals 2,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

or if it's OK to have the href just be the query where


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

the href would be question mark page equals 2.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It will function the same for the user with any


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

of those options, but it was wanting


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to know if there are any potential crawling issues


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

from implementing it one way or the other.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I think it doesn't make a difference to us.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I think, in general, it would probably


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

be nicer to not just have slash question mark page equals 2,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

just because then we know that this is related


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to the specific subpage.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But it doesn't really matter that much, I think, in the end.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's an implementation detail that we'll


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

have to deal with one way or the other,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

especially because in both cases, it's a query parameter.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So the crawling-related issues that


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

can arise from parameters like infinite crawl spaces


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

apply here just as well.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

W. Ebunzo or W. Webbenzo.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I'm not sure.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Oh, that's me.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Oh, that's you.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK, so how do you pronounce that username?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Oh, it'd be Webenzo.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Webenzo.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK, Webenzo.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Because Ebunzo is actually a German word,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and I'm like, hmm, interesting.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But yeah, Webenzo.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah, it stands for El Nino Southern Oscillation, which


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

brings great ski seasons.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Wow.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Now I learned something from the office hours.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's awesome.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK, so that's the, what was El Nino Southern?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

El Nino Southern Oscillation.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It just brings a variety of weather to California.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The El Nino.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah, so I have a blog that's under that name,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and that just happens to be how I was logged


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

in when I posted the question.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

My name is Kathy.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Hi, Kathy.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So Kathy, you have a question.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Working with a software vendor using a client-side JavaScript


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

framework, we're seeing many cases


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

on two separate instances of the software of pages


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

canonicalized by Google to unrelated pages


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

or even to a soft 404 page.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

If you turn JavaScript off, no content shows.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Testing the page in Mobile-Friendly Test tool


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

shows the page renders.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

However, in many cases, the Google Search Console URL


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

inspector is showing a blank page.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

What's the reason for the discrepancy


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

between Mobile-Friendly Test and URL inspector?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Can we assume that the URL inspector is timing out,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and this is why the erroneous canonicals and low indexation


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

of the site happens?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's a really good question.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And the answer is not as easy, especially


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

without knowing the URLs that are affected here.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But basically, canonicalization happens at multiple stages


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

in the pipeline.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And normally, normally, when we can render a page, it's fine,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and it doesn't impact canonicalization.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

For some reason, sometimes, it can be that, especially


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

if vendors are failing for whatever reason,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that we are actually seeing no content and then concluding,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

oh, so this page has no content, similar to this other unrelated


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

page that also has no content, and then canonicalizing


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

correctly.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So you are on the right track, I think, with your hypothesis.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The thing is that what I was wondering is,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

if you look at the URL inspection tool,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

are you seeing the page failing to render in the live test


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

or in the crawled page?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I'm always doing the live test.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

To be honest, I'd have to go back and look and see


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

at this.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I didn't think we got a screenshot.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Maybe this is me being silly, but I


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

didn't know if we could see the screenshot in the crawl test.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Can we?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I think you don't have a, oh, now you're asking questions.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I don't think you have a screenshot.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I think you have the rendered HTML, though.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So the render.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Oh, so I could search it.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK, I have not done that test, to be honest.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's perfectly fine.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's exactly why we're here, right?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

We're working on this together.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So this is fine.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

No, that's what I would look for,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

because I have a feeling that the live test, similar


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to mobile-friendly test, they are using the same kind


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

of infrastructure, but they can give you different outcomes,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

depending on the relatively strict, the relatively,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

oh, you actually do have it.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

No, you don't have a screenshot in the crawl page.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I just double checked, but you don't.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You have the rendered HTML, though.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The live tests have relatively short deadlines


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to fetch resources, so it's very easily happening,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

or very often happening, that we are actually running out


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

of time to wait for resources to complete.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

On the crawl page, I would have a very careful look


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

at both the rendered HTML, if the content is actually there,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

when we actually rendered it with the production


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

infrastructure.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Good morning.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And the other thing that I would look into


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

is, when you view the crawl page, you also have,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I think it's more info, you have resources.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then look for resources that didn't load.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

If there's any critical client-side JavaScript


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

or any API calls that haven't been loaded for whatever


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

reason, those might also be the reason why we are not


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

seeing the content.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And if that happens in the production indexing run,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

then yes, we will see an empty page,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and then these weird canonicalization errors happen.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Specifically, as you say, it happens with soft 404 pages.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I have a feeling that that might be happening here.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

In general, client-side rendering is not a problem,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

but in instances like this, it can be a problem.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then you might want to consider


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

either dynamic rendering or even better, server-side rendering


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

things, depending on your stack.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah, we've started the dynamic rendering conversation.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

One more piece of info I just want to share with you


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

is, under Settings, when you go and look at the Googlebot type,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

59% is page load resources rather than smartphone


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

or desktop.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So I think that's telling me that it's trying very hard


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to load these resources.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It is trying very hard, yeah.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So I am assuming that's the interpretation


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to take from that.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So that was just one more piece of information


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I wanted to share.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

with client-side JavaScript applications,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

the resource loads are relatively often


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

the majority of the crawls.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So that's not, per se, a problem.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's just like it tells you, we are trying really hard.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It doesn't seem to be working that well.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

What's happening here?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And that's a good place to start digging, I think,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and trying to find out why are we not loading this.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Sometimes you can improve things by having different caching


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

directives or trying a CDN to balance things out


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

a little bit, but normally it should not be a problem.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's rarely a problem, but I have seen cases where resource


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

load didn't go through in time.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then as we couldn't fetch the resource in time,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

we actually didn't see any content.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's the big downside of client-side rendering.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah, absolutely.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Absolutely.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And for one of the sites I'm looking at,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

it's actually pretty slow.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The time to first byte is kind of all over the map.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It kind of ranges from a second to almost eight,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and I've kind of kept pushing on the client


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to say this needs to be fixed.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So I'm suspecting that's adding to the problems.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Wow, OK, yeah.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Time to first byte of eight seconds.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's not always true, but I have seen it.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's something that you can definitely look into and try


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to find out where that variety comes from,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that deviation from the mean comes from.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then probably that's where the issue starts,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

but not necessarily.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But it's a good venue to investigate, I think,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

because that's a high time to first byte.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yes, absolutely.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Okey-doke.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Sweet.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Thank you.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You're very much welcome.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Then that concludes the YouTube part of the questions.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So again, you have the opportunity


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to ask questions live.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You can use the Raise Hand feature,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

or you can use the chat here in the Hangout


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to ask your questions live.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Should you have any?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Actually, hold on.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

We have a Q&A feature, I see.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's fascinating.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But someone raised their hand.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So hold on.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That is gone now.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I think Naran was raising their hand.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Awesome.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Hi, Naran.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Hi, Martin.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So Martin, I actually have a question.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So I basically work for a website which is into ReactJS.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And so my question is, how important


