which means you don't have this big box of text


English Google SEO office-hours from December 11, 2020

on these Web Stories.


But you still need textual content


so that we can rank those pages properly.


Question about AMP.


My website is 97% traffic is from desktop users.


Should I need to be worried about AMP?


Because in the Search Console, I can see some AMP


errors on my website.


Is it worth spending time and effort on to fix those issues


since the majority of the traffic is from desktop?


Will it impact ranking in the long term?


So AMP pages are responsive.


So essentially, you can use them on desktop, too.


It's not something that is purely mobile.


There are lots of sites that use AMP as their primary framework


for making content.


And that's perfectly fine.


So that's something where just because you


have a lot of desktop users doesn't


mean you should not use AMP.


For example, I think the amp.dev site is completely written


in AMP.


And if you look at it in a desktop browser,


it looks like a normal website.


With regards to AMP errors, what happens with AMP pages


when we recognize there are errors on these pages


is we understand that they're not valid AMP pages.


And that means that those pages would not


be kept in the AMP cache and would not


be treated as AMP alternate.


If you have kind of the setup with the traditional HTML


on the AMP alternate pages, if you have errors in the AMP


version, then we would not show those AMP alternate URLs


in the search results.


So it's not that there would be a ranking effect from that,


but more that you're not getting the full value


out of your AMP pages because we can't put them in the cache.


We can't serve them immediately when people click on them.


It's more of a usability kind of thing.


It's like you're already doing a big part


to make those AMP pages work, but they're not


completely valid.


So we can't actually use them as AMP pages.


By mistake, I created a lot of tags.


And sometimes of the same name with the main category


it ends up that the tag pages score better in the search


results than my categories.


Will the use of rel canonical help


so that I can send the juice back to the main category?


How long will it take until this change is implemented?


So sometimes it can happen that you


have a lot of different pages on a site and kind


of the wrong ones end up ranking.


And cleaning up the site structure


makes it a lot easier for us to pick out


which pages you really want to have


shown in the search results.


So cleaning up the URL structure means, on the one hand,


kind of removing or reducing the amount of internal links


to those kinds of pages, and on the other hand,


using technical elements like the rel canonical


or setting up redirects to point at the pages


that you do want to have shown in the search results.


So in that regard, if you're kind of seeing


that you have a bunch of similar pages and the wrong ones


are ranking, then cleaning that up definitely helps.


It can improve the ranking of those pages


because if we can concentrate all the value in fewer pages,


then we can make those pages a little bit stronger in search.


They can be a little bit more relevant.


With regards to how long that takes, it's really hard to say.


In particular, we have to crawl these pages.


And on a per URL basis, we have to understand,


oh, this is the same content.


You have a rel canonical here.


We should switch indexing to the other page.


And on a per URL basis, that takes a little bit of time.


The crawling itself also takes a little bit of time.


And crawling is not something where there's


a fixed time frame involved.


It can be that we recrawl some pages within, I don't know,


a couple of days, other pages within a couple of weeks.


So that's something where it's really hard to say


how long it will take.


Accessibility question.


We're going to make invisible headings


for some sections of our pages.


For example, main navigation, kind of highlighting


how will Google understand that this is not cloaking.


So we probably would not understand


that this is not cloaking, but this kind of hidden text


is something that is super common on the web.


And we essentially just deal with that.


So that's less of an issue for us.


Even if we were to recognize that this is kind of hidden


text on a page, it's not that we would say,


oh, this is a spammy page because it


has hidden text on it.


But at most, we might say, oh, well, maybe this piece of text


here is not super relevant for this page


because users never see it.


So in your situation, if you have main navigation


as kind of a heading for people who are using voice browsers,


essentially, then people are probably not


going to search for main navigation on Google


to try to find your site.


They're going to look for your actual content, which is


something that would be visible there.


So in that regard, even if Google


were to recognize that this is something that


is less relevant for your site, it


wouldn't negatively affect the rest of your site.


