on a server, because it just adds so much more complexity,


English Google SEO office-hours from July 2, 2021

and you get absolutely no value out of that.


So that's kind of my primary take on technologies like these.


I think it's really cool to kind of come up


with this kind of a setup, but it's not something


that I would implement on a website on a day-to-day basis.


It's terrible to maintain.


You can't use any of the existing tools on it


because you can't really crawl the website.


I would absolutely discourage from that setup.


With regards to page rank, and essentially what is going here


is kind of like page rank sculpting,


where you're saying, I don't want any page rank going


to my privacy policy pages.


Our systems are pretty good at recognizing


kind of how these pages interact within a website.


And from my point of view, you don't


need to do things like blocking page rank from going


to your privacy policy pages.


These are things that are totally common on the web.


It's not something that we would be surprised


if we found a privacy policy page for your website.


But rather, it's kind of like a normal part of the web,


and we expect to find it on a website almost.


So that's not something I would consider hiding.


In general, page rank sculpting within a website


is something I would try to avoid as much as possible,


because it's possible to really significantly break the way


that your website is crawled, and you


don't notice that when you interact


with the page in a browser.


So that's something where I would try to avoid


that as much as possible.


We just have a few minutes left before I pause the recording.


So maybe I'll just go back to some live questions


in the meantime.


Looks like there's still a bunch of hands up.


I also have a bit more time afterwards if any of you


want to stick around a little bit longer.


Let's see.


Kaush, I think you're up first.


Hi, John.


Hi.


So my question is regarding international targeting.


Actually, I was working for a client, and what we saw is,


like, we have created for different pages


for different countries targeting those pages.


And of course, all the pages are in English language.


And we have created a subject, a kind of thing,


like USA or France or Australia.


And we have set one canonical URL in all the pages,


and the HTML and tags are also properly implemented.


But for different locations, we see sometimes for a country


like France, we see our UK page is getting ranked,


or Australia, something else is getting ranked.


So I just wanted to know, like, all our interlinking,


or we have created different sites, site mapping.


If the pages are for UK, we have created a sub or a nested site


map for them.


If the breadcrumbs are even properly organized,


interlinking also is great.


So what could be the possible reason


we're doing all those parameters,


is still like Google something else


for different locations?


Yeah, so I think there are two or three things to mention.


One is if we don't have the pages all crawled


and indexed already, then with the hreflang annotation,


we will kind of miss that connection,


and we might show the wrong version.


The other is similar to, I think,


one of the questions before with regards to canonicalization.


If these pages are significantly similar,


then we might pick one as a canonical,


and we might use that one to show in the search results.


So if, for example, these are both English language pages


and the content itself is essentially


the same across them, then that's


something where maybe we'll say, well, these are duplicates.


We'll just pick one and show those.


And I think last is also that with any setups that you have,


you need to assume that Google won't always get it right


with regards to internationalization,


and you need to provide some kind of a backup mechanism


on your site as well.


So usually, that's done with a sort of a banner on your pages


where if you can recognize that a user is


from the kind of wrong country, then you


can show with JavaScript a banner on top saying,


hey, it looks like you're from, I don't know, Indonesia,


and this page is for Australia.


Here's a link to the Indonesian version of our website.


So those are kind of the approaches I would take there.


On the one hand, if these pages are really


duplicates of each other, then sometimes you


just have to take that into account.


If we just haven't crawled and indexed those pages,


then sometimes it's a matter of just waiting until that happens.


If you have a lot of different country versions


and we're not crawling and indexing all of them,


then maybe it makes sense to reduce the number of country


versions just so that we can kind of focus more


on the versions that you do have.


And then finally, just assume that Google won't always


get it right.


And users will sometimes go to the wrong version of the page.


And you need to be able to catch that on your side as well.


OK, sure.


Thanks, John.


Thank you.


Sure.


Let's see, Chris.


Yes.


Hi, John.


Thank you so much for doing this.


So I'm working on a site that has public profiles


as a component for users.


However, this isn't a social network


where users can follow one another


or there's a directory-like page where all the public profiles


are listed.


It's that each user has a profile and a unique URL


to their profile.


And so I wanted to understand what


is the right way to expose to search crawlers


so that when a user types in their name on Google,


their public profile link from our site can also show up.


I was looking at the robot.txt files for sites


like LinkedIn and Twitter.


And they don't expose the individual users' profile


links.


And so it doesn't appear to be in the site map either.


So I was wondering if there's a way that we can also


do something similar so that search crawlers can find it


without us exposing it in the robot.txt files.


So you want it to be indexed or you don't want it to be indexed?


We do want it to be indexed.


OK.


Essentially, you don't need to do anything special


in a case like that.


So from our point of view, these would essentially just


be normal pages within your website.


And ideally, you would cross-link them


within the website normally.


So if there's, I don't know, a comment or some reference


to a specific user, you would link to their profile page.


And then we could crawl the website normally


and essentially find our way to those profile pages


and then just index them like that.


And if we don't have the commenting functionality


or any way for pages that are exposed


to be linking to the user's individual profile,


is there anything that we can upload into Search Console,


for example, like the links of public profiles


that can allow search to identify them?


I mean, you could put them in a sitemap file.


And we could pick them up like that.


However, if they're only linked in a sitemap file,


then it's a bit hit and miss if we would actually


go off and index them because we don't have any context


for those individual links.


It's basically like, here are a bunch of pages on my website.


And we only give them to you in the sitemap file.


Users wouldn't be able to find them otherwise.


Then our systems would be a little bit reluctant, probably


to actually go off and index all of those pages.


So it's really something where we'd


need to be able to find links to those profile pages


somewhere within the normal content of the site


and crawl our way through that, which could be,


I mean, I don't know how these would be embedded.


But on the profile pages themselves,


you could have things like related links,


where you say other users from this location,


and then kind of cross-link them like that.


But yeah, essentially, we'd need to find


normal links to those pages.


The other thing maybe to keep in mind


as well is that user profile pages are


super popular target for spam.


So that's something where if spammers realize


they can create a profile page on your website


and it's indexable, then they'll go off and do that in masses


with bots and kind of create millions of profile pages


with names like, I don't know, buy this pharmaceutical here.


And it's something where, especially


if you're starting off to provide profile pages,


you really need to keep in mind that it's a super popular


target for spammers.


OK.


Thank you.


Sure.


Let's see, Zach.


Hi.


So my question is kind of similar to the previous one,


but also kind of the opposite at the same time.


So our site started kind of ranking recently,


like on page two of a kind of fairly competitive keyword


or search query.


But yesterday or the day before, it kind of plummeted to page 6.


And I noticed it's because Google recrawled our site


and indexed like 400 or 500 user profiles,


but they were all private.


So it's my assumption that they're marking it as spam.


And I guess my first instinct was to 451 all the pages


or 401 all the pages unauthorized,


but the project was bootstrapped with Create React App.


And that's a single page application.


And there's not really a way to return any status


code other than 200 on a client-served application


like that.


So yeah, I guess my question is, where do I go from there?


Because I was thinking to have the profiles redirect


to a slash unauthorized and then add it to my robots.txt.


But yeah, just any thoughts would be super helpful.


Yeah.


So I think, first of all, if these pages just


got indexed now, then I would not expect our system to say,


oh, the quality of the website is bad.


We will not rank it that well anymore.


So my assumption is that if these pages just got indexed


now, it's probably unrelated to the change in ranking


that you're seeing.


One of the things that recently happened


is we launched another core update, I think, yesterday.


So if that kind of aligns with yesterday,


then maybe that's related to the core update.


And the core updates tend to be more on a broader quality


basis across a website.


So that would also take into account the indexable pages


for the website.


But if these pages were just indexed last week or so,


then that probably wouldn't be playing a role there,


but rather the content that was indexed


over the last couple of months.


That might be something that we take into account


for a quality update.


That's kind of the one thing.


The other thing with regards to single-page apps and pages


that you no longer want to have indexed, one thing you can do


is add a noindex to these pages.


You can do that with JavaScript as well, where


when you load the page and you kind of recognize,


oh, this is actually a page that shouldn't be indexable,


then you can use your JavaScript to edit the DOM


and add the noindex robots meta tag to that page.


That's one thing you can do.


You can also, of course, redirect


to an unauthorized page if you want to do that.


On the unauthorized page, I would also


use the noindex instead of the robots meta tag,


instead of the robots.txt disallow,


just because with the noindex, we really


know that we shouldn't be indexing this page.


And if it's an error page, then you


don't want to have that indexed.


Whereas if you block the page with robots.txt,


then we wouldn't know what's on that page.


And then we would go off and probably index the URL


without knowing its content.


And we might end up showing that in the search results.


So especially for a single page app,


I would use robots meta tag noindex, not the robots.txt.


So those are, I think, the two main things


I'd mention in that regard.


And I think if you suspect this is based on the core update


from a timing point of view, I would go and look for the blog


post that we did, I think, last year about core updates.


And there are a bunch of questions there,


things that you can ask yourself about the website's quality


overall.


And I would try to go through that, ideally,


with someone who kind of knows your website


but is not directly involved, so that you


can get some really objective answers and reactions


based on some of the questions that are there.


SPEAKER 2 OK, that's perfect.


And I guess this is kind of a smaller question.


But if I want to move my URL to a more concise,


like a smaller and a higher quality TLD,


but the new URL doesn't have any keywords that I'm targeting


or any backlinks to the site, if I


were to migrate it in Search Console,


would the rank be maintained?


