about the options, I'd check out our documentation on both the robots.meta tags as well as on


Do I need a robots meta tag? #AskGooglebot

other tags that Google supports. The links are below. And that's it for today's episode.


If you'd like to send us a question, make sure to use the hashtag AskGooglebot on Twitter,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Hi, everyone.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Welcome to another Webmaster Conference Lightning Talk.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

This video series is based on sessions


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

presented at our Webmaster Conference series of events.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Our goal with these videos is to make


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

the information we shared at these events


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

available to everyone.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Today's video will focus on HTTPS and its importance


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

for your site.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

In this talk, we'll cover roughly how HTTPS works,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

why you might want to use it, how to plan a migration


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

from HTTP to HTTPS, and some common questions


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

we've seen on this topic.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Let's start with the basics.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

What is HTTPS, and why would you want to use it?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

HTTPS is a secure connection between your website


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

and your users.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

It protects your website from unwanted activity.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

For security, HTTPS ensures three things.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

First, authentication.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Am I talking to whom they claim to be?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

This is how users can be certain they're


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

engaging with your website and not some intermediary.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Second, data integrity.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Has anyone tampered with the data?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

When your business is active online,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

you want to be sure that your users see your content exactly


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

in the way that you provide it.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

And third, encryption.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Can anyone see my conversation?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Information users enter and content they view


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

should be kept between your website and your users.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

These three pillars of HTTPS are critical for a secure and


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

trusted modern web.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Your users should feel safe on your site,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

just like they would feel if they visited


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

your business in person.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Because HTTPS is such a foundational element


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

of the modern web, it's also a requirement


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

for many modern browser features.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

In particular, you need HTTPS in order


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

to access features like geolocation, autofill, camera,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

progressive web apps, push notifications, and more.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

HTTPS is also directly shown in modern browsers.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Or rather, because it should be active by default,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

the lack of HTTPS is shown.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

When users access a website that doesn't use HTTPS in Chrome,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

for example, it will be flagged as being


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

insecure in the browser bar.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Finally, Google Search gives pages that use HTTPS properly


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

a slight ranking boost.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

So you can see there are lots of reasons to go to HTTPS,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

but how do you do it?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

HTTPS URLs are different than their HTTP counterparts.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

So to switch over, you need to redirect everyone from HTTP


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

URLs to the HTTPS version.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

This is generally done with a server-side 301 redirect.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

For websites, that's generally considered


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

to be a site migration.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Let's take a look at the commonly taken steps.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

First, set up your HTTPS site.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

For this, you might need help from your hoster,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

and you'll need an HTTPS certificate.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

In general, all certificates supported by modern browsers


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

like Chrome will do fine.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Free certificates are perfectly suited.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

The exact steps you need to follow here


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

vary from website to website.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Sometimes it's just a matter of changing a setting.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Other times, there's a lot more involved.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Second, verify ownership in Google Search Console.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

This is critical so that you can track issues associated


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

with your HTTPS version, too.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Additionally, you may also opt to verify the whole domain,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

which would combine the HTTP and HTTPS data in one place.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Make sure to use the same settings in Search Console.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

In particular, review the settings


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

for geotargeting, URL removals, the URL parameter settings,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

the crawl rate setting, and the disavow file.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

If you have co-owners in Search Console, add these, too.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Third, test your HTTPS site extensively.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Allow even some of your users to try it out.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Sometimes there are quirks that you missed,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

and it's best to recognize and fix these before committing


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

to the HTTPS version.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Some of the things to test include avoid mixed content.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Mixed content is when a page on HTTPS


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

includes elements from HTTP.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

For example, you might have embedded images, ads,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

or analytics script with HTTP.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

This is bad for security.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

And browsers will warn users when they recognize it.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Check internal linking.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Make sure that all internal links within your website


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

go to the HTTPS version, too.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

There are various tools to check this,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

but you can also just click around in your browser


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

and watch the URL that's displayed.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Check hidden references.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

If you use rel canonical or rel alternate hreflang link


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

elements, adjust them to HTTPS.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

If you use structured data, make sure


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

that all URLs refer to the HTTPS version.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Check your sitemap files.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Sitemap files help us to crawl and index more efficiently,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

so it's important to point at the correct URLs there.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Now the HTTPS site is ready.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Congratulations.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

It's time to switch everything over.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

So fourth, use server-side redirects


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

to forward all requests from the HTTP version


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

to the HTTPS version.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Double check that all of the old URLs


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

redirect by trying samples of each part of your website


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

manually, or use a tool to automatically check all URLs.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

If you have a sitemap file, this is a good time


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

to submit that, too.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Search engines will now start to use your HTTPS URLs.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Fifth, now it's time to monitor your migration


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

in Search Console.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

We recommend checking Search Console regularly


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

in the beginning to catch any potential issues


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

before they cause problems.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

In particular, check that your sitemap files


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

are being processed normally, that no unexpected crawl


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

errors appear, that the index coverage report shows


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

a rise for the HTTPS site, and of course,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

that your users are finding your HTTPS site in Search.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

If all goes well, it's now just a matter of time


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

until things settle down again.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Do you want to take it to the next level?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

After you're sure that everything


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

is working as expected and you've given it


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

a few months to settle down, you may


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

want to consider enabling HSTS.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

HSTS, that's HTTP Strict Transport Security,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

is a way of letting browsers know that they don't even


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

need to check the HTTP version of your site anymore.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

It's a long-term commitment from your side.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Setting up HSTS is fairly easy.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

You just need to add a header to your server's responses, which


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

tells browsers that they don't need


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

to check the old HTTP version of your site's URLs anymore,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

even when a user tries to go there directly.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

This still requires that a user goes to your site first,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

and you can go even further by adding your site


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

to the HSTS preload list.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

This is a shared list of sites that have committed to HTTPS.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

The list is used in Chrome directly.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

This is a fairly big step, so it's only


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

recommended if you're absolutely certain that everything is


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

working correctly on your HTTPS site.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Whew, that was a lot of information.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

HTTPS isn't something sites do every day,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

so it's normal to have questions about some details.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Let's go through some of those questions here.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

How long do I need to keep the redirects?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Well, ideally, redirects should remain in place forever.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

There should not be a reason to not redirect from HTTP to HTTPS


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

once your site has migrated.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Is it OK to just move some pages to HTTPS, maybe my login page?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Well, yes, technically, that's possible.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

In practice, it's often not much more work


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

to move the whole site over.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

And ultimately, that's what you want to do anyway.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

What kind of certificate should I get?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Any certificate that's supported in a modern browser like Chrome


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

is fine.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

You can get free certificate through Let's Encrypt,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

for example.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

How long does a migration take?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Google has a lot of experience with HTTPS migration.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

So if you have everything set up properly,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

it's usually processed in less than a week or so


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

on most sites.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

In practice, the exact timing doesn't matter so much,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

since users will be redirected anyway.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Will this migration affect my site's ranking?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

No, usually not.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Generally speaking, it's still the same website embedded


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

in the web in the same way.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

The ranking boost for HTTPS is quite small and generally not


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

visible separately.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Can I move back if something goes wrong?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Yes, but it's not recommended.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Instead of moving back, we recommend just fixing the issue


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

and moving forward.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Well, that was a lot, right?


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Moving to HTTPS isn't something you do every day.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

So take your time to research what you really need to do


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

and go through those steps thoughtfully.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

Take notes along the way.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

This helps you to avoid missing important elements


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

and makes it easier to get help should you need it.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

We have a lot of information on site migrations,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

including migrations for HTTPS in our Help Center.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

I hope you enjoyed this excursion into HTTPS


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

and how it can help your site to succeed in Google Search.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

There are even more things related to HTTPS


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

that we could include, but we decided


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

to focus on the most critical elements here.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

However, if there's anything you find


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

that's important that we missed, let us know in the comments


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

below.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

And if you'd like to discuss the use of HTTPS on your site,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

feel free to drop by our Webmaster Help forums,


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

where experts can often help with questions specific to your site.


