But what if you're building guest posts on a large scale


English Google SEO office-hours from August 27, 2021

for huge publications which are relevant,


like Healthline or Forbes, with non-keyword rich, albeit


relevant anchor text that might be able to help our site?


I think, for the most part, when the Web Sam team runs


across something like that, they would see that as unnatural


links and try to kind of diffuse that almost,


in the sense that they want to make sure


those links don't count.


So from my point of view, doing something along those lines


to drive awareness to your website is fine.


But then the link should be nofollowed.


And essentially, if you're bringing your expertise


to a broader audience, if you're showing them,


here is something really smart that I put together,


then you can find out more information on my website,


and that link is nofollowed.


It's kind of almost like an advertising for your website.


And if it's nofollow, people can still click there


and go to visit your website.


And in the end, if they think, oh, this


is actually good content, I'll recommend it to other people,


then they can link to your content.


But that initial link that you're


pointing to your content that you're placing yourself,


that's at least not passing any signals.


So that's kind of the way that we would see it.


Obviously, just going out and creating great content


is one thing.


But if nobody knows about that content,


nobody is going to be able to recommend it.


So you almost have to do some amount of initial marketing


or promotion for your content.


But that initial marketing and promotion that you do


doesn't have to have kind of normal


followed links to your content.


SPEAKER 1


Cool.


Thanks.


Daniel.


Hey, how's it going?


Hi.


Couple of questions, one's a general and one specific.


So the first one really is, I asked this question


a couple of weeks ago, just shared two URLs again


in the chat.


So the first site is the original site,


and then migrating to the staging site.


And we spoke about if we had links in the navigation


versus on page, and the kind of impact


that would have against link equity and that being dispersed.


So the good news is they are going


to keep the exact same URLs in the new site


versus the old site.


So the structure there is going to be the same.


But my concern now is the placement, the link placement.


So you'll notice in the first URL, the first domain,


we've got the collections and the pages URLs.


It's a bit of a mix, mainly forward slash pages.


Both forward slash pages and forward slash collections


get a lot of visibility across the two.


But in the new site, it's only collections in the navigation


and the forward slash pages as being moved to the A to Z page,


which you'll see top right hand corner next to the what's next.


So my main concern now is the link placement.


Now that we've got the forward slash pages being removed out


of the navigation onto the A to Z, I kind of wanted some advice.


So you can see the new site's much cleaner.


It's more of a mega menu now.


It's got more URLs.


It's going to be better for the UX.


But my concern now is if we go live with that,


all the visibility that forward slash pages URLs get,


we'll lose it.


And we'll lose it also, and we'll


have a bit of volatility and ranking.


So I feel like the only way to mitigate that


is to have or trying to replicate, again, what's


in the existing site to the new site, which


has got a lot less URLs and has a mix of pages and collections.


But I kind of wanted to get your advice on that,


because we don't want to lose any visibility.


And the current site is, yeah, that's


something that's been around for years,


and we've just been bolting on and adding on


and stuff like that.


So yeah, what would be the best course of action


if we didn't want to lose visibility


across the forward slash page URLs


and the forward slash collections


if they are getting removed from their navigation,


if that makes sense?


Yeah, I don't know, I would almost have to take a look


at the site in detail.


But it's always very tricky to judge what would happen.


In a case like this, I mean, it's always,


if you're changing the internal navigation


and things are moving around, then you're


kind of changing the weighting of the elements on your site


and what you want to kind of see as being the most


important on the site.


And that's sometimes a bit tricky,


especially if you have things like mega menus or just


generally bigger menus, where when you initially look at it,


it's hard to tell what is actually a link in the HTML


or not or what the actual structure there is.


So that's something where if you're


changing the actual structure of the internal linking, that


would almost certainly affect things from an SEO point


of view.


But it could also affect things in a positive way,


where it's hard to say, I don't want this part of my site


to drop, but at the same time, I want everything else to rise.


Essentially, you're shuffling things around always.


You're kind of like taking something from here


and putting it here.


You're not keeping everything here and then adding five more


here if you're just shifting things around on the website.


And that shuffling between different parts


of your website, that's something


that you can do strategically as well, where you can think


about, well, what do I really care about with this website?


Where do we make the most money?


Where do we think we have the best content


that we want to promote?


Maybe where is the most competition


where we need to put more weight so that we can compete


properly?


And those are all things where you're


taking from one part of the site and moving it


a little bit to the other part by changing the internal length.


And that's sometimes really tricky to look at just


from manually looking at the site.


You probably need to almost crawl the site with a tool


like Screaming Frog or something like that, and then look at,


I think they have some kind of a


AUDIENCE 1 Is it in links?


Or the map, I think, you're referring to that between.


JOHN MUELLER That map, yeah, exactly,


where you see everything is rotated around here.


Everything is split into these sections.


And usually with that, you can see before and after.


It's like everything was rotated around this part of the site,


and now it's shifted over here.


And then you can evaluate, well, is that what I want?


Or is it not what I want?


I'll give that a go then.


I think if we were to be safe, maybe


the important forward slash page URLs,


we would insert into the navigation


and then kind of figure out all the,


wait till post migration and pull them out.


But yeah, we can have a look.


It's a handy tip, actually, to have a look at that site


because it's just using Screaming Frog.


OK, I'll have a look at that.


And this is just more of a general question as well.


So obviously, we've obviously seen


there's a lot in the industry news around the title tags


and SERPs.


And now Google is doing more of taking the H1 tag,


or at least on-page content, and kind of replacing that.


So my question is, is Google moving away


from using title tag as more of a weighted factor now?


Or have they already done that?


Because again, we optimized title tags


to make sure it's descriptive and it makes sense.


But if Google's not really using it as a ranking factor,


is there any point?


So I just wonder if that's a step in that direction


and moving away from the reliance of title tags.


I'm going to rank as a ranking factor.


JOHN MUELLER-GAULTUOIS-MARTINETTI Yeah,


I don't know what the future will bring.


But at least at the moment, it's not the case


that we're saying title tags are irrelevant.


They still matter for search.


They do matter for rankings as well.


So even if our systems kind of rewrite something,


then it's not the case that we would


say your page is irrelevant for what you had as a title tag.


We would still use that for search.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


OK, that's good then.


Thank you, John.


I really don't know which direction things will go there.


I suspect with all of the feedback


that we've gotten around title tags, what will happen


is we'll do a bunch of iterations


in the algorithms, which on the one hand,


I think will make things better.


On the other hand, SEOs will always be like, oh, no,


more changes.


But hopefully, there'll be reasonable changes or changes


that you all think make sense as well.


There was also a little bit talk about having


some kind of opt-out meta tag or something like that.


I don't know.


Personally, I don't see that happening, at least not


in the near future, because it's also something


that we didn't really need in the past as well.


And making a setting just because the algorithm currently


is maybe a little aggressive in that direction,


that seems like the wrong approach,


because it should be something we should improve


in the algorithm, not rely on an extra setting to get it handled.


But I don't know.


We keep getting feedback, and that feedback is super helpful.


And we'll see what we have to do to make sure


that things align, that they work well for users,


and that they work well for the sites as well.


SPEAKER 1


If this is here to stay and I guess


it gets rolled out across everything,


I might ask this question again in the future.


JOHN MUELLER


Sure, yeah.


Nothing is here to stay.


The web is like, what, 15 years old now?


It's changing all the time.


So I


It's evolution.


Yeah, exactly.


It's always emotion.


SPEAKER 2


No, it's not.


I appreciate the answer on that.


It just gives me and my team a bit of guidance.


And yeah, we're unsure.


It's something we've been doing for years, I think,


as a lot of SEOs.


And as a case, we need to stop focusing on that as more


and focus on different areas.


But it seems like you're still using it for relevancy


as such.


So we'll continue doing what we're doing.


Awesome.


Thank you, John.


I appreciate that.


I appreciate the answer.


JOHN MUELLER


Thanks.


OK.


I see there's still a bunch of hands raised,


but I need to also get through some


of the submitted questions.


So I'll jump to some of the submitted ones for the moment


and get back to the people who are raising hands afterwards.


Also, I'll have a bit more time after the session


for anything that's remaining.


Let's see.


If we have links pointing to all category pages


in the main navigation, is there any benefit for SEO


if we put a second link to some of them from the main content?


I don't think there's really a big benefit from an SEO point


of view if you add an additional link to the same page


within that page.


Sometimes we can get more information from the anchor


text.


If the initial anchor text is very short or not


very descriptive, then a more descriptive one can help.


But there's also no downside there.


So if you're adding extra links in the main content


for usability reasons, that's perfectly fine.


That's something that I think definitely makes sense.


What would be an ideal product description


length for e-commerce sites offering


quite technical products?


Does the length of the product description


influence how these pages rank at all?


I don't know.


You won't like the answer, but it depends.


It's something where essentially you


can use whatever you want as a description.


And some sites don't even provide any description at all.


They essentially leave it completely


to Google or search engines to figure out


what the description should be.


But it's something that's very unique to each individual site.


And the length that they supply there, that can vary.


It's also the case that in the search results,


the length that we show varies quite a bit.