Or is it still kind of starting from scratch


because I'm losing a lot of those things I had before,


I guess?


SPEAKER 1 Usually, that would be maintained.


So the keywords in the URL are really helpful for us


when we first recognize a website,


when we don't know anything about the website.


But as soon as we know something about the website,


we've kind of like indexed some of your content,


then we can focus on your actual content and not the URLs


themselves.


So that's something where oftentimes, people


will focus too much on having keywords in a domain name


and, in the end, not realize, well, actually,


the content is the important part.


It's not the keywords in a domain name.


If you were to do that for a single-page app,


I don't know if that's combined.


The tricky part is in Search Console,


we check to see if there are 301 redirects in place.


So if you wanted to migrate to a different domain


with a single-page app, you would


need to make sure that your server generates


those 301 redirects on a per-page basis


and not do that with JavaScript.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


Yeah, that's perfect.


Great.


Thank you so much.


Cool.


All right.


Let me take a break here with the recording.


And I'll be around if there are more questions.


And it looks like there are more hands up.


So we can go through some of that as well.


If you're watching this on YouTube, one last thing,


almost forgot to mention it, is we have a survey running


on the YouTube channel.


There is a link.


I'll put the link in the description.


There's also a link, I think, in the thread for this video.


And I would really appreciate it if you


could take a short time to go through that survey


and leave us some answers there to help us figure out


what we could do to make the channel and the videos


that we're producing a little bit better and a little bit


more useful for you as well.


All right.


And with that, let me take a break with the recording.


What do rendering, signal collection, and SEOs & devs have to do with each other?

Welcome, everyone, to the next episode of Search Off the Record podcast.


Our plan is to talk a bit about what's happening at Google Search, how things work behind the


scenes and, who knows, maybe have some fun along the way.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate on the Search Relations team here at Google in Switzerland.


And I'm joined here today by Martin and Gary, who are also on the Search Relations team.


How are you two doing?


Can't complain.


Could be worse.


I'm going to die.


We all are eventually.


But maybe not during this episode, please.


Or not anytime soon.


I'll do my best.


You're setting the bar quite low.


All right, Gary, before it's too late, can you take us off?


Fine.


Just like I'm the only one that has a topic anyway, all the time.


How dare you?


In the previous episode, we talked about indexing.


And I thought that was pretty cool.


And other people also thought it's pretty cool.


So I am going to continue with that topic.


But first, one thing that I forgot, perhaps on purpose, to talk about was rendering.


And in my brain, rendering works in a very interesting way.


Basically, we have John's workstation that's basically rendering all the documents that


we are indexing.


So you have John Mueller standing in front of his computer and visiting random websites.


And then his Chrome browser is outputting the dome of those web pages that he visited.


And then that's sent to indexing.


That's accurate.


I got that right, right, Martin?


Yeah.


And you forgot a detail.


There's this entire pipeline where someone gets the request and then puts a little piece


of paper onto a little slide that then goes to John Mueller.


And then he basically has these pieces of paper lining up over his computer.


And there's this entire music thing that goes on like the duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh


while all this is happening.


And then some steam comes out somewhere.


Oh, Gary.


I feel like you're being sarcastic.


No, me?


Sarcastic?


Never.


Of course.


Is this why I always get these weird advertisements in my browser?


Yes, exactly.


That's why.


Because you click on all the things.


All right, since you are being a jerk to me again, do you want to explain how rendering


works?


Fine.


Just because you are so nice and you are the chief of happiness at Google Search, I'll


happily explain to you how this works.


And actually, this is interesting because I know that last time you went into a little


more details into how the crawling part of things works as well.


And there's a bunch of moving parts involved here.


But eventually, once the crawling is done, we have the initial HTML.


The initial HTML is then passed on.


It's part of the Caffeine system, really, that then uses a microservice that is called


the Web Rendering Service.


And what that thing does is it's basically orchestrating or herding, if you want to,


a bunch of Chrome instances across our cloud.


These Chrome instances get the HTML that comes from crawling and then basically do what your


browser does if you visit a website.


It uses the HTML to then construct the DOM tree.


It downloads the images.


It downloads the JavaScript, the CSS, all these resources, and then executes the JavaScript


just as your browser would do.


And to do that, we use an evergreen Chrome.


So whatever we are updating to the latest stable version of Chrome, that is usually


like a few weeks after a new stable version of Chrome comes out.


Then we are also updating the Web Rendering Service instances that we use for rendering.


And then we have a bunch of systems that make sure that these browsers, if they crash, they


retry.


If your rendering fails for some reason, we can also retry.


Something else goes wrong, we have error handling in place.


We make sure that we get your website as it completes rendering, which sounds simple but


actually isn't because when is a website done rendering?


When the HTML is there, not really because the JavaScript can influence the content as


well.


But when is the JavaScript done?


That's also a tricky one to answer.


But we are doing our best to actually give you enough time and enough resources to complete


rendering.


And then we have the HTML after JavaScript has run.


Then that is passed on to other parts of Caffeine and used for indexing.


Does that make sense?


Is that something that happens for pretty much every page?


Yeah.


And that's a lot more than I can load my browser myself.


That is true.


If you ever try to run Chrome with lots of tabs, you know that this is not an easy feat.


But we are pulling this off with lots of magic and tears.


Back in the days when we could still visit each other and we've seen what people are


doing, and we had those desks that were all organized in an office, I remember that John's


browser always looked crazy because he always had like 10 million tabs open all the time.


And his workstation was always trying to take off and become the new Hubble telescope.


So yeah, I'm still uncertain if what you said, Martin, is true or it's John actually doing


the rendering.


Although now that he's working from home, perhaps that would be much harder.


So maybe you are right.


I'm helping him.


The laptop's also taking off because I'm also rendering some of the pages.


And also, to be fair, in John's defense, you also sometimes have like a bazillion tabs


open.


And there's even a photo that you took on Twitter that shows that you have lots of tabs


So come on.


Yeah.


I mean, this is, I don't know, like I don't want to distract from the awesome work that


the rendering people are doing.


Because if you have tried to open a lot of web pages fairly quickly, then you really


see there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make all these pages load and to be


able to look at their content.


I don't know.


I find that really fascinating.


On the one hand, like the crawling and the indexing side, those numbers are really impressive.


But it feels like something that I can't really put into perspective.


But thinking about, I don't know, opening millions of pages in Chrome, I can kind of


feel that pain.


And it is not easy, because some web pages are built so, how do I put this, interestingly,


that they are a true challenge to open in a browser.


And we somehow still pull it off.


And the team has worked not just for our benefit, but if you are using the Chrome DevTools protocol


with things like Puppeteer, then that is partially work that the web rendering service team has


done in order to be able to use mainline or mainstream Chrome to actually do this.


They also worked on reducing the memory footprint and the CPU footprint so that we can run this


at scale in the cloud.


And anyone who has ever tried to automate rendering websites using a browser at scale


knows that this is not a trivial task to accomplish.


So hat tip to them.


Yeah, that's pretty cool.


Can we install browser extensions on the headless Chromes?


I mean, if you run your own headless Chrome on your own server, then you can do that,


yeah, but not on the web rendering service.


No, the rendering.


No.


Oh, that's a pity.


Why?


Do you want to bring back Flash?


No, I wanted to inject cats in pages that I don't like.


Also, fun fact, you can't mine Bitcoins on our infrastructure.


At least I know that people tried and we are aware of this.


So no.


Really?


Yeah, that was a problem.


That was one of the challenges that people are like, ooh, let's add this malicious JavaScript


onto people's websites.


I mean, it's a fantastic money grab scheme, right?


If you can infect lots of websites and inject malware, then why don't you inject a JavaScript-based


WebGL Bitcoin miner?


Interesting.


So what happens next after rendering, Gary?


Are you trying to steer the discussion away from money-making schemes?


Yes, yes, yes.


OK.


So there was rendering.


There was conversion that we talked about and also collapsing, basically getting rid


of soft error pages.


Next, we start extracting more data from the pages.


And one of the things that we care about quite deeply is structured data.


And there's not that much to say there.


Basically, what you see in the rich result testing tool is what we see.


But we do extract all kinds of structured data.


It's not just what the rich result testing tool validates, but pretty much any structured


data that you put on the page.


Now, this doesn't mean that you have to put every single kind of structured data on your


page.


But if you put something relevant, that will be extracted.


Why?


For entities, basically, using structured data, we can infer some information about


the entities that might appear on pages.


And that's why we find that useful.


And in this stage, I think that's pretty much it.


Basically, this service just extracts the structured data and passes it on to the services


that might want to make use of it.


So for example, the search result page might need, I don't know, recipe markup for presenting


pages in the recipe carousel.


Let's say.


And yeah, in this stage, there's nothing that much more that happens.


But the next one, actually, the next step is actually quite interesting because that's


signal extraction.


And I said the bad word, signals, and now everyone on Twitter will go nuts about it.


And looks like John is also going nuts about it.


But I would not overthink this just yet because there are lots of signals that are kind of


not so exciting, I would say.


In this stage of indexing, many of the signals are just determining which version of the


content is, for example, canonical.


Like is it scraper.com or mysite.com that is the original publisher of piece of content?


And for that, we, for example, use different kinds of hashing algorithms.


We hash the content or the centerpiece of the page.


Basically, the centerpiece is where the meaty part of the content is.


We talked about this in a previous episode.


And we hash that part of the content, and then we measure the differences between two


versions of the potentially same content using these hashes.


Why do we hash?


It's because it's easier to compare shorter string than, for example, 2,000 words.