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

And finally, if there's something more general


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks

you'd like to let us know, you're


HTTPS | WMConf Lightning Talks


Multiple H1 Headings: How to Handle Them for SEO & Accessibility? #AskGoogleWebmasters

Welcome to another episode of Ask Google Webmasters.


Today's question is from Marcus Kepeli.


Marcus is asking, can we have a clear answer


to the question how to handle headings and accessibility?


I see a lot of multiple H1s, all but one are usually


hidden out there on the web.


Everybody treats it differently, and stuff like the main tag.


So this is a pretty common question,


and it's pretty straightforward.


Our systems don't have a problem when


it comes to multiple H1 headings on a page.


That's a fairly common pattern on the web.


We use headings to better understand


the context of different parts of a page.


Having clear, semantically understandable headings


is useful in understanding any given page.


However, we have to work with the web as we find it,


and a lot of it isn't semantically


structured at all.


For users, the difference is minimal.


Both kinds of pages can be extremely relevant to a question


that they have.


In turn, our systems aren't too picky,


and we'll try to work with the HTML as we find it,


be it one H1 heading, multiple H1 headings,


or just styled pieces of text without semantic HTML at all.


In short, when thinking about this topic,


SEO shouldn't be your primary objective.


Instead, think about your users.


If you have ways of making your content accessible to them,


be it by using multiple H1 headings or other standard HTML


constructs, then that's not going


to get in the way of your SEO efforts.


I hope you found this answer useful.


And if there's anything else we can answer for you


in short video form, please send us


your questions using the Ask Google Webmasters hashtag


on Twitter so that we can include them


in one of the future videos.


To stay in the loop, make sure to subscribe to the channel,


and see you next time.


Google Search Explained | Search for Beginners Ep 4

Search is a powerful tool.


It allows users to find, share, and access an almost infinite amount of content.


Regardless of how or where they connect, understanding how Google Search works is essential.


If you have an online business, and you want your customers to find you.


Whether you have a website, blog, social media profile, or Google My Business listing,


Google goes through a whole journey to find your business, categorize it, and show it to your potential customers.


First of all, Google needs to realize your business has a presence on the web.


For this, Google constantly searches for new content to add to its huge catalog.


This discovery process is called crawling.


Google generally discovers web pages by following links from page to page, finding new content never seen before.


Once the Google crawler, which we call Googlebot, has found your website, it has to understand what the content is all about.


This process is called indexing.


Just as you would organize the inventory of your store, whether it's shoes, sweaters, or dresses,


Google analyzes the content on your page and saves this information to its index,


a database considered to be the biggest library in the world.


How can you help the Google index understand your content better?


Learn more about that at the link in the description below.


Alright, now Google has found your website, and Googlebot knows you have an online shop that sells clothes.


What happens next?


When a user types a search query, Google's systems sort through hundreds of billions of web pages in the search index,


looking for the most useful and relevant results in a fraction of a second.


This step is called ranking.


For a typical query, there are thousands, even millions of web pages with potentially relevant information.


Google has to determine the highest quality and most relevant answers,


returning the content that provides the best user experience and most appropriate results.


Some of these factors may include the user's location, language, and device type.


For example, searching for buy a nice shirt.


might show different answers to a user searching from New York than it would to a user searching from Miami.


Remember, Google search results are organic and generated through sophisticated algorithms


that make thousands of calculations for each search in a fraction of a second,


based only on the relevance of a page to a user's query.


Google never accepts payment from anyone to be included in organic search results,


or to alter a page's ranking in any way.


When you use Google search, ads may appear with your search results,


but they are clearly labeled so they are easy to distinguish from the rest of the page.


So now you know that Google crawls the web to discover new content,


Google indexes the content, categorizing it like a catalog,


and Google's ranking systems scan the index to serve the most relevant results to users.


If you'd like to learn more about how search works,


and how to improve your site's visibility in Google search,


follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines,


read our SEO Starter Guide,


and visit the Webmaster Portal,


your one-stop shop for support documentation.


Links to these resources are in the description below.


Be sure to check out the next episode,


Is My Website Searchable on Google Search?


Search Console for Nonprofits - Google Search Console Training (from home)

Hi, I'm Daniel Weisberg, Search Advocate at Google.


And today I'll talk about how to use Search Console


if you work for a nonprofit organization.


Search Console is a free tool from Google


that helps you understand how you're performing on Google Search


and what you can do to improve your appearance on Search


to bring more relevant traffic to your website.


You probably have limited time to dive in,


so one step at a time.


Here's how to get started.


Make sure Google can find and read your pages.


Monitor your site's performance to find new opportunities on Google Search


and learn about optimizing your site for Search.


I'll try to explain each of those as simply as possible,


so stay with me.


If you've never used Search Console,


you'll first need to verify ownership of your site.


There are several ways to do this, so don't worry.


Check out my previous video to find out more about verification methods


and best practices.


It will help you choose the one that's right for you.


Google is constantly crawling the web to discover new and updated pages


and compile a massive index of all the words it sees


and their location on each page.


When a user enters a query, Google machines search the index


for matching pages and return the results we believe


are the most relevant to the user.


The Search Console index coverage report will give you an overview


of all the pages Google indexed or tried to index in your site.


Log into Search Console and find the report in the sidebar.


The default view shows a summary of errors on your site.


Click the tabs to show valid with warnings, valid, and excluded pages too.


Here's what each status means.


Errors prevent pages from being indexed.


An error means the page won't appear in Google,


which can mean a loss of traffic to your website.


Ideally, you should fix most of the errors on your site


to improve your coverage in search.


Valid with warnings are pages that may or may not be shown on Google,


depending on the issue,


but we think there is a problem that you should look into.


Valid pages have been indexed and can be shown on Google Search,


so good job.


Excluded pages were not indexed and won't appear in Google,


but we think that is your intention.


An example might be a donation details form


that shouldn't appear in search results.


Clicking a row in the table will lead you to a more detailed view


showing examples of pages with that issue


and more information on the error or warning.


Here, you can also grab a link using the Share button


to share the details with a developer that can help you fix your site.


After you or your developer have fixed the issue,


click Validate Fix, and Google will validate your changes.


You can watch my previous video on the Index Coverage Report


to understand more about the issues affecting your site


and learn how to validate the fix you have implemented.


Another very useful report is the Search Performance Report.


This report shows how much traffic you're getting from Google Search,


including breakdowns by queries, pages, and countries.


For each of those breakdowns,


you can see trends for impressions, clicks, and other metrics.


Here are three things to look for when reviewing your performance data.


If the number of impressions is significantly higher


than clicks for a query or a page,


you might need to create better page titles and descriptions


to make your site more attractive to users in search results.


If search queries that you expect to see don't appear,


your site might not have enough useful content relevant to those queries.


Check how many queries show your site when the user does


or does not include your nonprofit's name.


These might show interesting areas


where people are searching for content directly related to your site.


Those are just a few examples


of what information you can learn from the default reports.


Check out my previous video on the Performance Report


for a more comprehensive overview of how to use the report


to analyze your Google Search performance.


Search Engine Optimization, or SEO,


is the process of increasing the visibility of website pages on search engines


in order to attract more relevant traffic.


It can involve changes to both the content and the structure of your pages.


Here are some examples of SEO best practices.


You might need a developer to help you implement those.


Create high-quality content that is factually accurate,


clearly written, and comprehensive.


Write unique page titles and description meta tags for each of your pages.


These are HTML elements that tell users and search engines


what the topic of a particular page is.


Use headings to emphasize important text in your pages.


And make your website mobile-friendly.


Most people are searching on Google using a mobile device.


To learn more about the suggestions above and others,


check the SEO starter guide linked in the description.