Sometimes we show something very short, sometimes maybe


two lines, sometimes maybe even four lines


or longer in the snippet in the search results.


So it's not the case that there is this one number


that you need to target.


And regarding ranking, it doesn't change ranking at all.


So you can supply whatever you want there.


The other thing maybe to keep in mind here


is just the snippet that we show is not just


the description in the meta tag.


It can also be something from the page.


And it can vary depending on the query.


So that's a little bit, on the one hand, similar to titles


in that it can be from the page.


But it's different from titles in the sense


that it can vary depending on the query.


And more title tag talk.


We wondered, if we changed the page title tag


to match what Google is now dynamically selecting


in the HTML, would this negatively affect SEO?


Ultimately, we want to know if the HTML title tag would still


add SEO benefit, even if it was not


being selected for display.


I think we touched upon this briefly.


It still matters.


The title tag still works for ranking purposes,


changing it to what Google has selected.


From my point of view, it doesn't automatically


make sense, because just because one algorithm selects something


as a title doesn't mean it's a better title.


But maybe there are cases where Google's algorithms have


selected a better title and where it makes sense


to go in that direction.


But there are certainly also situations


where maybe Google's algorithms select a worse title


and where you want to keep the one that you had there,


or maybe you even want to improve the one that you


had previously.


So I wouldn't just blindly use what we show in search


and say that's got to be the best title,


because Google's algorithms know everything better.


And it's not the case that Google's algorithms


know everything better.


AUDIENCE 2. Can I just add to that?


Is that OK?


JOHN MUELLER-ROSSENBAUM, JR. Sure.


AUDIENCE 2. So basically, when you guys change it from,


let's say, from ABC 1, 2, 3, and then I go ahead and make


a change because I don't like what the algo did choose,


it takes quite a long time for it to update than before.


What's going on with that?


So a long time ago, it took about 20 seconds for bot


to go in and update it.


Now, days, maybe like weeks.


So is there an issue on why that's happening?


When I go and fetch the new title tag,


it doesn't take, you know, it's not as fast


as it used to be, John.


That's all I'm saying.


I don't have anything against that.


It's probably the new infrastructure or?


JOHN MUELLER-ROSSENBAUM I don't think


there's any kind of built-in latency there.


So it's


AUDIENCE 2. Right, it's many sites.


I've tried it with 10,000 web pages.


I've tried it with a small and pop shop.


It takes a long time for it to update.


So let's say right now I made a title change,


and I go and submit it to, and I go and fetch it.


Wait, then the security thing pops up, you put it in,


and then you wait, and you wait.


And I don't see the change.


JOHN MUELLER-ROSSENBAUM I mean, it's something where we don't


guarantee that we actually go off and re-index the page when


you submit it there.


So that's something that always plays a little bit of a role


there, but I've seen reports online where people are making


title tag changes, and they're reflected fairly quickly.


I don't know, the, what is it, WordStream,


for example, on their blog.


They had an example there where they're like, oh,


Google changed our title tag to something that we don't like.


And they went off and changed some things on their pages,


and that got picked up within, I don't know, a day or so.


I don't know what the timing there was.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Yeah, so a day is fine.


I'm just saying, but before, back in the day,


it used to be much faster.


So there's probably.


I mean, I don't know if the titles are specifically slower,


but that shouldn't be the case.


And kind of indexing is something


that differs extremely by site, from site to site.


And for some sites and some pages,


we go off and re-index things very quickly,


and other sites, it just takes a lot longer.


And I think with regards to titles as well,


things like the site title that we


have where we try to figure out what the title of the site is,


that's something that does have a bit of latency


there because we kind of assume that sometimes not all titles


on a website have kind of the brand mentioned.


So if we don't see the brand mentioned, we say,


oh, we should add the brand there as well because that's


what users want to see.


And if you're trying to change that brand name


or remove that from the title there,


then that can sometimes take a bit of time.


Yeah, I'm OK with it.


It's just I'm adjusting to what's happening on your end.


And I understand what you guys are going through.


So it's just that's the way it is.


And yeah, no, I'm OK with it.


OK.


No, I mean, it's good feedback to have for the team


that if you want to make changes quickly,


then it's annoying if you have to wait.


Yeah, if a client calls and says,


hey, this and this or the development team,


what's going on?


How long is this going to take till the change?


I mean, there's some.


Yeah.


Got it.


OK, let's see.


Next question here.


I've been consistently publishing content


on my website.


Oh, no, this is essentially the same question that you had.


It's like my new articles are not being treated by Google


like my early articles not being indexed as quickly.


What can I do?


Now, I think it is something that you


have to grow from over time, especially


if it's a relatively new site.


Then it does take a bit of time for Google's algorithms


to pick up on that and to crawl very quickly and frequently


on content that you're adding.


And especially when it comes to new content


that you're producing on a website,


we do take into account things like the overall quality


that we've seen of a website over time.


And if it's a relatively new website,


maybe we don't have that much context there


with regards to the quality.


If it's something older and you're


seeing that Google is just not picking up new content,


then I would try to take a step back and think about what you


can do to really make it clear that this is really


high-quality content and that you


don't have this mix of high-quality, low-quality


content there.


So that's my advice there.


And with regards to new content not being indexed quickly,


it's not that the new content is maybe of questionable quality.


It's really the overall existing content.


So that's one thing to watch out for there.


If my website is in Wix or Shopify, for example,


and they mess up the hreflang implementation


and I get a 503 error and get deranked,


it's not in our control.


Is there any way to get recrawled faster


after the fix has been implemented?


So I think there are a few things here which


are being combined here.


On the one hand, if you're using a platform


and something on that platform goes wrong,


we see that as an issue on your website.


We don't go off and say, oh, they're using a platform


and they can't help it if that platform is doing something


wrong.


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


oh, the website doesn't have anything to do with this.


It's like we should act like as if the website is doing


everything perfectly even though it's not working for us.


We do see it as something that is on the website itself.


So that's maybe the first thing.


With regards to technical issues in general,


that gets resolved fairly quickly.


Especially the larger platforms are extremely well set up


for these kind of technical issues.


And the ones that you mentioned there


are ones where, at least from what I've seen,


are doing fantastic work with regards


to the quality of the technical infrastructure


that they have.


The other thing that's mentioned here


is the hreflang implementation.


Hreflang is not a ranking factor,


so it would not affect the ranking of your website.


So that's maybe something else to kind of throw


into that mix there.


So my general advice here is if you're seeing something


like this happening that your website is dropping in ranking,


then I wouldn't focus on those specific things


that you mentioned there.


So not the hreflang, not a temporary server error,


not that it's hosted on some popular provider or something


like that, but rather think about what


might be happening on your website with regards


to your general content overall that could


be affecting ranking there.


Because if these are technical errors,


then we would remove those pages from search.


Then it wouldn't be a ranking issue,


but rather an indexing issue.


And usually that gets picked up fairly quickly


once any technical issue is resolved.


So I think there are kind of a few things mixed in here,


and it's hard to have a clear answer on what you


should be focusing on here.


What I would recommend is if all of this


is throwing you off completely and you're not sure


what is actually happening, the next time you


see an issue like this, go off and post in the help forum


and include the details.


So which of your URLs are affected?


What specific issue are you seeing?


Which queries are you seeing a change in ranking for?


And oftentimes, the folks that help out in the help forums,


they can take a look and at least help


you to rule out certain things.


And maybe there is something on the provider side


that they need to change.


But by ruling out some of the more general issues,


you have something more specific that you


can go to the provider for and say,


hey, this specific thing is broken,


and I think you should fix it.


Or you should help me to find out how to fix it myself.


There's a great saying from one of your podcasts.


I think it's about Google's not a magazine.


Google's a library.


So treat it that way.


And yeah, going back to the site and looking at the content,


changing it is what it is.


Yeah.


Let's see.


Next question.


Does a page index but blocked by robots.txt?


Is that counted for the overall site quality?


In general, no.


So on the one hand, we don't know what the content is.


So we can't take that into account.


On the other hand, if it's blocked by robots.txt,


then almost certainly it won't appear in the search results


anyway.


So that's something, even from there,


we would not be able to take into account.


So from my point of view, that usually


wouldn't be something that we would take into account.


Also, if the page is noindex, then it's also not indexed.


We wouldn't have the content in our index.


We wouldn't be showing it in search.


So there's nothing really to take into account


in a case like that.


What's the benefit in getting greener with regards


to Core Web Vitals?


We have most of our site in the green


but would like to understand what's


the value of making the scores even faster.


Probably nothing.


So at least from an SEO point of view,


if you're already in the green, like in,


I don't know what it's called, good or OK,


in the individual metrics for the Core Web Vitals,


and you're seeing that from the real user metrics as well,


then essentially from an SEO point of view,


from a ranking point of view, we would not


be changing anything if you get even better than that.


However, when it comes to things like real user metrics,


it is something where you always have this variance of speeds


and kind of metrics that we see from users.


And if you make sure that your data is kind of even more


in the green, then it'll be a little bit more stable


in the green when it comes to the field data that is actually


used in Search Console.