We're facing consistent impression spikes


on Google Webmaster Tools.


Oh, no.


It's a really old tool.


You should switch to Search Console.


Usually, we average between 2,000 and 3,000 per day.


On Fridays, it goes up to 10,000 on certain keywords.


Any suggestion on what could be causing the impression spikes?


It's really hard to say.


On the one hand, this could be something


that users are just searching more on some days.


And this is really common, depending


on the type of website that you have,


that you see kind of like a weekly cycle


through the number of impressions that are taking


place for your site where you have either on the weekends


a lot of impressions or during the week a lot of impressions


or during the daytime or during the evening.


These kind of cycles are really common.


So perhaps you're seeing something there.


What I also sometimes see is that some of the rank checking


tools leave behind traces in Search Console,


and you also see kind of side effects like this.


For the most part, these are things that we do filter out


in the rest of our pipeline, but sometimes they just


linger on in Search Console a bit like this.


We're about to run an A-B test for metered paywall


with different variations, so each variation and its paywall


schema.


We're embedding the roadblocks through a third-party tool.


We can't know which versions are aimed at which users


because it's on the fly.


Is there an option to fit only one paywall schema


for all the different tests?


Sure.


So the usual setup that people do, well,


at least the setup that I've seen,


is that they essentially provide this paywall markup


for the version that, or in a way that matches


what users would always see.


So if there is, for example, a kind of a lead-in that you would


always show all users, and some users see more content,


and some users see less content, or some users


can see more pages, or some users


see the paywall immediately, then you


kind of add the paywall markup in a way that


matches what everyone would see, kind of like the lowest


common denominator.


And that way, we can understand that.


And it's not the case that we need to have the 100%


exact correct paywall markup on all of these pages.


If we can recognize that there is a paywall markup there,


then that already helps us to understand that, oh, you're


implementing a paywall, and it's different by user type,


or by location, or whatever you use as parameters.


And that's totally fine for us.


So how do you test the structured data,


specifically the paywall structured data?


Essentially, you would use a rich results test,


like with any other kind of structured data.


I think the tricky part with some of these paywall


implementations is that Googlebot, of course,


needs to be able to see the full content so that we


can understand what it is that we should


be showing your site for.


And with that, we should be able to see the paywall markup


as well.


So if you're showing the paywall markup,


depending on the user there, keep


in mind that probably users don't


need to see the paywall markup.


It's really important that we see it, though,


especially if you're serving Googlebot the content


and not showing it to users in some cases.


Let's see.


I cross so many sites, about once a week


I get a notification from Search Console


that datavocabulary.org has been phased out.


It's no longer an actual issue for any of the sites,


so I'm curious how long Google will store and process


the HTML for.


Some of the pages that pop up had their last crawl up


to three years ago, and even on the HTTP versions


of the site, which have been redirected


to HTTPS for even longer.


OK.


I don't know.


Once a week, that sounds pretty excessive.


I thought we just sent out that notification once


for all sites that were using it.


So if you're watching this and can send me


some details of what you're seeing,


that would be really useful.


Because like I said, this notification


is something that we should be doing just once for the site.


Usually with these kind of notifications,


we focus on what we last had indexed for those sites.


So it's less a matter of when we last crawled those,


but rather like, oh, we know that this markup used


to be on your site or is on your site based on the last version


that we have indexed for your site,


and then we'll notify you about that.


And like I said, this should be something


that should be a one-time thing per site rather than


a weekly notification.


And it's mostly just meant to let you know that, by the way,


if you still have this here, you should probably switch it out.


It shouldn't be something that's super annoying.


But if you can send me some details,


then I'm happy to take a look to see


what might be happening there.


I recently tweaked the meta title and description


to improve quality of the words and made it more fresh,


as I wanted updated for a while already.