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

it is to basically ensure that whenever


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

we try to fetch a page through console of ReactJS,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

two things I want to ask.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

One is about the blog resources.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And the second thing is about if we


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

are trying to search for the content which we are trying


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to send for the Google, if we are not


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

able to find it in the live fetch,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and if we are not able to find it in the crawled page, what


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

are the problems that are going to be there in these two cases?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

My question are two, and my second question are two parts.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So if I understood correctly, you're


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

building a client-side rendered React app.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Right.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And you have seen some blocked resources.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

What do you mean by blocked resources?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Just resources not loading or something


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

blocked by robots.txt or noindex or?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So it's both the cases.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's basically blocked resources through robots.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And it's also a case where basically the bot is not


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

able to read those scripts which are into JSON


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

or maybe into all these things.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So the thing is basically as Google,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

your page goes through multiple stages before it is potentially


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

findable in search.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The first thing is crawling.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Crawling doesn't really matter that much


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

for React applications because when we crawl,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

we basically with a client-side rendered application


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

only get an HTML that has some placeholder content


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and actually loads the JavaScripts.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The second stage that happens is the rendering stage


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

where we actually fetch these JavaScripts


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and run these JavaScripts.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And fundamentally, a Chrome instance on our infrastructure.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then your application should be


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

able to run and generate all the content that is on the site


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

or on the page that you want to have indexed there.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then that basically get the DOM gets snapshotted.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then that is used for indexing.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Now, if you are blocking resources


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that are relevant in order to actually render


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

the page, such as the JavaScript files or any API calls


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that we need to make in the renderer,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

then that means that it goes through the crawling


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

infrastructure.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So it follows robots.txt.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So if you block, let's say, your app or main.js file


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

from robots.txt, we can't fetch it


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and we can't render your page, which means


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

we will never see the content.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That usually manifests in the live test and the crawl page


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

not showing the content that you would expect.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And I think that's exactly what you described, right?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You said you go into the crawl page


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and you can't see the content there in the rendered page,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

right?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 Right, right, Martin.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

MARTIN SPLITT I think that's probably


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

because you are blocking the robot


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

from some critical resources that we need


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to actually render the page.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's likely what's happening there.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And generally speaking, I would expect the live test


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to show you which resources were blocked.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then you can use that information to unblock them


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and then basically try again.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You should see the content that you expect in the live test.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then later on also, you should see it


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

in the crawl page rendered source.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 Yeah, Martin, cool.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And Martin, I just want to ask you one more thing.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Is there any tool or maybe a way out to test things


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

before going live?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

MARTIN SPLITT Yes, absolutely.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's not exactly meant for that purpose,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

but it's a great tool for exactly that purpose.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You can use the mobile-friendly test.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The mobile-friendly test uses the same infrastructure


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

as the live test, as the rich results test,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

or you can use the rich results test that works as well.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But I prefer the mobile-friendly test


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

because it also gives you access to the resources that


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

were blocked as well as the over-the-fold screenshot,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

as well as the rendered page source.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And you can feed that with any URL.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You can be using local tunnel or ngrok


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

if you want to do that from your developer's machine.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Or if you have a staging, you can use the staging URL.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Any URL goes.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So that's my question.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Thanks, Martin.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

MARTIN SPLITT You're welcome, Naren.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Thank you very much for the question.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And I've seen that musicmink has asked the question in the chat,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

does same button text cause duplicate content or spammy


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

anchor text issue?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

For instance, read more, check profile, etc.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's not a city question, not really a JavaScript question


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

either, but in general, it's not duplicate content.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's more a bad anchor text.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So we don't really know the relation,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and we might weigh that anchor lower.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So descriptive anchor text or descriptive button text


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

is always a good idea.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Anyone else raising their hands?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Because I figured out how raising their hands is now


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

signaled in the roster here in Hangouts again.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

No raised hands?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Oh, yes, there is a raised hand.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Baruch.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Hi, Martin, how are you?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Hi, great.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

How are you doing?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Good, it's been a while.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I haven't seen you in a while.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's been a while, that's true.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I have a quick question.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So the specific site I'm dealing with has two things.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

One of them is a private virtual server.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's got a plugin called WP Rocket.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then at the same time, then it's


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

synced also with Cloudflare.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But the issue over there is I'm not sure what's happening.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I think it's a cache between the actual site and the server.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I'm getting a very high LCP that shouldn't be happening.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And with the new page experience that you guys introduced,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I'm getting a very high response.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's been really frustrating.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But I did manage to do what needs to be done.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And it's been already a week.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And it's been 95 of 100.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Who cares?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But at the same time, yesterday's reply was, uh-oh,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

LCP is high again.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And it's so frustrating.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And normally, everything usually is fine.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I never get frustrated with this kind of stuff.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But I've really done exactly what Google wants.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But then I did it above and beyond in terms of results.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then yesterday's page experience.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

MARTIN SPLITTENBERG So you're getting that in the page


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

experience report in Search Console?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Or where do you get the high value?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I got it in the LCP section.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Let me just double check.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But in Search Console, in the page experience report,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

not like PSI or Lighthouse or something, right?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yes.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Lighthouse, Lighthouse, I always refresh it twice.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then I get the exact results.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Refresh it once.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then I get points down.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I know it's not correct.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

No, that's fine.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The thing is, I wanted to know where it's coming from.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Because I know that, as far as I'm aware,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

the page experience report is probably still a little flaky


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

these days.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

LCP is a tricky metric similar to CLS being a tricky metric.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Let's not talk about FID, because that's


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

the trickiest of the three.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

LCP is a heuristic to begin with.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

We need to work out what we think is the most important


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

piece of content and what is the largest content


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

paint that happens there.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And this can be a little flaky sometimes.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then it gets aggravated, the fact


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that the page experience report is an aggregate report


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

from multiple data sources.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And yeah.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So if you are sure that you will be doing fine,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and you are, because you are measuring with other tools,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and you're getting good, consistent data,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and you have a setup that sounds solid


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and seems to be working fine, then I


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

would take these reports in the page experience report section


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

a little with a grain of salt and say,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

yeah, I should probably look into it


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

in terms of what does the Chrome user experience report say


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

here if that backs up the problem that we are seeing


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

here.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But if you are sure that you are doing fine,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

it should work itself out with the improvements


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that are happening to the page experience report.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And what about the Core Web Vitals?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Exactly, the big problem is you have to be aware that there are


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

field data, whereas Lighthouse, PSI, and any tools that are


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

using Lighthouse, or HTTP, WebPageTest, all of these


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

are not using field data.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

They are using lab data.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So lab data usually looks better than the field data looks like.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But yeah, it's tricky is the answer to this one, unfortunately.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Is there a reason why Lighthouse doesn't like RocketLoader


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

from Cloudflare?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Is there a reason why there is like, I'm noticing,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

so when I turn it on, right, when it's turned on,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

then I get a reply and I get a, basically,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

it's not agreeing with RocketLoader for some reason.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I'm guessing the problem is probably