So that's something where you're kind of making it more certain


that we're seeing your site as being good.


But it's not the case that if you save another 5


milliseconds, you will see any kind of a ranking effect based


on that.


Of course, until you reach that amount,


you would see some changes there.


But if you're already in the green,


then you're doing a lot of things really well.


The other effect there that you might see


is just the non-SEO effect.


If users are seeing that your site is


fantastic with regards to loading and interaction


and usability, then that's something


where you might see some indirect effects,


that they spend more time on your site


or recommend it more.


And that's always a good thing too.


But that's not a direct SEO ranking point of view thing.


Let's see.


A bunch of questions still left.


But we're kind of running low on time.


So let me get back to some of the people that


are raising hands here.


Contact mentor.


SPEAKER 2 Hey, John.


Yeah, so first of all, thank you for your question.


I'm sorry you had given me last-to-last confidence


so that I was able to fix it up regarding that ranking thing.


And I have three quick questions.


So first question is regarding crawl stats 404 errors.


In the sense, not 404 errors that


are broken links that are on the page


are the errors that are there on the Google link.


In the sense, they are not the broken links


that any user can access.


But certain old links, which are no longer indexed,


but the crawl board comes back to index it


and it gets a 404, does those errors affect the ranking?


So that is my question.


JOHN MUELLER No.


So if these are old links that are no longer on your site,


they definitely wouldn't be affecting the ranking.


It's very normal for a website, when


we crawl it, to have a lot of 404 errors just from old URLs


that we know about that maybe don't have any content anymore.


And that's perfectly fine.


PRAVEENKUMAR RAMANATHANIKARANJANAPUJI Okay, so another is,


actually, so I was planning to add an interstitial


about my own website in my articles, for example.


So I know that interstitials can affect,


intrusive interstitials can affect rankings.


So what if I add an interstitial after 20 seconds,


user has interacted with that page.


Are those OK?


To some extent, that I think is fine.


I think, from a user point of view, those are still annoying.


So I personally, I would recommend


trying to find an approach where you can do something more


like a banner and use that rather than an interstitial.


But if it's something where a user is interacting


with your page, they've scrolled to the bottom, for example,


and then you show an interstitial,


that could be fine.


There is also a matter of the CLS, the cumulative layout


shift, which could also be affected


by an interstitial like this.


So that's something you might want to double check.


So how about a fixed footer like those are fine, right?


Usually, that's fine.


Yeah, usually, that's fine.


Something like a small banner in the footer,


something like that, that's usually fine.


I would still test with regards to, especially,


cumulative layout shift.


Some implementations of interstitials


are a bit tricky in that regard.


So last question is, I have certain tools


like Microsoft Clarity or CrazyEd


where I can check how user is interacting with my website.


So when you say good user experience of article,


what is exactly?


Is it in terms of how much time they spend in my article?


Or do they read full article?


Or in what ways I can see whether it's a good user


experience or not?


So it depends quite a bit on what you think people should


be doing on your website.


So that's something where I don't


think we would have one metric where we say,


this is the one that you need to look at.


Because some types of content, people can glance at briefly.


And they get the information they need.


And they can move on.


Other types of content, you really


want them to read to the bottom or maybe


click on a call to action button or sign up or buy something.


And that's very different.


And that's something where from a usability point of view,


you can look at that to some extent.


But you also need to look at the big picture of what you really


want people to do on your website.


So I think with a lot of these tools, with Google Analytics


as well, there are just so many different options in there


that it's tempting to say, I will pick this one metric


and use it for everything.


But usually, that doesn't make sense.


Usually, you really have to find something


that works for individual parts of your website


or specific to individual websites.


SPEAKER 2


If they just read the definition and go,


then that is also a good experience.


I mean, it's not that we would use this as a ranking factor


anyway.


It's more about you recognizing when


people are happy with your content


or when you think you need to change something


with your content.


So I wouldn't see that as something


that is a pure SEO thing to do, but more as you


have some goals that you want to achieve with your website.


And how can you guide users to do that?


SPEAKER 3


Thank you, John.


Thank you for answering your questions.


Baruch, I think you were next.


You kind of dropped up and down.


SPEAKER 4


Yeah, just I guess when I'm speaking,


my hand disappeared.


So here's the situation.


When you're working with a team of 20 developers,


one likes one guy, the other, and there's a lot of drama.


And you're getting all the warnings from the core vitals.


And just in general, the new page experience,


which I love the new design that you guys did,


and it's just amazing.


And so the core vital warnings, you


leave it one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks


just to sit there.


How important are they to just go ahead and make the changes?


Because there's other things that they're working on.


And then here come these warnings.


What do you do?


And then, yeah, I don't even want to get into that question.


But is it a ranking factor?


But in this Hangout, many people ask you that question.


Yeah, I mean, we use the core vitals


as a part of the page experience ranking factor.


So that is a ranking factor.


That is something that we take into account.


But at the same time, it doesn't replace everything else.


So we have a lot of different ranking factors.


And you don't have to do everything


perfect for all ranking factors to rank well.


I don't think any site really does everything perfect.


So it's something where you can do really well


in this part of search and still rank fairly highly.


Or you can do really well in another part of search


and rank very highly.


It's not the case that you have to do everything all the time.


And I think that makes it a little bit better


for those sites that don't really


know what they should be focusing on, because sometimes


just focusing on anything kind of helps move the needle forward


a little bit.


Sometimes having information on what you could be focusing on,


which is kind of like what Search Console is giving you


there, is useful if you don't know what you should be


focusing on or what you could be focusing on.


With regards to whether you should do everything


for Core Web Vitals or kind of leave it alone


and do other things, I don't think


there is one answer that kind of works for everything.


It's also something where, personally, when


I look at something like this, I would


try to look at the metrics overall


and see if it's kind of reasonable in the sense


that when users get there, it's, I don't know,


still in the red, but it's not terrible,


or if it's really off the chart bad.


AUDIENCE 1 So if you see the LCP at like nine seconds,


OK, work with that.


And if you're looking at, if you're


seeing really serious ones, so start from the serious ones


and then go from there, right?


Yeah, I mean, it's also something where if it's almost


like at the end of the red in the sense


that it's like almost in yellow, then from my point of view,


I'd say at least from a user point of view,


it's not super critical.


I would still look at that at some point,


and maybe there's something like a sprint


that you could do in between to kind of move that forward.


But if you're seeing that the LCP is, I don't know,


30 seconds or 50 seconds or something like really crazy,


then that does feel like something


where even without the SEO aspects,


your users will notice.


And that does seem like something


that's worth prioritizing.


So that's, I don't know, kind of the way


that I would look at it there.


I think if you would ask the Chrome team,


they would always say, oh, yeah, you


should always do speed first.


But you have to find some kind of a practical middle ground.


You don't have infinite resources.


You don't have a team of 500 people


who can just jump and do everything on your website.


AUDIENCE 1 OK, I appreciate it.


And I'll take it and share it.


So some don't agree, some just like, OK, Google's


really demanding in that area, and so on.


But all right, thank you.


I'll let others go ahead.


JOHN MUELLER Sure, cool.


Tarun, I think.


Hi, John, I have three questions.


The first question is about Web Stories.


So let's say that we start a new site in the current scenario


right now, and we focus only on Web Stories.


We wouldn't be putting all those long-form content.


Will it be a good idea to do that,


or should we mix with long-form content


and the traditional approach?


And then we should consider Web Stories just as an add-on thing


or what?


So what's your recommendation on that?


So Web Stories are essentially HTML pages


using the AMP framework.


But usually, they have a limited amount of content in them.


So it's something that we can show them in the search


results, we can show them in Discover.


I don't know if it depends on the location,


on how we show them.


We can always show them as normal HTML pages as well.


But it might be something where having a certain mix


of normal long-form content and Web Stories


probably performs better overall.


So if everything is this really short story format,


then I could imagine that it's trickier


to rank for some queries just because you don't have room


for a lot of different kind of content


and variations of that content in a Web Story page.


OK, thanks, John.


The second question is, let's say that we have a niche.


We have been working for the last 10 to 12 years.


And we are doing pretty good in that particular niche.


But our readers are asking to focus on other niche as well.


Let's say that we were earlier working on technology.


Now they are asking us to focus on automobile.


Should we do it on the same site?


Because we already have good traffic.


And should we write?


Let's say we are working on technology content


for the last 13 years.


They are asking us to write about automobile and maybe


various other stuffs because we do get


a lot of comments from our readers.


So how is going to Google look into that aspect?


Whether should we do that, or should we


just jump into a new website and start something out of it?


I don't know.


It's hard to say.


And it almost feels like more of a strategic question


from my point of view.


I think starting a new website is a lot of work.


And maintaining a new website is a lot of extra work.


So usually my recommendation when people ask,


like, should I have more websites or fewer websites,


I usually tell them, try to limit the amount of websites


that you have and focus really on one really strong website


rather than having multiple that are kind of mediocre.


And that's something that I would say probably also applies


here.


But at the same time, if you're noticing that the audience is


significantly different, then maybe it


does make sense to kind of split it off and say,


this is a different website.


