But doing the normal URL inspection,


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from November 29, 2019

it just shows that Google selected canonical is now


the new URL instead of a 404.


I don't know how to push it to kind of recrawl it and take


the 404 into account.


I could imagine our systems are doing that on purpose


to help people who aren't doing redirects properly.


So maybe that's a case where we're


being more helpful for you than you want us to be.


Because if we can tell that the content is the same,


and it disappeared one URL and it reappeared somewhere else,


then I could imagine our system saying, well, this is your kind


of shifting the canonical from one to the other.


So that's something.


I guess the approach there could be


to make sure that the content is significantly different.


But then your experiment is getting more and more


complicated.


Yeah.


So it's kind of a product page.


So can't really change much of the content there.


It's just a description of some of the features of the product.


I don't know.


Yeah, tricky one, I guess.


Tricky, yeah.


And the new URL seems to have inherited the positions,


the keyword positions from the old URL, which, again,


70 to 80 average position for any keyword, which


is very, very dubious.


OK.


I mean, maybe that's just the normal ranking


that we would see there.


That might also be.


I mean, nobody wants to hear it.


Sure.


Yeah.


Have you started?


Sorry.


Let's take a break here.


I'll pause the recording.


I still have a bit of time.


So if any of you want to stick around and just chat,


that's fine as well.


All right.


So thank you all for joining in.


Thanks for kind of watching the recording, I guess.


And thanks for submitting so many questions.


I'll set up the next batch of Office Hour Hangouts


probably also in two weeks, where we also


have the Webmaster Conference in two weeks.


So not quite sure how the timing will work out,


but we'll try to figure something out.


We also have Webmaster Conferences


in Japan and Korea happening the next couple of weeks.


Next week, there's one in Tel Aviv,


and then two weeks in Zurich.


So lots of things happening here.


So yeah, I mean, hopefully we can catch up there.


So with that, let me pause here.


Thanks again, everyone, and see you


English Google SEO office-hours from March 25, 2022

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


SEO Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate on the Search Relations team


here at Google in Switzerland.


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


where people can jump in and ask their questions


around their website and web search.


We have a bunch of things submitted already,


which we can go through, but also two people


with their hands raised already.


Let's see.


First one, I think, is Bukosi.


I have her name right.


Yes, yes, that's correct, John.


Thank you so much.


All right, John, I came here, I think it was a week ago.


And I was talking about Google not


being able to show me how many pages are mobile friendly.


And by the way, I got that fixed.


And OK, so today my question is about average position


in the Google Search Console.


So a few days ago, I realized that I've


got over 60 keywords that are showing


that I'm on position one.


I still don't understand how that works,


because some of the keywords that I'm checking on the search


results, I don't appear face to face.


I've seen some of them are coming from the Google Business


Profile, but some of them, they're not really appearing.


I really don't understand.


When it says that the average position is one,


what does it really mean?


Does it sometimes say I'm on position one


and it takes time to appear, or how does it really work?


So the average top position is based on what


was actually shown to users.


So it's not a theoretical ranking


where you would appear at number one


if you did it right kind of thing.


It's really, we showed it to users


and it was ranking at number one at that time.


And sometimes it's tricky to reproduce that,


which I think kind of makes it a little bit hard in that


sometimes it's for users in a specific location,


or they search in a specific way, maybe just on mobile


or just on desktop.


And sometimes it's something perhaps


in an image one box or knowledge graph or kind


of the local business entry that you mentioned.


All of those things are also paces


where there could be a link to your website.


And if you see something kind of like listed as ranking number


one, usually what I would recommend doing


is trying to narrow that down into what exactly was searched.


So by using the different filters in Search Console,


figure out which country that was in


or what type of query was it.


Was it on mobile or on desktop?


And see if you can try to reproduce it that way.


Another thing that I sometimes do


is look at the graph over time.


So specifically for a query where it says average position


ranking number one, but the total impressions


or the total clicks don't seem to make much sense


and that you think maybe a lot of people are searching,


but you should kind of expect to see a lot of traffic


or a lot of impressions at least.


That could also be a sign that you were shown at position


number one in whatever way, but you aren't always


shown that way.


So that could be that something that


was like something very temporary or something that


fluctuates a little bit, anything along those lines.


But it's not the case that it's a theoretical position.


It's really it was shown in the search results.


And when it was shown, it was shown like this.


SPEAKER 2


OK, does it improve its time?


Your ranking or how do you do that?


OK, like maybe the appearance, because one of the things


that you mentioned right now that I've seen


is that on some of the queries where I'm ranking number one,


I'm not really getting maybe any impressions.


Or some of them are just getting a few impressions


and I haven't gotten any clicks, but I'm still saying


that I'm on position one.


Yeah, I mean, it kind of depends on how you were shown there.


If it's really the case that it's showing you


at position number one and you would expect this query


would drive hundreds of thousands of impressions


and you get two or five impressions,


then to me that sounds almost like some aspect


of personalization kicked in, maybe a previous query that


was used, maybe the site was previously


shown to that specific user.


And just for those very few cases,


it was actually shown at number one.


All right, so in this case now, can I just sit back


and be like, OK, I think everything is going well.


Maybe I should just wait a bit more time.


Maybe things are going to improve.


You could, but my feeling is it won't just automatically become


better just by waiting.


Because especially if it's something where


it's a little bit fluctuating or sometimes shown,


sometimes not shown, it means that our algorithms are


a bit on the edge.


And your job in that case would be to convince our algorithms


and say, well, actually, it's like,


you should be totally clear that this is a great result to show.


And then just sitting back, you're


leaving it up to chance and saying, well,


we'll see what happens.


And maybe your competitor will do better


and then you won't be shown at all.


Maybe at some point your competitor


does something really stupid and then you're shown.


But then it's out of your control.


Whereas if you take the situation where


it's fluctuating and say, well, I'm


going to convince Google's algorithms


that my side is the best by far, then


you're kind of doing things on your side, on your terms,


and taking steps to make it better.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


All right.


So yeah, what I've been doing is I've


been adding more content and providing more value.


And one more thing, John.


When I'm checking in the Search Console and the pages,


the only page that's actually showing


is the home page, mostly for the ones


that are ranking on number one.


Most of the queries that are ranking on number one,


the page that's showing mostly is the home page.


I don't understand it because some of the queries


that the home page seems to be ranking for


have their own pages.


Yeah, I guess that's just our algorithms kind


of seeing your home page as being the more important page


overall.


And sometimes that's something where


if you kind of continue working on your website


to make it better and better, it's


easier for our systems to recognize that actually there's


a specific page that is more suited


for this particular query.


But that's kind of like a matter of working on your site.


And I think working on your site should be something


where you're not just generating more and more content,


but you're actually creating something better.


And that could be by deleting a bunch of content


and combining things together.


So that's something where it's like improving your website


isn't the same as just adding more content.


All right.


Thank you so much, John.


Sure.


Phil.


Hey, John.


We've got our sitemaps now in the subfolder of our site.


I've noticed recently a lot more pages are saying indexed


but not submitted.


Do you think that might be due to having moved them


into the subfolder?


We used to have them in our root,


but due to a technology change, we had to move them.


The location of the sitemap file shouldn't really matter.


It's something you can put it in a subdirectory.


You can put it in a subdomain or a different host if you want.


It depends a bit on how you submit the sitemap file.


But if it's, for example, listed in your robots.txt file,


you can put it anywhere.


It doesn't matter if it's in subdirectory or not.


OK.


That helps.


Thanks so much.


Sure.


Cool.


Barry.


Oh, thanks for having me.


So I started a new blog.


I'm new to blogging.


And it's been amazing, an amazing experience


to start from scratch, to be honest.


Makes me think of a lot of new questions.


Anyway, brand new blog, no links to it.