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

because you're injecting, I'm not exactly sure


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

how RocketLoader works with Pathflare.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I've used it in the past, but that's like 10 years ago.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Well, 10 years is probably more like seven years ago.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Anyway, a long time ago.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But the thing is it injects additional JavaScript,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and JavaScript usually comes with a bit of a performance


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

hit and the performance cost.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So I'm guessing that maybe it delays some of the events


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that we are looking for and thus actually creating a penalty.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Because there's nothing in Lighthouse that says, oh,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

this is using RocketLoader.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Let's remove some of the points or something like that.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

There's nothing inherent.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It just basically measures certain events


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

happening on the page.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

If these events take longer to happen,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that's usually not a good thing.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And what is the exact number today based on your number?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

What should a site in terms of mobile,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

should it be below 2.5 seconds?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Oh, god.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I know that we have some numbers published somewhere.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah, yeah.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

They're not really recent, but it's below three.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The faster, the better is my general hunch there.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Obviously, you can't make it ridiculously fast


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

if you have a certain setup, especially those


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

who are on larger platforms.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah, you'll deal with that.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But as far as I'm aware, the thresholds for,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

we're talking LCP, right?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yes.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah, then the threshold's still 2.5 seconds.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I have not heard any adjustment to that.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Maybe at I.O. there will be new thresholds,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

but I don't think so.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Thank you so much, Martin.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I appreciate it.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You're welcome.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Trying to help.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Kathy has raised her hand as well.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So thank you for your tip to go look at the crawled page.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Unfortunately, these URLs are all showing up


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

under things like duplicate.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So they're not in the index or soft 404,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

so there's no crawled page to take a look at.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And I mean, I can go try the mobile friendly test again,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

but in general, the mobile friendly test


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

works for these pages.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But that's a weird one then.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Why are we not seeing this?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And did you make larger, or were there any larger changes


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to any of the code, like any of the JavaScript?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Was there like a roll out of a new version or something


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that happened recently?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So for one site, so I've seen this on two sites, right?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's the same platform.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The first site, they did block an essential resource


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

using robots.txt.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And we fixed that, and things were indexing,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and then it sort of stopped indexing,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and now we're seeing this problem.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

On the second site, yes.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

There was a migration from one domain to another.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

They had assured me that all it was changing were the URLs,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

but it turns out they did make changes


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

in the underlying JavaScript.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So yes, for the second case, there was changes,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and I'm just beginning to get the details on what was changed.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Mm-hmm, right.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Because the reason why I'm asking is the number one,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

so there's like two big differences


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

between the live test and the actual infrastructure


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

that we're using for indexing and rendering and crawling.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Number one is obviously the fetch deadlines.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Surprise, surprise, because the indexing is perfectly


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

fine to wait a couple of hours for requests


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to actually be made, because the crawler has to crawl pretty


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

much the entire internet.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So it can take a little while.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

While we obviously don't want to make


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

you sit in front of a loading bar for the mobile-friendly


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

test or any of the live tests for an hour,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

so we have a lot shorter fetch deadlines there.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's one big difference.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's also why the live tests sometimes


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

time out when the actual real-world situation does not


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

time out.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The number two difference that I feel is at play here


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

is that the live test obviously should test live,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

which is like whatever is on the server at this point in time


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

when you hit the button to test.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Whereas indexing, the actual indexing pipeline, does not.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It uses a cache.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So if something something.JavaScript


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

has fundamentally changed and has not


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

been replaced in the cache yet, and then


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

something else.JavaScript requires


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

the change in something something.JavaScript


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to be there, it might actually not


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

have that because there is a cache mismatch.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And that can lead to weird issues.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But then you should see some sort of console errors.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But yeah, well, in the crawl site, ha ha ha ha.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

We don't have, because it has been coalesced before.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Damn.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

This is one of the cases that I would take to the forum


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and try to get someone's attention, either a Google


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

representative or the, what's it called,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

the product experts in the Webmaster Forum.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Because they can give you private supporters,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

as in like the program experts.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Product experts can give you a private chat, basically.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then you can post a URL there.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You can also send me a URL on Twitter via direct message,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

for instance.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And then I can take a look.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

The downside is I can't give you any information back.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I can take the information in and try


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

to see if this is a general or bigger problem,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and then try to address this publicly somehow.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But yeah, that's the way to go.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Because I don't exactly know what's happening here.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And that's something that needs to be investigated


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

a little more.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And I don't exactly know how easy that's


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

going to be with the public tools.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Got it.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK, well, thanks for at least confirming


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

why I'm getting confused and frustrated.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I understand what's happening there.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I don't understand why it's happening.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So that's a question that probably depends a little bit


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

on the platform you're using and on the specific sites that are


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

experiencing these problems.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

But again, feel free to drop me a direct message with a URL


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

so that I can take a look.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

And maybe I can share that publicly on Twitter,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and you and others will benefit from the outcome.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

OK, thanks.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

All right.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Narin is raising his hand as well.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Narin, what can I do for you?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So Martin, I have a question which is also related to React


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and which is another genuine question for us case like this.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So Martin, my question is basically


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

if we write code for a certain page


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and we keep both the themes, that is like mobile


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and desktop, in the same code, and we


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

hide some code for desktop in the mobile


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

and some code in mobile for the desktop.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It's like vice versa.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

So if that is the case in some of the pages of a website,


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

is it harmful from a crawlability perspective view


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

because Google is able to see both the codes?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Yeah, that's not a problem.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's not a problem.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Thank you, Martin.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You're very much welcome, Narin.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

All right, any other questions today?


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Again, feel free to use the chat or raise your hand here


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

in the Hangout.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

I'll also double check if someone might have posted


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

on YouTube as well.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Sometimes people are posting on YouTube when they not.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

No more questions on YouTube.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

No more questions in the chat.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

No more raised hands here.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

In which case, I'd like to thank you all very much


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

for your time.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

It has been a huge pleasure.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Oh, OK.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

That's a thanks in the chat.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

You're welcome, Philip, very much happy to help.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

All right, in that case, thank you so much.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

We see each other again for the next Office Hours and JavaScript


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Q&A in two weeks time.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Thanks so much for your questions.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Thanks for your time.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Have a fantastic day.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Stay safe.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Stay healthy.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021

Bye bye.


JS SEO office hours May 12th, 2021


JavaScript SEO office hours November 11th, 2020

He muted himself.


That's even better.


All right.


Hello, and welcome to the JavaScript SEO Office Hours.


The first Office Hours from Google


Search Central, our new rebranded identity.


I'm super glad to be here.


My name is Martin, but I am from the Google Search Relations


team, and I am happy to answer all questions.


We'll go through the YouTube submitted questions,


and then I'll open the floor to audience questions.


I'm really happy to see a bunch of people here today


in the audience and look forward to the questions.