It's long, but will be worth your while.


That was a short introduction.


Hopefully, you found some new ways to improve your search appearance on Google Search.


Make sure to check our YouTube channel,


where you'll find many videos on Search Console and Search in general.


Make your Angular web apps discoverable - JavaScript SEO

If you are building single page apps that use hash routing or the history API,


you might be using a JavaScript framework to do so.


One of the most popular frameworks is Angular.


Angular allows you to quickly build and deploy single page apps


and helps you and your team be productive doing so.


But what do you need to make sure your Angular apps are discoverable in search?


How do you handle SEO?


In this video, we will cover a few important basics


to make sure your Angular app can be found by your users via search


and how you can make their experience even better with Angular Universal.


Let's start by looking at a typical Angular app.


While your Angular app and Angular projects might be different in size, content and complexity,


there's a lot that all Angular applications have in common.


For this video, we will start by creating a fresh Angular app using the CLI.


First, we should make sure that we have a more or less recent version of the Angular CLI installed.


Once we have established that, we can create a new Angular app.


This creates a basic Angular app that we will use throughout this video


to learn more about the fundamental SEO concepts.


Let's take a look at our application now.


Right now, our web app only has one page so far.


Let's add one more and set up the route to it.


Now it's time to look a little closer at our web app.


The first thing that stands out is that we have the same title for both routes,


but they are about very different things.


It's always a good practice to have a descriptive title


that sets the expectations for what the page is about.


So let's fix this.


Angular provides us with the title service to retrieve and set the title.


In our app component, we can extend the constructor to get a reference to the title service


and then use it within the constructor to set the title to something more appropriate.


Note that we can change the title later on as well, but crawlers might not pick it up then.


We will discuss techniques to make sure that the crawler sees the title and our content properly later.


Now, let's look at a sample search result.


There's one more thing here that we should definitely provide, the description snippet.


This snippet is generated from the meta description tag.


Like the title, this description should be specific to the individual pages


and reflect what the user can expect when they click on the search result.


Let's add some descriptions to our pages now.


Similar to the title service, Angular also has a meta service that we can use.


It allows us to create or read meta tags on the page.


We are interested in adding a description tag, so we get a reference to the meta service


and add a description tag with a meaningful description like this.


Descriptions don't have a limitation in how long they can be, but we will pick an excerpt if necessary.


For instance, to accommodate for limited screen space on a mobile device.


If your web app has content that changes frequently, you might notice that it can take quite a while for search engines to pick it up.


Some might not even show your content at all.


We explained the reason for this in episode 2.


In that episode, we suggested using Rendertron or Puppeteer to handle this.


And with Angular, there's a simpler option of using Angular Universal.


Angular Universal runs our app on the server and delivers static HTML to the clients.


This often results in an improvement in speed as well.


The Angular app continues to work as usual and as you would expect,


because it then also runs your JavaScript code in the browser to give users the normal experience when using your Angular app.


To set up Angular Universal for our web app, we add the Universal module and generate a Universal app based on our existing web app.


Then, we need to make sure the server runs the Universal app.


If you use Express for your server site, you can use the Express engine to do so.


Now, we start the server and can see the difference in the HTML that is sent from the server to the client.


Here is the version before we used Angular Universal.


And here it is after we added Angular Universal.


Users and crawlers now get the content faster and without needing the JavaScript.


It's not always this easy, but at least for our sample, this Angular web app is now discoverable in search and fast.


Thanks for watching this video. If you liked it, leave us a comment below.


And to stay tuned with all the new Webmaster videos coming out, definitely also subscribe.


Security issues explained - Google Search Console Training

Previously on Search Console Training


The Search Console Security Issues Report shows warnings when Google finds that your site might have been hacked or used in ways that could potentially harm a visitor or their device.


When Google detects a security issue on a website, Search Console verified site owners will receive an email alerting them about this issue with a link to more information on how to solve it.


Read your emails carefully. It's important that you see these alerts as soon as possible.


Welcome back to the two-episode special on security issues in Search Console.


In this second part, Aurora will go deeper into hacking and social engineering. Enjoy!


There are many different types of hacks. The most common one is URL injection that can happen through stolen credentials or outdated software.


Once hackers gain unauthorized access to the CMS or the hosting service of a website, they can remove, modify, or add content, steal user data, or exploit the reputation of the website for their own commercial purposes.


I'll focus on three forms of hacking through injection of URLs, content, or code.


Injections usually result in harming the user experience and trust, damaging the reputation of the website.


URL injection happens when a hacker creates new pages on a site containing spammy links. These links redirect users to other sites.


Content injection happens when a hacker adds unrelated content to a site's pages, such as spammy keywords or gibberish text.


Code injection happens when a hacker injects code to a website to change its behavior, for example, by sending spammy emails.


Typically, hackers take control of a website in one of these ways.


By gaining access to an insecure directory on a server. For example, you may have forgotten about a directory that has open permissions.


By exploiting a vulnerability in a software running on a site, such as a content management system.


For instance, you might be running an older, insecure version of your CMS.


By hacking third-party applications, such as plugins or widgets on a site.


Wow! So a lot of security issues come from outdated software and bad credential management?


Yes. Hackers usually look for technical signals to assess if a website is well protected or not.


If they see that a website is running an outdated version, they might exploit a known vulnerability.


Hmm. I'm going to check if I need all those plugins if they're really updated.


Wait. I haven't told you about social engineering yet.


Social engineering?


Social engineering tricks users into doing something dangerous online, such as revealing confidential information or downloading malicious software.


Phishing is an example of social engineering.


Google Safe Browsing protects users by warning them before they visit deceptive websites or download harmful files.


If Google Safe Browsing detects that your website has deceptive content,


the Chrome browser may display a deceptive side-ahead warning when visitors click to access your site.


To learn more about Google's work in this field, check the Safe Browsing and Transparency Report links in the video description.


Search Console will alert you by email if we think any of the pages on your site contain social engineering content.


But take a quick look at your security issues report once in a while just to be on the safe side. Pun intended.


Some examples of social engineering are deceptive content.


Your site tries to trick visitors into doing something they'd only do for a trusted entity.


For example, sharing a password or a credit card number.


Deceptive ads.


Your site contains ads that falsely claim that device software is out of date, prompting users into installing unwanted software.


Since deceptive content makes you believe that it is the original source, it may try to trick you into sharing your sensitive data.


But I don't fall for those tricks.


You may not fall for obvious phishing attacks, but deceptive content such as fake download buttons may try to trick you to download malware.


In addition to social engineering warnings, we also report on other security issues.


On common downloads, your site offers a download that Google Safe Browsing hasn't seen before.


Chrome may warn those who download it that it could be dangerous.


These warnings are lifted automatically if Google Safe Browsing verifies that the files are safe.


Harmful downloads.


Your site offers users a download that Google Safe Browsing thinks is either malware or unwanted software.


Browsers such as Chrome may show a warning when a user visits your site.


To remove this warning, you must remove the links to harmful sites.


Unclear mobile billing.


Your site is not sufficiently informing users about mobile charges.


Chrome may display a warning before the user loads a page that incurs in these charges.


Malware.


Your site has been infected by or is hosting malware from a hacker.


This can be software, a mobile application, or a script specifically designed to harm a device when a user knowingly or unknowingly installs it.


You can find out more about malware issues and how to fix them in the Assessing Malware documentation linked in the description.


So, remember, pay attention to the Security Issues Report in Search Console.


It may contain important information regarding the security of your site and your users.


And as a user, beware of social engineering.


Pay attention to warnings and don't fall for deceptive content and harmful downloads.


Thank you so much for helping us understand more about security, Aurora.


And before you forget, subscribe to the YouTube Google Webmasters channel to watch more videos on Search Console.


Stay tuned.


No, it's not like that. It's...