So for example, if you are selling furniture


and you're selling that directly to consumers,


then that's a fantastic website to have.


If you're suddenly also selling to resellers or providing,


like, I don't know, white label furniture as well,


then maybe that's something you don't want to mix


with the existing website.


With regards to your content in your situation,


if the existing users are saying they also


want to see other content, then that


sounds like there's enough overlap there


that having one website would work.


So that's kind of my take there.


SPEAKER 2


I tend to enter some keyword on Google,


and I end up listing a big website.


And when I hit the back button, they


take us to a dedicated page of that particular website


rather than going back to Google.


So is it a good approach to do something for a publisher


like us also?


No.


That's terrible.


I think that's a terrible user interaction there


to kind of hijack the back button like that.


And it is something that also the website team sometimes


does take action on.


So if we notice that websites are hijacking the back button


like that, they would try to step in and encourage


them to not do that.


Because it's kind of like a sneaky redirect,


I think we would see that.


SPEAKER 3


Thanks, John.


That's the best answers, what I got.


Thanks so much.


Cool.


Thanks a lot.


Let me pause the recording here.


I see there's still a bunch of hands raised.


We can go through those as well after the recording stops.


But if you're watching this on YouTube,


thanks for watching, sticking around until the end.


If you'd like to join these in the future,


I post the link to them a couple of days


before they happen in the community section


of our YouTube channel.


So take a look there.


And as always, thanks for watching.


And thanks for all of the good questions so far.


All right.


A spotlight on SEO and data with Michelle Robbins

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


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


My name is Gary with a B and I'm joined today by Lizzie Sesman from the search relations


team of which I'm also part of.


Say hi Lizzie.


I'm sorry I'm afraid I can't do that.


What?


Just say hi.


I'm reading the script.


I don't know.


It's there in the notes.


What script?


I'm looking at it.


You're looking at it too.


Should I say hi Gary?


Just forget it.


That was Lizzie.


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


search marketing community who inspire us, today we have a very special guest, someone


who's very close to my heart in a very professional way, Michelle Robbins.


Hello.


Thanks for having me.


Well hi.


I think I haven't seen you in person for a very long time, two years.


It's been a minute.


I think it was PopCon Vegas when we last met.


I think so.


Or something like that.


Yeah, that would have been it.


That would have been the last big conference before COVID.


Right and then lockdowns and staying away from people and then we got bored at one point,


if I remember correctly, and we started a bake-off.


Yes.


Who started it?


One of us baked something and saw it and I may have seen something that Gary baked and


I was like inspired to bake something and so then I baked something and then he baked


something and it just kind of went back and forth every week where we sort of upped the


ante on the challenge of baking and there was one consistent thread through Gary's bakes


however.


Okay, tell me more.


The man likes his matcha is all I will say.


Well yeah because matcha is amazing and you have to put it in everything.


And you're the matcha guy.


He is the matcha guy.


Yeah and that's why I have thematcha-guy.com but baking is not why we are here because


it turns out this is not a cooking show.


So I would want to talk a little bit about you as well after all the baking because your


career is quite inspiring and maybe we can inspire someone by telling your story.


Do you remember when was the first time you encountered a computer?


Yeah.


What kind of computer it was?


Oh my gosh, I can't remember what kind of computer it was.


I remember it being very large.


My mother worked at a law firm.


She was a paralegal and so she worked on these very large computers for her job and in the


summers you know during junior high school I would go in and like do file clerk stuff


and so that was the first time I ever saw computers.


They were definitely DOS based.


And what were you doing on those computers?


I was not.


Were you playing games?


I was a file clerk.


I was filing papers.


You know I have like a similar story with DOS computers and my first interaction with


a computer at my grandpa's optometry office and doing like patient data entry with the


program that he made on DOS.


And that was like a summer job.


Did you get paid?


I think there was like some kind of deal about like a car being passed down or something.


So it worked itself out that I got like a hand-me-down vehicle.


So I was paid with equipment I guess.


Well if you got paid then it's not slavery I guess.


I got paid.


With money.


With money, yeah.


I guess you can be paid in other ways but yeah with money that you got to choose what


to do with the money.


Exactly.


Yes.


The car was to drive me to future jobs so I think it was meant to be a vehicle in more


ways than one I guess.


Interesting.


And Michelle, do you remember when was the first time you encountered the internet by


any chance?


It was actually AOL Instant Messenger when people started using that.


That was the first time you know besides like local network protocols I mean obviously email


at work but communicating with people not on your corporate network was AOL Instant


Messenger.


And then ICQ.


Do you remember ICQ?


Anybody?


I never actually used ICQ in our group it was somehow frowned upon to use ICQ but I


don't know why like I don't remember why and everyone was using IRC and then the MIRC M-I-R-C


application and that was amazing for many reasons but the ICQ, no.


Was AIM much after that?


AIM?


That's AOL Instant Messenger.


I remember the name.


AOL Instant Messenger I guess I that's.


So AOL was before ICQ but then AIM really took off and that's what I don't think it


contributed to the death of ICQ but everyone eventually moved off of ICQ as well and then


there was Trillion but that was more of an app that you could combine all of the different


platforms in.


And how about websites?


Did you have like favorite websites where you went and checked recipes for example because


it's a cooking show?


They were not recipes on the web net back in the day.


No I didn't actually start meaningfully working on the internet and using the internet until


much later when I was working at the software and online startup in Orange County.


Oh cool.


That was when I first really started to you know it was after I had worked in marketing


at Disney and so very traditional traditional media traditional marketing and left there


to join a startup from some friends from college and half of the business was focused on software


web server utility development and the other half was online you know getting people to


get websites and it was really funny because we would hold these luncheon learns where


we would have local businesses come in and we'd be like and this is the internet and


you should probably have a domain name and so we had registered like El Pollo Loco.


We had all we had so many brands names because this is before they we tried to convince them


like look we have your domain name but you should have it let us build a website for


you and they just thought we were bananas.


It was it was really really an interesting time.


And at this point did you have your own website like you're going around telling other people


like you should have a website.


Did you have one?


I did not because in my in from my perspective websites were for businesses.


I did not have a business yet and so I did not see a need for a website.


I wasn't like hey look at me so I didn't I didn't I didn't have a use for one and I considered


it more you know it was more work aligned.


It's what we did it at work.


We built websites and we built you know applications and things like that.


It wasn't until later that when I had my own consulting business and that's when I pivoted


into actually away from marketing and more into computer science because while I was


at the company it's actually where I also learned search marketing first.


The online division was run by Danny Sullivan.


You might have heard of him and Ken was the founder of the software company and has been


my longtime mentor in my programming career.


So I learned search marketing you know as search marketing evolved from the very early


days.


In fact one time a bunch of us were at the movies it was an off-site and we were all


in line it was well Empire Strikes Back was back in theaters come on.


So we're all in line and I remember Ken and Danny were talking about e-commerce and this


is before there was e-commerce but and they were asking me and another woman that worked


there they were like do you think you'd ever buy clothes online and I was like what are


you kidding?


Why would you do that?


So it's really it's really been fun to kind of see the entire evolution of you know just


using the web for information and for understanding information and shifting into it just being


a daily part of our lives that we don't even think about.


In the background I'm also counting that this was your third job that you mentioned at least?


Or career change.


I mean not jobs but like industries.


So that was the second so I went from Disney to the startup and then from there I really


wanted to understand you know what the software side was doing right.


So they had brought me in to do you know sales and marketing because that was my background


and so I felt like I could if I understood more about what they did and about the programs


then I could more effectively market them.


So I said you know I want to understand more about actually what you guys do at a more


fundamental level and this is where I think that when you talk about you know career development


and how you can become involved in any given you know industry or anything I think the


importance of having mentors and having people to sponsor you on your career trajectory is


so critical.


I 100% would not be where I am today but for these four really key individuals that helped


influence me and support me on my own journey.


And so from the software side these three guys basically two of them said tell you what


pick a topic set aside an hour in the conference room every week pick a topic and we'll you


know we'll tell you all about it.


I was like okay great first topic TCP IP what's that all about because my background wasn't


actually you know from an educational standpoint was not in technology.


I doubled in criminal justice and psychology so this was a complete 360 for me but once


we started diving into it I realized this is really interesting and I really want to


learn more and do more.


So I went back to UCI and took programming courses through their extension and so I focused


primarily on Microsoft technologies because they built Microsoft Web server utilities


so that was the technologies utilized in all of our programs.


So my first you know when I first started learning program it was all Microsoft it was


CVP you know all of that.


So that's kind of what started my career shift into technology and from there there was also


another person at the company who he's now been at Google for probably over 20 years


who at that time was our primary developer and designer and he had come out of art school


and he taught me HTML and CSS.


So I learned that from him and I learned the programming from these two incredible programmers


who are now working like one works in biometric authentication at Verisign and the others


worked at Snap and is now at Facebook I think.


So I had incredible mentors and then of course I learned you know search marketing and all


about search engines from Danny so I consider myself very fortunate.


This is mind-blowing.