OK, so let's go through the questions.


Florin Mihai is asking, they have an old website


made with C-sharp and web forms from ASP.net,


and they want to build a new one with.net core and views


that render the HTML using JavaScript and Ajax


and extract information to be populated on the web pages


from APIs in the back end.


It sounds a bit like a mixture of server-side and client-side


rendering for me, but I don't know.net core and the views


system, so I'm not sure how exactly that would work.


The question is, will this affect our rankings,


and will Googlebot be able to read the content of the website


even if it's rendered after the page load event?


That's a good question.


Generally, it should not break in Googlebot.


We should be able to render it even if it uses JavaScript.


But that is something that you can and should


test before you launch.


You can test this with a more friendly test.


You can test this if you have a URL and a domain that is


verified in Google Search Console.


You want to look at the rendered HTML


and make sure that the content in the rendered HTML


is the content you would expect.


Now, if the structure of your website and the content


has changed, that will affect the rankings.


If it is a one-to-one copy, it will not necessarily


affect the rankings.


Because if it's really a one-to-one copy of everything,


the URLs are not changing, then there's


no need for us to gather signals again.


If URLs change or the structure changes or the content changes


or the way that your page works fundamentally changes in a way


that we need to recollect the signals,


then that would have a ranking impact.


But that's not necessarily something


that you should worry about unless there's


a technical problem that we can't see some of your content.


That's what you want to test for before you go live.


Again, test with mobile-friendly test.


Look at the rendered HTML and see if the content is there


that you would expect.


Maria Stella is asking two questions.


They are using Gatsby and JavaScript


and a lot of and have a lot of locale adaptive content


on the page.


What we do is we check the cookies and the browser


language and then the IP in that order to, one,


redirect users to the appropriate localized versions


and, two, for instance, basically they check,


oh, this is D-E-D-E, so German in Germany,


or this is French in France, and so on and so forth.


And then they redirect you to that content.


They also populate the content on the page using JavaScript


to show super localized content for a specific city.


And they were wondering how Googlebot perceives this.


Since they get Googlebot's location through the IP


address, which is probably not going to be different


or not going to vary that much across the world,


Googlebot won't see all versions of the page


that users see because Googlebot doesn't crawl from every city


around the world.


Is this a problem?


Is there an alternative solution you would recommend?


Yes, to both of us.


It is a bit of a problem because if we


don't see the content, then frankly, we


wouldn't know it exists.


What you should be doing is for the locale content,


you should set up hreflang and basically say,


this content is also available under EN US, EN UK, FR, FR,


D-E-D-E, and so on and so forth.


Basically, give us a list of the versions


in the different languages so that we understand and cluster


them together as one piece of content,


and then know that there's language variations of each


of these.


For the different cities and the hyper locale stuff,


make sure that you have URLs and that URLs are discoverable


either by putting them in the sitemap or even better,


somehow creating a structure where


we can use the structure and links in a kind of menu,


for instance, to understand where


in the structure the different pieces of content belong


and how the different cities relate to each other,


for instance.


So that's two things that you should look into and make sure


that we have URLs that we can use


and that we find these URLs as well.


So discovery will be a challenge as well as giving us


hints as to how the information structure looks like.


Second question is regarding JavaScript


and pre-rendered content.


Is it OK to pre-render content for Googlebot


but do some personalization for users using cookies?


Users might see different content


than Google based on their previously


selected preferences, is it cloaking?


Again, that is not a super easy answer to that question.


But fundamentally, if it's just personalization


and if I'm on a page for products,


let's say, I don't know, it's a page for restaurants


and I see slightly different restaurants


or I see them in a different order, that is fine.


If you show me my top used restaurants or something


instead of just a generic list of restaurants nearby,


that is absolutely fine.


It's not cloaking because if I click


on the list of restaurants, for instance, in the search result


pages and I get to a list of restaurants that are around me,


including my top restaurants, that's not surprising.


That's not disruptive.


And that's not bad intentioned.


I wouldn't call this cloaking.


But it's a little blurry.


You want to be careful not to give content that completely


mismatches from what they might expect from search result


pages.


So that's something you want to be careful about.


But generally speaking, this would not


be considered cloaking.


I know you've talked about, so Danielle says,


I know you've talked about dynamic rendering


and how that's OK.


For many, though, bots are only ever shown


a non-interactive site that is not rehydrated.


How does or will that impact Core Web Vitals?


Not at all.


Core Web Vitals are coming from real user data.


So they would come from people actually browsing your page.


And that way, we wouldn't hopefully not


get the dynamically rendered version for bots.


And then that's not an issue.


For lab data measurements, this might be a challenge.


But we are not using that data in the Core Web Vitals


for now, which might change in the future.


Who knows?


But you don't have to worry about this as of today.


And we have a question from Patrick.


Not really a JavaScript question, but more right.


Several websites that are ranking in Africa,


and I really want to get the event schema up and running.


I've tried JSON with multiple entries.


I tried combining the code and using IDs.


And I also tried switching the data to microdata.


Satisfied all requirements.


However, the events did not show up in either case.


I want to confirm whether the event schema, which snippet


is available in Africa.


Actually, I don't know.


Unless we are saying it's not available in Africa


in the documentation, there's no reason


to assume that it's not available in Africa.


But it's important to understand that implementing the markup


and satisfying all the requirements


makes you eligible for potential rich results showing up.


That doesn't mean that we guarantee you


that you're showing up as a rich result snippet.


So it might just be that the algorithm doesn't decide


to go with a rich snippet for the query


that you are ranking for.


And that means that the event schema,


even if implemented correctly, would not


lead to rich results.


So again, it's eligibility.


It's not a guarantee that you get the snippets.


Then Ankur asked a question here.


I'm not sure if this is something you can answer.


We'll find out in a second.


We have our website in Vue.js, and we also


have an SSR version for Google, so effectively


dynamic rendering.


How do we measure Core Web Vitals?


Does Google measure results from the SSR version


as SpaceSpeed Insights tool will measure it from the CSR version?


Again, the answer is similar to the answer


I gave previously with regard to the dynamic rendering question.


The Core Web Vitals are being measured by real user metrics,


so basically coming from the Chrome UX report.


That means that the results come from real users using


your website.


They get the client-side rendered version,


which means that's where the data comes from.


That's where the measurements come from.


So that's that.


Lab data using a bot user agent, yes.


But I had to clarify with the team


that what I thought was rolled out


is actually currently an internal experiment.


The lab data is only used as an experiment internally.


It's not actually ready and might actually never happen.


So I wouldn't worry about lab data too much.


I would focus on real user metrics for the moment


because that's what we'll roll out in May rather than


the lab data measurement.


Lab data is mostly useful for testing, really.


So you shouldn't worry too much about it.