Essentially, that's it.


But we do have exciting signals here as well.


For example, I will say the bad word, page rank.


What?


I know.


So you're adding the ranking of the page as a signal?


Not that page rank.


So page rank is one of our main algorithms.


And it's hard to believe it, but after 20 years, we are still using it.


It was used in the original background version of Google, basically the alpha version, I


guess, or beta version of Google in 1996, seven.


Are we still using the actual page rank or have we replaced it with something similar?


Because I thought we are not using the original one anymore.


The original one is still used.


But obviously, it's been improved since then.


And it's more robust, cheaper to run, et cetera.


Basically, it's been improved, but it is still calculated.


But it's not what was displayed.


Basically, if I know what my page rank was according to the Google toolbar back in the


day for my page, that's not what we're using today.


That's never what we've been using.


That's a dumbed-down version of the page rank algorithm.


Ah, OK.


So one thing, if you read the white paper about page rank, one thing will be very obvious


is that it's not a number from 0 to 10 or from nothing to 10.


It's actually an integer.


So it goes from 0 to 65,000-something.


And then on that scale, you land somewhere with your page rank.


And then that number is used as a signal somewhere down the line, somewhere downstream.


But it does take a lot of resources to compute this thing.


I have a friend who's running their own version of PageRanker.


Basically, he built a PageRanker based on the white paper that we published.


And he's using it for weird things like predictions, like NFL predictions or NBA predictions and


stuff like that.


And it's surprisingly accurate.


But it's very resource-heavy because you always have to, it can be used for any link graph


or graph-based system, right, or graph-based structure.


You don't necessarily need the web pages to rank.


But it is very resource-heavy because you always have to take into account the whole


graph always.


And that takes up lots of resources.


You need to store that in memory.


Then you traverse every single node.


So it can get really hairy, especially if the graph is big.


But that's one of the signals that we calculate here based on the links pointing to the page


itself and also the quality of those links.


More links that are low quality will essentially increase your page rank less than a few high-quality


links.


So don't go buying links from link farms.


So you're saying we should buy links from high-quality link farms?


OK.


Don't buy links.


Good boy.


I guess.


But this is awkward.


So let's just talk more about signals.


What other signals do you think we have?


Page speed?


No.


Train crossing signs.


Wait, what?


Page speed is not calculated here.


OK, it's not calculated.


So signals that we are calculating here.


Is that what you're saying?


Yeah, in indexing.


Keyword density.


Uh, what?


Why would you even say that?


To make it awkward, that's what we're here for.


Haven't you realized that yet?


I thought that you are my sunshine and happiness, but apparently not.


OK, content quality of some sort.


What main topic is maybe?


We could figure that one out semantically.


Yeah, maybe.


That's perhaps not that bad of an idea.


OK, I will help.


Safe search.


Oh.


Like, you want to know at this stage whether a page contains porn or not.


Because we don't necessarily want to surprise our users in our search results.


So when they search for something like buttercup, for example, then you don't want to serve


porn.


You want to serve what they actually searched for, the literal term.


Then another signal that we calculate here is where the page is local to, which country,


or which metro area in certain countries.


Which language as well?


Yeah, language as well.


Thank you for interrupting me.


Sorry.


But these are all important signals for serving highly relevant results for people.


Because if I'm in Switzerland and I search for, I don't know, queso, then I don't want


German results.


Well, I rarely want German results.


But why would you search for cheese in Switzerland and not want Swiss cheeses?


What?


Oh, wait, German cheese.


Yeah, German cheese.


No German cheese.


Just Swiss cheese, right?


Yes, that's correct.


And then, because we know that those pages are from Switzerland, don't make me laugh


because then I can't talk.


Because if we know that those pages are Swiss, basically, relevant to Switzerland, then we


can give them tiny boost in ranking based on the signal that we extracted during indexing.


As you said, language is also important for similar reason.


And yeah, I think those are the signals that I'm willing to talk about here.


So based on these things so far, essentially, you are a developer and you build a good web


page, like good HTML, good JavaScript, good whatever, then you should be able to do well


in search.


Yeah, if only.


So just one quick thing.


Are these signals a part of those hundreds of signals that we use?


That's a good point.


Some of them will end up being ranking signals.


Some of them will not.


Some of them will.


So for example, SafeSearch will definitely become one of those ranking signals.


Country language, both of them will become.


But most of the hashes that we use for canonicalization, for example, which we reserve for future episode,


those don't end up as ranking signals.


Yeah.


OK, cool.


If only people would just write like good, stable HTML and...


Yeah, everything would be better.


And without JavaScript.


Whoa!


JavaScript is OK.


No, no, no.


We talked about rendering.


Like we heard JavaScript is fine.


I just have to refresh the page.


But to be fair, there are developers who are basically like using JavaScript as the go-to


tool for everything.


And then they can paint themselves into corners.


And then they're like, oh, what's happening?


And lots of them discount SEO as something that they should be aware of or they should


be like careful about.


And that's my daily challenge basically to like bridge the gap between these two communities.


And coming from a developer angle, I'll probably focus a little more on the developer side


of things.


But it is a two-way challenge in the sense that sometimes a few people in the SEO circles


make very broad blanket statements.


That does not exclude us, to be fair.


I know that when I am on the go and tweeting, then I tend to say like, oh, no worries.


JavaScript will be fine.


Which is a blanket statement that I'd rather not make.


But every now and then, I'm human.


I make mistakes.


And our general perspective on search is that it's our job to make the world's information


accessible and useful.


So it's our job in search to be able to index and showcase good content websites on the


web to people searching for the thing that the websites are about.


And so we'd rather have you worry about making good websites and then us worrying about the


technical bits and pieces.


But I think developers do their part to this, as well as SEOs working with developers are


taking part in this entire equation.


And if you say things like, JavaScript is bad or JavaScript is great, then that's very


simplistic views of the issue or of the challenges that we are facing.


And I'm trying to be as specific about this as possible.


But even I fail every now and then by making these blanket statements.


But I find it tricky to talk about these things.


Because on one hand, if I get too technical with SEOs, they sometimes oversimplify it.


And then there's like this game of telephone going on where I say something.


And then an SEO hears part of that and talks to the developers who hear only part of that.


And then some weird miscommunication happens that then is really hard to backtrack out


of.


But on the other hand, I wish that developers wouldn't discount things such as SEO.


But not only SEO, also user experience, usability, accessibility, design as like, yeah, whatever.


This is like simple stuff.


Because it really isn't.


There are a bunch of things that you need to keep in mind and that are not necessarily


easy to get right.


I don't know if you observe this with developers as well, especially when you are at a conference


and you're like, hi, I'm talking about SEO.


Like everyone's like, oh, I'll go to another session, I guess.


Yeah.


But what kind of things do you find developers skipping over when it comes to SEO?


Oh, that's so many different things.


So one thing is using JavaScript where you don't have to.


If you are building a very simple, mostly static website, let's say like a blog that


doesn't have that much interactivity, maybe comments, OK, fair.


Or maybe like an online shop or something like that.


They oftentimes go for the shiniest, newest technology, which usually is somewhat experimental.


For instance, most of the client side JavaScript frameworks of the early days were technically


quite experimental ways of making the browser do stuff that it couldn't do at the time when


they should have just opted for something existing like a server side technology instead


of doing everything in the client side because the server is a more controlled environment.


We are now seeing the pendulum swing back.


So all the bigger frameworks have server side solutions or investigating how they can do


things on the server side, which I think is a good thing.


Thinking about the architecture of their websites, thinking about how the content should be presented,


how you deal with internationalization, if that's a concern for you.


These things seem to be like afterthoughts oftentimes.


OK.


So it sounds like it's more about adding complexity where there doesn't need to be complexity


and making things more brittle through that complexity.


It's not that it won't work at all.


Because it sometimes feels like on the one hand, we're telling people, oh, JavaScript


will just work fine for SEO.


And on the other hand, we're saying, well, you should avoid using JavaScript unless you


really need to.


And I can imagine developers are kind of like, just tell me what to do.


Yeah, that's what I mean.


And I think there are scenarios where it absolutely makes sense to have JavaScript in the client


side.


If you are building a 3D design app or a product customizer or a catalog system with really


fancy interactions or something like that, then I understand that.


If you build a web application to design things in the browser, I understand that you are


using JavaScript in the client side.


But it's not a go-to tool.


If you are making a marketing website with a landing page and five different pages that


show different products, then why are you using JavaScript in the client side for that?


If you are a JavaScript developer, feel free to use the technologies that make sense to


you.


But try to make it as robust as possible.


And yes, if you build a complicated and amazing and fantastic web application that needs all


the interactivity, we are here to help you.


And it will work in search unless you're doing something very fundamentally wrong.


But that doesn't mean that you should always use JavaScript in the client side.


I think that's a very important distinction there.


And the other thing is also sometimes just very basic SEO concerns.


If you have a link rel canonical on every page pointing to the home page, then why are


you doing that?


What was the thinking here?


How do you deal with routing?


Do you use fragments for routing?


That's not a great idea for a variety of reasons.


If you are doing different ways of having different URLs landing in the same thing that


then customizes the content, you should look at that.


Don't just write a robots.txt because you think it's a trivial thing to do and then


accidentally block all your APIs from being crawled and then the content doesn't show


up.


That's not a great thing either.


Be careful with no index tags, all these kind of things that developers are just like, yeah,


I know how canonicalization works.


And then they don't.


OK, so basically you're saying developers should take SEOs more seriously.


Yeah.


OK.