Client-side JS Redirects: Can Googlebot Detect Them? #AskGoogleWebmasters

Hi, everyone.


John Mueller here with another episode


of Ask Google Webmasters, a video series in which we


answer your questions about Google Search and websites.


Today's question is from YesI'mVinny,


who is asking, can Google Evergreen Chromium detect


client-side JavaScript redirects?


I'm not able to submit Google Search Console indexing


requests to pages that have client-side JavaScript


redirects to a subscription page.


Thank you for all your questions.


But first, let me back up a bit and explain


where some of that comes from before diving


into the question itself.


Googlebot is what we use to crawl the web,


to find public and crawlable pages that we can


include in our search results.


Over the years, we've started using a version of Chrome


to do a part of that, to make sure


that we can see what users would see when they use


their browsers to view those pages,


until earlier this year, we were using a special older


version of Chrome for that.


And now, we've started using a recent version of Chrome,


and we're updating that automatically over time.


A browser that's kept updated automatically


is often called an Evergreen browser.


So essentially, when we talk about Evergreen Googlebot,


we're saying that it's rendering with the recent version


of Chrome, similar to what you'd have on your computer as well.


By using redirects, you're telling us


that you'd prefer to have a different URL, or at least


the contents of a different URL indexed.


We support JavaScript redirects of different types


and follow them similar to how we'd follow server-side


redirects.


JavaScript redirects are important for, well,


unsurprisingly, JavaScript-based sites,


which we also work hard to support.


All that said, submitting a URL for indexing that redirects


doesn't really make much sense for indexing,


since the redirect tells us you'd prefer


to have the other URL indexed.


So my recommendation would be to submit the URL that you'd


like to have indexed instead.


Or even better, make sure that we can discover those URLs


automatically.


For example, if this URL is linked properly within your website,


we'll discover it through our normal crawling anyway.


You can also help us to pick up changes a bit faster


by using a sitemap file.


I hope this helped to clear up some of the questions here.


If you have further questions about how Google uses


JavaScript in search, make sure to check out


our developer documentation linked in the description


below.


And if you want to ask us a different question,


don't forget to use the hashtag AskGoogleWebMasters on Twitter.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

Aditya is asking, by any chance, a self-referential canonical


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

can override an existing canonical or preferred page.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

I believe two canonicals for the same page should be avoided.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

That's correct.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

Avoid multiple rel canonicals with separate URLs


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

on the same page.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

Ankit is asking if putting the date and the month in URLs


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

is OK, and will it affect my Google rankings?


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

Well, having the date in a URL is fine.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

It doesn't affect crawling, indexing,


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

or ranking of the page.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

A question from Jay Low is, I heard


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

that using CDNs to deliver images


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

might be a problem for Google Search,


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

since it's not on my server and Google doesn't


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

support image canonicalization.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

Well, using CDNs for images is fine.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

It doesn't have to be on your server.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

Rahul's question is, what is the best way


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

to appear in Search if you have a global audience to target


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

with a single domain?


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

We don't have multiple physical addresses for local SEO,


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

and we don't want to go for ccTLDs because of a resource


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

crunch.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

It's fine to have a single domain.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

Many websites just have one version


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

that's globally available.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

RMW, Web Publishing, is asking, is it such a bad thing


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

to leave the Google Webmaster's verification file out


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

of the sitemap XML?


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

We would have thought the sitemap XML should only


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

be filled with content greatness you want indexed.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

Well, you're right.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

You don't need to include the verification


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

file in your sitemap file.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

The verification file is just for Search Console.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot

Nobody else can do anything useful with it.


SEO lightning round - #AskGooglebot


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from July 24, 2020

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


Office Hours Hangouts.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google in Switzerland.


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


where people can join in and ask their questions


around their websites and web search.


Bunch of stuff was submitted already.


We'll try to go through as much of that as possible.


But if any of you want to get started with a question,


you're welcome to jump on in now.


Hi, John.


Hi.


I have two questions, actually.


So the first one is about the chart.


So our client, they run some sort of survey


to get information from the user.


And they write blog content based on their survey.


Now, the question is, how we can add this chart


to the blog post?


Should we add as an image, or should we


add some sort of code to show the chart which one is better?


I think it depends a bit on what you want


to achieve with the chart.


Usually, these kind of things I would just add as an image


and make sure that you have an understandable alt


attribute for the image as well.


So if there is any critical information in that chart


that you need to get across, then


put it in the alt attribute so that we can pick it up as text


so that people who can't see the image


can also get that information.


But in general, I would just let them get in those images.


I think usually, these kind of charts


are not going to do something fantastic in image search


because it's hard to imagine that someone


is looking for that particular chart using Google Images.


But essentially, an image is probably the best approach


there.


I don't think you would get a lot of value out


of making that chart into HTML and putting the numbers


and the labels into text because that's something that you can


just as easily put in the body of the blog post in the alt


attribute as well.


SPEAKER 1 The next question is about infographics and image.


Now, infographics is still a bit different from the image.


Now, how Google can understand this one is just a simple image


and this one is infographics?


How can Google understand this thing?


I don't think we need to understand the difference.


Or why should we need to understand the difference?


Because for us, an image is an image.


We can pull out some information from an image.


If there is text in the image, we can try to understand that.


But essentially, if it's an image,


if you're putting a little information into an image,


then that's something that's primarily an image and not


primarily text.


So if you're doing something like an infographic,


like a really long thing, I'd recommend making sure


that you have the text or the bulk of the text


in there in some kind of a blog post or in other textual format


as well.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


Thanks, John.


SPEAKER 1 Sure.


SPEAKER 3 Hello, John.


Hi.


My question is regarding content scrapping,


which is also a quality guideline from Google.


So the thing is we have a website


where we cover mobile games that come on Google Play Store.


And we write about those games.


We write original content about the game,


like what is storyline, gameplay, and all


the characters about the game.


But we have a competitor who just


blannantly copies everything from Google Play Store


and puts the content they rank better than us.


So what can we do to improve our rankings


in this kind of situation?


We are doing everything original,


and they are just copying from Google Play Store.


Now, I think sometimes that's frustrating.


But essentially, the important part to keep in mind


is that we use a lot of factors when it comes to ranking.


So what I've sometimes seen is that one site will do a lot


of things really well and then some individual things really


badly.


And they'll still perform fairly well


because overall, we look at that and say,


well, there are lots of good signals here too.


So as a competitor in a situation like that,


I would recommend making sure that you're


focusing on all of those signals as well,


that you're trying to find ways to improve your site overall,


not just specifically with regards to the content.


For example, I don't know your site,


so I'm just making up a situation.


What could happen is you have really good textual content,


but you embed it on a site.


Look, wait, yeah, oh, that is really good.


So that's where I take a step back.


And instead of just focusing on the text,


try to think about your whole website overall.


Well, we do have considered all these points.


And I think we have a good visibility


overall of the website.


We have a good number of backlinks compared to them.


Our website looks good.


It loads fast.


Everything is good.


It's just the content part that I


believe we are lacking behind, because they just copy it


and they just rank better.


Still not able to figure out the exact reason why


they are ahead of us.


I don't know if it's the right thing.


Usually, in these kind of situations,


not that there's one thing that they're doing


that is the reason they're ranking better,


and you can just copy that and do that as well.


It's really a combination of different things.


So that's something where I'd really


be cautious about just saying, well, on this page,


we have better content than this other page.


But really try to take a step back and look at your website


overall.


Maybe there are other parts of your website


that are more problematic.


And try to find ways to improve all of that.


And that's not something that happens,


like you fix the HTML code today,


and then tomorrow everything is perfect.


That takes a long time sometimes to really improve overall.


AUDIENCE 1 Sure.


Thank you.


Sure.


All right, let me run through some of the submitted


questions, because I think last time we barely


got through any of them.


Let's see, the first one.


I don't know what I can say here.