But yeah, if lab data comes in and we do measure that


from a bot agent, then that would impact the metrics based


on dynamic rendering, which is probably


exactly why it's an experimental state and not an actual thing


because you need to figure that one out because I don't think


it makes sense to give users expectations based on something


that comes from the rendered bot version off of the page


rather than what they would see.


So we'll see about that.


In general, again, dynamic rendering


is considered a workaround.


So if you want to make some midterm, long-term bets


and investments, I would not go down the dynamic rendering


route.


I would figure out the way to basically do


SSR plus hydration as that pretty much gives you


the best of both worlds.


Even there would be still a discrepancy in the metrics.


But again, that's not your problem.


That's our problem.


We wouldn't use lab data before we figured that one out.


Excellent.


With that, I think we have exhausted


the pre-submitted questions.


That means that we are opening up to the floor.


Does anyone have questions for me here?


Quiet, peace and quiet.


Any tips for the best use of hydration and rehydration?


Good question.


Basically, whatever is implemented in your framework


of choice, as long as the rendered HTML has the content,


it doesn't really matter that much.


Try to build it in a way that it doesn't basically


reload the entire content, but it really just hydrates


the interactivity layer on top of it.


Because if you have a lot of things going on


on the main thread, that might mean


that interactivity is hindered and the page


starts to feel jaggy and weird.


So try to offload as much work as possible from the main thread.


Some dumb work has to happen on the main thread, unfortunately.


But minimize the main thread time


that your JavaScript spends as much as you can.


That's generally true for JavaScript,


which is an interesting position,


because we haven't fully tested web workers that much.


They know of some limitations of our rendering implementation


when it comes to web workers.


So that's something that we'll have


to work on this year and next year.


Any other questions?


More questions?


The questions are great today.


I love this.


Everyone felt quiet?


Oh, there's everyone's submitting questions.


You can also ask questions aloud in the video,


but it's fine to also use the chat.


I respect that, too.


Christian is asking, what is the best way


to use the chat to get a better view of the web?


And I think that's a good question.


I think that's a good question.


I like that, too. Christian is asking, what happens SEO-wise


when there are inconsistencies between rendered


and non-rendered HTML of a page, specifically


with canonical tags, noindex tags, title tags?


Does one of the HTML versions prevail?


That's undefined behavior, actually,


which means you shouldn't be running


into the situation in the first place.


If you do, that's not great, simply


from the standpoint of, what is it that you really want?


And some people would say, we want


what we sent you in the initial HTML.


And other people would say, oh, we actually


meant what we have in the rendered HTML.


So it is guesswork.


Whenever there's guesswork involved,


you can't rely on either of the two to be picked.


It might flop between the two, like flip-flop between the two,


or it might always prefer one or the other.


But I can't say which one of it will prefer.


Even if you would measure it today,


this might change next week.


Because again, this is undefined behavior,


and this is not something that we would encourage.


So I would recommend keeping your versions aligned


or leaving out information when you know it


to be inconsistent or incorrect.


Generally, I would expect the rendered HTML


to prevail in most cases.


But that's not necessarily the case.


Especially with canonization, it is possible


that we might also look at the pre-rendered version.


And this might influence the way that the rest of the pipeline


works.


It might be that you run into really strange behavior,


because this might rely on microservice timing, the way


that basically the indexing pipeline is not


one program that just keeps running from A to Z.


But it's basically a piece of program


that branches out in different services,


and then they process information in parallel.


And depending on what results the indexing pipeline gets back


from the individual services and when and in which order


it gets them back, you might see different behavior


whenever there's undefined behavior.


So for instance, indexing generally


would wait for rendering to happen.


But when we get the initial HTML,


we start a few processes at the same time.


We, for instance, start duplication,


which is fundamentally what canonicalization is part of.


So we would try to identify, is this page


a duplicate of something else that we have in the index


already?


We can't make a final judgment call,


because the rendering might change the content,


and then it might no longer be a duplicate.


But we already get preliminary results.


And if it then says, canonicalize this


to this other page, then we might,


depending on if rendering has finished at that point


or still is in progress, we might see a different behavior


onwards in the pipeline than if that isn't the case.


So that's tricky, and you should avoid that situation


in the first place.


Then Ankur asks, in the SSR version,


we have to add a card, add to cart.


We have an add to cart button, which basically does not


do anything at this stage.


Does Google take this in a negative way?


No.


We don't click on buttons.


At least Google Search doesn't click on buttons.


For shopping, I don't know.


You would have to ask the shopping folks.


But for Google Search, we don't click on buttons,


so it doesn't matter.


Then what would be the case if the website is in JavaScript


for Christian's question?


I mean, I don't know exactly what that means.


If it has nothing in there, and then the JavaScript generates


the stuff, then that's fine.


Then we don't have mixed signals.


That's OK.


If the JavaScript generates a different canonical,


as I said, that's undefined behavior.


And then you might get either of the responses or results.


All right.


So to clarify, clicking on add into shopping cart button,


you did clarify, yeah, Google Search doesn't directly do


that.


But like you did say, Google Merchant Center shopping


might do that in limited cases just


to make sure the price is what it is from the shopping


page versus the cart page.


And there was a whole big controversy


about that when it was written about, I think,


in the Wall Street Journal.


But it's just for validation purposes, I believe.


Yeah.


But again, if you want to learn more about that part,


you'll have to ask the shopping and merchant center folks,


because that's a little outside of my area of expertise.


It's quite interesting to see that this kind of thing happens


and then people get confused about it.


So is Googlebot doing this?


Then the question becomes, what do you understand as,


what is Googlebot?


Because Googlebot really is a piece of shared infrastructure


that different teams at Google may use.


For instance, I'm not sure if you ever


saw a bot with a user agent speaker.


And I think now it's called Read Aloud or something.


That's also Googlebot.


It's just a completely different team.


So they are using the same crawling and fetching


infrastructure, but they are not using


any of the rest of the bits.


And it's not really the Googlebot


that you know for search.


So.


Right.


I mean, the biggest speculation came out


when Google started AdWords, or ads now, Google Ads.


And they have their own Googlebot ads stuff.


So yeah.


I thought they were separate.


It's kind of, yeah, it's wild.


It's kind of interesting.


I could write my own version of Googlebot


that clicks on all the links if I wanted to.


I would have to have the budget for that,


and I would have to run through a bunch of approval processes.


But if I ever say, oh, I want a Googlebot that actually clicks


on all your links to see what happens,


I could implement that.


It still wouldn't be the regular Googlebot,


but the infrastructure would allow me to do that.


Didn't you guys open source some of that?


We do have the robots.txt.


Parse, that is open source, which


is one of the microservices that we run.


We do have the, so Puppeteer is using the Chrome DevTools


protocol, which internally used to be called Light Writer.


And that's kind of a way to programmatically control


Chrome instances.


And that's used in a very customized and interesting way


in the web rendering service.


So a few bits and pieces are at least partially open source.


And I am hoping that we would see more stuff moving


towards open source, because I think


a bunch of our components are quite useful for other purposes


as well.