After I updated it for one of the search queries,


I noticed my site is being indexed with just that one word,


that keyword search, that makes me


worry that the rank might never improve again,


as I recently saw a drop in ranking for that particular


keyword before the tweak.


Can you explain why Google search can rewrite a meta title


up to an extent where it only leaves one word


as a meta title?


I suspect you're seeing something very specific,


so it's really hard to say.


But it is something where we do sometimes


change the titles of pages.


In particular, when we can recognize


that the title on a page is perhaps not


the most relevant one to show to users


based on their current query.


So based on the query, we can show different titles.


Based on the kind of title that you


have specified on your site, we might show a different title.


For example, if you have the same title


across a lot of different pages, then we might assume,


well, maybe this title is not so relevant


for any individual page.


Or if you have something really common and shared on your title


like you just have home for your home page,


then we wouldn't show home as a title.


We would try to figure out, well,


what is this home page about and try to show something


from that as a title.


And that's something when we change the titles like that,


it's not a sign that we're changing the rankings,


that the site is not ranking for what it has and its titles.


It's more that we're just saying, well,


the title that you have on your pages


is not something that encourages a lot of people


to actually click through.


So perhaps we should show something


that is more relevant for your individual pages.


If you're seeing this very often across pages on your website,


then I would take a step back and try


to look at the titles that you have specified on your site,


also the descriptions maybe if you're seeing it


with this snippet, and think about what you could be doing


perhaps differently to make it a little bit clearer what actually


is a useful title here for users.


So a really common example that I


see where we do sometimes rewrite titles


is if you just include a big collection of keywords.


And you say, oh, I want to rank for these keywords.


I will put them all in my title.


When we look at that, we say, well,


this is like a collection of words.


It's not a description of a page.


So maybe we should rewrite that.


And similarly, with descriptions and snippets,


it's kind of the same thing.


If we recognize that this snippet is essentially


just a bunch of variations of SEO phrases


you want to rank for, then we'll try


to pick something either from the snippet that you have there


or from a part of the page.


And we'll try to show that to users when they search.


MIHAI APERGHISLAMO


I don't know if it would help you become more relevant.


But I think what it would help you definitely


in the short term is that more likely we


will show the title that you have on your page.


And if that title is better in the sense


that it matches what users are looking for,


it matches their intent, then that gives you more traffic.


And then indirectly, over time, maybe those users


recommend you, and your site improves in ranking overall.


But it's not so much that we would say,


oh, this title is now good enough to show.


Therefore, the website is better.


MIHAI APERGHISLAMO No, I'm thinking in cases like,


as you mentioned, maybe the title is Home or something


like that, and the title does play a role


in how relevant that page is.


And you change it to red widgets,


I don't know, something that is more relevant.


Then shouldn't that lead to the page becoming


more relevant for red widgets since you're now


actually using those words?


JOHN MUELLER Sure, sure.


Yeah.


I mean, but that's kind of the, I would almost


say, less common situation.


The more common one I see is someone


where the title is red widgets, blue widgets, green widgets,


all widgets.


It's like widgets, plural, singular kind of thing,


a title like that.


And if you just change it to red widgets,


then it helps us a little bit.


But just including all variations of all keywords


there doesn't make a page relevant automatically.


MIHAI APERGHISLAMO Okay, and just to be sure, when you're


changing the title, does that mean


you're actually ignoring whatever


is in the HTML code per se?


I mean, you're completely ignoring the user-generated


title tag when you're not?


JOHN MUELLER No, it's really just the title


that we show in the search results.


So it's not that we say, oh, we will skip this.


We will not use it for ranking.


It's just we don't show it for this particular query.


Because it also depends on what people are actually searching.


MIHAI APERGHISLAMO Sure, yeah.


SPEAKER 3 John, is it query-agnostic then?


Does it change on the fly?


So can't page titles and meta descriptions


change to improve, like, if you like, search result


diversification?


So they pick something out and change the actual page title


and meta description to sort of vary the results?


I don't know.