Would you recommend that you submit URLs


as you publish them using the Google Search Console,


inspect URL, then request indexing


for new blogs that have no links to it?


Or no point?


It's not going to really help.


There is sitemap for press.


Yeah, I think you get it.


I mean, it's not that there's any disadvantage of doing that.


I think if it's a new site where we really


have absolutely no signals or no information about it at all,


then at least telling us about the URLs


is a way of getting that initial foot in the door.


But it's not a guarantee that we'll pick that up.


So that's something where probably you


know someone else who is blogging,


and you can work together with them


and maybe get a link to your site.


Something along those lines, that probably


would do a lot more than just going to Search Console


and saying, I want this URL indexed immediately.


And I'd probably not have to take that route.


I want to try it brand new.


Nobody knows me.


I want to see what happens, kind of thing.


OK, the next question I have is around the Google Search


Console links report.


I know nobody talks about it anymore.


I'm just curious.


Again, I wanted to see if anybody was linking to me.


It shows no external links, shows internal links.


Obviously, because I'm linking internally and the blog's set


up that way.


But how long does it take typically a new site that


has brand new and has links?


How long does it usually take Google to pick up links


in that report?


Is it pretty quick, like the performance report


and crawl stats report?


Or is it more like months or so?


I would have to ask the team.


My understanding is that a lot of the reports in Search Console


are recalculated every three to four days.


So in terms of about a week, you should probably


see some data there.


The tricky part, I guess what the links report


is that we show a sample of the links to your site.


So that doesn't mean we would immediately populate that one


link that we found to your site.


So that's something where, I don't know,


I'm kind of curious to see how long it


takes to get that picked up.


But it's not a matter of months.


And then it's not a matter of hours,


like with the performance report.


It's more along the line, I'd say,


like a week, one and a half weeks, something like that.


Should be a reasonable time.


Sounds good.


Thank you.


Cool.


All right, Kashi.


Yeah, hi.


Hi, John.


And thanks for doing this.


I actually have two questions.


And I'm going to start my first one by confirming a premise


that I have that the Google and other websites have stated


that the data that we get on Google Analytics and Google


Search Console, they will not match exactly,


but they will make sense directionally,


which means for your organic search,


all your clicks will always be greater than the sessions


that you're getting.


Is that understanding correct?


I guess it depends on what you have set up


and what you're looking at specifically.


So if you're looking at it from a site level,


then probably that's about correct.


If you're looking at it on a per URL level on a very large site,


then it could happen that those individual URLs are not


tracked in Search Console.


And then you would see slightly different changes.


Or you would see changes over time.


Or some days it's tracked.


Some days it's not tracked.


In particular, if you have a really large website.


But if you look at the website overall,


then that should be pretty close.


I mean, Search Console measures essentially


what is shown in the search results, the clicks


and impressions from there.


And Analytics uses JavaScript to kind of track


what is happening on the website side.


And those tracking methods are slightly different.


And they probably have slightly different ways


of deduplicating things.


So I would never expect these to line up completely.


But overall, they should be pretty close.


So I think I can give you the context of the problem now.


I'm getting on the Google Search Console for those PLPs.


But for the PDPs, Product Description Pages,


I'm getting a data difference of around 10x.


So that's if I'm getting 500 clicks for a product


description page.


I'm getting 5,000 organic sessions for those product


description pages.


So I'm not able to make sense out of it


what's the probable cause and what's causing this problem.


But like you said, in an overall website level,


and when I look at our overall organic sessions


and our organic clicks, they're kind of making sense.


But when I'm looking at the page level, it falls apart for PDPs.


But for listing pages, it is making sense.


Yeah.


I think it's also a bit tricky with regards


to things like canonical URLs and things like that, where


I could imagine if you're looking at individual product


pages that you start to see more and more differences there.


That's perhaps another layer that is involved there.


The other thing is sometimes analytics


is implemented incorrectly.


And that can play a role.


If you're seeing overall on a website level


that it's kind of aligned, then probably it's implemented OK.


But that might also be something just to kind of double check.


But from what you're saying, I'm assuming


it's a large e-commerce site.


I don't know.


Yes.


But if it's a really large e-commerce site,


then there are definitely limits in Search Console


on how much data we collect per day for a site.


So if you drill down on a per URL level


or on a per query level, then that's


something where you might see those differences


on a large website.


Got it.


But if that were to happen, if that what you're saying


is true, I would have seen the data discrepancy


for product listing pages and for product listing pages


as well.


But product listing pages making sense.


The clicks and sessions are making sense.


It's the description pages that's not making sense.


Well, I mean, usually if we have more data for individual pages,


then those will be kind of tracked a little bit better


in Search Console.


So that's probably why the pages that


are a little bit higher level essentially probably


have kind of more complete data in Search Console.


Whereas if you drill down to the leaf pages on a larger website,


then that's probably where you would


expect to find more differences.


Right.


So I think what's been jettling for me


is for all over the internet that I'm reading,


I'm seeing that everybody is facing


that they are getting more sessions than clicks.


But for me, it's completely opposite.


I'm getting more clicks than sessions.


So I think that's where I'm studying.


In analytics?


How do you mean?


Yes.


For my sessions in analytics are more than the clicks


that I'm getting on Search Console.


In a traditional problem, it would be your clicks


are more than your sessions.


Right?


Not necessarily.


That's fair.


Yeah.


I think you're probably seeing kind


of the effects of a large website and small chunks


of the data on there.


And that's something where you can


see kind of these variable differences like that.


Got it.


Second question, is there a way to check the real time


data on Google Search Console?


No.


In the performance report is as close as it gets.


And I think it goes up to six or nine hours,


something like that.


But it's not real time.


And what you're saying is the probable reason for this


is that your data is getting limited for the product


description pages.


So probably the limit of the product.


Yeah.


OK.


And the next question is, in my robots file, what I've done


is I have disallowed some of the pages, certain pages that


have disallowed.


But it is quite possible that Google had probably in the past


have indexed those pages.


And when I have blocked them, disallowed them from crawling,


today, to this day, I see them getting organic sessions.


Why is that happening, and how can it fix that?


I remember there was something called no index directive.


But is there the right way to go about it,


or how should I proceed with this?


If these are pages that you don't want to have indexed,


then using no index would be better


than using the disallow in robots text.


The no index would be a meta tag on the page, though.


So it's a robots meta tag with no index.


And you would need to allow crawling for that to happen.


Got it.


So I have to allow that in the robots.txt,


but I would have to add the no index meta


tag on these URLs.


Exactly.


Cool.


Thanks.


I'll look into it, and I think probably we'll see you next.


OK.


Thank you.


All right, Hazel.


Hey, John.


Good afternoon.


So I've got one question about some software for errors.


So in our JSC Bankland, there are some sudden increasing


errors of software for URLs in the coverage report.


And we took some sample URLs to test in the mobile-friendly test


tool.


And the page is mobile-friendly.


However, the title and description


of the tested page showing in this tool


seems to be the older version.


Long, long time ago.


And since we couldn't use the live URL inspection in JSC,


so we use extension to monitor the user agent of Google


to check the source code of the sample pages.


So all looks good to us.


Even the title is new, and so is the description.


So in this case, we couldn't find the reason


about these increasing soft 404s.


So any otherwise help to identify this problem?


It would be useful to have some examples.


Sometimes the soft 404s are things


like products that are out of stock or not available anymore.


Those kind of things can also be picked up as soft 404s.


It could also be that the page is empty


or that there's some other error that's in the DOM of the page.


If there's something happening with JavaScript,


for example, that's loading some kind of an error that says,


no information found, or product not available,


or something like that.


All of that could be seen as a sign of a soft 404.