But also SEOs should be aware of their responsibility to not cry wolf whenever there's something


that they are not fully sure about.


Make it a conversation.


Have these conversations.


Let your developers explain why they chose JavaScript.


Hold them accountable for what they are doing and also guide them in when they are making


decisions.


And after they made all the decisions and asked them to redo everything from scratch,


then it's too late.


I would just blame them.


No.


That's a fantastic idea.


Mm, the blame game.


Lovely.


No, it's like you have to work together.


Yes.


I think there is always room for both sides, but it does sometimes come across to when


I talk with developers that they're like, oh, SEO is this voodoo magic thing that you


don't really need, according to Google.


But there are just so many things involved with SEO that, from my point of view, are


critical to making a website accessible online, on the web, and especially in search.


So it's certainly not something that you can just ignore.


And I think your comparison to accessibility, usability, design, that's very apt there.


It's not that it's like, oh, I will just make everything light gray on dark gray, and then


I will be a designer.


That's not really how it works.


Yeah.


But I found a lot of these things also came up in the recent unconference that you organized,


Martin.


I thought that was really cool.


Oh, thank you.


How is your impression of the event as a facilitator?


Because you facilitated the session.


Yeah, I thought it was really cool.


So these were small groups, I think around 20 people.


I took part in the one for mobile first indexing and the one for talking about SEO, of course.


And in both of these sessions, there was a really nice mix of people.


So there were people who were fairly fresh who were like, oh, I just started with SEO


this year.


And it's like, I have no idea what you all are complaining about, or kind of like all


these inside jokes.


I don't get them.


So that was really cool.


From my point of view, I find it a really nice sign that there are more and more kind


of new people joining the SEO side as well, because that kind of confirms that maybe SEO


is not a fad that is just going away.


Maybe that will stick around, which is, I think, good for the community in general and


the whole ecosystem.


There are also people there who are working with really large sites.


There are people there who mostly work with small businesses.


And kind of getting that mix of feedback was really interesting.


Especially the ones working with small businesses are like, we don't have to get everything


perfect as long as we're a little bit better than our competitors.


That's good enough.


And it's like, that's a perfect approach.


You kind of have to focus your work on things that matter.


And you don't have to be absolutely perfect when it comes to SEO.


We also tried to balance our attendees a little bit across the world.


So I hope that that also came through.


Yeah.


Now, the different people from different locations was really cool.


Time zones, of course, is tricky.


I think we had one or two people from India in our sessions.


And for them, it must have been in the middle of the night somewhere.


But otherwise, that was really nice.


Also a really nice mix of genders.


It was fairly balanced.


That was really useful.


And I think it's something that sometimes goes missing with a lot of the online events


where you have the same people speaking over and over again.


You just hear their opinions.


It's like, I worked for this really large company and worked with these giant clients.


And that's one part of SEO.


But there are so many people who are working on kind of normal websites, normal businesses.


And I found that really cool.


So do you think we should be doing more of these?


Definitely.


So this was our pilot event.


And we have been receiving very overwhelmingly positive feedback.


And I know that I broke a lot of hearts with sending lots of people emails that they didn't


make it, they didn't get in.


And I know that that is not optimal.


But as you say, these discussions unfolded in smaller groups.


And I doubt that they would have unfolded in larger groups.


There are only so many people facilitating sessions.


We got the conclusions from every facilitator.


That was great.


So we'll be publishing a blog post about this.


Or by the time this episode comes out, maybe there is already a blog post.


So check out the Google Webmasters blog.


And yeah, we think with all the positive feedback and also with the time zone challenge, we


will definitely run more localized events across different time zones so that people


can jump into the one that makes sense for their time zone.


And by having more of these and maybe even doing them more regularly, like once a quarter


or at least like twice a year or something, there will be more chances of getting a spot,


even though we will have to continue to probably limit the amount of people.


Because whenever we are putting out an event, whatever kind of event it is, the lists for


participants fill up very, very quickly.


Yeah.


I think it's really cool.


I mean, it's also kind of this big gap that we have because we don't have physical events


at the moment.


It would be really nice to do some kind of real physical event type thing.


Maybe we can start doing those early next year.


Probably not, I guess.


We'll see.


We'll have to see.


You're very optimistic there.


Yes, everything will get better.


After Christmas, it's just like one uphill stretch.


Oh, uphill stretch in infections or?


No, no, no.


It'll just get better.


Everything will be better.


OK.


I'm sure.


That's what you asked for from Santa or?


Yeah, exactly.


How does that work?


We should just all send a note to North Pole saying, make everything awesome again and


let us have real conferences.


Everything is awesome.


We'll also probably do another virtual event where we don't have to limit the amount of


participants later this year.


So at least we have that.


But yeah, the physical events would be amazing.


That would be great.


I miss it.


I mean, as many people as possible can also listen to our podcast.


So it's not like we're limiting things there.


Or they can watch all of our videos.


It's like you can binge watch the Webmaster channel on YouTube if you really miss hearing


us, seeing us.


So that's an option.


There's also no limits on the seats for the office hours.


That's also a thing that we're doing if you want to join these.


Cool.


All right.


Fun times.


Sounds like lots of stuff is lined up.


OK.


So maybe we can take a break here.


Thank you for all of the cool insights from rendering and indexing and talking with developers.


I thought that was pretty cool.


To everyone listening in, thank you for listening to the podcast.


I hope you found it insightful and kind of fun.


I certainly found it that.


And feel free to like and subscribe and follow us for more information as things move along.


Send us follow links.


Follow links.


Yeah.


No follow links.


I only want no follow links.


No, not subscribe.


Subscribe links.


Subscribe?


What?


What are you doing?


It's not a thing.


OK.


Great.


Maybe we should make it a thing.


See you all later.


Bye.


Bye bye.


Inclusive language in Search

Welcome, everyone, to the next episode of the Search Off


Inclusive language in Search

the Record podcast.


Inclusive language in Search

Our plan is to talk a bit about what's


Inclusive language in Search

happening at Google Search, how things work behind the scenes,


Inclusive language in Search

and maybe have some fun along the way.


Inclusive language in Search

My name is John Mueller.


Inclusive language in Search

I'm a search advocate on the Search Relations team


Inclusive language in Search

here at Google in Switzerland.


Inclusive language in Search

I'm joined by Martin, who's also on the Search Relations team.


Inclusive language in Search

Our special guests today are Zineb and Bruno, also


Inclusive language in Search

from Google.


Inclusive language in Search

Today, we'll be talking about inclusive language.


Inclusive language in Search

It's a topic that has become more and more top


Inclusive language in Search

of mind in the recent years, so I'm excited to find out more.


Inclusive language in Search

Thanks for joining us.


Inclusive language in Search

It's great having you guys here today.


Inclusive language in Search

ZINEB BAHAJIYAN, SANDVARSHINH, AND BRUNO, GOOGLE,


Inclusive language in Search

GOOGLE, AND BRUNO, GOOGLE, GOOGLE, AND BRUNO, GOOGLE,


Inclusive language in Search

GOOGLE, GOOGLE, GOOGLE, GOOGLE, GOOGLE, GOOGLE,


Inclusive language in Search


Inclusive language in Search

GOOGLE, GOOGLE, GOOGLE, GOOGLE, GOOGLE,


Inclusive language in Search

GOOGLE, dance, track, 1850s, dancer, dancek Away,


Inclusive language in Search

choreographycamera, dress, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance,


Inclusive language in Search

dressdance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, dance,


Inclusive language in Search

dance, dance, dance, dance, dance.


Inclusive language in Search

It's my pleasure and pleasure to welcome


Inclusive language in Search

you on this time.


Inclusive language in Search

I really appreciate your time.


Inclusive language in Search

And now we can jump right into it.


Inclusive language in Search

Hey, I'm Bruno, and I'm a linguist


Inclusive language in Search

working on Google Search, especially


Inclusive language in Search

on query understanding.


Inclusive language in Search

Yes, and Bruno and I both collaborated in a working group


Inclusive language in Search

around inclusive language with a specific focus on French


Inclusive language in Search

for now.


Inclusive language in Search

Ooh, that sounds interesting.


Inclusive language in Search

Inclusive language, can you explain a little bit


Inclusive language in Search

what that means?


Inclusive language in Search

Yes, sure.


Inclusive language in Search

So by inclusive language, we mean a language


Inclusive language in Search

that is actually free from words or phrases that are


Inclusive language in Search

stereotyped or discriminatory.


Inclusive language in Search

So for a very long time and in many languages,


Inclusive language in Search

like French, for instance, the masculine form


Inclusive language in Search

was the default expression in any context.


Inclusive language in Search

So for example, people would say during the executive meeting,


Inclusive language in Search

chairmen are leading the discussion,


Inclusive language in Search

but this could be a chairwoman, but the masculine


Inclusive language in Search

would actually be used.


Inclusive language in Search

So recently, we've seen a very strong movement


Inclusive language in Search

where people are being more inclusive when they speak


Inclusive language in Search

and when they write, and they try


Inclusive language in Search

to really honor and embrace all of the different identities


Inclusive language in Search

out there.


Inclusive language in Search

So for example, in English, we would either


Inclusive language in Search

make sure to mention the gender when we speak, for instance,


Inclusive language in Search

how to become a policeman or a policewoman,


Inclusive language in Search

or we would use a gender neutral form,


Inclusive language in Search

like how to become a police officer.