JOHN MUELLER I don't know if we would do it to vary the results.


But we do try to use it in a way to better explain


what a user would expect when they go there.


So I don't think.


SPEAKER 3 It wouldn't change depending on the query.


It would depend on the document rather than the query.


That's what I'm saying.


JOHN MUELLER It would change based on a query.


So that's something that you often see, especially


in a case where you have a very generic title, like home,


for example, for a page.


Then you often see, depending on how you search,


you see either home, or you see kind of a rewritten version,


or you see a name of the company, or something like that.


So it would change based on the query.


But it's not the case that we would change the titles based


on what is shown as titles for the other pages in the search


results page.


SPEAKER 3 Right.


OK.


So it wouldn't be used in as part


of a collection of the top 10 or whatever,


just to sort of switch things up and make


sure there's a range of different types of results?


No.


SPEAKER 4 John, regarding this, I


have also seen one case where one page was


ranking for three keywords.


For two queries, the original title it was showing.


But for third query, it was rewriting the title.


So it is all the time, it is not like very simple thing


where we can go and just think like this title is not


relevant.


Sometimes it is like we have to go ahead with the same title.


Yeah.


Yeah, I mean, it's tricky.


We've also discussed internally options


like having a meta tag saying like, I know what I'm doing.


Always show my title kind of thing.


But that's also really tricky.


And it makes things complex in various ways.


We also had a project underway at some point


where in Search Console you could specify a title


for like a handful of pages and say like,


I always want this title to be shown.


And there also we just noticed that there


are lots of weird edge cases where showing a title


algorithmically just makes it much easier for users


to recognize that this is actually


a good page to match what they were looking for.


Mm-hmm.


Maria, I think you had a question


or you raised your hand at least.


You're muted.


We can't hear you.


We can't hear you, Maria.


Sorry.


I was muted.


Again.


So yeah, I did have a question.


However, when Dawn Anderson asked her question,


it kind of clarified the question I had.


However, going back again to my total description,


I think it was a little bit more complicated.


And one, going back again to titles and descriptions,


sorry to ask, maybe this has been commented before.


One thing we are seeing at work, as I said,


with small businesses and some clients, they do,


is they saturate because someone told them or something,


they saturate their title or their description


only with commercial keywords because they


know that it works for such and such person.


For example, you can see in some websites


like listing Brighton, flower delivery Brighton, wedding


flowers Brighton, and just all that in a description.


Why still is it?


I don't know if that is against practices.


Why does that keep happening?


People do it because they say it work.


Is that against practices?


Is there a, I just, I don't know.


It doesn't look right.


When the client comes to me and I see that, the first thing


I say, no, this has to change.


But I don't know.


I just want to hear your point of view.


Why?


Yeah.


So.


If I may say so.


So it's not against our webmaster guidelines.


So it's not something that we would say is problematic.


I think at most, it's something where


you could improve things if you had


kind of like a better fitting title


because we understand the relevance a little bit better.


And I suspect the biggest improvement


with a title in that regard there


is that if you can create a title that


matches what the user is actually looking for,


then it's a little bit easier for them to actually click


on the search result because they think, oh, this really


matches what I was looking for.


Whereas if you're looking for, I don't know,


flower delivery Brighton, and as a title in the search results,


you see flowers, green flowers, yellow flowers, blue flowers,


Brighton, and all of the cities nearby,


then you might look at that and say, well, is this like,


I don't know, some SEO result, or is this actually


a business that will do a good job


and create some nice flowers for me?


So that's something where I almost


think it's more a matter of improving the click-through


rate rather than improving the ranking.


And if with the same ranking, you get a higher click-through


rate because people recognize your site


as being more relevant, then that's kind of a good thing.


SPEAKER 2


Sorry.


I just know because I saw a comment saying something


about funeral flowers, and yeah, I thought, I don't know.


Thank you.


Yeah, it makes sense.


I mean, it's not a practice I follow.