And if you're seeing a rise in the number of soft 404s,


my guess is that something in the classifiers


for the soft 404 were slightly updated


and were picking up a slightly different pattern


on your website.


And that's something where sometimes using the inspection


tools helps you to figure out what might be happening there.


If you look at the full content in the rendered HTML,


and sometimes it doesn't make any sense.


And if it's something where you're like,


well, everything on my side is OK,


then those would be really useful examples to have


for the team.


OK.


So.


Sorry.


With regards to the old title being shown,


that would need to be from your side somewhere.


Because the mobile-friendly test and the URL inspection test,


they don't use any cached data to display the information


that we find there.


They really pull that information


fresh from your server.


And it can sometimes happen, depending on your setup,


that you have a content delivery network that,


for whatever reason, maybe one of the nodes has stale data.


And from that, I've seen in the past


that you'd see a difference like that.


And usually, over time, that stale node fixes itself.


But that might be something to double check as well.


OK.


Good.


So you are saying that when we test a page


through this live URL, the cached page will not be tested,


right?


Exactly.


It's a live fetch, yes.


So at the first time, we thought it's maybe something


about the cached page.


But also, like I said, the older the title and description


is, it's older than maybe many, many years ago.


So we dropped that one reason.


Yeah.


I think if you see it in the search results,


that might be from a cached page.


But if you're using the mobile-friendly test


or the inspect URL, it's really a live fetch.


So what about the live test you are inspectioning in JSC?


It's also test the live URL?


Yes.


Good.


One more question is about this tool.


When will this tool be fixed at approximate time?


Yeah, because it kind of depends on this tool


to test some maybe test some live problems.


How do you mean fixed?


Yeah, because we see some problems


that showing something went wrong when we use the test.


Oh, OK.


Yeah.


That one issue.


I don't know.


I haven't really heard anything recently about that.


I assumed it was fixed.


But I can double check with the team.


OK, sure.


Thank you.


Cool.


OK, let me run through some of the submitted questions.


And then we'll get back to some of the people


with their hands raised again to see how far we can go.


I need to go at the end of the hour.


But we'll see how far we can make it.


Let's see.


Is it true that Google has different algorithms


for the indexing and ranking of different niches?


We have two websites of the same type.


And we've built them with the same process.


The only difference is that the two sites are different niches.


And currently, one is ranking, while the other one


has lost all ranking.


So I don't think we have anything specific with regards


to different niches.


But obviously, different kinds of content


is differently critical to our search results.


And if you look at something like our quality raters


guidelines, we talk about things like your money,


your life sites, where we do kind of work


to have a little bit more critical algorithms involved


in the crawling and indexing and ranking of those sites.


But it's not the case that you would say,


like, a bicycle shop has completely different algorithms


than, I don't know, a shoe store, for example.


They're essentially both e-commerce type stores.


But the thing that you also mentioned in the question


is that these are content aggregator sites.


And they're built with the same process.


And some of them work, and some of them don't work.


That, to me, feels like it's kind of like,


I don't know your sites.


It feels a bit like low-effort affiliate sites,


where you're just taking content feeds and publishing them.


And that's the kind of thing where our algorithms tend not


to be so invested in to make sure


that we can crawl and index all of that content,


because essentially, it's the same content that we've already


seen elsewhere on.


So from that point of view, if you


think that might apply to your site,


I would recommend focusing on making fewer sites


and making them significantly better so that it's not just


aggregating content from other sources,


but actually that you're providing something unique


and valuable in the sense that if we were to not index


your website properly, then the people on the internet


would really miss a resource that provides them with value.


Whereas if it's really the case that if we didn't index


your website, then people would just


go to one of the other affiliate aggregator sites,


then there is no real reason for us


to kind of focus and invest on crawling and indexing sites.


So that's something where, again, I


don't know your websites, but that's something


that I would look into a little bit more rather than just, oh,


Google doesn't like bicycle stores.


They like shoe stores instead.


Two related questions.


What counts as a click for an FAQ-rich snippet?


Does Google ever add links to FAQ answers,


even if there isn't one included in the text?


You link to the Help Center article


on that, which I think is pretty much the definitive source


on the clicks and impressions and position counting


in Search Console.


In general, we count it as a click


if it's really a link to your website and so on clicked.


And with regards to the rich results,


I can't say for sure that we would never


add a link to a rich result that we show in the search results.


Sometimes I could imagine that we do.


But it's not the case that we would say,


oh, there is a rich result on this page,


therefore we'll count it as a click,


even though nobody clicked on.


It's really like if there's a link there


and people click on it and go to your website,


that's what we would count.


And similarly for impressions, we


would count it as an impression if one


of those links to your sites were visible in the search


results.


And it doesn't matter where it was visible on the page.


If it's on the top or the bottom of the search results page,


if it's theoretically visible to someone on that search results


page, we'll count it as an impression.


What's the best practice to create sitemap files


for multi-language websites?


Right now, we're using the subfolder


to differentiate the languages.


And for the sitemap component itself on URL value,


should we use the xhtml link rel alternate hreflang


with every available language version of the URL?


So using subfolders for sitemap files is perfectly fine.


As I mentioned before, it's a reasonable approach to doing


it.


We don't really care where your sitemap file is located,


as long as it's in a valid location.


And a valid location is something either


that you're referring to yourself within the setup


of your website.


So with the robots.txt file, for example,


you'd point us at a URL somewhere.


Or you're submitting it in Search Console,


and you have the rest of your site also verified


in Search Console.


Then those sitemap files would be OK.


With regards to the hreflang attributes,


you can use those in the sitemap file.


You can put them in the HTML of your page.


You can put them in the headers of your page.


Where you do that is totally up to you.


Some people put it in one place, some people in another place.


We sometimes also see that it depends a bit on who is


actually working on the website, in that maybe you don't have


access to the HTML code.


Or maybe you can't set the HTTP headers.


Then putting it in a sitemap file


is a good way to take advantage of those different locations.


I believe for developer documentation,


we use a sitemap file because we can't easily


add them to the headers.


So we end up putting it there.


Are there any crawling issues if posts on a category page


are sorted by last modification date instead of published date?


No.


So in particular, if we're looking at an HTML page,


the order of the links on there is not


related to the order of our overall crawling


of those pages on the website.


So as long as those links are on the HTML page


and we can follow them, we can essentially


pick that up and use that.


I think it might get a little bit tricky


if you have things like paginated pages


and the newest link is on page 10 of that paginated set.


Then we'd first have to crawl all of those 10 pages leading


up to that and then find that new link.


That's something I would try to avoid.


But if it's all on the same HTML page


and you have either an order by last modification date


or an order by published date and they're


kind of visible on the HTML page,


then that's good enough for us.


Then a question about parameter URLs.


Why do parameter URLs end up in Google's index


even though we've excluded them from crawling


with the robots.txt file and with the parameter settings


in Search Console?


How do we get parameter URLs out of the index


again without endangering the canonical URLs?


So I think there is a general assumption here


that parameter URLs are bad for a website,


and that's not the case.


So it's definitely not the case that you


need to kind of fix the indexed URLs of your website


to get rid of all parameter URLs.


So from that point of view, I would see this as something


where you're kind of polishing the website a little bit


to make it a little bit better, but it's not something


that I would consider to be critical.


With regards to the robots.txt file and the parameter


handling tool, usually the parameter handling tool


is the place where you could do these things.


My feeling is the parameter handling tool


is a little bit hard to find and hard to use by people.


So personally, I would try to avoid that and instead


use the more scalable approach in the robots.txt file,


but you're welcome to use it in Search Console.


With the robots.txt file, you essentially


prevent crawling of those URLs.


You don't prevent indexing of those URLs.


And that means that if you do something like a site


query for those specific URLs, it's


very likely that you'll still find those URLs in the index,


even without the content itself being indexed.