Would you confirm if Google is making any changes into the


search results?


Because I'm seeing ranking loss and big fluctuations


in existing rankings for my Australia-based website.


So we make changes all the time.


So from that point of view, I can pretty much


confirm that we have made changes in the search results.


So I don't think that's really useful in that sense,


because if you're making changes all the time,


why am I seeing changes now?


But rather, that's something where I would generally


recommend, obviously, recognizing


these kind of situations is a good first step.


But also letting it settle down, seeing what happens in the end,


checking in with other webmasters,


other sites to see what kind of changes


maybe they're seeing as well.


And then think about, on the one hand,


what you can do to improve your sites overall so that they're


a little bit more stable and not reliant on this one


particular factor that you happen to be working on.


And on the other hand, maybe looking at the search results


where you've been seeing changes and thinking about how


all of that could fit together.


So in that regard, I don't really


have this one answer that's like, well,


you're seeing changes in search.


Therefore, you should hold the handbrake on your website


and everything will stand still.


That doesn't happen.


These changes in search are things


that we do to try to improve the search results.


So sometimes we do get it wrong.


But a lot of times, I think we head in the right direction.


And it's worthwhile to find ways that you can improve your web


so you kind of keep up with how the web is improving overall.


Google has stated that deep linking to an app


has a positive ranking effect to the associated website


it's being linked from.


Is this accurate today?


So I don't know if there's really a positive ranking


effect on the website that you would get just


from linking to an app.


That feels like a stretch.


I'm not sure where exactly that's coming from.


And the question is, is this still accurate today,


provided I'm doing all the right things to make my site


indexable and providing authoritative content that users


can trust?


What sort of lift should I expect from it?


Yeah, like I said, I don't think this is something


that we do today.


Because essentially, you can link to all kinds of content.


And just because you're linking to that content


doesn't mean that your website is better.


This is, for example, if you take it to web pages,


something that people have been doing since the beginning,


where they will publish something low quality


or spammy, and they'll link to Wikipedia and CNN and Google


and say, well, look at all of these authoritative websites


I'm linking to.


You should trust my content.


And just because you're linking to something good


doesn't mean that your content is good.


Obviously, sometimes links do provide extra value


to your content.


But there is no kind of magical effect


from just linking to some things that are also good.


Would you advise utilizing a reverse proxy server


for moving from a subdomain to a subfolder structure?


Any risks or considerations that shouldn't be overlooked?


In general, if you're changing the structure of your website,


I would recommend just setting up redirects


and doing it the normal way.


Setting up some kind of reverse proxy, in my opinion,


for something basic like this seems like a lot of extra work


with a lot of moving parts that can break.


So I recommend setting up the redirects.


Whenever you're changing the site structure,


you will see some fluctuations in search for a while.


But that's something where it'll settle down.


And we have a lot of practice with redirects.


So usually, that should work out well.


I think, especially in the beginning,


there are some situations where maybe setting up


a reverse proxy makes sense, where if we really


can't crawl your content properly,


or if you have a really kind of complicated infrastructure


that you need to hide from users and hide from search engines,


then maybe setting up a kind of a reverse proxy


to map your complicated URLs to cleaner URLs,


maybe that could make sense.


But for the most part, site moves like this,


site structure changes, that's something


where I wouldn't bother with all of this extra machinery


to hide those changes.


I've seen several WordPress sites get hacked,


resulting in a warning being displayed in the search results


if a reverse proxy was used.


And this warning was present.


Would the warning extend to the rest of the domain?


Or would it only pertain to the pages that


are hosted on the WordPress CMS?


I don't know how broad that kind of setup would be.


So I think what you're kind of saying


is you would have your WordPress site in a subdirectory


or something like that on a main domain.


And would this warning affect the rest of the domain?


I don't know, it depends a bit on how easily we


can recognize which part of the site is running WordPress.


And I mean, the ideal situation is not so much


to kind of mitigate the risk that when you get hacked,


that Google only shows that for part of your website,


but rather that you try not to get hacked,


or that if you do get hacked, that you fix this


as quickly as possible.


So I think investing a lot of time and energy


into setting up a special configuration where


that hacked warning will only be visible to a small part


of your site seems like time and energy


that you could be spending to make sure that your website


doesn't get hacked at all.


In Search Console, in Search Performance,


when I filter a query, that report


gives me certain stats.


Then when I add a country filter plus the same query,


I get total different stats.


I get a higher number of clicks than before.


How come I get fewer clicks if I don't filter a specific country?


I don't know, it'd be useful to look at some examples.


If you can send me some examples,


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


Sometimes what happens there is, depending


on the way that the filtering happens in the back end


with regards to how much data we have


for individual parts of a site and how


the sampling of that data happens overall.


In practice, what you can usually rely on


is that the higher number that we show in Search Console


is the more correct one.


So maybe that helps.


Maybe that makes things more confusing.


If you have some specific examples,


I'd be happy to take a look.


One of the typical SEO suggestions


is to avoid Google to index poor content pages.


Typically, user profile pages are like that.


Maybe just username and a couple of information.


The question is, is it better to put no index on profile pages


to avoid Google seeing those less valuable pages?


You can do that if you want to.


In general, I wouldn't say that all profile pages are bad,


but it's something that we do sometimes


see that either spammers use profile pages as a way of kind


of placing their links or placing some specific content


that they're trying to rank for.


Other times, the profile pages are just with basic information


and not very useful.


If it's just a matter of basic information and not


very useful, I generally don't think


that's something you need to put a no index on,


because what happens in practice is we will look at your website


overall, and we'll try to determine


which parts of your website are important for search.


And those are the parts that we will focus on.


So even if you have parts of your website


that are less useful, like maybe some of these profile pages,


we will still try to focus on the things


that we think are useful and relevant to show in search.


So it's not that those less complete profile pages


would be pulling your website down.


The one time where it would probably


make sense to do something here is


if it's a really gigantic website,


and you have tons and tons of these kind of emptier pages


on your website, and that makes it really hard for us


to crawl and index the website.


So in particular, if you have several million pages,


and of those, maybe 80% are these more empty profile pages,


we would spend a lot of time focusing on these empty profile


pages before we recognize that actually they're not


so important for your website.


We could be spending our time somewhere else.


So from that point of view, I wouldn't blanketly


say you always need to put noindex on your profile pages.


I would look for things like spam.


People are abusing those profile pages.


Clean that up.


If the absolute number of those profile pages


is kind of in a reasonable range,


and they're not showing visibly in search,


then I wouldn't really worry about that.


Do you think a 301 redirect chain of multiple redirects


rules pileups can hurt a website?


For example, httpexample.com to www.example.com


to httpsexample.com?


Is that something critical to look at,


or is it just us who are noticing those paths,


but search engines and users are experiencing the final URL?


Yeah, for the most part, we focus on the final URL.


So that's something where, depending


on how you have your website set up,


you commonly have this kind of chain redirect setup


where you redirect incrementally closer to the URL


that you actually want.


And that's perfectly fine.


The one thing that can sometimes happen


is if we find the ancient URL at some point,


and that's the only thing we know about your website,


then what Googlebot will do is follow five redirect steps,


and then in the next day follow the next line.


But once we've recognized where your final URLs are,


then we'll focus on those final URLs.


It's not that we'll follow that redirect chain every time


we try to crawl.


So that's something that I've seen tools sometimes flag


and say, hey, if you look at this obscure URL,


you'll find seven redirects in a chain,


and your website will disappear in search if you have seven


instead of five.


And that's definitely not the case.


So what I would do in a general situation like this


is try to double check that when users are using a website,


they're using the final URLs, that you're not constantly


redirecting between URLs.


And if you have multiple URLs set up, redirect set up


like this, and this is just kind of legacy changes that


have been happening over time, I wouldn't worry about it.