We sent the webmaster videos to my clients,


and I say, watch from minutes x to z.


And this is a common practice I see with people that come from,


that they launch their own website,


and they try to keep it a go to their own.


They're learning SEO.


One of the most common activities I've seen


is saturation with keywords, titles, and descriptions.


So OK.


Yeah, I mean, it's a really common tactic


because we say as well, we use the keywords in your titles


as part of our ranking systems.


And then people say, oh, then I need


to add all keywords to my titles.


And then you end up with something like that.


But just because they are used for ranking


doesn't mean that you need to put everything in there.


And sometimes I suspect the bigger aspect is really


the click-through rate from search rather than


the ranking effect, especially for small businesses.


It's like you don't have a lot of chance


to be visible in search results in lots of places


because you're probably more focused on your regional area.


And having a title that is really good,


that matches your business, that's


a lot more important than having all of the keywords in there.


Does it have the opposite effect on the signs, John?


Yeah.


How do you mean opposite effect?


Well, if you see, take the example


that Maria has just provided of the florist,


big florist selling flowers in every town or city in the UK


or the US or wherever.


And all the page titles say florist in Brighton,


florist in South Sea, florist in Hampstead Heath, blah, blah,


blah.


Can that sometimes, because they're almost competing


against each other as clusters, can that almost


have the opposite effect to them ranking well and detracts away


from maybe just everything?


Because they're all candidates all of a sudden


with very, very tiny variations.


I think I see that sometimes on big sites,


where they actually cannibalize themselves.


With different pages or with the same page?


Or just competing with themselves with different pages,


with many, many different pages with small variations,


with page titles being one of the quite aggressive ones


that there's not a lot of difference on,


if that makes sense.


Yeah.


That's definitely something that kind of happens there.


And I think, I mean, on the one hand,


I understand the interest in having


pages for individual topics.


But if the variations are so small,


you're essentially just diluting the value of your content


across those pages.


And then you have a lot of pages for individual topics,


but they all don't rank well, versus you


have one page for a slightly more general topic,


and it is very well concentrated there,


then it's a lot easier for us to say, well,


this is a really competitive page for that topic,


and we should show it more.


So it's back to the old fewer pages, but better.


Yeah, exactly.


Are they really competing against each other,


those pages?


So if Flows is one of the typical examples where you


genuinely do need a geographic page because they might


have a genuine network, whereas a lot of these pages,


plumbers in, and then name every single area within 200 miles,


they're not.


They're just doorway pages.


But Florists have the longest established e-commerce network


anyway of that distribution method.


And I think that goes back to what


you were saying, that those pages aren't competing


with each other, and they're not competing for the main home


page title and description.


They should be genuinely standing alone.


And Florists have, if I remember correctly,


they have the highest click-through rate


of any e-commerce business because no one searches for it


unless they're buying it.


Yeah.


Does it depend on genuine network availability then,


I think is the point that Rob's making?


I think it's probably one of those things where it depends,


as much as nobody wants to hear that, where you kind of have


to figure out for your specific use case,


is it critical that you have them kind of separated out


like this?


Do you actually have unique value


that you're providing there?


Or is it something that you can combine a little bit more?


I've seen this happen with, for example,


if you're a hotel site, people search for hotels in Zurich,


but they might search for accommodation in Zurich,


travel packages, and everything like that.


So I've seen sites kind of do individual pages for each


of these just so they don't stuff the title with all


of these keywords.


But I think, and what I've been using as a,


I don't know how good of a practice


it is to kind of alternate some of the keywords in the title


with some of the keywords in the heading.


And I've noticed that Google sometimes,


if you're using hotels in the title


and accommodation in the heading and people are searching


for accommodation, Google will sometimes


just use the heading instead of the title in the search results,


if that makes sense.


So can that be a kind of a good practice


to avoid kind of creating multiple pages for what


basically is the same user intent?