And I took a look at the forum thread


that you started there, which is great.


But there you also do kind of this fancy site query


where you pull out these specific parameter URLs.


And that's something where if you're looking at URLs


that you're blocking by robots.txt,


then I feel that is a little bit misleading


because you can find them if you look for them.


But it doesn't mean that they cause any problems.


And it doesn't mean that there is any kind of issue


that a normal user would see in the search results.


So just to elaborate a little bit,


if there is some kind of term on those pages


that you want to be found for, and you


have one version of those pages that is indexable


and crawlable, and another version


of the page that is not crawlable, where we just


have that URL indexed by itself, if someone searches


for that term, then we would pretty much always show


that page that we actually have crawled in.


And the page that we theoretically also


have indexed because it's blocked by robots.txt,


and theoretically it could also have that term in there,


that's something where it wouldn't really make sense


to show that in the search results


because we don't have as much confirmation


that it matches that specific query.


So from that point of view, for normal queries,


people are not going to see those roboted URLs.


And it's more if someone searches for that exact URL


or does a specific site query for those parameters,


then they could see those pages.


If it's a problem that these pages are


findable in the search results, then I


would use the URL removal tool for that if you can.


Or you would need to allow crawling and then use


a noindex directive, robots.txt directive,


to tell us that you don't want these pages indexed.


But again, for the most part, I wouldn't see that as a problem.


It's not something where you need to fix that


with regards to indexing.


It's not that we have a cap on the number of pages


that we index for our website.


It's essentially, we've seen a link to these.


We don't know what is there.


But we've indexed that URL should someone search


specifically for that URL.


Is there any direct ranking advantage


for improved accessibility?


For example, like performance as a URL that is more accessible,


naturally providing better UX and engagement?


Specifically, do links that have features like increased font


weight, underlining, or color contrast


provide any search advantage over links


that are not visually separated from the surrounding text?


No, not really.


So I think accessibility is something


that is important for a website because if you drive


your users away with a website that they can't use,


then they're not going to recommend it to other people.


But it's not something that we would pick up and use


as a direct ranking factor when it comes to search.


And maybe that will change over time.


That's something where I could imagine the work that we've


done around Core Web Vitals and the page experience ranking


factor, where it could be that at one point


we can quantify accessibility a little bit more.


And maybe at that point we can use that


when it comes to ranking.


But that's something where, at least at the moment,


we don't have any specific plans in that direction.


I have a question about duplicate content.


I worked at a developer staffing company,


and we published technical articles weekly


about developer hacks and tips into our blog section.


Is it OK to have the same external source


code as a reference to two or more articles?


For example, if you have five different articles talking


about express.js topics, but using the same source


code information from a referring source,


is this still considered duplicate content,


even if it's just a source code from another project?


So I think there are a few assumptions here as well.


On the one hand, that duplicate content


is a problem that you need to fix,


which is usually not the case.


And the other is kind of like if there's


a part of a page that is considered duplicate content,


is that a bad thing?


And no, that's not necessarily a bad thing.


So from a practical point of view, what would happen here


is we would recognize that a part of the page


is the same as other pages that we've seen.


And if someone were to search for a line of text


or a piece of text specifically to that shared section,


then we would try to pick one of those pages


to show in the search results.


Whereas if someone is searching for something


that is relevant to the text around that,


then we would try to find the best matching page appropriately


from there.


So from that point of view, if you're sharing the same code


snippet, probably people aren't going


to be searching for that code snippet itself,


but rather they're searching for the information


around that code snippet.


I don't know how to do something special in JavaScript.


And then they find that page.


And as an example, they have that code snippet there.


But they don't search for that code snippet itself.


And from that point of view, that's perfectly fine.


It's OK to have kind of shared elements on a page talking


about the same thing.


Let's say my product page is ranking


for a transactional keyword.


Would it affect its ranking if the product is out of stock?


And I guess the other question is kind of unrelated.


Let's see.


Out of stock, it's possible.


Let's kind of simplify it like that.


I think there are multiple things that


come into play when it comes to product themselves,


in that they can be shown as a normal search result.


They can also be shown kind of as an organic shopping result


as well.


And if something is out of stock,


I believe the organic shopping result might not be shown.


I'm not 100% sure.


And when it comes to the normal search results,


it can happen that when we see that something is out of stock,


we will assume it's more like a soft 404 error, where


we will drop that URL from the search results as well.


So theoretically, it could affect, essentially,


the visibility in search if something goes out of stock.


It doesn't have to be the case.


In particular, if you have a lot of information


about that product anyway on those pages,


then that page can still be quite relevant for people


who are searching for a specific product.


So it's not necessarily that something goes out of stock


and that page disappears from search.


The other thing is also important to note here


is that even if one product goes out of stock,


the rest of the site's rankings are not affected by that.


So even if we were to drop that one specific product


because we think it's more like a soft 404 page,


then people searching for other products on the site,


we would still show those normally.


It's not that there would be any kind of a negative effect that


kind of swaps over into the other parts of the site.


The other question is, could my rankings


be influenced by a banner popping up on my page?


And yes, they could be as well.


There are multiple things that kind of come into play


with regards to banners.


On the one hand, we have within the page experience report,


we have that aspect of intrusive interstitials.


And if this banner comes across as an intrusive interstitial,


then that could negatively affect the site there.


The other thing is that often with banners,


you have side effects on the cumulative layout shift,


like how the page renders when it's loaded,


or with regards to the, I forgot what the metric is


when we show a page, the LCP, I think,


also from the Core Web Vital side


with regards to that page.


So those are different elements that could come into play here.


It doesn't mean it has to be that way.


But depending on the type of banner that you're popping up,


it can happen.


I'm building a keyword research tool


that analyzes the search results for competition.


However, the API I'd like to use is obviously to scrape Google.


Is it legal to use such an API, or should I


ban creating tools like this?


I can't give you legal advice.


So from that point of view, I can't say is it legal or not.


I believe this kind of access would


be against our terms of service.


And how that kind of affects what you do is more up to you.


But I can't really give you legal advice.


So I don't know.


Not really sure what to say there.


OK, let's see.


We have a bit more time.


Maybe I'll go back to some of the people who


have their hands raised.


Let's see, Akash.


AKASH SINGH CUMMINGI, JR. Hi, John.


So I have a question.


Let's say if there is a particular page which is,


like, there is an error in Google Search Console, which


is like, sometimes Google might pick something,


a different page, what a user has defined.


So in that regard, how can we provide the correct signals


to the Google when it comes to selecting


the right page as a canonical?


I think there is an error, right?


Duplicate, like Google choose different canonicals


that the user defines.


So in order to make sure, because the pages


have the correct canonical tag, and the coverage report


is different than what the URL inspection is showing.


For a few URLs, it shows what the user has defined.


But for a few pages, it shows that Google has picked


something different canonical tag.


This is definitely related to a job industry


where a lot of HRs try to put in the same job description


for a particular job-specific query.


So this is not something which is controlled by me


or controlled by the team.


But from the employer's side, the job title remains the same.


But job description is like copy pasted


whatsoever on the pages.


There could be a duplicate content issue as well.


But I don't know how to make sure for job industry


how to deal with the problem.


Yeah, I think, first of all, kind of making sure


that these pages are significantly unique


is something that is almost like a requirement there.


In the sense that if we think these pages are essentially


the same, then we're trying to do you a favor by just picking


one URL to index it.


And you probably don't like that,


that we're trying to help you in that regard.


But that's something where if we think these are essentially


the same pages, then we're saying,


well, it's like you accidentally submitted multiple pages


with the same content.


And we try to fix that for you.


So the best way to avoid that part


is really to make sure that these pages are significantly


unique.