Inclusive language in Search

To give you a non-gender related example,


Inclusive language in Search

because this is not only about gender,


Inclusive language in Search

we also try to be mindful of some expressions that


Inclusive language in Search

are not inclusive of culture, race, ethnicity,


Inclusive language in Search

or the actual state of the world.


Inclusive language in Search

For instance, in tech, for a very long time,


Inclusive language in Search

we used expressions like blacklist or whitelist,


Inclusive language in Search

and sometimes we still do because those are


Inclusive language in Search

habits that are hard to change.


Inclusive language in Search

But we should prefer using more inclusive terms,


Inclusive language in Search

like a block list or an allow list.


Inclusive language in Search

And at Google, we see more and more engineers


Inclusive language in Search

doing that, actually.


Inclusive language in Search

Another example, you would often hear people say in the minority


Inclusive language in Search

group when referring, for instance, to a smaller


Inclusive language in Search

group than the group that is visually bigger in the room


Inclusive language in Search

or in the country.


Inclusive language in Search

But we should prefer using something


Inclusive language in Search

like the minoritized group or even


Inclusive language in Search

the underrepresented group.


Inclusive language in Search

So those are only a few examples.


Inclusive language in Search

It sounds like we really have to shift our focus a little bit.


Inclusive language in Search

But why is this important for Google Search?


Inclusive language in Search

Yeah, actually, one of the three values of Google


Inclusive language in Search

is to respect the user.


Inclusive language in Search

So we really want to make sure that all our users are


Inclusive language in Search

represented, regardless of their gender,


Inclusive language in Search

their sexual orientation, or even their beliefs.


Inclusive language in Search

And gender bias has always been a very, very strong concern


Inclusive language in Search

for us.


Inclusive language in Search

If you remember a long time ago, image search


Inclusive language in Search

was showing only image of women where you were looking


Inclusive language in Search

for a nurse, for example.


Inclusive language in Search

And if you were looking for doctors,


Inclusive language in Search

you would have only image of male doctors.


Inclusive language in Search

So we've been actively working on changing this bias


Inclusive language in Search

and being more inclusive in how we represent the two genders.


Inclusive language in Search

But there are still a lot to do, especially


Inclusive language in Search

in terms of inclusive writing.


Inclusive language in Search

So what is inclusive writing, then?


Inclusive language in Search

So inclusive writing is all kind of practices or style


Inclusive language in Search

that we are using to make sure that the readers feel really


Inclusive language in Search

including when reading, regardless


Inclusive language in Search

of their gender, their ethnicities,


Inclusive language in Search

or their socioeconomic status.


Inclusive language in Search

In many languages other than English,


Inclusive language in Search

it's rather hard to represent a gender-neutral term.


Inclusive language in Search

So as Zenith mentioned, police officer or fire person


Inclusive language in Search

are gender-neutral term that don't refer particularly


Inclusive language in Search

to a man or a woman.


Inclusive language in Search

But in other languages, when there


Inclusive language in Search

is no such a gender-neutral term,


Inclusive language in Search

the trend now is to always refer to both term.


Inclusive language in Search

So using, for example, fireman and firewoman


Inclusive language in Search

when you refer to the fire person,


Inclusive language in Search

or to use a contracted form with a specific character.


Inclusive language in Search

Specific character.


Inclusive language in Search

Could you give us an example or multiple examples


Inclusive language in Search

of that in different languages, then?


Inclusive language in Search

Yes, sure.


Inclusive language in Search

I can give you some examples in English to start with.


Inclusive language in Search

So as Bruno mentioned, we would say fireman or firewoman


Inclusive language in Search

or a fire person.


Inclusive language in Search

But then you have also more generic examples


Inclusive language in Search

like the use of the word mankind, for instance.


Inclusive language in Search

We use it all the time.


Inclusive language in Search

But we should prefer using humanity


Inclusive language in Search

so that you don't have man in that word.


Inclusive language in Search

Another example that many people probably use,


Inclusive language in Search

that I use as well, but again, it's


Inclusive language in Search

a mental training all the time.


Inclusive language in Search

In the office, we often tend to greet our teammates by,


Inclusive language in Search

hey, guys.


Inclusive language in Search

How are you guys?


Inclusive language in Search

Just John, at the beginning of this podcast, said, hey, guys.


Inclusive language in Search

But we should prefer using hey, folks, or you all,


Inclusive language in Search

which is more neutral.


Inclusive language in Search

Another example as well is, for instance, the term Latino


Inclusive language in Search

refers to men from Latin America.


Inclusive language in Search

But we used to use it to refer to all of the Latino community.


Inclusive language in Search

But Latina actually refers to women, right?


Inclusive language in Search

So the current trend today to include both genders


Inclusive language in Search

is to use Latin X, Latin X with the letter X at the end.


Inclusive language in Search

Yeah, so those are just a few examples in English.


Inclusive language in Search

But maybe Bruno, you would like to add some more


Inclusive language in Search

examples in other languages.


Inclusive language in Search

Yeah, absolutely.


Inclusive language in Search

In French and in German, there is more and more


Inclusive language in Search

this tendency to abbreviate the feminine and the masculine form


Inclusive language in Search

together.


Inclusive language in Search

So for example, instead of saying etudiant, so student,


Inclusive language in Search

in the masculine form, and then to add and etudiant,


Inclusive language in Search

so the feminine form, we would just contract everything


Inclusive language in Search

together with a special character.


Inclusive language in Search

So it would be etudiant followed by a special character,


Inclusive language in Search

like a dash or a slash, and then the final ending


Inclusive language in Search

E, which is the feminine form.


Inclusive language in Search

And more recently, we witnessed an increasing use,


Inclusive language in Search

especially in French, of a very special character,


Inclusive language in Search

the middle dot, which is called in French, the pois-midiant.


Inclusive language in Search

You can now find it on Google Gboard on mobile phone


Inclusive language in Search

by long pressing the dot key.


Inclusive language in Search

I see something similar in German as well,


Inclusive language in Search

where they also have the slash.


Inclusive language in Search

And I've seen some use a star as well for the ending.


Inclusive language in Search

In practice, is this something that you see is widely accepted?


Inclusive language in Search

For the pois-midiant, well, it's actually a very hot topic


Inclusive language in Search

right now, especially in France.


Inclusive language in Search

But we do witness an increasing use of the pois-midiant.


Inclusive language in Search

I do see it more and more on social media,


Inclusive language in Search

like from friends or acquaintances who are using it.


Inclusive language in Search

I don't know if I'm paying more attention to it


Inclusive language in Search

or if people are actually using it more.


Inclusive language in Search

But in any case, I think that people have different ways


Inclusive language in Search

of writing inclusively.


Inclusive language in Search

And I'm going to say that it's not up to us, to Google,


Inclusive language in Search

to basically decide and say whether people should use


Inclusive language in Search

the middle dot, the normal dot, slash, the star, or the hyphen.


Inclusive language in Search

But I think it's our responsibility


Inclusive language in Search

to make sure that our user, our Google users,


Inclusive language in Search

can use any form that feels natural to them


Inclusive language in Search

and that we will still parse and understand


Inclusive language in Search

their content as expected.


Inclusive language in Search

Cool.


Inclusive language in Search

So it sounds like Google has been doing some things already


Inclusive language in Search

on this front.


Inclusive language in Search

Do you have some examples of what has been done so far?


Inclusive language in Search

Yeah, absolutely.


Inclusive language in Search

So in our working group, the first action we took


Inclusive language in Search

was to work with the Gboard team to make this point


Inclusive language in Search

median, this middle dot, more accessible


Inclusive language in Search

before it was hidden in a second or third layer of the Gboard.


Inclusive language in Search

And now we can just, as I said, just


Inclusive language in Search

by long pressing on the normal dot,


Inclusive language in Search

you would have access to this point median


Inclusive language in Search

and then easily write it if you want.


Inclusive language in Search

But we also started working on the more infrastructure side


Inclusive language in Search

with talking with the search ranking team


Inclusive language in Search

to see how these new inclusive writing practices are handled


Inclusive language in Search

at indexing and ranking.


Inclusive language in Search

Ooh, that's cool.


Inclusive language in Search

So how does it actually work in search right now?


Inclusive language in Search

And how are algorithms dealing with the middle dot on web


Inclusive language in Search

pages these days?


Inclusive language in Search

That is an excellent question, Martin.


Inclusive language in Search

Thank you for asking because I wanted to ask it to you,


Inclusive language in Search

actually.


Inclusive language in Search

So to you and John, basically.


Inclusive language in Search

So if a website uses etudeant.e, like student


Inclusive language in Search

with the middle dot and an e on their page,


Inclusive language in Search

can it be retrieved as well for users


Inclusive language in Search

who search for etudeant in the masculine form


Inclusive language in Search

and etudeant in the feminine form?


Inclusive language in Search

Oh, that's a good question.


Inclusive language in Search

I don't answer ranking questions.


Inclusive language in Search

Maybe John?


Inclusive language in Search

Oh, man.


Inclusive language in Search

Way to throw me under the bus, Martin.


Inclusive language in Search

So I don't know what the current details are in search.


Inclusive language in Search

But I do know it's something that the team is working on.


Inclusive language in Search

From my understanding of Google systems,


Inclusive language in Search

there are probably three aspects that are


Inclusive language in Search

involved in this whole thing.


Inclusive language in Search

So on the one hand, there is indexing.


Inclusive language in Search

So we try to extract the words from the individual documents


Inclusive language in Search

that we find on the web.


Inclusive language in Search

And we keep them in our index.


Inclusive language in Search

And that way, we can try to find the documents that


Inclusive language in Search

match specific queries.