If it's something that people see all the time,


if you look at your server logs and you see


that these redirect chains are being used regularly,


then I would try to figure out how


you can link to the final URL rather than to the initially


redirecting URL.


But the redirect chain itself, that's not something


that I would really worry about.


Are companies in the process of merging and rebranding


two domains?


Let's say site one and site two both have unique content.


They cover similar topics.


Site one is our flagship site with more value.


The new domain we required for the merge and rebrand


just happens to be the.com version of site two.


So we want to use that.


Since site one is more important,


we want to first redirect site one to site two


and then redirect site two.org to site two.com at a later


date.


Would this be problematic for the search?


Would Google penalize the site, since this could


be confusing signal to users?


So we definitely wouldn't penalize sites like that.


That's something where definitely


from a web spam point of view, this is a non-issue.


This is a kind of a technical issue


that we need to figure out, but it's not something


we would consider to be of use.


So maybe kind of that worry off first.


That doesn't mean that you won't see any fluctuations


with changes like this.


So that's a kind of a different question.


In general, moving from one domain to another


is something that we have a lot of practice with.


If you're just moving one to one,


all of the URLs from one domain to another,


I would expect that to just work out.


Maybe you'll see some fluctuations


for a couple of days, maybe a week or so.


But usually, that should settle down fairly quickly.


On the other hand, if you're merging things,


so in particular, if you move like site one to site two,


and site two already had some content,


then you're merging things.


In cases like that, it does take significantly longer


to kind of settle down.


And in this case, I don't know if the final site already


has content or not, if you're merging things into that.


But what I would generally do is try


to separate out the individual steps


so that you can easier recognize where things have gone wrong


or where something might have happened


that you need to double check.


So a common scenario is you do kind of this moving from one


domain to another.


And at the same time, you change your CMS,


and you change your URL structure.


You change the layout of your pages.


And if you do all of that at the same time


and something goes wrong in search,


then figuring out why that happened in search


is going to be really hard.


Whereas if you do it incrementally,


and you recognize, oh, when I changed my URL structure,


things went wrong, therefore, as a next step,


I need to figure out what in my URL structure


is different compared to before.


And maybe I can improve things.


Maybe I need to roll the URL structure back, whatever.


But by being able to separate out those individual parts,


it makes it a lot easier to figure out


what you need to change.


So that would generally be my recommendation there.


I wouldn't worry so much about the unique content


part or similar topics or all of those things.


But from our point of view, it's really more a matter of,


are you merging things, or are you just moving things?


A question about pop under ads.


My site started ranking, and I have this pop under ads on it.


It only opens up once in 24 hours.


Can this affect my ranking on Google?


I don't want my rankings to drop.


I don't think anyone wants their rankings to drop.


I don't know what specifically you're showing


with the pop under ads.


In practice, we do take a variety of signals


into account when it comes to understanding


the quality of a page.


And we look at things like if the top part of the page


is visible or not.


And pop under ads feels like, I don't know how exactly you're


implementing it, but if you're opening a window


behind an existing window, that feels like a really old


technique that I don't know if browsers even


support that that well anymore.


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


I would look more into the usability side of that


and figure out, why are you doing this,


and what is your goal?


Does it actually work for you?


And then, as a second step, figure out


if this is really useful for you users


and useful for your site, how might that affect search?


We have a question about mobile usability.


It's stated that we have clickable elements


to close and content wider than screen on some pages.


We tried a lot of ways, like improving the font size,


adding padding and margin for clickable elements


to improve these issues, but none of them work.


The actual problem is Google Search Console


doesn't show us where exactly the problem occurred


on which clickable elements.


It's also interesting that when we use a test live page


on Google Search Console, we don't get any errors


with the same pages.


So what I would suggest doing there


is if the bulk of your pages don't have this message,


and if the live test doesn't have this message,


then I would just ignore that warning.


What might be happening is that individual times when


we try to render those pages to see


how the text on those pages works,


that maybe we're not able to process the CSS


for those individual pages.


And then we flag that like this in Search Console.


So that's something where if the live test says it's OK,


then I would trust the live test.


I have a question about nofollow versus no atriff


on internal linking.


I'm not sure.


OK.


I don't want Google to relate our menu links


on all types of category pages.


What would you suggest here?


Remove the atriff from the menu links.


Add nofollow to the menu links.


Disallow the menu container.


So generally speaking, you don't need to hide things that are,


I mean, I don't know your specific site setup.


But in general, you wouldn't need


to hide links on a site like that.


Because if it's something that you don't want to have indexed,


then I would put a noindex on the destination page.


It's generally not something that you need to prevent


from being crawled.


If you do want to avoid forwarding signals internally,


then using a nofollow there is fine.


Using a disallow on the menu container,


I don't think that would necessarily work in most cases.


So that would mean that you'd have


to have your menu as a separate HTML file that


is loaded in iframe on a page kind of thing.


And that's a really complicated site structure setup.


That's something that I haven't seen in a really long time.


But if you really just don't want


to forward any signals to those links, I would use nofollow.


But for the most part, you probably


don't need to do anything special here.


A question about page speed insights.


Why does a Google AdSense script cause poor page speed


insights performance?


It's loaded async, but Google marks the ads by Google


as a problem with these errors.


It's weird because Google suggests


don't use Google AdSense.


It's bad.


It slows down your pages.


So I don't know about that specific snippet of text.


But in general, our speed testing tools


are agnostic to the kind of markup and scripts


that you add to your pages.


So it's not going to be the case that our speed testing


tools will say, oh, this ad script is perfectly fine


because it's made by us, even if it's really slow.


So if our speed testing tools say


that a particular element is slowing down your page


and that particular element happens to come from Google


at some point, then essentially you


have a page that is a bit slower.


Users don't care where that ad is coming from


or where the slowness is coming from.


They just care that a page is slow.


So that's something kind of off the side.


With regards to why the Google Ad script is making your pages


slow, I don't know.


That's something where I would check in with the AdSense folks


to see what other options you have where you might be able


to implement those ads in a way that don't slow down your site.


Or maybe there are ways that you can implement


the ads on your site in a way that doesn't directly


affect the page speed.


For example, if you have those ads further down on the page,


then maybe the largest contentful paint,


the first meaningful paint, all of those metrics


are actually OK because this lower part is loaded


after the first page view.


So those are kind of a few elements there.


The other thing to keep in mind is that, in particular,


the page speed insight score is not like a magic number


that you have to improve and get to 100%.


It's a combination of different speed factors,


and it's meant to help you to figure out


where your weak points are with your website.


So that's something where, if you add a script to your page


and it goes down from 98 to 95, then probably that's still OK.


But it's worthwhile to figure out,


especially if you see really big changes with regards


to those speed scripts.


In the future, we plan on using the Core Web Vitals rather


than just the page speed insight score.


The Core Web Vitals are also, I believe,


shown in page speed insights now, but separately.


So I would take a look at that to see


how maybe this particular script affects the Core Web Vitals,


and also check in with the AdSense folks


to see if there are ways that you can implement things that


still work really fast for your site.


I noticed my site ranking suddenly


dropped around May 2020, and I noticed all my ranking post


was not ranking anymore.


I don't know what's wrong with my ranking.


I don't know.


That's a very vague question and a very broad timeline,


so it's really hard to say.


What I would recommend doing here


is maybe posting in the Webmaster Help Forum


and including your URL, including the queries where


you've been seeing changes, and the pages on your website


that you think should be ranking a little bit better


for those queries, and trying to talk with other people who've


run into similar problems to figure out


what you could be doing to improve things there.


What I have sometimes seen is that sites


will look at metrics like the total impressions


or the total clicks to the site and not consider


the individual queries and the conversion on those queries.


If those queries were really queries where your site is


particularly relevant for.


So for example, I have seen situations


where a site will write an article about how


to log into Gmail.


And if that article happens to rank for a query like Gmail,


then you would get a lot of traffic there.