Yeah, I mean, the other thing to keep in mind


is that as kind of the whole machine learning side expands,


and it's like it has expanded for a long time now,


it's something where we understand a lot better what


these words actually mean.


So especially synonyms, like you mentioned,


accommodations and hotels, we kind of


know that these are the same things.


And you don't need to mention kind


of those different words on the same page


because we understand it's the same thing.


And I imagine for a lot of the city names,


it's very similar where we understand, well,


these cities are right next to each other.


So if someone is searching for one city,


we could show content from the other one.


Whether or not the user would click through and say,


well, actually, I really need a florist in my city,


or maybe this city is across the border


and it's right next to me, but I can't easily


get there for whatever reasons.


So it's kind of tricky there.


But at least for the synonyms side of things,


I think we are a lot better there.


Yeah.


Hi, John, I have a question.


Sure.


With adult websites, it's very unclear


which sort of schema is basically allowed there


because in some articles you mentioned


that this schema is definitely not allowed for adult websites.


But on the majority of them, it's just not mentioned.


So how can an adult website do this?


Should they just implement everything and hope


for the best?


Or how can we actually know which one is supported


and which one not?


For example, the live one.


Live is used a lot on blogs nowadays on some podcasts.


But adult websites cannot use live,


but it's not written there that it's not supported.


So how can we know?


I think in our rich results guidelines,


we say none of them are useful for adult websites.


But I haven't checked recently.


I don't know if anything has changed there.


But at least as far as I know, all of the types of rich


results that I'm aware of are explicitly not meant


for adult content websites.


And I imagine, so I don't think there


is any kind of manual action or web spam action that takes


place in something like that.


But it's more that our systems recognize,


oh, this is an adult website.


And it wants to show these rich results types.


But since it's an adult website, we just won't show them.


So it's not like it'll be loaded or anything.


Then I have a second question.


But schemas are also not picked up there


because Google still thinks that's an adult website.


So what makes a website adult is my question.


What makes a website adult?


I don't know.


So it's a.


As far as if you have to ask, you probably


already know the answer.


I mean, there's, let's say, websites such as Twitch.


I mean, Twitch has all of these things supported.


Let's say that we make a website like Twitch.


It's still not going to get picked up.


And I wonder why.


Yeah, so the thing is, I think with a lot of the safe search


filters is we try to apply them to a kind of a broader URL


pattern on a website.


So if we see that the whole domain is adult content


for the most part, and you have some small part that


is not adult, then probably we would filter the whole domain.


Because it's just our systems are pretty much.


Yeah.


I mean, our systems are just kind of like we want


to stay on the safe side there.


If you have individual subdomains where some of them


are adult and some of them are not,


that makes it a little bit easier.


If you have separate domains, then that obviously


makes it a lot easier for us to understand


that these are completely separate websites that


should be treated differently.


So it's something we also see, I think, sometimes with.


If it's filtered by SafeSearch, then it's adult, pretty much.


Sorry?


I mean, I don't think we make any clear distinction


between filtered by SafeSearch and adult and porn or whatever


the different categories are there.


It's mostly like we recognize it's filtered by SafeSearch,


and then probably we wouldn't show any rich results there.


It also happens the other way around,


where some sites might have, I don't know,


classified sections, which are for adults.


And then if that section is embedded


within the main website in a way that is hard to separate out,


then we might say, well, we don't


know how much of this site should


be filtered by SafeSearch.


Maybe we'll filter too much.


Maybe we won't filter enough.


On the other hand, if you move that to a subdomain,


then it's a lot easier to say, oh, this subdomain


should be treated like this.


The other subdomain should be treated differently.


OK.


Understood.


Clear.


Does Webmaster Tools tell you if your site


is held under SafeSearch?


Does it?


No.


It did.


Yeah.


I think it is one of those things.


Like, probably you know if your site is really adult content.


But if it's kind of like a tricky thing,


then I've also seen that happen that they go to the forums.


Like, my site is not showing up in search.