Inclusive language in Search

And one option, or perhaps one part of the solution,


Inclusive language in Search

could be to automatically expand on some of those words


Inclusive language in Search

into the appropriate versions, maybe drop the punctuation


Inclusive language in Search

if that's kind of like not a natural word boundary,


Inclusive language in Search

but actually assign that what is meant here


Inclusive language in Search

is they're different versions.


Inclusive language in Search

And similarly, we could maybe automatically expand


Inclusive language in Search

on the versions that we do find in the documents.


Inclusive language in Search

And in our index, keep both of these versions,


Inclusive language in Search

or whatever versions are appropriate to keep.


Inclusive language in Search

The second aspect is more about ranking, which I guess


Inclusive language in Search

is the ranking question, which is all about the serving


Inclusive language in Search

side of things.


Inclusive language in Search

So when people enter a query, what happens on Google's side?


Inclusive language in Search

And we've seen from the previous episodes of the podcast


Inclusive language in Search

that we do automatically kind of expand the query that we


Inclusive language in Search

see based on known synonyms, abbreviations,


Inclusive language in Search

different versions of different words.


Inclusive language in Search

And in practice, these systems tend to run automatically.


Inclusive language in Search

So when we see that new synonyms are being picked up and used


Inclusive language in Search

by users, we try to pick that up and use that automatically


Inclusive language in Search

because there's no way for us to keep up


Inclusive language in Search

with what people are searching for.


Inclusive language in Search

And people search for different terms all the time.


Inclusive language in Search

So that's another place that could come into play.


Inclusive language in Search

And third, one place that I think


Inclusive language in Search

we don't talk about that much is everything


Inclusive language in Search

about understanding entities, both in the content


Inclusive language in Search

and in queries and the individual attributes


Inclusive language in Search

that are assigned there.


Inclusive language in Search

So for example, we know the Eiffel Tower is a structure,


Inclusive language in Search

and it has a certain height.


Inclusive language in Search

You can ask Google, how tall is the Eiffel Tower?


Inclusive language in Search

For other entities, the gender may also play a role.


Inclusive language in Search

And all of this comes initially from the Knowledge Graph.


Inclusive language in Search

And it tends to be built up automatically


Inclusive language in Search

based on the content that we find online.


Inclusive language in Search

However, that doesn't mean it's automatically always correct.


Inclusive language in Search

For example, if you ask, who is the Second


Inclusive language in Search

Lady of the United States?


Inclusive language in Search

Well, the role is still the same,


Inclusive language in Search

but it's different now because the US Vice


Inclusive language in Search

President is a woman, and she's married to a man.


Inclusive language in Search

Therefore, the title is now different.


Inclusive language in Search

And this kind of bias needs to be improved,


Inclusive language in Search

both in our languages and, of course, in Google systems.


Inclusive language in Search

MARTIN SPLITT


Inclusive language in Search

What would you suggest folks are doing when


Inclusive language in Search

they create content online?


Inclusive language in Search

Well, right now, there is no official recommendation.


Inclusive language in Search

And I also don't think it is our role as Googlers


Inclusive language in Search

to say how it should be written.


Inclusive language in Search

But we do see content being written using various forms,


Inclusive language in Search

like various punctuations, middle dots, tar, slashes,


Inclusive language in Search

parentheses, using the neutral form,


Inclusive language in Search

mentioning all the genders in a sentence, et cetera.


Inclusive language in Search

So I think that all of them are valid as long as they


Inclusive language in Search

make readers feel included.


Inclusive language in Search

What's your thought, Bruno?


Inclusive language in Search

Yeah, I think it's also really dependent on what


Inclusive language in Search

you are writing.


Inclusive language in Search

It's true that if you are writing full text to be read,


Inclusive language in Search

special character might be hard for the reader to read.


Inclusive language in Search

Although, I have to say that there


Inclusive language in Search

is no clear psycholinguistic evidence


Inclusive language in Search

that a new special character is harder


Inclusive language in Search

than any other abbreviation that you haven't seen before when


Inclusive language in Search

you read a text.


Inclusive language in Search

But if you are making a list of very short content or form


Inclusive language in Search

or headers of section, you can really


Inclusive language in Search

start using a condensed or abbreviated inclusive writing


Inclusive language in Search

because it makes everyone feel more inclusive.


Inclusive language in Search

I also like to mention this example.


Inclusive language in Search

In France, the ID card has always


Inclusive language in Search

the mention born in, where the place of birth for the people.


Inclusive language in Search

And born in is abbreviated ne with an e in parentheses.


Inclusive language in Search

So there is an inclusive abbreviation form


Inclusive language in Search

to agree born with female or male,


Inclusive language in Search

depending on the holder of the ID card.


Inclusive language in Search

So in any type of forms, you can use this kind


Inclusive language in Search

of condensed writing.


Inclusive language in Search

But again, we are not in a position


Inclusive language in Search

to tell how people should write.


Inclusive language in Search

The only recommendation we can say


Inclusive language in Search

is write in the most natural way that is the most natural to you


Inclusive language in Search

and that your text is easily readable.


Inclusive language in Search

Cool.


Inclusive language in Search

Now, I imagine if people write naturally,


Inclusive language in Search

then they would automatically include synonyms


Inclusive language in Search

and variations as well anyway.


Inclusive language in Search

So some of that probably plays in, I don't know,


Inclusive language in Search

search's favor in that when people write naturally,


Inclusive language in Search

they don't always just use the exact same word


Inclusive language in Search

over and over again.


Inclusive language in Search

You provide some variety.


Inclusive language in Search

But all of this sounds very focused on written content.


Inclusive language in Search

And more and more, voice search is a thing.


Inclusive language in Search

Would this also work for spoken information?


Inclusive language in Search

So if I went to my Google Home and asked about fireman jobs,


Inclusive language in Search

would it be able to recognize that on a page?


Inclusive language in Search

And how would that get pronounced?


Inclusive language in Search

So the pronunciation of an abbreviation


Inclusive language in Search

is always a tricky part for human being.


Inclusive language in Search

When we read a text with an abbreviation,


Inclusive language in Search

we don't necessarily always know how to read it.


Inclusive language in Search

MR being read as Mr is something that we have to learn.


Inclusive language in Search

The middle dot is interesting because, again, it's


Inclusive language in Search

an abbreviation of the two form, the masculine and the feminine.


Inclusive language in Search

So naturally, I would pronounce it if I see etudiant.e.


Inclusive language in Search

I would pronounce etudiant and etudiant, so the two forms.


Inclusive language in Search

But for computers, for text to speech system,


Inclusive language in Search

it's, of course, a little bit trickier because, again, it's


Inclusive language in Search

an abbreviation that we need to handle.


Inclusive language in Search

But that can happen in any terms.


Inclusive language in Search

So we are working on it.


Inclusive language in Search

But of course, it's a very longer-term project.


Inclusive language in Search

MARTIN SPLITT


Inclusive language in Search

And we are here to talk about search.


Inclusive language in Search

How should search engines handle this, in your opinion?


Inclusive language in Search

MS. BARROW-LONGINI In my opinion, I would say that search engines should


Inclusive language in Search

adapt to the way people write online.


Inclusive language in Search

So as Bruno mentioned, if it feels natural to the content owner,


Inclusive language in Search

then search engines should adapt to that.


Inclusive language in Search

So there is a clear trend, at least in French,


Inclusive language in Search

for adopting inclusive writing online.


Inclusive language in Search

And as search engines, we need to make sure


Inclusive language in Search

that it is supported by our crawling, indexing,


Inclusive language in Search

and ranking systems, and that we also show inclusive results.


Inclusive language in Search

So for instance, it would be great if kids,


Inclusive language in Search

when they search for doctor or football player,


Inclusive language in Search

a footballer in French, or a tennis player or engineer,


Inclusive language in Search

it would be great if they see a variety of search results


Inclusive language in Search

so that both little boys and little girls


Inclusive language in Search

can identify to those professions, for instance.


Inclusive language in Search

MARTIN SPLITT Yeah, we have seen that as a challenge in the past.


Inclusive language in Search

And is that something that Google search teams are aware of


Inclusive language in Search

and are working on already?


Inclusive language in Search

Or is that something that we need to raise more awareness


Inclusive language in Search

internally for?


Inclusive language in Search

So we recently started with our working group to get in touch


Inclusive language in Search

with different teams that can get involved.


Inclusive language in Search

And this is actually how we get in touch


Inclusive language in Search

with you, John and Martin.


Inclusive language in Search

So this is just the beginning.


Inclusive language in Search

We know it's a very long endeavor


Inclusive language in Search

to make all little bits, parts of the system,


Inclusive language in Search

more inclusive and more sensitive to inclusivity.


Inclusive language in Search

But we are hoping to solve the bigger pain point very soon,


Inclusive language in Search

both to get content creators confident that they can write


Inclusive language in Search

the way they want, but also our consumers to read


Inclusive language in Search

or their consumer to read the content as they like.


Inclusive language in Search

Cool.


Inclusive language in Search

It sounds like there's still a lot of work.


Inclusive language in Search

Would it be a positive thing if search engines just


Inclusive language in Search

understood the one most common way of doing this?


Inclusive language in Search

Or would they need to support all of the different forms?


Inclusive language in Search

I think that if they support the most common forms


Inclusive language in Search

of inclusive writing, it's already a great thing.


Inclusive language in Search

That would be phenomenal.