There's a clarification on the previous question from Ankur.


I mean, if the website is built in JavaScript,


then if the tags are different from the SSR.


Yeah, that's exactly what I answered for.


If the SSR version and the JavaScript versions


are disagreeing on things like canonical tag,


it's undefined behavior.


You might get either us treating the initial version


as the real thing or the rendered version.


You can't rely on that.


You should avoid that situation.


All right.


I have a bit of an abstract question.


Unless you want to hang on.


So machine learning is used throughout Google Search.


We know for ranking and other purposes.


I know you in the Search Off the Record podcast with Gary


spoke a little bit about dedupe, duplication process,


and figure out the canonical.


And there Google puts in the things


for machine learning for assigning weights


to what the canonical page is.


In terms of rendering and crawling,


is there a lot of machine learning used there


as far as you're aware of?


For crawling, yes.


We do have a bit of machine learning in there as well.


As far as I remember, I'm not sure


if this is actually live or if this is experimental.


But I know that we are using machine learning to identify


or to predict the result of a crawl in terms of what will we


get in terms of quality content.


Can we predict?


Or it's definitely interesting to try to find out


if we can predict what kind of quality


we will get from a given crawl before it happened.


Because that would allow us to schedule


crawling more intelligently.


The same goes for if we can try to find out


if we can predict freshness, as in do we


know that we have to schedule this website daily?


Or can we gather signals that tell us not to do this daily


and then use machine learning on predicting that for sites


that we haven't had as much data for?


But again, I'm not sure if we're using this in production


or if this is experimental so far.


All right.


So to clarify, you may be using machine learning


for crawling purposes.


For one, should I bother crawling this page?


Is it enough quality for us to use our resources


to actually try to even bother crawling the page?


And two, for how fast we should crawl a specific site because


of, is it a new publisher and so forth?


And generally, I guess in the past,


you may have not used machine learning to find those things.


But now you might be, or you may decide


to do so in the future based on some tests.


MARTIN SPLITT


But nothing on the rendering side, I guess.


OK, thank you.


Any other questions?


Hi, Martin.


I have a question about the web rendering service.


So from what we know, the web rendering service


is very resilient.


So if a rendering fails, it might retry later.


So can you specify a bit more about when it's retry,


if there is a percentage of fetch


that have to fail to retry the render,


or any other things that fight these retry later?


So just to the bugs problem.


Yeah.


In general, this is something that you


shouldn't need to worry about.


That's something that we need to worry about.


Very basically, this is out of your hands.


This is our problem if a rendering fails.


We are pretty good at detecting rendering failures,


either on the network level, when there's a crawling issue


with actually fetching the resources, for instance.


We might fall back to the cache.


If the cache gives us a version that looks OK,


then we should be fine.


We also try to basically render multiple times


and see if the rendering result changes too much.


Because basically, the rendering tries


to be as deterministic as possible.


So we shouldn't see too big of a change,


except for maybe content.


But even that should not change super much


when we render multiple passes in one go.


And if we see things like we have signals


from a page that has been high quality


and now comes out with very few bits and pieces of content,


then that would be considered low quality.


And then we would assume that this probably


is a failure on our rendering side.


And then we would retry.


We often use the cache to bypass most of the failures,


because most of the failures are actually network failures.


Sometimes we do have a non-responding Chrome


that's taken care of by the internals of the web rendering


service so that you basically then get immediately


rescheduled on a new fresh Chrome instance.


But all of that is something that, A, you don't see.


B, you don't really have to deal with.


That's our job, to make sure that that's just working.


As far as the indexing pipeline is concerned,


it says, like, render me this page,


and then it gets the rendering back.


All the failure management is handled inside the WRS.


AUDIENCE MEMBER 1 OK, thank you very much.


MARTIN SPLITTMANN You're welcome.


Good questions.


That's really lovely today.


Thank you so much, everyone.


Bring on more.


OK, so I have another one about CPU usage.


So we can use tools that we have, Chrome, that tool,


so stuff like that to have an idea of the max amount of CPU


we can use without the CPU usage.


We can use without the rendering.


The rendering might stop a script that is loading too much,


that is using too much CPU.


There is a way we can say, like, OK, my JavaScript


is using 80% of my CPU when I'm loading on my Chrome browser,


my dev tools, or stuff like that.


Obviously, this depends on computers.


So on my MacBook, it's probably different from the Chrome


instance machine, because they're using different CPU,


different RAM.


But there is something that we can do, like, OK,


we can remove the JavaScript memory leak, and that's OK.


We can have a profile limit, so we can say,


OK, this is the limit.


I can't do much more of this, so I have to debug stuff


and optimize the JavaScript file.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Again, a really good question,


and there is no easy, hard, and fast rule for this either.


Again, it's holistically done.


And generally speaking, you should not really


worry about the CPU consumption.


If your JavaScript ends up in an infinite loop,


we will cut that off.


If you are taking ages, and I mean ages,


and I'm very specifically saying ages are not a specific number


here, because there is no specific number thanks


to the way that we are actually rendering, which is interesting


and complicated and unfortunately internal only.


You don't really have to worry about that.


But if your JavaScript takes ridiculous amounts of time


on a reasonable machine, and that could be your MacBook,


that could be your phone, you should


assume that you definitely want to do something


not specifically for Google, but for your users.


So it becomes a problem for your users and your real world


performance before it becomes a problem for rendering.


SPEAKER 1 OK, so if the JavaScript file


is working on a smartphone or a computer,


in the render should be fine.


OK, this is something interesting.


Thank you.


SPEAKER 2 You're welcome.


Happy to help, happy to answer all questions.


And again, I know that you probably want to hear,


like, oh, yeah, if it's this many instructions


or this much CPU usage on this machine,


that's not how it actually works.


SPEAKER 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know


I am a bit interested in how the web rendering service is built,


but this is something not to be.


SPEAKER 2 I'm just waiting for the ability


to let out more details.


But I have been asked for holding some bits and pieces


back.


I'm really excited about that as well,


because I think our engineering team did a great job there.


SPEAKER 1 And one more question about this CPU.


Using our work would work, because I already tested it,


but would also be useful in the rendering machine?


Because, yeah, just to know.


SPEAKER 2 Generally, yes.


I mean, parallelizing work that can be put in parallel


is always great.


That's great for users.


That's easier for rendering.


Just be careful to test this very, very carefully,


because especially with web workers,


there's so many edge cases that I tested with.


I tested a few very simple things,


and they failed in rendering, partially


because very few people do this, and very few people


do this in a way that it matters for the content.


So I am a little cautious when recommending


to put things into web workers, because in theory, it's great.


In practice, it needs very careful testing.


SPEAKER 1 Yeah, I test a bit something


that is connected to the timing on the page.


And yeah, it's not really working very well,


because obviously, you have a different time


inside the rendering machine.