And then someone will say, oh, well,


if you turn off the SafeSearch filter,


then it is showing in search.


And then they try to figure out, like,


how did SafeSearch get confused?


Or why is SafeSearch so picky in this particular situation?


Because it's one of those things where different cultures have


different thresholds almost of what


they would consider to be problematic or adult content.


And we, I don't know, in our algorithms,


we have to make some call somewhere.


Sure.


OK.


Well, I don't know whether you saw that there was a case.


Well, it was not really a case study.


Fabio from TransferWise did a little bit of an investigation


into why something just suddenly just tanked.


And he found adding exclutives seemed to have a bad impact.


Is that the case, John?


Because sometimes it's quite difficult


to control communities, et cetera.


And he found, I don't know whether it was just correlation


versus causation, but when lots and lots of swear words


got added to some content, it seemed


to have a very adverse impact on the rankings.


Is that something that might happen,


or is that just correlation versus causation?


Yeah, I don't think that's something


that would be by design.


So maybe it's more of a side effect kind of thing.


Also, if it's any site with a forum or comment section,


I mean, literally every comment section in the world would.


I know.


Exactly.


Yeah.


Yeah, it was just, you just seemed


to think that that was something that had impacted.


And I don't know.


I don't know.


I didn't see that.


Sounds interesting, though.


But I don't think that would be by design.


Just adding some curse words to a page


shouldn't make that page less relevant.


OK.


Thank you.


Cool.


I have to jump off to another meeting soon.


So maybe I'll pause here.


I have another Hangout lined up for next Friday.


So it's not the last one this year.


And if any of you want to join then, feel free to jump on in.


I think it'll probably be a little bit looser


because it's like last Friday before the holidays.


We'll see.


But thank you all for joining in.


It's been really interesting.


Lots of good questions, lots of feedback also


to pass on to your teams.


And I hope you all found this useful.


And maybe we'll see each other again one of the next Hangouts.


Thanks, everyone.


Bye.


Bye, John.


Source HTML vs. Rendered HTML | Search Central Lightning Talks

Did you ever inspect the source of a website and wondered why it looks different from what you see in your browser when you open the same website?


Or maybe you heard about the rendered HTML or the DOM and don't know how these are different from what you see in View Source, for instance?


Then this video is for you!


In this video, I would like to take you on a journey behind the scenes of your browser, so let's jump in.


To understand what happens between a server sending some HTML into your browser and the browser showing you the website in all its glory,


we need to start at the moment where you hit return in the address bar and ask a server somewhere on the internet to give a website to you.


The first step to get a website into your browser is to send an HTTP request to the server that is hosting the website.


Once the server receives the request, the server chooses how to respond to it.


That can mean running a program like a PHP script or a Java program or whatever, or simply sending back the content of a file.


For this video, we will skip over what exactly the server does and focus on the fact that the server usually starts sending a bunch of HTML back to the browser.


Many people think of the HTML that was sent from the server as the same as the website you will see in your browser, but that isn't really accurate.


Instead, we could say that what you see in the browser is a dish, and the HTML that was sent is the recipe.


The browser needs to prepare, or cook, the dish based on the recipe it received from the server.


It turns the HTML into a number of visual and sometimes interactive elements that then show up on your screen.


The interesting part is what happens between the HTML and what you see in your browser.


This is called rendering.


Let's look a little closer at rendering to see what happens in between the beginning, the HTML that comes from the server, and the end, the interactive website that you, well, interact with.


To understand the difference between the HTML that we received from the server, the so-called source HTML, the rendered HTML, and the DOM, we need to look closer at this rendering process.


The rendering process is a series of steps that start with the source HTML, and if included, the styling information in the CSS.


The browser starts by parsing the source HTML and, if available, any CSS found inside, which creates two tree-like structures called the Document Object Model, DOM for short, and the CSS Object Model, CSSOM for short.