One thing I find very interesting is that among let's say my circles you are typically


known as the person that collected person who who used to run these massive search engine


marketing shows and you are more related to SEO than to computer science but it turns


out that you're related to computer science and psychology and marketing traditional marketing


more than SEO and SEO folks.


Well yeah I mean yes no so once the the software founder relocated to the Bay Area Danny Sullivan


relocated to England for a time to do his own consulting and spin up search engine watch


and so then I opened my own consulting business where I started doing web design and development


application development for clients and as part of that work I would also do their SEO.


It was just sort of you know oh and yes here's SEO.


So I have done a lot of SEO but that's not my passion or my focus.


What is your passion focus?


Well right now it's actually right now my focus is definitely it's data and data science


but I've always had a passion for data and this goes back to my undergraduate work as


well.


And your undergraduate work was in criminal justice and psychology?


Yes.


How did the data kind of come into play there?


Research you know there's you do a lot you do a lot of research and what you come to


understand about data and how data is used and how to better and worse use data I would


say is applicable in marketing.


That's sort of interesting like you've got that base of how to look at the data from


that kind of lens and then diving more technical.


On how to like procure the data and then analyze it.


Yeah so it sounds like a very nonlinear career path right to go from marketing to tech and


media and data but data really does underpin all of it in each of those domains.


And it sounds like each sort of iteration of your career has sort of been driven by


your own interest or like on the job learning or that you had a mentor who maybe suggested


something.


I am curious about that like how did the seed get planted that maybe you should return to


computer science and go back to school?


So the seed got planted from basically you know working with these great guys who never


said no right who never said don't worry your pretty little head about that those are that's


that's programming you're not going to get that.


I never heard that.


I never I never encountered a blocker right it was always like hey yeah we'll show you


how to do that and then I went back to school and any questions I had you know they're like


oh yeah no this is how this works this is how that works they were just incredibly generous


and supportive right and like I said having that I think is critical and then it is my


my own interest and passion right so after you know I was at the media company for 12


years and I had felt like well I've kind of done everything I'm going to do here right


so a couple of years before I decided to leave I had taken a certificate course out of MIT


on big data and social analytics and that was my first opportunity then to start writing


in Python because I hadn't done anything in Python prior to that point everything was


kind of lamp stack focused and being able to understand the power and capability of


analyzing big data sets right to get that opportunity to have the opportunity to continue


pursuing that I needed to shift into a different industry into different focus and and I've


been able to do that it's been fantastic and I have decided to once again go back to school


and I'm getting my master's and I start a master's program in the summer.


Amazing.


This summer or you're going to start oh yeah yeah yeah yeah I'll start it this summer.


Do you have any interesting anecdotes or data anecdotes?


Yes.


I like I know that you you are so into data that you must have something interesting that


you.


Like a favorite data set.


Oh gosh favorite data set hmm honestly what I'm most interested in looking at these days


when considering non-marketing based data sets right so data that's not directly related


to the work I'm doing day to day I'm most interested in understanding ethical applications


and use of data and so ultimately that's where I want to that's where I want to end up is


on the ethics side of AI and machine learning.


Interesting I imagine that kind of roots in in certain biases in data that might be there?


Yes and actually that's how it does tie back to my undergraduate work right so I had to


do a really large research project on the death penalty at one point and in looking


at all of the data around just just criminal justice data in general and when you consider


that these data sets are being used in the models where predictive policing is being


used right the problems with these data sets are significant because these data sets are


created by humans who bring their own subjectivity and bias to every decision-making step in


the criminal justice system so whether or not you get pulled over by a policeman whether


or not that policeman gives you a ticket whether or not you go to court and you you know you


get bail you get sent I mean there's there's discretion at every step of the way and how


do you account for discretion in a data set and bias right that filters that finds its


way into those data sets and so then those data sets are being utilized for decision-making


and that's highly problematic so when we think about you know starting you know even just


with the research that I found and the information that I found in doing the research as an undergrad


on the death penalty which was really shocking to discover that it has less to do with people


think and we can cut this out if we're going on a tangent here just FYI but just for your


own edification yeah the it's not the race of the perpetrator that determines who's going


to get the death penalty it's the race of the victim interesting yes that was shocking


to discover and just the problems with you know how the death penalty gets adjudicated


throughout and there's research that's been replicated over and over and over to support


this and yet here we are so I've always been fascinated by looking into data and especially


data around human behavior which when you think about marketing that's the data we're


all using right so how are people using our websites how are people finding us what are


the words they're using that's behavioral data yeah and that can be really problematic


when the sources that go into that data set that you have is not fully inclusive or including


all of the the types I don't know the sense is getting away from me but yeah no no and


and and I do think that you know when we talk about the data that we all use in our our


day-to-day jobs and everything I don't think there's enough interrogation of the source


of the data sets how these data sets are gathered so many people rely on third-party data sets


or tools and we just like trust it implicitly like if you just cite your source like you've


referenced something but then if you go and dig into okay like how many people were in


that study oh it was only like 20 of them or like this was only from the US or something


like can we really make a decision based off of that once you sort of start digging in


then you realize like is this really representative and can we trust it oh yeah absolutely um


I was asked to put together an algorithm to determine just something it doesn't actually


matter what it was trying to determine but the suggestion was that I used sentiment on


Twitter as part of that data set and I said no that's a bad way to go and they didn't


understand well why wouldn't you and I said well because most of America most of the world


is not actually on Twitter you're dealing with you know a very problematic data set


and the people that are on are very inactive so you're injecting bias into the system you


can't use Twitter as a barometer I mean that sort of begs the question is there any data


set that is unbiased can you have something that is trusted or well-rounded I would say


no honestly I think that you can gather a lot of your own first-party data and that's


going to be the most informative for actions already taken things you already know but


when you start mixing that data with third-party data sets and using it in ways that the the


artifacts of that data were not necessarily intended to be utilized right so it's always


a matter of whenever anyone comes to me and says you know we need a report that has this


this and this I always say what are the questions you're trying to answer because I don't necessarily


think that people understand the data they need to answer the questions they have I think


people just assume we have this data therefore this is the answer yeah you have to find the


right data within your data set to support whatever point you are making but that also


has the trouble that very often I see that people are misrepresenting the data in some


sense basically they are saying that this happened ergo this is the way for example


and then when you are actually looking at the data set or the data it's like well actually


yeah you can explain it that way but you can also explain like 10 other ways oh for sure


why that why that why that data is there and that feels like bigger problem that that we


have not just in in the SEO industry but in in many many industries where people are picking


cherry-picking data that support their hypothesis and then just use that and it's not a new


thing either because like end of 90s for example this doctor I was air coating here who came


up with this brilliant idea that vaccines cause certain conditions that was basically


cherry picking and it led to a big change in how certain people perceive vaccines for


example so yeah you definitely have to be careful about how you are presenting the data


because you can mislead people very easily with it voluntarily or involuntarily yeah


if you torture the data it will talk oh yeah and there's a lot of there's a lot of torturing


of data going on quite a bit I would also suggest that in marketing people tend to still


operate in silos while everyone says you know omni-channel is the way the truth in light


in reality people still focus on their silo and the data within their silo and don't necessarily


understand how data from all of those channels impacts one another right and I have a great


example of this we had a had a client this agency had been brought on to do just their


paid their lead funnel had been drying up and so they switched to using us for just


their paid we'd only worked with them for about three months and they weren't seeing


the results they were wanting to see and so usually I hear from people when there's a


problem and so they couldn't figure out like what's going on here what's you know we're


doing everything right we're getting leads but yet overall they're not and so I spent


about a week diving into all of the data all of the data that we had with this client market


data with respect to are there things happening in the market that could be negatively impacting


them I know a lot of people don't think to go outside and look at market data and you


know offline impacts and couldn't really find anything that was incredibly conclusive and


so I got on the phone with the head of marketing at the clients and I said tell me what you


guys were doing in this quarter and it was a quarter about a year ago because after it


was after that quarter that everything seemed to sort of fall off the charts in every single


channel for them all the channels and they said well you know we weren't really doing


anything different oh wait we did stop running billboards and we pulled all of our media


buys on TV and we stopped doing bus advertisements I was like okay thank you very much and and


that was it right so that's that's what you know that's that's a data void that a lot


of you know digital marketers don't concern don't consider the data they don't have and


how does that data impact the data they do have my favorite example for this or similar


example is seasonality of traffic for example yes in SEO and the first time I encountered


this I was like a very junior SEO for a very small company and the owner was complaining


that we are bleeding traffic and the traffic just go is going away this was in January


and then in February it was worse and in March he was yelling like crazy because there was


no traffic and then he was showing that in December there was so much traffic like what


happened to that we were just sitting there and it's like well gee I wonder what what


happened people were buying your product in December and now they are not interested in


it anymore because it's not Christmas season but he refused to accept that and that's crazy


but it's not surprising I mean if you are thinking about your business then depending


how passionate you are you might not want to accept it and that's also another trouble


that we have with data that sometimes people don't want to accept what certain data is


clearly trying to tell but oh well we are humans right that's what keeps it fun and


exciting is finding those answers okay we have very different definition of fun how


about inclusivity do you have any interesting data or anecdotes about the gender gap in


SEO or conferences that you've been running I do a number of years ago when it first became


you know an extremely noticeable problem in search conferences that there were a lot of


manuals there weren't a lot of women on on sessions and things and presenters and and


keynotes in particular I had a lot of data that I could look at from our you know decade


of producing conferences and multiple conferences a year and so what I focused on was the data


we received in pitches right so we would have people pitch to speak so I analyzed all of


the pitches we got by gender and then the acceptance rates and the diversity of our


our panels in our sessions and everything actually tracked because as it turned out


we would only receive for every you know two or three pitches from a man would be one pitch


from a woman and we ended up having about 30% female 70% male panels so it was a problem


because how do you encourage people to put themselves out there more and how do you solve


for the challenges that might exist that might be unique to minorities and underrepresented


communities that are maybe not to the folks that we would see pitching regularly like


how do you address what oftentimes is inequity in the ability to travel and the ability to


be sent to or pay for you know a conference appearance all of that matters as well as


how you're selecting and how you're sourcing your speakers.