Probably it's faked or stuff like that.


So yeah, it's not working really well there.


SPEAKER 2 Exactly.


There's lots of bits and pieces.


It's also a measure of the way that we


detect how the website rendering is progressing


is not working super well when there's threads involved.


So it's fascinating, and there's still a lot of work for us


to do in the web rendering service.


It's not all done and dusted and perfect yet.


SPEAKER 1 Yeah, thank you very much.


Thank you very much.


SPEAKER 2 You're welcome.


Thank you very much, Giacomo.


More questions?


All right, if there's no further questions,


I'll give you five, four, three, two, one.


Last call for questions?


No?


All right.


In that case, thank you all so much


for joining the live recording.


Thanks, everyone who submitted questions in the YouTube thread.


I'll just post the thread for the next one


in two weeks, which means that's the, oh, my,


I can't remember when the next one is.


I think that would be on the 25th of November.


That will be the one on 10 AM CET.


So I'm trying to serve all time zones as much as I can.


Thank you very much.


I'll post the recording later if you're watching the recording.


Thanks for watching the recording,


and have a great time.


Stay safe, stay healthy, and bye-bye.


Google Monetized Policies | WMConf Lightning Talks

Hello and welcome to another video from the Webmaster Conference Lightning Talk Series,


a video series which brings you shortened but still information-packed talks we normally


deliver at Webmaster Conferences around the world.


In this video, we'll cover a topic that's not directly related to Google Search, but which is often interesting to publishers.


I will share with you why we at Google Trust and Safety create and enforce publisher policies


and how that helps to protect the digital advertising ecosystem.


Hi, I'm John and I lead our outreach efforts representing the Publisher Policy team.


Before we begin, I'd like to provide some background on the team I work with, the Trust and Safety team.


This group creates and enforces policies, influences product excellence, identifies abuse patterns,


and strives to increase safety and trust for the entire digital advertising ecosystem.


To us, success looks like this. All are treated equally and find value in their interactions with Google.


We try to strike a balance, help publishers earn revenue, and help advertisers distribute their messaging.


But this is difficult. To be successful, we have to be good at this balancing act.


With enforcement, sometimes advertisers may think that we don't go far enough, while publishers may think we go too far.


When we create these policies, we must keep the needs of the entire industry in mind.


We constantly review our policies and our enforcement to be fair and thorough, while being mindful of societal changes and newsworthy global events.


With content policies, strengthening our controls on what content publishers can monetize initially can seem like we're punishing publishers,


while benefiting advertisers, but it's important for our industry.


With traffic policies, over many years and after analyzing vast amounts of data,


we've developed and utilized over 180 signals and filters to help defend our network.


We also give controls to publishers and advertisers to help them make the right decisions for their businesses.


For example, we've added controls for both publishers and advertisers to give both more granular category options.


And we've modified the way that we create and enforce policies to better protect the ecosystem, as well as to better help publishers.


Recently, we've made an effort to align our content policies across all of Google.


This includes AdSense, AdMob, and Google Ad Manager.


We did this with the goal of creating a simpler experience for publishers.


Along with this alignment, we've changed a number of policies to restrictions, which removes the monetization for certain types of content.


However, we do indicate to publishers that limited ad serving may be in place.


With restrictions, advertisers determine demand or lack thereof.


And we make clear which types of content we will never monetize.


Again, with the goal of simplifying the publisher experience.


Let's look at an example of how our policies worked before the launch of restrictions and how they work now.


Before the change, alcohol content was a policy and is now a restriction.


As a policy, any site that facilitated the online sale of alcohol or promoted alcohol consumption


or portrayed alcohol in a favorable light would not be monetized.


Now, as a restriction, we understand that advertisers may not find this content to be appealing or a good association with their brand.


However, we let them decide.


Our advertisers have a number of categories that they can choose from and not all will opt into alcohol.


Therefore, the end result is content label as a restriction may receive limited or no monetization.


However, it is no longer a policy violation.


These changes are the result of our constant dialogue with publishers and trying to blend the needs of publishers with those of the ecosystem as a whole.


You can find more information on both our policies and restrictions within our Help Center.


Both are broken out and describe the types of content that fall into policy or restriction categories.


So you now know the work of our team and what we are trying to achieve.


Let's look at how automation and human review work together to enforce these policies.


First, we review new publisher applications at the time of application and then we continuously re-review existing publisher content all the time.


Our review includes the utilization of automated systems as well as human review.


And with our robust systems infrastructure, we can process vast amounts of data in seconds.


Automated review is how we can protect the network at scale from the simple as well as the highly sophisticated threats, including clickjacking, malware and cookie stuffing.


OK, so how does content and traffic policy enforcement benefit publishers?


The most important benefit is this. We have high standards.


Not only do publishers have to have good traffic to be part of our network, they also have to follow our policies and these policies help ensure that we are selective.


We reject 88 percent of all applications to join our network.


Publishers that follow the rules benefit from not sharing advertiser dollars with publishers that do not meet our policy standards.


We also have high standards with the advertisers we work with.


In 2018, we rejected 2.3 billion ads and blocked nearly 59 million ads.


We introduced 31 new ad policies to address abuse and we've removed more than 6 million bad sites and apps per day.


All of these policies and policy enforcement ultimately benefits the good publishers in our network.


What are some best practices that you can implement to grow your business in a sustainable and policy compliant way?


First, set up your account correctly.


Segment what is your own responsibility versus what is managed by your publisher partners.


Vet the publishers you partner with to minimize risk.


Are you partnering with a real business?


Make sure you answer these questions for each and every publisher you onboard.


Who is this publisher?


Do they have a business address?


Does the address match with what you know about the publisher, the app or the website, and the who is information?


How long have they been working on the app or the website?


Who are the people behind the business?


Do I trust them?


What is your business model?


Does the site offer value to its users or advertisers?


And what are their traffic projections and are they realistic?


If something doesn't add up to you, you need to investigate.


Review your partners regularly, especially newcomers to the network.


Schedule regular business reviews to analyze inventory that you've purchased.


If there is a revenue spike, check UGC or implementation issues.


If your partner is reluctant or unable to explain anomalies, they may pose a significant risk to your network.


And understand your analytics.


Monitor your traffic and understand what normal traffic patterns for your site look like.


Proactive traffic monitoring can identify small issues before they become serious trouble.


And break down your traffic reports into meaningful segments or channels.


Lastly, we encourage publishers to become familiar with the work of industry groups like the IAB and TAG.


At Google, we actively engage with industry groups through partnerships and collaborations.


We believe that the entire industry should adopt policy best practices for invalid traffic, advertising implementations, and content.


And that's why we've teamed up with the IAB and TAG on various initiatives.


I hope all of this background has been helpful.


What should you expect from my team going forward?


We will continue to invest in transparency.


We do this through face-to-face meetings with publishers of all sizes at global conferences and events.


And through the creation of materials such as videos such as this one you're watching.