And when our algorithms figure out, well, actually, this


is not really the best thing to show for this query,


then you will see a big drop in traffic.


And if you just look at the absolute numbers there,


then it'll look like something really big


is happening to your website.


But it's actually just that one query.


And if you step back, then you might notice, well,


maybe my site isn't really the best one


to rank for that particular query.


I made several tests to find out that my high CLS and LCP


are coming from AdSense ads.


Oh my gosh, more of these.


So other than removing those ads,


can you give us a guide on how to solve the problem


or to fix a guideline from Google AdSense


would also be nice.


So again, we're not going to change our guidelines just


because products from Google are also sometimes slow.


But rather, we encourage the web to find ways


to improve their speed overall.


If you're seeing issues around specific Google products,


then I would go in those Google product forums


and really work with folks there to help improve that.


And I'm happy to help out if there's anything I can do there.


But in general, we don't know all the teams at Google.


And we can't give them confidential information


on how to magically make things faster.


They have to do normal things as any other provider would


need to do.


So that's something where I primarily


try to work with the product teams that you're


trying to integrate there.


Is crowding Google search results


with multiple domains from the same company


selling the same product against the webmaster guidelines?


Our business is being pushed down.


Page one results for thousands of keywords.


And we want to know how to deal with it.


It's something that I think our algorithms do sometimes


struggle with.


A lot of times, I think we get it right.


And every now and then, something


will pop up where suddenly there are lots of different TLDs


from this one site that are showing up in the search


results.


And that's something we do try to work on.


So it's not so much like, is it against the webmaster


guidelines or not, but rather, our algorithms sometimes


struggle to get the right balance there.


Showing multiple results from the same website


is perfectly fine.


We try to generally try to limit that to maybe one or two


results per website.


But for individual queries, it might make sense


to show a lot more.


And there is no magic number that we would say,


this is the total number of results


we would show from one website or one business in the search


So that's something also worth keeping in mind there.


The other thing is the one area where


it does touch on the webmaster guidelines


is if you're doing something like creating doorway sites


or creating doorway pages.


If you're creating significant duplication


with all of the same content and just tweaking things


by putting it on different domain names,


then that is something where the web spam team might take action


if they find that.


Using the web spam report form is a good way


to kind of bring that up on our side.


But also keep in mind that the web spam report


form is something that we use to improve our algorithms.


It's not something where the web team will take that input


and one-to-one do a manual action on it.


Two questions.


Does Google index image metadata?


If yes, does it influence ranking?


We do pick up some image metadata.


And I believe it's primarily used


for things like understanding the image license


and the copyright information.


It's not really a ranking factor,


but it's something that we do sometimes


show in Google Images.


When people are seeing kind of this preview of an image,


we can sometimes show the metadata from the image there.


So not a ranking factor, but always a good thing to have,


especially if you have information


about the licensing or kind of copyright information


that you want to provide.


Does Google index metadata in MP3 and other audio formats?


Does that influence ranking?


I don't think so, but I don't know for sure.


I think the tricky part there is I


don't think we actually index MP3s at all.


So we would probably be able to pick those up as videos


sometimes, depending on how you're


embedding those on the page.


But otherwise, I don't think we would individually


index MP3s separately.


So that's more a matter of providing information


on the landing pages where you're linking to those MP3s.


And obviously, information on the landing is text,


and we can use that for ranking.


How many internal links should we use on a page?


Let's say there's one in the menu and one in text.


What is the best approach?


Will it lose link value if the same internal link


is used multiple times?


Use as many internal links as you want.


So that's kind of the guideline.


It's not that there is any magic number


that you need to focus on or with regards


to kind of using the same link multiple times.


That's all generally fine.


The one thing I would watch out for


is more that your site has kind of a clear structure,


in that when we crawl your website,


that we can understand which pages are related


to each other, which pages are kind of equally important,


and which pages are kind of sub-pages of existing pages


so that we can understand the context of your pages


a little bit better.


So one thing that SEOs sometimes like to do, especially when


they first get a hold of a crawling tool,


is to create a really flat structure,


where all pages link to all pages.


You just have to know one URL, and then you


know all URLs of the website.


And if you crawl the site, it's just one long line


where all pages are equally important.


And from our point of view, that's not really that useful,


because we don't understand how the relationship is


between these pages.


From kind of a pure crawler point of view,


it looks like, oh, all pages are on level one,


or however you count that.


But that's not necessarily good.


It's usually better to have kind of a balanced structure, where


you have some category pages, maybe some subcategory pages


for the individual categories, the detail pages further down


below, so that we can understand what the relationship is


between those pages.


And with regards to internal links,


that essentially maps back to that.


So if you have links from your category page


to your subcategories of that category,


and from there to the individual products,


then that's a nice structure to have.


It's not that you need to put all of your site's links


into all of your pages.


OK, let's see.


We've still got some time.


There's one longer question about a specific site.


I'll just skip that one for now, because it


seems like something more complicated to look at.


I notice these spammy sites are linking to my pages.


I sent them email to stop, but they didn't.


I disavowed them.


I don't want them to affect my ranking,


because I didn't put them there.


Some pages are linking to my pages


around 20 times with some weird author.


Is disavow the only thing I can do here?


This is perfect for these kind of situations.


If you really want to make sure that Google's algorithms do not


take this into account at all, disavow is perfectly fine.


In practice, you probably don't need to disavow.


If these are really spammy pages,


if these are just kind of like links


on random pages of the web, then that's


something we probably ignore already.


It's not something that you would need to disavow.


But if you're worried about this,


worried enough to actually send them an email,


you really don't want them to be taken into account,


then the disavow tool will do that for you.


Structured data questions on a new site.


FAQ page, structured data.


Is it OK to mark up main content landing page containing FAQs


with FAQ schema rather than create a separate FAQ page


strictly for FAQs linked to each other?


From a user point of view, we think


it would be better on the site to have


all the FAQs listed on the main content landing page.


The landing page will have an accordion style index


on top with hashes to jump out to the FAQ content


for ease of access.


Speaking, you can do that.


I don't know if it really makes sense for you users,


but that's kind of a question between you and your users.


It's less a matter of can you do it or not.


The important part with FAQ content and structured data,


rich results in general, is that we expect this content


to be visible on the page.


So if you're hiding the whole block of FAQs,


that would be problematic.


If you're showing the questions on the page,


and if you click on the questions,


and it expands and shows the answer, that would be fine.


Video structured data, same landing page as above.


We have multiple videos listed in carousels.


Better to have individual pages for these videos


and add supporting content on the page.


If so, how to mark up the videos on the landing page


and point Google via markup to authoritative best content


page containing the best amount of useful metadata and schema


data.


So the best amount of metadata and information on a page


is not something that you can really quantify.


You have to kind of use trial and error,


test that with your users, and figure out


how much information makes sense to have


on one page versus splitting that across multiple pages.


When it comes to videos, the thing to keep in mind


is that when we recognize there is a video on a page,


we will show one video thumbnail for that page.


So if you have multiple videos, and these are essentially


video landing pages for those individual videos,


then I would tend to put those videos on separate pages


just so that you have one clear landing


page for those individual videos.


So that's kind of from my point of view,


the way that I would look at it there.


If you have all of the videos on the same page,


then it's really hard for us to tell which of these videos


is the important one that we should


show as a thumbnail, for example.


Some simple links are attached under each result description


in the search results using a scrolling carousel.


I can't find any guide pages on that.


What's the difference with the exposure type and site links?


How does Google select those links?


Can you explain more about the purpose


and the algorithm of additional attached links on the search


results?


I'm not so sure exactly which kind of links you mean there,


because search results pages have gotten a bit complicated


with lots of different things there.


When it comes to things like site links


that we would show under a page, that's


something where we try to understand


where it makes sense to show additional information


to the user.