And if that's something that is based


on what people are submitting to your website,


then maybe there is a way for you


to add some kind of a pre-submit check where you say,


well, actually, this description that you gave me


is the same one that you gave me yesterday for a different job.


Kind of to push back on that level,


that might be an approach.


But essentially, if the pages are, for the most part,


the same, then it can certainly happen


that we fold them together.


And you also see this when you have an e-commerce site where


you're active in multiple countries,


and the product descriptions and the products themselves


are exactly the same.


You just have a different phone number


on the bottom of the page for the individual country address.


Then that's also one of those situations


where our systems will say, well, this page is essentially


the same.


We don't need to index all of these variations.


So I think that's kind of the first thing that you need to do.


And in general, with regards to canonicalization,


it's important to keep in mind that there


are multiple factors that play a role here.


The rel canonical is one thing.


But we also look at things like internal and external links


to those pages.


We try to see what is listed in a sitemap file, what


is listed otherwise with indirect links on a page


with things like structured data.


We also look for redirects on the page.


If you're kind of like redirecting from one page


to another, then probably the destination page


is more relevant.


And sometimes we also look at things


like which of these URLs looks nicer,


or which of these URLs is cleaner.


So in particular, if we have one page with parameters


and the other page without parameters


and it's exactly the same thing and we have similar signals,


then we will probably try to pick the cleaner URL.


And all of those things need to align.


And well, I mean, they don't need to.


But ideally, they would align so that we can really


follow that recommendation.


Because what we often see, or sometimes see at least,


is that people will put a rel canonical on a page.


But internally, they'll link to the other version of the page.


And then our systems are like, well,


you say this is your canonical.


But within your website, you're telling us


something completely different.


Which of these is it?


And maybe we'll just pick this one today.


And maybe we will shift over to another one


at some point in the future.


So with regards to canonicalization,


that's always really important.


Really making sure, I guess, first of all,


for your particular case, is making sure


that the content is actually unique so that we don't


have to do canonicalization.


But if we do canonicalization, make sure


that you're giving us all of the signals in the right direction.


Cool, so that means that I really have to talk to a lot of HRs,


I guess.


That makes sense.


OK, so my second question is related


to a backlinking part, especially.


So let me just break it down into two things.


One, there are a lot of new sites


which are publishing about a particular domain


or a particular brand name.


But they have not linked that brand name


to my particular domain.


So those are just mentioned.


However, those mentions could be in the form of a brand name,


or it could be in the form of a person's name as well.


So there could be a, like, could be like the CEO,


the VP of my company could be present at some


of the new sites, you know.


They might have spoken to some of the new channels as well.


So those particular things.


Does Google still able to recognize those mentions,


those names, and since they have been associated


with the current company or the current particular brand


that they are working with, does that some kind of influencer


has to be like get passed to the particular page, the brand name,


just because you have been mentioned on some other places,


but you're not linked to that particular kind of entity.


And if a new site has written multiple articles on us,


on my particular brand or domain name,


let's say three to four articles on a particular topic,


sort of which few pages have been indexed


or few are not indexed.


So if the page is not indexed and they have been still


linked to us, so are they still count from the backlink


perspective, from the signal point of view,


like these have been referred to you?


I mean, first of all, if there is no link to your pages,


then it's not really a link there.


So it's not something that we would see kind of like, oh,


it's like a half link worth of mention or something like that.


It's essentially there is no link.


So there is no signal passing like there


would be with any normal link there.


So that's, I think, kind of the first thing to keep in mind.


That doesn't mean that these mentions are bad


or that you need to avoid them or anything like that.


It's really just like we don't treat these as links,


and that's about it.


And it's something where maybe users will pick that mention,


and they will search for your site


and then go to your site anyway.


But it's not a link to your site.


So from that point of view, it's very different.


I wouldn't put them into the same category.


AUDIENCE 1 How about you have been linked from some pages,


but those pages have not been indexed?


So people might be able to discover


on some other platform, some other CMS,


but they might not index due to, again, two favorite issues


like crawl currently not indexed and not indexed.


But those mentions or the link has been already


present on those particular things.


So it is still counted just because the page is not indexed,


and so those links won't be counted.


Or even if the page is not indexed,


but if there is a link, those things can be counted as well.


Usually that wouldn't count because for a link,


in our systems, at least, we always


need a source and a destination.


And both of those sides need to be canonical indexed URLs.


And if we don't have any source at all in our systems,


then essentially that link disappears


because we don't know what to do with it.


So that means if the source page is completely dropped out


of our search results, then we don't really have any link


that we can use there.


Obviously, of course, if another page


were to copy that original source and also show that link,


and then we go off and index that other page,


then that would be like a link from that other page


to your site.


But that original link, if that original page


is no longer indexed, then that would not


count as a normal link.


I have a follow up on that, can I, or is it still OK?


Or maybe I'll take Matthew because I'm running out of time.


And next time, I should have a bit more time


to go through more questions.


Sorry.


My question is on the harvesting of images for the recipe


gallery because we've finally identified something


which I think has affected some other bloggers


and it's really badly affected us,


which is that if you have lots and lots of recipes indexed


in the recipe gallery and you change


the format of your images, as the metadata is refreshed,


you might have 50,000 of the recipes get new metadata,


but there is a deferral process for actually getting


the new images.


And it could be months before those new images


have been picked up.


And while they're being harvested,


you don't see anything.


But when you do a test on Google Search Console,


it does it in real time and says, yeah, everything's right


because the image is there.


So there's no warning about that.


What it means is you better not make any changes or tweaks


to slightly improve the formatting of your image URL


because if you do, you disappear.


Probably what is happening there is the general crawling


and indexing of images, which is a lot slower


than normal web pages.


And if you remove one image URL and you add a new one


on a page, then it does take a lot of time


to be picked up again.


And that's probably what you're seeing there.


What we would recommend in a case like that


is to redirect your old URLs to new ones also for the images.


So if you do something like you have an image URL which


has the file size attached to the URL, for example,


then that URL should redirect to a new one.


And in that case, it's like we can


keep the old one in our systems and we just


follow the redirect to the new one.


To do that, I guess we have to still send


the old one in the metadata.


Because if we send fresh metadata,


I believe you delete the old one.


Because our old image URLs still work,


it's just because we've shipped you the new metadata


that you're no longer going there.


So I think we have to start sending you the old URLs


as well.


JOHN MUELLER-GRANT, MD, PhD That might be easier to process.


Yeah.


OK, but it's just, yeah.


The key thing is there's nothing on the thing


with the previewing and things which says, by the way,


this won't happen in the real world.


Or I mean, it sort of vaguely gives that caveat.


But the fact that images can take so long to be picked up.


And I guess you don't see it with Google with the web page.


These pages still show an image in the web page


because you still know, oh, this image goes with this web page.


But it's only the recipe metadata


where it's the other way around, where it's looking


for a particular image.


Because otherwise, it just says we


have an image which came from this web page.


So a regular Google search result


will just show any old image in those came from that web page.


Yeah.


I mean, that's kind of the way that image search


works in general.


But maybe we should have some kind of a better warning


to catch those kind of issues.


SPEAKER 2


If we had a site map specifically for images,


will that be of any help in sort of speeding up


the harvesting of images?


I don't think so.


I mean, I think it could help us to understand


which ones we need to pick up.


But we have to recrawl the web page anyway.


And the image would only drop out


if we have recrawled the web page with a new image


URL attached to it.


So I don't think it would speed that up.


It would be more useful if you're


documenting the stable state.


Then that site map file with the image URLs would help.


But if you're making a change by changing all the image URLs,


I don't think the site map file will change anything there.


And the kind of crawl budget, essentially,


there's some algorithms going on deciding


how many robots to send where.


And you just have to live with however many it sends you.


Yeah.


I mean, what you can do is make sure


that your site is really fast in that regard.