Inclusive language in Search

And over time, I think in a couple of years or so,


Inclusive language in Search

I wouldn't be surprised if we see that each language ends up


Inclusive language in Search

having their own inclusive writing common practices


Inclusive language in Search

or agreed upon practices that most writers would


Inclusive language in Search

be following.


Inclusive language in Search

But for now, I would say starting


Inclusive language in Search

with the most common ones that we see online is enough.


Inclusive language in Search

And obviously, this is not a one of change.


Inclusive language in Search

Language is dynamic.


Inclusive language in Search

Languages are dynamic.


Inclusive language in Search

And search engines should still take this into account.


Inclusive language in Search

And they should still take into account


Inclusive language in Search

any new inclusive writing form if that form becomes


Inclusive language in Search

prominent over time.


Inclusive language in Search

So do you think over time there will become a single way


Inclusive language in Search

of doing inclusive writing?


Inclusive language in Search

So maybe people should just wait until there


Inclusive language in Search

is one common thing or maybe even one common way of doing it


Inclusive language in Search

across all languages?


Inclusive language in Search

Or how do you see that evolving?


Inclusive language in Search

I really think each language is different.


Inclusive language in Search

As we highlight before, in some languages,


Inclusive language in Search

it's really easy to have a neutral form like fire person.


Inclusive language in Search

But in some other, this neutral form doesn't exist


Inclusive language in Search

and is not possible at all.


Inclusive language in Search

So that's why there is this need to have


Inclusive language in Search

a special character or abbreviation


Inclusive language in Search

to take into account the two male and female version


Inclusive language in Search

of a term.


Inclusive language in Search

Now about is there one common way to write inclusive writing?


Inclusive language in Search

I think it's, as Zineb said, language


Inclusive language in Search

are very dynamic.


Inclusive language in Search

And we see now a trend about using inclusive writing.


Inclusive language in Search

But the usage of which abbreviation to use


Inclusive language in Search

is still quite inconsistent.


Inclusive language in Search

But we can hope that the more people use it,


Inclusive language in Search

there will be a large exception of one in favor of another,


Inclusive language in Search

for example, or a kind of a standardization.


Inclusive language in Search

In history of languages, this is how it happened all the time.


Inclusive language in Search

You have a hesitation about using one term over another.


Inclusive language in Search

And the more it evolves, the more there


Inclusive language in Search

is a kind of a standardization across the language community.


Inclusive language in Search

You can take, for example, the gender neutral pronoun they.


Inclusive language in Search

In English, using they to refer to one person


Inclusive language in Search

in a neutral way has been introduced or make


Inclusive language in Search

it more and more frequent maybe 30 years ago.


Inclusive language in Search

And now nobody is questioning the use of they.


Inclusive language in Search

But 30 years ago, some people were questioning it.


Inclusive language in Search

So it's just a question of evolution over years.


Inclusive language in Search

Cool.


Inclusive language in Search

So it sounds like people shouldn't wait.


Inclusive language in Search

They should jump in and use inclusive writing,


Inclusive language in Search

even if they're not 100% sure which version is the one that


Inclusive language in Search

will become maybe more popular over time.


Inclusive language in Search

They should already kind of start doing these things.


Inclusive language in Search

Is that about correct?


Inclusive language in Search

Yeah, absolutely.


Inclusive language in Search

OK.


Inclusive language in Search

So all of this still feels a little bit complicated to me,


Inclusive language in Search

because probably I'm just used to the way things worked


Inclusive language in Search

until now, or the way that I saw things working.


Inclusive language in Search

But it's been really insightful.


Inclusive language in Search

So let me see if I got this right.


Inclusive language in Search

Ideally, search engines would automatically


Inclusive language in Search

show a diverse set of content across all different aspects.


Inclusive language in Search

So if you search for something like firemen,


Inclusive language in Search

it would automatically include different versions,


Inclusive language in Search

including websites that mention firewoman or fireperson.


Inclusive language in Search

And similarly, search engines should be automatically


Inclusive language in Search

able to use the different common forms of inclusive writing


Inclusive language in Search

when they're found on a website.


Inclusive language in Search

So the goal should be that these pages are automatically


Inclusive language in Search

processed and accessible for any searches that


Inclusive language in Search

are related to that.


Inclusive language in Search

It sounds like it might be tricky,


Inclusive language in Search

given there are so many different ways of doing


Inclusive language in Search

inclusive writing, even when just looking at one language.


Inclusive language in Search

But just because something is hard


Inclusive language in Search

doesn't mean it's not worthwhile doing.


Inclusive language in Search

And again, ideally, site owners, they


Inclusive language in Search

should just use inclusive writing techniques whenever


Inclusive language in Search

they're appropriate.


Inclusive language in Search

And people like you, or listeners,


Inclusive language in Search

should continue pushing search engines so that it kind of


Inclusive language in Search

keeps working better.


Inclusive language in Search

Because without this gentle nudge across the board,


Inclusive language in Search

I think it's very easy also for search engines to say, well,


Inclusive language in Search

it seems to be working OK.


Inclusive language in Search

Maybe we don't need to change anything.


Inclusive language in Search

But perhaps we do need to change some things.


Inclusive language in Search

Is that about a reasonable summary?


Inclusive language in Search

Yes, very good.


Inclusive language in Search

Thank you, John.


Inclusive language in Search

I would add just one thing that is obvious,


Inclusive language in Search

but it's worth repeating.


Inclusive language in Search

Write for your users.


Inclusive language in Search

And your users are diverse.


Inclusive language in Search

You don't only have an audience of male or female readers.


Inclusive language in Search

So make sure that everyone feels included when they


Inclusive language in Search

read whatever you write online.


Inclusive language in Search

Cool.


Inclusive language in Search

Well, I thought this has been a super interesting topic.


Inclusive language in Search

And it sounds like there's a lot more information


Inclusive language in Search

available outside for people who want to dig in.


Inclusive language in Search

Do you have some examples that we could point people at?


Inclusive language in Search

Yes, we'll post some links in the description


Inclusive language in Search

of this podcast.


Inclusive language in Search

But I would start with the authoritative websites,


Inclusive language in Search

basically.


Inclusive language in Search

The UN has a few pages about inclusive writing


Inclusive language in Search

in various languages.


Inclusive language in Search

And then there's also the Wikipedia page


Inclusive language in Search

to explain what inclusive language is.


Inclusive language in Search

And we'll add more links also.


Inclusive language in Search

OK.


Inclusive language in Search

We'll try to drop those links in the description


Inclusive language in Search

so that people can take a look if they're


Inclusive language in Search

interested in finding out more.


Inclusive language in Search

Cool.


Inclusive language in Search

Well, that's it for this episode.


Inclusive language in Search

Thank you for joining us here, folks.


Inclusive language in Search

It's been fun with these podcast episodes.


Inclusive language in Search

I hope you, the listener, have found them both entertaining


Inclusive language in Search

and insightful as well.


Inclusive language in Search

And regardless, let us know how you're liking these.


Inclusive language in Search

If there are topics that we could


Inclusive language in Search

be including in one of the future episodes,


Inclusive language in Search

feel free to drop me a note on Twitter


Inclusive language in Search

or chat with us at one of the next virtual events


Inclusive language in Search

that we go to.


Inclusive language in Search

And of course, don't forget to like, subscribe, and update


Inclusive language in Search

your links.


Inclusive language in Search

Thank you, and goodbye, everyone.


Inclusive language in Search


HTML file upload for site ownership verification - Google Search Console Training

In this video, I'll go through the steps you need to follow


to verify your website in Search Console using the HTML file upload method.


In order to complete this process, you'll need to have permission


to upload the file to your website where it can be accessed by a browser.


How to verify your website using HTML file upload


In order to verify your website using HTML file upload,


you'll need to have permission to upload a file to your website


where it can be accessed by a browser.


After you click Add Property,


add your website URL under the URL prefix option and click Continue.


Expand the HTML file section where you'll find the File Download button.


Download your HTML verification file


and upload it to the root directory of the property you want to verify.


For example, if you want to verify www.example.com,


then the root directory is the homepage.


If you want to verify www.example.com slash party,


then the root directory is slash party slash.


In this case, you would upload the file to slash party slash


and all child directories would be verified.


Note that you can use this file in any site you want to verify.


It's personalized to your user and can be reused.


Once you complete this step, click Verify in Search Console.


If you perform the steps above correctly,


verification should work immediately.


If it doesn't, click the Full Details link to learn about potential errors.


You can find out more about those errors


and how to handle them in the Help Center.


Thanks for watching and check the Google Webmasters YouTube channel


English Google SEO office-hours from June 25, 2021

All right.


Welcome, everyone, to today's Google Search Central SEO


Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate at Google in Switzerland.


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


where people can join in and ask their questions


around their website and web search.


And as always, lots of questions were submitted already.


And it looks like a bunch of you already have your hands raised.


So maybe we'll just go through some


of the people who raised their hands first.


And then we can go through some of the submitted questions.


Let's see.


Anas, I think you're first.


Hi, John.


Hello, everyone.


Hi.


So basically, my question about something


popular on the internet when we are doing some research


about SEO, about the end of domain name.


I'm not talking about the US or the UK.


You know, I'm talking about.net,.com,.club.


So most people on the internet saying.com is better for SEO.


But I can't see that logically.


Is that right?


I don't think that's right.


So we generally don't differentiate


between the different generic top-level domains.


We mostly differentiate between country code,


top-level domains, and generic ones for geotargeting.


But within the generic ones, pick whatever you want,


whatever is available to you.


OK.


I have another small question about when I am learning SEO.


So I'll start with bad SEO.