And oftentimes, that's based on things


like us recognizing that the users search for one thing,


but actually, they're not looking


for the most important page on those keywords,


but rather some general information around those pages.


So maybe they'll search for any name,


but instead of land clicking on your company home page,


they'll click on blue running shoes,


because that's a site link, because actually, they


were looking for running shoes from your company,


and they just remembered your company name as a query


to look for.


So that's something, kind of a reason we would


show things like site links.


And for site links, in particular, it


helps to also have a clear site structure,


kind of as I mentioned before.


Rather than linking everything with everything else,


if you have a clear structure on your site,


where we can tell that these are kind of sub pages


from this one primary page, then it's


a lot easier for us to automatically generate


site links for those pages, because we know that they kind


of belong together.


It will be interesting to get some insights in recent major


changes of the page algorithm.


Do you have anything interesting worth mentioning?


Is seed sites something that is implemented?


So I have no information about any major changes


of the page rank algorithm.


I think we've kind of worked with that for a really long


time.


So from that point of view, I don't really


know what specifically you're looking at there.


The thing to keep in mind also with page rank


is we do use page rank in search,


but we use lots and lots of other factors.


So sometimes it's something that people tend to focus on a lot,


just because we publish information about it once,


and links are this kind of thing that you


can implement and kind of manipulate


a little bit on the web.


And you think, well, I can influence this page rank


algorithm.


And probably you can influence the page rank algorithm,


but there are so many other things involved with search


that focusing on one specific tiny element of all


of the kind of ranking or general indexing algorithms


is not going to really help your site.


OK, we still have a few questions left.


And John, sorry.


Good morning.


It would be very good if I could ask a question, because I


have just a few minutes left.


It's about GDPR and all the privacy stuff.


Because of that, we are implementing two click


embeds on our website for social media and YouTube.


It's like when you come as a user to our website,


you see a placeholder, and there's a text like,


here would be recommended content from YouTube.


And then you have to click on a switch,


and then you give your permission


to see this kind of third party embed stuff.


So we are wondering if this affects our visibility


and rankings on Google, because Googlebot can't see this YouTube


video or social media embed, because Google


can't click buttons.


Yeah, so I think that kind of embed


has been around for a pretty long time.


And generally speaking, I think that's a fine approach


to take.


The one place where I could imagine this playing


a little bit of a role is in recognizing


which videos are embedded on a page when


it comes to video search and the video thumbnail.


But what you can do in cases like that


is use the video markup rather than just the video embed.


So our systems do recognize the common kinds of video embeds


and try to figure out what is this thumbnail automatically.


So if we recognize a YouTube embed or Vimeo embed


or whatever all of these common formats are,


we can figure that out automatically.


But you can also use the structured data


to tell us about this.


So in a case like this, instead of relying on the embed code,


I would use a structured data and tell us,


hey, I have the video here.


And this is a thumbnail image.


This is the file or the other information


that you have for the video.


And then we can still recognize the video is on this page.


We can use this page as a video landing page


and show it appropriately in the search results.


Our approach would be to just use the embed URL schema


so that Google sees the URL of the embed.


Is it enough, or should we use the video object schema


for this for YouTube embeds?


I would try to use a video object.


I'm not sure how we would use embed.


But the object, you're really giving us that information.


For the other kinds of embeds from social media content,


usually I'd find that less problematic


unless there is something in that embed


that you need to have for indexing.


Like if you have a series of embedding on a page,


and if we can't see those tweets at all,


then the text in those tweets, we can't really


associate with the page.


But the fact that this text comes from tweets


and here's a link to the tweets, that doesn't matter to us.


So it's not that we need to see for the other social embeds.


It's less of an issue.


I think even for Instagram, when it comes to images,


I believe their images are embedded in a way


that we can't actually index the images through the embed


anyway.


So for the non-video types of social media embeds,


I don't think that would be a problem.


OK, thank you.


Sure.


OK, maybe we'll just switch over to more questions from you all.


I also have a little bit more time


so we can stay a little bit longer if any of you want.


Feel free to jump in.


Can I ask a question about intrusive interstitials?


OK.


So first of all, thanks for doing these Hangouts.


I'm a big fan.


There's some clarification that I


need around the interstitials regarding serving it


to organic visitors, bots, and about full page.


So let me ask.


Let's say there's been tests done


and we see that the conversion rate for an e-commerce website


is the same for buying products.


So from a user perspective, a full page or a lower third


is the same from a conversion perspective


for buying products.


But signing up for the emails, it's


turning the sign up rate, the registration rate.


So from what I understand, Google devalues


a full page interstitial.


Is that correct?


On mobile, at least.


On mobile, yeah.


Yeah.


So is it OK to serve?


Let's say I can figure out how to improve the registration


rate.


Is it OK to serve a lower third to organic visitors,


but visitors coming in direct or other marketing channels


to serve the full page?


Is that OK?


That's generally OK.


The thing to watch out for there is


that Googlebot, when we crawl and index your page,


we don't send a refer.


So that's something where if users coming in from search


see kind of an improved view, that's fantastic.


You just need to make sure that that improved view is also


the one that Googlebot sees when it crawls and indexes


the pages.


Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to take that into account.


Correct.


So it's OK to essentially serve the lower third


to Googlebot and organic visitors.


Yeah.


OK.


So let's say now somebody is coming in from California,


same like Googlebot.


It's the full page, and we've got the privacy policy.


And it's a full page.


Is this OK?


Will I get devalued for that?


We try to recognize legal interest issues


and ignore those.


So things like privacy policy, the data protection


interest issues, those kind of things,


we try to recognize and skip over.


The important part is that you're


showing this on top of the HTML page,


not that you're showing it instead of the HTML page.


So things like redirecting to a separate interstitial URL


or showing the interstitial instead of the actual content,


that would mean that we wouldn't be able to actually crawl


and index the content.


But if it's a div on top of the HTML, that's perfectly fine.


OK.


And last question regarding devaluing.


So I understand, obviously, organic is,


that's what I live by, and that's my job.


So it's very important.


But let's just say from a registration standpoint


that full page, business-wise, for the email is more valuable.


How can I measure if I'm getting devalued?


Is there a way?


Can you suggest something?


So for example, my main competitors,


they do not have a full page except for one.


Until now, I don't know exactly how


to measure or prioritize this within the company.


I don't think you can.


I don't think that's possible.


So it's one of those things that we use in the ranking


algorithms where we will try to take that into account


and essentially rank the website a little bit lower.


If we recognize that it's doing things like the content


above the fold on mobile is not there or filled with ads,


filled with an interstitial, that kind of thing.


But it's not that there's a flag in Search Console


or you see a warning or anything like that.


Last question, and I don't know if you can tell me


the answer for this.


But let's say the ranking drops three or four positions


consistently.


So I get to that first, second position,


and then it drops three, four positions.


Is that somewhat of an indicator that this could be hurting me


or related to the devalue?


I would intuitively say no, just because my understanding is


that, especially something like the intrusive interstitial


change, that's something that is more probably a softer factor.


And it's something that wouldn't be applying


across the whole website.


In particular, if people are still


looking for your brand name, then I


wouldn't expect to see any ranking change for that.


Whereas if people are looking at you.


AUDIENCE I see it on specific pages


and related to eyeglasses to help.


Yeah.


So if people are searching for eyeglasses


and you're one of the hundreds of competitors out there,


then that's something where I could see a change being


visible in search.


But it shouldn't be across the whole site.


It should be really to those more generic queries


where there's more competition than slightly harder


for your site.


OK.


Thanks so much.


I really appreciate it.


All right, I think we're at time.


So I'll stop the recording here.


But if any of you want to hang around and chat,


ask more questions, you're welcome to do that as well.


Thank you all for dropping in.


Thanks for joining and asking all of the tough questions,


submitting some really good questions.


And hopefully, I'll see you all again next time.


All right.


Have a great weekend.