I think that actually got much better and I remember that it was a conference in Seattle


I think you were one of the organizers and I remember this conference specifically because


it hit me that this is a nice change because the two other panelists on stage were women


and I was the third one and I was the only guy there and it felt somehow great like I


never realized before that it was the other way usually and I was just sitting there like


a pumpkin as usual and then suddenly it was different and then it made me realize more


consciously that this is a problem and it's being fixed by the conference organizers however


they can I don't actually know how what was employed to to fix this gap or how were you


trying to fix this.


Intentionality you have to be intentional you have to be eyes on it you have to not


expect it to happen naturally you have to be intentional I know which panels you were


talking about and that's what it was it was intentionality.


Was it anything that you did to get more submissions like the the pitch number or the selection


process or like across the board things that you changed in order to make the panels more


inclusive?


So we did change the pitch process a bit in that we would give feedback you know we'd


get a pitch and I could look at a pitch and see that this is not a very strong pitch but


I can understand what they're trying to get at and these few changes and adding this would


make this a stronger session so I would reach back out to that person and suggest these


changes or focus it this way or let's let's look at this you know and as well as just


reaching out to people and saying you know we'd like you to speak can you pitch you know


I know you you know what you're doing you're talented you know go ahead and pitch a lot


of people feel like I mean it's it's I feel like it's almost a catch-22 right right it's


like people think like well I'm never gonna get selected for a session because nobody


knows me but nobody knows me because I've never appeared anywhere and so at some point


you have to put yourself out there and that can be very hard but I also think a good place


to start for people looking to raise their profile get some speaking arrangements I would


suggest go to conferences and meet people don't go necessarily expecting you're gonna


learn a ton but try and network just be really effective at meeting people walk up to somebody


that you respect in the industry and say could you spend some time with me I'm looking for


a mentor I found that most people in this industry are incredibly giving of themselves


and their time and are actively engaged in that kind of mentorship and sponsorship anyway


so find those people and would you say that like your goal is to speak at a conference


and like please help me get there like when you are reaching out to find a mentor would


you be targeted or would you recommend that people be specific about their goal in order


to find like a good match I guess with a mentor I'd suggest people find a mentor just for


their career pathing in general and whether that's internal where they where they work


or if that's you know with them in it within an industry group or meeting someone networking


I don't think that speaking has to be a goal I don't think that becoming a celebrity in


SEO necessarily is is a goal I mean for some it is and that's fine but I just think it's


more about your career development and SEO is a really interesting space because you


know there are a lot of different ways to get at an answer there are a lot of different


ways to get at a solution to a problem and the more experience you have to people who


have had diverse experiences working on different types of sites working with different and


within different verticals even the approaches can be wildly different so the more exposure


you get to those differences the stronger you're going to be as an SEO so I think it's


it's more in service of making you stronger in your craft and if as a side benefit you


end up on a stage that's great but I would suggest just for your own you know your own


edification well I think that was a wonderful way to wrap this up it was the motivation


that everyone needed definitely me you're gonna get out there and start speaking now


Gary no he's gonna get a mentor the the call to action was like get a mentor I need to


be mentored I need advice in my life direction yeah Lizzie we have to talk oh no if people


wanted to find you where can they find you twitter at Michelle Robbins also on LinkedIn


do you post on LinkedIn now and again all right so we will put the links in the description


of the episode so that you can find Michelle and we are going to mention you in the tweet


on Twitter and with that thank you for joining us here Michelle it was great having you thanks


so much for having me it's this is a lot of fun next time on search of the record we are


going to talk about UX and SEO probably with Martin we've been having fun with these podcast


episodes I hope you the listener have found them both entertaining and insightful to feel


free to drop us a note on Twitter at Google search see or chat with us at one of the next


events we go to if you have any thoughts and of course don't forget to like and subscribe


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from September 6, 2019

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


Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I am a webmaster trends analyst here at Google in Switzerland.


And part of what we do are these Webmaster Office Hours


Hangouts, where webmasters and SEOs and interested people


can join in and ask their questions around web search.


As always, a bunch of things were submitted already.


But you're welcome.


Any of you here are welcome to jump in and ask


the first questions if there's anything on your mind


that you want to start with.


Good morning, John.


Hi, it's Amos here.


Good morning.


I have a question about Google for Jobs.


So we recently migrated away from a third party that


was hosting our Jobs Award.


We moved that onto our own website.


We lost the majority of our Google for Jobs traffic


when we did the migration.


Now, all of the technical setup is actually correct.


So we checked also with the guys at Google through the forum.


And they said, yeah, everything's perfect.


But they said there's a ranking problem.


So we're sort of in the blind.


We don't really know what the problem is.


The content is exactly the same as it was on the Jobs Board


we migrated away from.


So any kind of direction you can provide


would be really helpful.


I don't really know much about Google for Jobs


other than that there's a markup and that you


can use the indexing API.


Is this all on the same domain?


Or did you move to a different domain?


It's exactly the same domain.


We just had a kind of a CMS that was on a different provider.


It was MagX.


They specialized in Job Boards.


And we decided to actually bring that


into our own platform.


OK.


And you noticed the change in traffic right about the time


when you switched over?


Yes, it was pretty much immediate.


So when we did the switch, everything


was obviously through un-re-arrested.


Everything went pretty smoothly.


But the Google for Jobs was the part


that really just dropped off.


If you can drop maybe some sample URLs into the chat,


I can take a look at that later on.


I don't really know much about the Google for Jobs side


or if there's anything kind of weird ranking related


on their end.


But I'm happy to kind of take a look and poke at the team


to see if there's something, at least if there's something


technical that you can fix.


OK.


Thank you.


Sure.


Hi, John.


Hi.


Recently, we have got a question from one of our clients.


I think you answered this before,


but I want confirmation from you again.


The client has H1 tags on all the web pages he has.


Only the home page does not have the H1 tag.


Now, someone told him that it is bad for his search engine


ranking.


It will impact badly the organic ranking.


But I try to ensure him that it is not 100% accurate.


So just I want to know how important the H1 tag for a web


page to rank on Google.


So headings in general help us to better understand


the context of the pages.


So it's something that I wouldn't see it


as a critical ranking factor.


And for things like the home page,


usually you would rank for the company name


anyway, and that's not a matter of are you ranking well or not.


Your company is probably the only page that is


relevant for that query anyway.


With H1 tags, we see it a little bit


like making text bold on a page.


It helps us to better understand this is really


important on this page.


Some people have multiple sections that are bold.


If you have the whole page that is bold,


then obviously we think, well, if everything is important,


nothing is important.


So it doesn't help that much.


But you can give us this extra information


in lots of different ways.


It doesn't have to be a H1 tag.


So I wouldn't see it as a critical thing,


but it seems like one of those things


is trivial to fix and to add.


So I would just take care of it, and then you don't


have to worry about it anymore.


I think a lot of SEO tools check for the H1 headings in general.


So if you use other tools, they will flag it.


Otherwise, as well.


SPEAKER 2


But just our concern, does it affect their search ranking


if we move to another domain?


Maybe, maybe. So in general, site migrations can be tricky.


So if you're moving purely from one domain to another,


and all of the URLs stay the same within the website,


and you have set up the proper redirect,


and you follow all of the guidelines,


then usually that's a matter of maybe a day or two


where things get a little bit uncertain,


and otherwise it works out well.


If you move to a different domain,


and things like country code top level domains come into play,


or if you change the content on the site,


or the kind of internal setup of the website,


then that's a pretty complex move.


And that's something that usually takes quite a bit


of time to settle down.


SPEAKER 3


Thank you.


SPEAKER 4


Hi.


SPEAKER 5


I have a question.


If you were making a decision, would you go PWA or AMP,


or would you do both?


Oh my gosh.


Which of my children do I like best, right?


That's very kind of what I'll say.


I don't know.


So from my point of view, it feels


like they're slightly different things in the sense


that a PWA, in general, you can use it to make something


that's more like an app, which means that you kind of have


a different setup on the website in general.


So it's less a matter of like you're just providing content.


So I could imagine that makes sense


if you have more interactive elements on a page,


if you care about things like offline accessibility,


all of those kind of traditionally PWA level


things.