And that's something in the crawl stats report,


you should be able to see some of that, where you


see the average response time.


And I've seen sites that have around 50 milliseconds


and other sites that have 600, 700 milliseconds.


And obviously, if it's faster, it's


easier for us to request a lot of URLs,


because otherwise, we just get bogged down


because we send, I don't know, 50 Google bots to your site


at one time.


And we're kind of waiting for responses


before we can move forward.


All right.


So improving performance is probably helpful.


Yeah.


Thanks.


Cool.


OK.


I need to jump.


I realize there's still people with your hands raised here.


So sorry, but maybe we can catch up


in one of the next Hangouts, where I have a bit more time


as well.


It's been great having you all here.


Thanks for all of the questions that you submitted


and the feedback, like with the images here.


Super useful.


I wish you all a great weekend, and hopefully, see you all


again in one of the future episodes.


Bye, everyone.


Bye, John.


Thanks, John.


Google Search News (Sept ‘22) - New reports, structured data, and more!

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Google Search News.


I hope life is treating you reasonably well wherever you are.


I'm your host today, John Mueller.


Wow, it's already September, and of course, I have some updates for you.


Today, there's news about e-commerce, search ranking, Search Console, and more.


So let's get started.


E-commerce in search has grown significantly.


Whether you're selling products directly or working with merchants


indirectly, we've got some updates for you.


First up is structured data for pros and cons.


These annotations can help users to see a high-level summary of a review.


It's shown in search directly.


You can find out more in our search developers documentation.


Recently, we announced expanded eligibility


for some product experiences from the use of structured data.


The features include the shopping knowledge panel, popular products,


and features in Google Images and Lens.


We updated the documentation and added a new merchant listings


report to Search Console.


Additionally, there are a bunch of new e-commerce-related videos


here on the channel, too.


They're YouTube shorts, perfect for getting a dose of SEO


while on the run.


And now, over to ranking updates.


In August, we launched the start of a series of improvements to Google


Search.


The goal is to help people to find great content made by and for people.


We call it the helpful content update.


We published a series of recommendations for creators.


In short, focus on people-first content and avoid


search engine-first content.


The full details are on Search Central and the Google blog.


This update is a site-wide signal, and the process is fully automated.


For affected sites, improvements will be taken into account over time.


This change is currently for searches in English.


If you have questions about this update, please post in our help community.


On the subject of ranking updates, we have a page that's


dedicated to keeping track of them.


The sample of updates which we list here


are bigger changes, where we have guidance to help site owners.


If you're wondering about specific updates,


we hope this list with dates helps you to narrow things down.


And now, over to Search Console.


Google Search Console helps explain how a website is doing in Google Search


and gives site owners information on potential issues and areas


for improvement.


If you're not using Search Console, I recommend giving it a shot.


New is a video indexing report.


This helps you to determine which videos were indexed


and what might be preventing the others from being indexed.


In addition to this report, we enhanced the URL inspection tool


to give you information about videos.


Also new is an HTTPS report.


Sites use HTTPS to securely communicate with users.


It authenticates the website and protects the privacy and integrity


of transmitted data.


HTTPS is a part of the page experience ranking factor.


With the new report, it's easier to recognize


any issues blocking a page from being served securely.


It's gradually rolling out over time.


Over the last month, we have simplified


the way that we classify pages, items, and issues in Search


Console.


This makes it easier to focus on critical issues that


affect your site's visibility in search


and to better prioritize your work.


Finally, we announced that the geotargeting setting


and the hreflang report in Search Console are going away.


hreflang annotations continue to be supported,


and you can find all the recommendations


for managing multilingual and multiregional sites


in our documentation.


Moving on to some neat non-Google things.


If you're getting started in the world of SEO,


Jackie Chu shared a list of interview questions for SEOs.


Interviews are stressful for both sides.


Jackie picked some great questions for you


to try out and to build on.


And then once you're in, it's time to build an SEO strategy.


Tom Critchlow has a great write-up


on how to work on SEO strategically.


Whether you're working on a big company's website


or just starting on your blog, I'd recommend checking it out.


And while you're here, I have a bunch of shorter updates


to share.


We're experimenting with a new format for our SEO office


hours to try to answer your questions around search.


Take a listen and tell us what you think.


In July, the search quality rater guidelines were updated.


The quality raters help us to evaluate our algorithms.


If you're curious about what we consider, then check that out.


In our developer documentation, we


added information about how many bytes of HTML


Googlebot will crawl.


While this doesn't affect most sites,


it's cool trivia to mention to developers.


It's 15 megabytes, by the way.


We also added best practices for feeds for the Follow feature


in Google Discover.


This feature is currently available in English in the US.


And that's all for this time, folks.


Thank you for tuning in to the Google Search News.


I hope things have been going reasonably well for you


this year, and I'm looking forward


to catching up here again in the near future.


Please drop any feedback and comments here.


I always read them all.


And if you subscribe to this channel,


we'll make sure to let you know when another episode is ready.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Why do SEOs give strange recommendations to us developers sometimes?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Why can't the Google documentation be up to date?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Why won't all SEOs use their tools and documentation properly?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Why is the Google documentation written so strangely?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Hello and welcome back to another episode of SEOs and Developers!


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Today, my guest is Michael King, who is not only running an SEO agency,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

he has a technical background, but he's also a rapper.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So I'm really looking forward to see what we'll be getting into today.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And I'm here with Googler, Martin Split, who's a diver, magician, and an individual who is


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

as dynamic as his hair. Very excited to be with him today.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So I'm really, really excited to be joined in this episode by Mike King.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And Mike, I actually have a really good question for you.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So you are running your SEO agency, and I know that you have a technical background,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

so you maybe understand where I'm coming from when I say, as a developer, I have met so many SEOs


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

who are basically like barging into the development room and go to the team,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

like stand in front of the entire team going,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

oh my god, stop everything that you're doing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We have a massive issue. And then you're like, so what's the issue?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We need to fix our canonicals.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And you're like, but why?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Oh, you know, it's going to break everything, and everything is going to be like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

we're going to get penalties, and everything is going to shed,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

and we have to like really get everything back up to speed,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

and oh my god, this has to happen now, now, now.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And I'm like, why is it that a bunch of people are operating like this?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Where does that come from?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Well, it comes from the fact that everyone in SEO comes from a different background.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like not too many people are as technical as someone like me,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

or some of the other great people in the space.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so, you know, a lot of it is like, okay, I read this checklist.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It tells me like, okay, I need to do these things.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I have a tool that tells me that everything is on fire,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

so I'm going to focus on the thing it says is most on fire.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So what it really comes down to is differing levels of education.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

You know, I think that there's some difficulty with people understanding like what priorities are,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

how they align with priorities in an actual business.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And then also from the perspective of like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

what is going to be the impact of doing any of these things?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So it's very easy for an SEO who is inexperienced to like put together some sort of like PDF report


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

from a tool that they're using that says like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

okay, these are the 10 things that must happen right now.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But it doesn't necessarily reflect what the impact is going to be of those things.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Right. Yeah, I've seen these PDF reports and that has me wondering like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

why can't tools not just be doing the right things?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like, why are these tools generating these 30 page reports with all this stuff in it?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

How do we end up here?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like when you build a generic tool around a series of SEO best practices,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

it's not going to take into account the context of the actual website, right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So in the example that you gave with canonical tags,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

you know, there may be a reason that you have so many duplicates.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

There may be a reason that the site needs that, right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like, you know, if you think about like a site that has a bunch of franchises


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

and that content isn't any different from the site,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

that content isn't any different per franchise,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

it makes sense that you're not canonicalizing those to one version of the page.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like the business wants to have these different permutations of pages