Additional specific policy videos can be found on our AdSense and AdMob YouTube channels.


These videos go into some depth explaining individual policies.


We iterate on our AdSense and AdMob help centers to make them more useful.


We create blog posts for our AdSense and AdMob blogs to help explain policies and best practices.


And we utilize social media.


We understand the challenges you face because we speak to you and we listen.


As alluded to in the breakout of certain policies, to change certain topics to restrictions, this was all the result of feedback from our publishers.


We listen and importantly we take that feedback to the team.


English Google SEO office-hours from July 9, 2021

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


Central Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate at Google in Switzerland.


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


where people can join in and ask their questions around Search.


We have a bunch of stuff already submitted on YouTube,


which we can go through.


But we also have a bunch of people raising their hands


already.


So maybe we'll go through some live questions first.


And then go and see what all has been submitted on YouTube.


Let's see.


First on the list is Ashwani, I think.


ASHWANI SANKARANDA, MD, PhD Yeah, hi.


Hi, John.


Hi.


John, I have a question related to website revamping


and redesigning.


OK.


So like I have done, I did lots of transformation of website,


like from WordPress to another language,


and another language to WordPress, so many times.


But like in last six months, I have revamped


total three websites.


And in every website, what I feel like,


before revamping, their traffic was almost,


like you can say, in between 10,000 to 15,000 in a month.


And after revamping of website, like after one month


of revamp, OK, suppose I did revamp in January.


So in February onward, their traffic is down to zero,


or even like 50 or 60 from 10,000 or 50,000.


So I have applied all these things.


Like I have checked their URL, their meta tag, meta title,


meta description, whatever things


which are required for on-pays factor.


I did all check 301 and all.


But still, I am facing these kind of issue


with last three websites from last six months.


So I don't know what is the mistake I


am doing for every website.


But before six months, like in 2020,


these issues are not generally happening.


But in 2021, I am facing these kind of issues.


And for this, I can say the website is going inside the Google


dance issue, like you can say.


Sometimes, its ranking is on the first page.


Sometimes, it is on the 10th page.


Sometimes, it is on the fifth page.


Sometimes, it is on the first page.


So this is the major issue I am feeling right now


for a couple of websites.


So I don't know what basically I can do while revamping


any website.


I just wanted to know from you.


JOHN MUELLER OK.


So in general, these kind of things,


I would look at on a per website basis.


There is nothing on our side that is saying,


like, if a website is revamped, then we must change its ranking.


So that's one thing, first off.


If you're seeing this with three websites,


that sounds like maybe you're doing something


unique with the revamped process and not


that there is something on Google's side


that would be blocking revamps in general.


For revamps, there are sometimes a few things


that come together.


And it's sometimes tricky to figure out


exactly what all is happening.


But the main things I would watch out


for when doing a revamp is to make sure that the URLs stay


the same as much as possible so that you don't change the URL


structure, that the internal linking stays


the same as much as possible, that the content


and the layout on the pages stays the same as much


as possible.


And if those technical elements are essentially aligned,


then from our side, the only thing that we see


is that maybe the website is a little bit faster now


because you're using a faster infrastructure.


But if, on the other hand, those factors don't align,


like if the URLs change, if the layout changes,


if the content changes, if you don't have redirects


from the old URLs to the new ones,


then those are essentially aspects that say to us


that we have to treat this as a new website


because essentially, we crawl from the start


and there's completely different content,


or it's a completely different setup,


or it's a completely different layout,


or the URLs are completely different.


So that's essentially, from our side, we would say,


oh, it's a new website.


We will start over and try to understand it again.


So that's something that I would watch out for there.


The other thing is also that we also


make other kind of ranking changes across the web as well.


And sometimes, when you do a revamp,


you get the timing in such a perfect way


that it aligns exactly with when we make a core update


or when we make a bigger ranking change.


And then it's really hard to recognize,


is this issue because of my kind of technical change that I made


or is this issue because Google just generally


would have understood my website differently anyway?


And trying to figure out, is it something


that you did with the revamp or is it something


that Google changed?


I think that's kind of a good first step.


And to do some of that, it's really


useful to just double check all of the technical details


and really kind of get a map of all of the old URLs


and then check them in archive.org


and see what they looked like before and confirm


what they look like now, use the different testing tools


to make sure that it's all crawlable and indexable,


all of those things.


AUDIENCE 1 Yeah, John.


Everything is OK.


Whatever you said is all fine from my side,


but except one thing.


I have changed the structure of the website.


Initially, it was a plain text.


Now it is in fold or it is in, like you can see,


multiple section.


There is a multiple section in website.


So I guess this might be one factor where


I am getting this issue, right?


Yeah.


OK.


And it's something where changing


the structure of a website, it will affect


how a search looks at it.


And it can be a positive effect, too.


So that might be like the previous revamps


that you did if you went from a one page website


to a multi-page website.


It might be that that was a good change for those websites,


but it might be that the same change for the current website


that you're working on does not make so much sense.


So it definitely changes something.


If suppose there are multiple paragraphs in your website,


and for an instance, I just changed,


for suppose the third paragraph, I


shifted to second number position


and the second number paragraph, I


shifted to third number position.


So does it really matter in ranking purpose?


Not usually, but it can affect a little bit


because we do try to understand the context of the text


that you have on the pages.


And if you move one paragraph from something


that is very prominent to kind of an area where it's like,


oh, this is a side note, then that could affect


how we see that information.


Now generally, these kind of things


were happening with the FAQ section.


Like I have on one page, I have a total seven or eight FAQ.


And I just shifted a few FAQ to like from first position


to sixth position or seventh position.


Does it really matter?


I think that's perfectly fine.


That's not something that we would look at.


OK.


It would be more if you changed something


from it's like a heading of a page


and you moved it way to the footer or something like that.


That's something where I could imagine our system saying,


oh, it's not important anymore.


And does image change matter in a SEO point of view?


If suppose while revamping, I changed my image.


Like earlier, it was 30 kV and now it is 15 kV images


uploaded.


And the image is also different than earlier.


So does it really hamper?


For normal web search, it wouldn't matter.


For image search, if you want those images in image search


and if you're getting traffic from image search,


then of course, changing the images would matter.


Yeah.


OK.


Thank you so much, John.


Thank you.


Sure.


Mohammed.


Hello.


Am I audible?


Yes.


Hi.


How are you doing?


Pretty good.


Actually, my question is related to link exchange.


Up to what extent is it permissible to exchange the links


or not considered as spam, let's say.


I have been outreaching to the websites from my competitors


have taken the links.


So basically, as a human tendency,


we want something in consideration.


So whenever I outreached them, so they also


ask link and exchange.


So what's the best practices when it comes to backlinks


and exchanging the backlinks?


So a link exchange where both sides are kind of like,


you link to me and therefore I will link back


to you kind of thing, that is essentially


against our webmaster guidelines.