Whereas with AMP, I think it's a great platform


for publishing content.


It makes it really easy to get stuff out there.


If you need to do interactive things,


there are also ways you can do that,


but it's kind of a little bit trickier.


So that's kind of where I would try to make the call initially.


It's like, are you primarily just publishing content?


Then probably AMP is a good setup.


Are you planning on doing something interactive,


where you have calculators or other kind


of interactive elements on the site?


Do you need to be available offline?


I don't know if you have a train schedule, for example,


that you just want people to have accessible regardless


where they are, then obviously PWA is a good choice.


With another thing I think it's worth keeping in mind


is that setting up a PWA can be quite complex.


So in general, if you're doing this in-house,


if you're creating it yourself, then you


need some pretty savvy developers


who can do all of this work with the JavaScript frameworks, who


can make sure that this JavaScript-based PWA will also


work well in search.


Whereas with AMP, you can pretty much use existing plugins.


If you have to code it yourself, the code is pretty easy.


It's a great way to kind of get started making web pages.


So if you have fewer developers in-house,


and especially if you're mostly publishing content,


then I would go towards AMP.


If you want to do something crazy fancy,


then maybe PWA is the right approach.


SPEAKER 2


OK, thanks.


Hello, John.


Hi.


Hello, everyone.


I have a question regarding mobile first instance mostly,


I guess.


So I have a client who has a site with a dynamic serving.


So does the way site appear on smartphones and desktops


need to be exactly the same with all text, images, graphics,


et cetera?


It doesn't have to be exactly the same.


But with mobile first indexing, we'll


only index the mobile version of the page.


So if there is content on the desktop version,


that is important for you.


And it's not available at all on the mobile version,


then we wouldn't index that with mobile first indexing.


So that's primarily what I would watch out for.


Sometimes people write it shorter for mobile


because it's easier to read.


Sometimes they have smaller images or different layout.


That's perfectly fine.


OK, and will Google switch site to mobile first


if it has slightly different content on desktops


and smartphones?


We have a classifier that tries to recognize


if the content is similar enough.


It's not that it has to be identical.


So we would probably still switch it over.


If everything else is OK and the content is just


slightly different, then we would probably still


switch it over.


OK, thank you.


Sure.


All right, let me run through some of the questions that


were submitted.


And if you have questions along the way,


feel free to jump on in as well.


Let's see.


The first question is about material design icons.


It's a pretty long question.


But basically, with the material design recommendations


from the framework, it looks like the way


to embed these icons is to have an eye element, so kind


of an italics text element with a specific class,


and then the text name of the icon.


And the question is, well, these appear


to be showing up in our meta descriptions


or in the snippets in the search results.


What can I do about this?


Is this like a bug in Google search or immaterial design?


I took a quick look at this beforehand to kind of try


to see what is happening here.


And essentially, from the search side,


we see this as text within the page.


So you're trying to display an icon,


but it's essentially text on the page.


So we try to index this text on the page,


and we show it in the snippet, if appropriate.


We might make it available if people search for it


explicitly.


So from that point of view, this is probably not an ideal setup


if you're putting these icons between important text


on your page that you need to have indexed


or that you think would make sense


to be shown in the snippet.


There are two things that you can do to make


this a little bit better.


On the one hand, specify your own meta description


using the description meta tag.


And we can try to pick that up and use that.


On the other hand, looking at the material design site,


there's also a way that you can specify these icons using


a code point where, instead of the text name,


you specify kind of a number that


refers to that specific icon that you're trying to show.


And we would essentially see that


as a single kind of strange character,


and that wouldn't have the same effect


as if you write out keyboard error left, for example.


So those are kind of the two directions


that I'd recommend there.


I will follow up with the material design team,


though, to see if we can make this a little bit better


in the sense that it will just work well for search.


I'm kind of surprised that this is the first time this has come


up, because it seems like something


that anyone who is using material design


might potentially see.


Let's see.


My site has a configuration of separate URLs.


And it's a pretty long question.


So basically, they have a www version that's for desktop


and an m dot version that's for mobile.


And sometimes they see the mobile version


in the search results.


From our point of view, that can sometimes


happen, especially with mobile first indexing.


That's similar to before, where sometimes on mobile, you


would see a desktop URL in the search results,


even though you have kind of this connection between the two


versions set up.


So the things I would watch out for here are, first of all,


make sure that you have the connection between those two


versions set up properly so that we can pick that up.


And then secondly, make sure that you redirect


from the mobile version to the desktop version


if the user is a desktop user.


So that's something that's often easier


to set up on the server side, where if you can recognize


it's a desktop browser, redirect from the mobile version


to the desktop version.


Similarly, a mobile browser going to the desktop site,


they would be redirected to the mobile version.


With both of these setups, it's easier


for us to recognize that.


And if we happen to show the mobile version in the search


results, it wouldn't cause any problems.


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


I think in the long run, the best approach here


is to go down the direction of either responsive design


or dynamic serving, where you have a single URL that


serves all users instead of having multiple URLs that


are valid for individual users.


So long term, I would go towards a single URL solution.


In the short term, I would set up the links and definitely


the redirects.


If you have the redirect set up, then you


don't need to worry about the mobile page sometimes being


shown in search.


Why does Google index 404 pages?


We don't.


So if a page returns a 404 error code,


then we will not index that page's content.


There are two things that might be something


that you're seeing here.


So I don't know exactly which pages you're looking at.


It might be that a page has recently turned 404.


And in that case, if we haven't seen


that the page returns a 404, then we


won't know that it's a 404.


So that might be something that's happening.


The other thing that sometimes happens


is that the server shows a 404 page,


but the result code that's shown to crawlers is actually 200.


And 200 means, OK, that this page is OK to be shown,


OK to be indexed.


And if we don't recognize that the text on this page says,


oh, wait, there's an error here, then we


might index that page separately.


So if you have custom error pages,


make sure they return 404.


If this is your site and you've recently removed content,


then sometimes it just takes a while for all of that


to drop out of the index.


Is it true that top-level domains are best for ranking?


No.


You can rank your content on any kind of domain.


It can be on a subdomain.


It can be on a subdirectory.


That's totally up to you.


Sometimes it's even tricky to recognize


what a top-level domain is because I


think some country versions have something


set up that looks like a unique top-level domain,


but it's actually a subdomain.


So it's definitely not the case that only top-level domains


are best for ranking.


If you're creating content on your own,


what I would recommend, however, is


that you use your own domain name for hosting your content.


By using your own domain name, you're


kind of making sure that regardless


of what infrastructure you're working on,


you can keep your content.


And keep that in search, you can continue


building on your own website.


Whereas if you use a subdomain, for example, from Blogger


or, I don't know, any of the other hosting platforms,


if at some point you say, well, Blogger isn't enough for me.


I want to do something fancy, then you


have to do a site migration.


You have to migrate that subdomain from Blogger


to some other domain or subdomain.


Whereas if you use your own domain for hosting


and you decide, well, Blogger isn't enough for me.


I need to use something fancier, then you


can continue using your domain.


And you just need to watch out that these URLs remain


the same.


So is Googlebot degrading sites traffic


which work like automated programs?


So the question is pretty complicated.


I think what this site essentially does


is automatically generate pages that match


what a user was looking for.


In many cases, that comes off as being very spammy.


If you're automatically generating


kind of textual content based on something someone searched for,


then that could be seen as an auto-generated page, which


the web spam team could take action on and say,


well, I don't know if this is really useful content.


In this case, it's automatically generating a ringtone


based on kind of the text that people enter, which, I don't


know, sounds pretty neat to me.


So I haven't tried it out, but it sounds pretty useful to me.


But with regards to search, this generally


wouldn't be something where we'd say,


this is bad because we can look at the content.


Even if someone manually looks at the content,


they can say, well, there is something kind of useful


that's being provided here.


It's not just a matter of someone


kind of copying and pasting the same text over and over again


or automatically generating some text.


That said, if you're automatically


generating pages based on things that users enter,


then you quickly run into the situation


that the amount of pages on your site explodes.


The kind of value of each individual page


is questionable because you don't even


know what people have entered.


And it's possible that users enter some really crazy stuff


that you don't want to be found for.


So perhaps someone goes in there and says,


I would like to generate a page for, I don't know,


Mihai is the world's best SEO.


And then that could come out as, well, your site


is promoting Mihai as the world's best SEO,


whereas actually you just want to provide a ringtone.


So my recommendation there, when it


comes to user-generated content, find a way


that you can filter out kind of the high-quality stuff


and separate it from all of the rest.


Because you want to be found for the high-quality stuff,


and you want to make sure that search engines, when they look


at your site overall, they see, well, all of this stuff


is really high-quality stuff.


Therefore, maybe this is actually a really good website


to show.


Whereas if search engines go there and say,


well, there's some good stuff here,


but there's this big pile of junk


that people have just submitted, then they might say,


overall, this website, I don't know,


is hard to see as something being fantastic.


Not to say that Mihai is not a good SEO, though.


I know Google doesn't penalize for duplicate content.


I heard that in one of the videos.


But what about spun content?