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

for different service areas.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And there's any number of reasons where this may be of value to the actual business.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So, you know, a tool is just going to say,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

well, the best practice is for every URL to be canonicalized


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

to the version of it that's very similar to it or is an exact duplicate.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It doesn't know that that actually makes sense for that business.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So I think that there's an opportunity.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I think this is generally true that like technology for SEO


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

is very much behind, of course, what Google is doing,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

but it's also behind what it can actually do, right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I think that there needs to be some sort of layer that's added to these SEO tools


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

where it's like, I'm this type of business.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We have this type of concern.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

These are our priorities.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

All right, now spit out something that is prioritized


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

or takes into account what makes sense for this business.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so when you don't have that, you need an expert that's able to interpret it


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

from a business use case perspective, from a perspective of like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

what can we technically do?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And again, because you don't have enough people in SEO


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

that are able to interpret things that way,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

you get these reports straight out of the tool.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's like, again, everything is on fire.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so that's what our job is, is to interpret that


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

through the frame of what the business actually needs to do.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

All right, okay, I get that.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So one takeaway for me, don't be mad at me here,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

is that from a developer's perspective, I always thought like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

this stuff can probably be automated away, right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We don't really need that many actual people doing it,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

but it sounds like that's not the case, right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

There's a bunch of stuff that depends on the context


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

and the tools can't capture this, right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Well, I'll put that back on you.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like at this point, we've also got tools that can automatically write code.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We don't need developers, right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's the same sort of thing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

You know what I mean?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like, of course we need developers.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like there still needs to be that interpretation of like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

what are we trying to do here?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And how do we account for the nuances of what we're trying to do?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So to your point, yes, I agree that a lot of SEO can be automated,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

but there are things that, let's say for instance,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

we're talking about like an internal linking structure.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

That could be entirely automated,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

but if you don't have the right rules in place,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

it could go crazy really quickly, right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like let's say you even got it to the point where you've identified


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

like all the pages that own individual keywords.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So let's say you've got your whole keyword list and you're like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

okay, there's a mapping of keyword to URL.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And then you have something that crawls the site and looks for the instances


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

of those keywords so that you can automatically build a keyword relevant,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

you know, internal linking structure.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But that could easily go crazy where you have every word on the page


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

has internal links on it now.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And now it's like a completely bad user experience.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And you know, there's any number of sort of like filters


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

that could be tripped as a result of that.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so you still always need that like human interpretation


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

so that we're doing things right and it just doesn't go haywire.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

MARTIN SPLITT Yeah. Yeah, I see that.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

No, that makes perfect sense.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And another thing that I'm surprised by, let's put it that way,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

is that there's a lot of the guidelines,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

you said like the best practices and the guidelines are there


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

and the tools are going along with them.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But a bunch of them seem to be, a bunch of the tools seem to be


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

making proposals or suggestions that I think are either, you know,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

not quite there or actually completely wrong and outdated and no longer are a thing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

How does that happen?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

JONATHAN CHAMBERS Yeah, you've got things like text to code ratio,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

which or like W3C compliance that is still in the series.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Which is, I mean, I'm embarrassed to see that type of stuff still,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

because it's like, was that ever really a concern or was it just something that,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

you know, some SEO at some point was like, hey, I think this is a thing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And then every tool just has it as a result.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But yeah, I think, you know, no one's really gone back and looked and taken a critical


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

look at things and said, like, hey, what do we actually need to be looking at?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

What do we actually need to have rules around?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I think it's largely been like, you know, you have to have feature parity with other tools.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so they're just like copying what they saw Moz do or what they saw SEMrush do or whoever.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And it's just like continue to persist.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But I think that there needs to be, you know, I think SEO as an industry probably just needs


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

a product manager to stand up and be like, yo, let's stop doing these dumb things.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

MARTIN SPLITT Oh, man.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I mean, I understand that that kind of like cruft accumulates over time.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But I mean, we have so much in terms of updates and documentation and reading material and


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

guidance out there that we are trying to update whenever something changes.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But yet the tools are still like spouting things.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And for instance, the W3C thing, that has been a tricky one because obviously writing compliant,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

semantic and correct HTML is great because that makes it easier for us to understand


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

what you're trying to accomplish there in terms of the semantics of the content.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But if you make mistakes, it's not that we stop understanding the page and be like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

oh, we don't know what that is.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We are out of here.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We are still trying to make sense of it.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We just might need like we might lose confidence in the way, right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's like, oh, this might be a headline, but we're not sure.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

DANIEL AUGUSTINA Right.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But realistically, you know, if that was actually a requirement, I'm going to guess that over 90%


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

of the web just wouldn't load.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

MARTIN SPLITT Absolutely.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Absolutely.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

DANIEL AUGUSTINA Because what is truly compliant across the web?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so to that end, you know, obviously you guys, the crawling capability is fantastic


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

and you're rendering the full page anyway.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So, you know, if my browser works, it's likely that your crawler will work.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so just the fact that we're still like even considering that is difficult.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But at the same time, there are things that you do that achieve compliance that do help.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So I agree with what you're saying.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But it's not the metric that we should be looking at to determine it.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I think that there's a lot of instances where, you know, if we're talking about documentation,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

where the documentation may be out of phase with where you are as an organization.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And I think you can say that, like, not just from what's public facing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I'm sure that's happening internally as well.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so the reality of it is very difficult to look at that documentation as the single


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

source of truth because things are changing so quickly.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so even if all the SEO tools were like, okay, let's follow Google's documentation perfectly.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It still wouldn't necessarily be, you know, the ideal state for how these tools would tell you


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

things.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Mm hmm.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Okay, I'm guessing this also aims a little bit in the direction of previous next links


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

where we had like this thing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Okay.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Yeah.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So what happened there was unfortunate.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And you're right.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like the docs are not always in phase.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We're doing our best to work with the teams and help them to keep their documentation updated.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But it does every now and then happen.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

In this case, like a bunch of engineers in search quality figured out, hey, hold on.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We actually don't really need the rel next and rel prev links anymore to figure out what


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

there's like a pagination going on.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We can figure that out from other things on the page by themselves.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So they just removed the code.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Right.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And then we were in this.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And now, now, like, go into our position.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Come, come to our side of the force.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And what do you do?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Do you either update the docs to like, just quietly remove that part because it no longer


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

is relevant?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Or do you go like, hey, by the way, this is no longer necessary and truthfully,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

truthfully speaking, it hasn't been necessary in the last six months, knowing very well


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

that people are reading the documentation, making recommendations based on it to other


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

people.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And these people then invest work and time and money into making that happen.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And the alternative would just be to let it in, like, let it live there in the documentation,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

even though it's wrong, it doesn't hurt.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So we went with the full frontal way of going like, okay, here's the thing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

This has been removed a couple of like, a while ago.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We are sorry about that.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But now our docs are updated.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And I think like, none of the choices are easy or necessarily perfectly good.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But it's just what happened.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So I think we're trying to keep the docs updated as much as possible.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Yeah.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And I get that it's hard.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

You know, again, you have a large team, which is like an offshoot of another even larger


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

team.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

You're both moving quite quickly.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I get it.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's just very difficult from this side where you're making recommendations to people.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And then you've got an engineer who's like second guessing you, and then they find something


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

in the documentation that's out of date.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And they're like, no, you're wrong.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

You don't know what you're talking about.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Google says this right here.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So it just makes our job a lot more difficult.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So I get what you're saying.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But you also got to come to our side and see what we're dealing with, because I'm just


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Mike King.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

You guys are Google, right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I understand that.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Yeah, no, no worries.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

That's exactly why we are so transparent and say like, hey, by the way, this has been removed.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We are sorry, but the docs are now updated.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Because we understand that we have to make sure to our best knowledge and our best ability


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

that the docs are a source of truth.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Nonetheless, it is tricky because what you just said, like, oh, the engineer finds this