I'm writing bad articles.


So after I am writing good articles,


should I remove old articles that


will affect my website on all, or I should keep it?


I think if it's something that you think


is good content that you want to publish with your website,


with your name, then I would keep it.


Just because it's old doesn't mean it's bad.


But if you look at it and you say,


oh, this is embarrassing for me now.


I don't want it to be online.


It's so bad.


Then that's something where I'd say either improve it


or remove it.


SPEAKER 2


Hi, John.


I'm Ahmed from Turkey.


I'm an SEO analyst at WebGST's marketing agency.


And my question is, on a multilingual website,


when we use our target language in our URLs,


there can be some symbols and numbers


instead of letters in some languages


because they are not supported.


So my question is, does that affect SEO?


Because some websites use this URL structure, and some of them


use only English in their URLs, even though the content


on the page is another language.


So what's the correct usage of this?


Yeah.


It generally doesn't affect SEO.


So for the most part, we don't care


that much about the characters and the words


in the URL.


So it's something that I would primarily do for users.


And users might care if, for example, something


is in English, but the actual content is in Turkish


or in French or whatever.


So that's something where I would


focus on the user aspect rather than the SEO aspect.


From a search point of view, we can deal with any URL


that is valid, essentially.


But from a user point of view, some types of URLs


are just a little bit more confusing than others.


One thing that stands out, for example,


is if you have spaces in URLs.


Technically, you can put spaces in URLs,


but it makes it a lot harder for people to copy and paste


and to recognize where the URL starts and where it stops.


So that's something where, from an SEO point of view,


it's fine.


But from a user point of view, it's confusing.


And with regards to different language content,


I think if you can localize the part of the URL that


kind of refers to your content, I


think that makes sense from a user point of view


because it gives them a little bit more of the feeling


that this is actually content for me


and not just content in English.


But from an SEO point of view, I don't think it matters.


Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.


Sayidul.


Hi, John.


Hi.


I have a question.


So one question is, we have a client.


He has e-commerce site, and they have a blog.


We have been told they have a lot of blog posts or blog posts


which are not doing well on Google search result.


They are not getting any organic press at all for a long time.


So we have decided to remove those blog posts.


But the problem is, we used those blog posts for interlinking


to other product page.


And if we remove those blog posts,


that means those product will lose some interlinking.


Will it affect the organic ranking of the product?


Maybe.


I mean, if these are blog posts that


don't get a lot of visibility anyway, where search engines


don't treat them with a lot of respect, essentially,


then those links are not going to matter anymore.


On the other hand, if these are blog posts that


are very visible in search, then of course, if you delete them,


then that visibility that's kind of forwarded


to the other parts of your site, that would get lost.


And the second thing is about a website.


We changed the domain name for the website in April.


Now, when we check on Google search console,


it is still showing that Google is moving the old domain


to new domain.


So it's OK.


So when you search on Google using the old domain name,


it looks like there are a lot of old domain name URL


are still available on Google search.


Now, my question is, if someone clicks on the old domain name


on Google search result and come to the new domain,


the 2301 free direction, will Google


consider this as organic traffic or referable traffic?


From a search point of view, I don't think we care.


I think probably where you might see a difference is


in Google Analytics.


But that's more with regards to how Google Analytics tracks


how people come to your site.


And that's not something that we would use for search.


Because what I see that after changing the domain name,


the organic traffic drop a lot compared to the previous month.


So we don't know actually whether how it is being tracked


or whether it is the organic or referral.


So a little bit confused.


That is why I'm asking this question.


Yeah.


So to double check, I would look into search console


and the performance report.


And there you can also look at the performance report


of the old domain to see, are lots of people going


to the old domain URLs or not?


OK.


Thank you.


Sure.


Ashwani.


Hi, John.


Hi, everybody.


Very good morning.


John, actually, I have a couple of questions


related to international targeting


and multilingual targeting.


So my first question is, if suppose


I have a website,.com website, and I am from India,


and now I wanted to promote that website in Brazil.


So I use a slash br directory for Brazil.


So now my question is, should I translate my complete website,


or if I only want to promote five or 10 products there


in Brazil?


So my question is, do I need to translate my complete website,


or only four or five pages that we need to just translate


and put it on the subdirectory?


Just this question.


Totally up to you.


You can translate as much as you want.


You can translate as little as you want.


So there is no requirement to have the whole website


localized.


OK.


And the second thing is, if suppose


I am adding something in Portuguese language


inside our subdirectory website, but I'm not


adding those content in a parent website, like.com website,


so does it affect any SEO?


That's also fine.


I mean, the main thing to keep in mind


is that if someone is searching for that specific content


that you have in just one language,


it can happen that that one language page shows up.


So for example, if you have a specific product in Portuguese


that you offer in Portuguese but not in English,


and if someone in English searches for that product name,


then we can still show the Portuguese page.


So it's not a guarantee that you would only see that content,


but essentially we would focus on that for indexing.


OK.


And do I need to create a site map for those directory


or submit it in the Search Console?


You don't need to.


I think it's a good practice because it makes it easier


for you to track in Search Console, though.


Understood.


And one more thing.


If suppose I have an English content, like Indian content,


but in US, there is a US American English


and there is a British English.


And I wanted to target my English content in US, in UK.


So do I need to convert all those Indian English content


into American English or British English,


or do I only target, like do I just implement location


targeting, just simply?


I would try to localize things as much as possible.


So on the one hand, there is the SEO aspect.


On the other hand, there is the aspect


of what happens when people go to your website.


And just for the sake of actually getting something out


of the SEO side, I would make sure


that it's localized properly.


So writing in the right form of English


or the right form of language, it's similar also


with Spanish content, Mexican and South American countries.


It's something where, on the one hand,


you can appear in the search results,


but if people go to your website and they realize,


oh, this is not actually content for me,


then they will just go away again.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


Thank you, John.


But John, one more question.


It is different from multilingual and


multi-targeting.


The simple question is, if suppose I am changing my


content, somehow changing the content of the website


or content of the AD product page.


And earlier, I was interlinking those products.


Earlier, we have created two or three interlinking and two


and three external linking.


Can we change internal linking or external linking in future


if we update any blog or any content or any product page


content?


JOHN MUELLER Sure.


SPEAKER 2 Do it effect SEO?


JOHN MUELLER We do use internal linking


to understand how the pages fit in within your website,


but you can change that.


That's very normal that sites restructure over time


and change the way that they link internally.


SPEAKER 2 OK.


Thank you so much, John.


Thank you.


SPEAKER 2 John, I have one follow up on this same question.


Let me go through some of the submitted people first,


and then we can have more discussion later on.


Thanks.


Cody.


CODY LEWIS-GEARNSTIEN Thank you, John.


I have the franchise versus local websites problem


as far as the strategy.


What percent is there a percent threshold


for the difference of the different pages


when they're covering the same topic,


so that way they're not crossfiring against each other,


diluting the result?


JOHN MUELLER Yeah.


There's no specific percentage.


From our point of view, we try to look


at the actual content on the page


and try to figure out how that matches the query.


So that's kind of the main aspect there.


And that's something which you could probably


look into a little bit more in detail when you look


at the queries in Search Console, where you see what


people are actually using to search for your website,


and then looking at the results there to kind of figure out,


for this one specific query, do I have multiple pages that


are being shown?


And could having multiple pages being shown


be a disadvantage in that particular case?


CODY LEWIS-GEARNSTIEN So for the local websites,


if I have one in Austin, I have one in Florida,


if someone's looking for something in Florida,


I shouldn't worry about Austin's result hurting Florida.


JOHN MUELLER Yeah.


CODY LEWIS-GEARNSTIEN Cool.


The other thing is to, is there any way


to get Google to understand that the independent local


franchises and the corporate website are on the same team,


so that way they support each other


and domain their authority?


JOHN MUELLER Not like with a meta tag or anything like that.


So usually we try to figure out which parts of a website


belong together and do that algorithmically,


but it's not something that you can specify.


CODY LEWIS-GEARNSTIEN OK, and then


how would you optimize the following,


or how would you prioritize the following?


Would you optimize current content that's for SEO,


or would you worry more about creating new content that


is SEO optimized?


JOHN MUELLER I think it depends quite a bit


on the audience and the kind of content that you have there.


If people are searching for something new,


then I would definitely prioritize newer content.


But it really depends.


And it's also something that can change over time.


So we sometimes see that with topics


that make it into the news for whatever reason,


then suddenly for a period of time,


we try to show newer content.


And then, I don't know, a month or so later,


then everything settles down.


We show the older content again.


CODY LEWIS-GEARNSTIEN OK, so if you were a service provider


providing a utility service, like working on something


in someone's house, like general construction,


would you say that current content is more important


because it's not so much time sensitive, it's more evergreen?


JOHN MUELLER Probably, yeah.


CODY LEWIS-GEARNSTIEN OK, cool.


JOHN MUELLER But I mean, it's also something


where if you're active on the website,


you have the opportunity to kind of jump into current topics


as well.


So if, I don't know, an ice storm comes or a heat wave


comes or something like that, providing some content


specific around that gives you a little bit more flexibility


to be shown for those queries as well as for kind


of the standard ones.


CODY LEWIS-GEARNSTIEN I appreciate that.


And one last thing, how would you structure linking


between the corporate website and the independent local


websites?


Is there any best practices there?


JOHN MUELLER I think you can mostly do that just organically.


I don't think you need to do anything specific.


One thing I might watch out for there


is if you have a really large number of individual websites


that are kind of tied into the main corporate website,