Does Google penalize for using spun content?


Yes.


So any time you're using auto-generated content


to create pages, textual pages like that,


that would be considered against our Webmaster Guidelines.


So that's something that I would definitely try to avoid.


There are common setups that the Web spam team runs across every


now and then.


On the one hand, pages that are completely auto-generated,


where you just have a few seed words,


and then it goes off and generates a big tree of text


that is essentially just trying to target those words


and has no value at all for users.


Then other common use cases we see


are scripts that take existing content on the web,


and they just swap out individual words.


That's also seen as spun content and would be against our Webmaster


Guidelines.


And then there are cases where people take existing content


and just translate it into other languages,


often using automated translating tools.


Sometimes they translate it back to make


it look like it's actually English again,


or whatever language it originally was.


And that would also be seen as automatically generated content


and against our Webmaster Guidelines.


The Web spam team, generally, when


they run across situations like this, they do take action.


And that can be action anywhere from the site is not showing up


so well in search to the site is completely removed from search


when we think there's really no value at all in that site.


SPEAKER 2 John, I have a question about this,


because on these automated tools,


we sometimes see that our images are


pulled into these spammy pages.


And using our own hosted images, they're


not downloading them and re-uploading them.


And does this have a negative effect on SEO,


because we're associated with this page, or?


No.


Not really.


Yeah.


That's a common setup.


They just scrape stuff from image search,


and they take it directly from those web pages and show that.


And I mean, sometimes we don't catch this, right?


Sometimes our algorithms don't pick it up properly.


It's useful to have a spam report


if you run across things like this,


or if you run across a bigger setup that just


seems to keep working, then maybe send me a note.


But for the most part, this is something


that is very widespread, and we have a lot of experience


with that.


Internationalization, duplicate content.


A site is multi-regional and all in one language


with the correct hreflang and canonical setup.


But Google is increasingly choosing its own canonical.


Does that mean it's because the content is the same,


that it's seeing it as duplicate content?


Yes.


If the content is the same, then it's


seen as duplicate content.


That's kind of, I guess, the definition


of duplicate content.


When it comes to international sites like this,


what generally happens is we would


pick one URL as a canonical.


And we would use the hreflang annotations


to swap out the appropriate URL in the search results.


So indexing-wise, we try to focus on one version


because it's all the same.


And in the search results, we would just swap out the URL.


So usually, that's OK.


Yeah.


Hi.


That was my question.


So our site is multi-regional, but it's in one language,


as you said.


However, we do have the correct hreflang setup and canonical.


And we've seen this increase quite suddenly.


So it's only happening in one market.


Like you said, because it's the same,


it's seeing it as duplicate, but the increase is all of a sudden.


So I was thinking, is there something behind it?


We've spoken to our dev team, and we've


seen that there's been an increase in the API pages being


crawled.


So we were just trying to understand


what is the reason for the sudden change.


It might not be anything on your side.


So what sometimes happens is our algorithms, over time,


will try to re-evaluate what is actually duplicate content.


For example, if the bulk of the page is the same


and the footer is slightly different,


then it might be that our algorithms will at some point


say, well, actually, these are the same.


And then you might see a shift like that.


So it's not necessarily something


that you're doing wrong.


It might just be our algorithms suddenly recognizing, oh,


wait, this is all the same.


Despite having correct hreflang canonical,


it's just the same content.


Yeah.


So usually what happens is in the search results,


we would show the right URL.


So it's not that anything is broken


or you're seeing kind of lower traffic there.


But it is confusing if you look at things like the Search


Console index coverage report or the performance report.


Both of those focus on the canonical URLs.


And if we pick one version as a canonical,


then we'll have all of the data there.


And it might be a different canonical


depending on the page.


So it could, for example, I'm just making this up.


Maybe your About page, we pick the UK version as a canonical.


And your Terms of Service page, we


pick the Australian page as canonical.


So that's something that makes it a little bit tricky.


If you have a single domain with the country versions


as subdomains or subdirectories, you


can use Search Console kind of on the domain level


to get the full picture.


If you have multiple separate domains


for individual country TLDs, then you


need to kind of manually calculate


the appropriate numbers across Search Console.


There's no real way to get an overview there.


OK, great.


So is the solution in future?


I know it doesn't hamper our performance in rankings


and traffic.


But moving forward, is it just best


to have those markets translated in their correct language?


I mean, translated is probably the best in the long run


anyway.


The question that I don't really have a great answer for


is, should you kind of artificially change


the content across, like say you have multiple English pages,


should you artificially shift sentences around so that they're


not seen as duplicate?


Theoretically, you can do that.


We probably wouldn't see it as duplicates anymore.


It would be easier to track.


From kind of a practical point of view,


I don't know if that would change anything in your search


results.


It would just essentially make it easier for tracking.


OK, great, thank you.


Sure.


I've read that Google only takes a number of backlinks


rather than a number of high DA backlinks


for ranking.


Is that true, at least currently?


So we don't use DA at all when it comes to search.


So this is a metric created by a third party company.


I think it's cool that companies create different metrics


to kind of try to evaluate how a website is


doing across search.


But we don't use DA at all, anything like domain authority,


the metric provided by other companies,


is not something that has anything


to do with Google Search.


So from that point of view, if you


want to use this metric on your site to compare things


and it helps you to better understand how your website


fits in with the rest of the web, go for it.


But I would not assume that this is


something that has anything to do with regards


to Google Search.


Does Google have any red flag if a site


is using an old PHP version?


No, we don't.


So what can sometimes happen, depending on the setup


and what is happening on our side at the time,


we may send out messages through Search Console


to sites that are using either kind of an older server


version or an older CMS version.


Say you have an old WordPress version installed.


It might be that we send you a message and say,


like, hey, be aware of the vulnerabilities


out there for this setup that you have running.


And it's possible that you'll get hacked.


And we recommend that you update as urgently as possible.


So that's something that can happen.


And it can certainly happen if you're


running an older version that is not patched appropriately


that your site gets hacked.


And getting hacked has its whole set


of hassles that are attached to it.


And so I try to avoid that if at all possible.


But it's not the case that there is any kind of a ranking


effect or any kind of red flag on our side that we'd say,


oh, it looks like they're running an old PHP version.


Therefore, we shouldn't show the site


as high in the search results.


Is there any risk in pointing parked domains


to our live website?


No.


That's perfectly fine.


I would not assume that you're getting any value out


of redirecting all of these parked domains to your website.


But I have seen cases where people use them, for example,


for marketing reasons.


So if you're doing some kind of offline advertising,


then maybe you'll pick a certain domain name


that redirects your main website as the ad URL


that you would show there.


And that's perfectly fine.


It makes it easier for you to track how that's performing.


So I wouldn't mind by just doing that.


Yeah.


YouTube?


In one of Google's patents, I've read about a new page rank


concept that is very intriguing.


It's about seed pages being used to calculate page rank.


So a few questions about that.


In general, I don't really have anything to say publicly


about any of the patents that we have.


A lot of these patents are done in the sense of kind of like,


we ran across this really cool concept,


and we would like to patent it so that it's clear that kind


of nobody else can take it.


So that's something that doesn't necessarily


mean that we would use that directly in search.


There are tons of patents out there.


Bill Slavsky, he runs a blog that covers all


of these really cool patents.


And I'm always amazed at the cool stuff


that people at Google are working on.


But I wouldn't assume that just because there


is a patent out there that this is how Google Search works.


I was recently approached by a company


promising great rankings through the use of their plugin.


Apparently, it allows them to publish content on my site


and on other clients' sites.


The plugin also creates what they


call a network of SEO links between their clients' sites.


The content isn't quite hidden.


It's only linked through the copyright link in the footer.


This screams bad news to me.


But they claim to have over 39,000 clients and 50,000


domains in the network, and nobody's being banned.


Is this a legit practice or a case of run, florist, run?


So I love that last part.


And I would kind of agree with that.


If essentially this plugin automatically


generates content for your site, that kind of


goes into the area we talked about before.


And if it automatically generates


this kind of network between other sites,


then it's kind of a linked network.


I mean, well, it's not kind of.


It is a linked network.


Then that's something that the web spam team,


when they run across that, they will take action on this.


And it's not necessarily the case


that we would remove all of these sites from search.


So you might still be able to find them in search.


But we would definitely take action on this network.


And we would make sure that all of these artificial links,


which are only there because you're using this plugin,


that they're taken care of.


And this is something that's not particularly novel.


It's like, I think, when I started in SEO, what was it?


Maybe, I don't know, 15 years ago,


there were various kind of linked networks


out there that were doing essentially the same thing.


So that's something that for a long time


has been clearly seen as a bad thing that goes


against our webmaster guidelines.


So I would stay far away from something like this.


Any way to help for new Search Console index coverage errors?


If Google could tell us what the errors are.


I have 520 errors with submitted and has a crawl issue,


desperately trying to find a fix.


But it can't figure out what's wrong.


The page comes up fine, but validation fails.


So I think what would be really useful


here is to have some sample URLs.


And probably what would work out here is to take this question


and post it in the Webmaster Help Forum.


So the folks in the Webmaster Help Forum