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

piece of documentation, argues their way around it.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's so hard to write these docs to the right audience.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Right.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Yeah, and that's the thing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It seems like from what I've read, and I've read most of it from what I can tell, it's


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

like the writer is aiming for the middle, but that doesn't really support the use case,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

right?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like, it doesn't necessarily align with the people that are actually going to use this.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like, at the same time, and I get there's a very wide audience of webmasters, but it's


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

like, oh, I'm a webmaster.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

How many small business people are really digging into documentation like this?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So why are we necessarily writing for them?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Or should it be the type of thing where we have a section that's more for the advanced


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

user or more for the enterprise user, where you're able to speak to these use cases in


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

more specific ways?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

There's a lot of situations in the documentation where there's just too many edge cases for


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

things that are being said.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

There's something that came out more recently where it's like, hey, if you see a traffic


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

trend or a click trend that looks like this, that means this is what happened.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I've seen plenty of trends that looked like all four of those things that are shown in


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

the documentation that weren't the thing that the documentation says it is.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So now I'll have a client that'll come to me and say, well, we saw this, and the documentation


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

showed us a screenshot of this.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So this must be why.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so they may not be so receptive to what's actually going to need to happen in order


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

to recover.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So that's the thing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It just doesn't really solve the problem in the way that we would hope it does.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

MARTIN SPLITT ANDERSON


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I understand that, and I understand that it's tricky.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And we learned that, and that's why we relaunched our documentation at some point in the past.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I think it was November 2020 we relaunched, or February 2021.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I can't remember when exactly we launched the new dev site.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But we're trying to group it differently, because we realized that even though with


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

the new grouping, we're still seeing feedback to very technical things like robots.txt,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

coming from small business owners, being like, I don't even know what any of this means.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We're like, OK, but this is a very technical thing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

How did you end up here?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Why did you end up here?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

What are you trying to accomplish?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So it's really, really tricky.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And we have to try to write for the broad use case, and then the edge cases.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

That's a tricky place.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Where do they live?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I did that for JavaScript.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I have this extra fixed JavaScript issues page with all the edge cases where things


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

might go wrong.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But it's tricky.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's not easy to catch all these things.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And that's why giving us feedback on the docs, and in the docs, there is an opportunity to


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

give us feedback right there.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We read this.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's really weird, because we can't give a response back.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

That's easy.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

You don't know that we read it, but we do read it.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And it's quite interesting.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

A lot of it is really useful, constructive, helpful feedback that allows us to improve


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

our documentation.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

A bunch of it is people saying, oh, you guys suck.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And I guess that's the reality of the internet.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Wherever you give people the opportunity to say things, they might say things that you


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

might not want to hear.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But that's OK.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

If they think we suck, I'm sorry.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Well, I do want to give some props, because especially around the JavaScript thing, I


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

really appreciate what you did with that.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Because that was very much something that we were very early on discovering at my agency.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We wrote a blog post a number of years ago, probably like 10 years at this point, called


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Googlebot is Chrome, where we introduced the SEO world to the idea of headless browsing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And I also wrote some subsequent stuff around that about how this could be done.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And I appreciated that you especially came out and were like, no, here's how we do it.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Here are some specific things to know.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Because it was a lot of speculation from our part and a lot of testing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But I appreciate that you were able to say, no, no, no, here's the way that we do it.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And then we can refine it across the industry.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So that's what I mean.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

There are definitely instances where the documentation has been incredibly valuable in shedding light


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

on how we need to be thinking about things.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Because for a long time, we may have been going in the wrong direction entirely.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So yeah, there's definitely some value to it.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I just think that there are instances where things are very vague or don't really speak


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

to the problem and create more problems for SEOs.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So with the create more problems, that's exactly what we want to improve on and what we want


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

to constantly get better at.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And also thank you very much for the positive feedback.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And for the other bit, it's very generic or very strangely written.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

That one is a tricky one because it is, you said it.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

You said it yourself.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

SEOs come from a wide variety of backgrounds.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And they have a wide variety of different focuses.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And they look at the same thing from very different angles, like the W3C validator thing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

If you ask me, so does our HTML need to be written well?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

My answer would be yes, it has to be written well.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But I don't mean specifically compliant to W3C specs, which is what some people might


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

hear who are coming from that angle.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Someone else might be like, oh, so it doesn't have to be compliant, but it needs to be like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

well done, OK, fair enough.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And it's not just documentation where this is hard.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's incredibly hard to do that from the tooling that we provide, PageSpeed Insights, for instance,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

or Lighthouse.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It gives you a score.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

That's so dangerous.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Ah, I know.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's so dangerous.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I know.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But some people need that score.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But let's dig into that a little bit.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So one of the common things that I hear, and I heard at a conference the other day, they're


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

like, oh, I ran it three times.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Why is it different?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

People don't understand that network conditions impact all of these scores here.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so if there was some sort of call out, maybe there is, maybe it's in a tooltip that


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

no one clicks on.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But I think there's some value in helping them understand that.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Because you'll see your score is like 45 right now.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Now suddenly it's 52.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And you're like, these tools don't work.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I don't trust these tools.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And then also let's talk a little bit about the difference between a click in GSE versus


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

a session in GA.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Most people don't know.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like, it was very widely misunderstood that those are not the same things.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so I ended up writing a blog post going in great detail.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I did some patent diving and looked at some of your documentation and showed people like,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

no, here's why they are measured differently.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

One of these comes from logs.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

One of these comes from clickstream and so on.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And so if that information was surfaced a bit better, and again, I'm not saying you don't


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

have it.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

There was a section in there that talks about the differences to some degree.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like, what is average position versus what is a ranking?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Things like that.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

These are things that are just not obvious to people that I think could be surfaced a


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

bit better.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

So these questions don't come up as much.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's very, very good feedback.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

That's exactly what we're trying to do.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And I know that especially the Lighthouse team, for instance, tries to be ridiculously transparent.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like, you can figure out how the score is being calculated and evaluated and as well


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

as how that changes over time.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Because the same score might actually change.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Even if everything else would be the same, over time, you might actually see different


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

scores because the way that the different metrics are weighted is changing.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Yeah.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It's challenging, though.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Of course.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I think the bigger challenge, though, is that, again, sometimes a developer will come into


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

the project, they'll look into the documentation, and they're like, this doesn't match up with


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

what the SEO has told me.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And then they just don't trust them.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And then there's also some messaging that I recall from a year or two ago where there


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

was a video talking about how you should choose an SEO.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Obviously, that created a bit of a firestorm in our space because it felt like Google saying,


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

this is the way that we need to be.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Here's the expectations you should have.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I wish there was one where y'all were like, hey, here's the expectations you should have


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

of our documentation.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I understand.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Yeah, see, and this is exactly what happens because I liked two things particularly in


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

what you just said.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Number one, this video created a firestorm amongst SEOs.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It was not even meant for them.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It was not even meant for their customers necessarily.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

It was meant for small businesses who were like, I am running a kid's clothing store


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

in a back street in Zurich, and I have zero budget.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

I'm basically running it out of my basement.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And people like WhatsApp me or Facebook message me or FaceTime me or Hangout me or write me


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

or write me a text message or whatever to pick up their order or something like that.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

But I want to be taking part in the online world of e-commerce.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

How can I do that?


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And it was meant for this audience.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like if you get an SEO, look for these very obvious red flags and things that might not


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

be up for what you are trying to accomplish.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And because of the wide variety of people, that is what happened.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

Like it was misunderstood and misrepresented, and it wasn't necessary, representing itself


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

very well.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

And the other thing was trust.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

We said a developer comes in and doesn't trust what the SEO says based on what is in the


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

documentation.


Why is SEO documentation so confusing?

That seems to be like the core of all this.