For us, the DOM is the more important of the two models, so we'll focus on it from now on.


For our website, for example, the browser would create the following DOM tree.


The browser needs this tree to identify individual elements on the website and their relationship to other elements, like, for instance, which text belongs to the heading and which to the paragraph, or what file is the source of this image.


The browser then takes the DOM and CSSOM and figures out how to fit all this stuff into the browser window.


This is called layouting and creates a render tree.


The render tree basically contains the sizes and positions on the screen for each of the elements in the DOM.


The browser uses this tree to paint the actual pixels that make up what we see in our browser window.


It is important to understand that once the browser shows us the website, it may use JavaScript to allow us to interact with the website.


The JavaScript might then change the DOM by adding, changing, or removing elements in the tree.


For example, when I click this button, it adds an image to the DOM and, thus, to the website on the screen.


Here we can see this in action.


On the left, you see the interactive website. On the right, you see a representation of the DOM that the browser uses for this website.


Whenever the button is clicked, the JavaScript adds a new image to the DOM tree and the browser renders it.


In the previous example, the DOM tree might look different at any moment, depending on what happened before.


The DOM itself only lives in the browser memory and isn't visible per se.


But we can represent it in different forms.


One such form is the interactive tree view that we saw in the browser developer tools on the right-hand side of the previous video.


Alternatively, we could turn the DOM tree back into HTML.


We call this the rendered HTML.


When we turn the DOM tree back into the rendered HTML, we might get different results depending on what happened to the DOM tree before.


For example, the rendered HTML of the previous example website is exactly the same as the source HTML as long as the button was not clicked.


As the button is clicked, JavaScript will run and will change the DOM and, in turn, the rendered HTML.


Now, you may already wonder, what is it that I see when I click View Source in my browser?


Well, it's the source HTML, or is it the rendered HTML?


There are three ways to see the source HTML coming from the server.


First, and probably most known, is to right-click on a web page and select View Source, or typing view-source colon in front of the URL.


That shows you the source HTML.


Alternatively, you can also go into the developer tools on your browser, select the Sources tab, and see the source HTML there.


Here you can see that the right side shows the original HTML without the images that are currently visible on the website.


A third way is to use the Network tab in the browser developer tools, where you can also see the HTML that was sent back from the server.


But what options do I have if we want to see what's in the DOM?


Well, again, the browser developer tools have us covered.


The DevTools contain a tree-like representation of the DOM that we can explore and interact with.


We find this in the Elements tab in Chrome.


You may notice that, unlike the other DevTools panels and the View Source, this shows us the current DOM content, including the images that were added by JavaScript.


If we wanted to, we can turn the DOM back into HTML.


This can be quite complex thanks to things like the Shadow DOM or cross-origin iframes.


But for simpler websites, you can get the rendered HTML by going into the DevTools console and running this JavaScript snippet.


Again, please note that this isn't always working, especially for more complex websites.


For debugging, I recommend that you use the URL inspection tool in Search Console to get the rendered HTML that Google Search uses for indexing of a page.


All right, so that was quite a ride.


Let's summarize what we learned today.


We started with a source HTML.


That's the HTML that a server sends to our browser when we open a web page.


Then we learned that the browser turns this HTML into the DOM.


That is an interactive element-by-element representation of the website constructed from the source HTML.


The DOM can change as JavaScript might modify it while the page is loading upon the user interaction or other events while it is open in the browser.


And then last but not least, we identified rendered HTML as a snapshot of that DOM turned back into HTML.


The rendered HTML reflects the DOM content on the page at the time the snapshot was taken.


To see the rendered HTML, you can use the URL inspection tool in the Google Search Console.


So, now we've looked at what's the source HTML, the rendered HTML, and the DOM, and explored what tools you could use to debug issues on your websites.


What tools are you using to debug issues on your websites?


Let us know in the comments below.


And also, thanks a lot for watching and please like and subscribe to stay in the loop with our latest and greatest content around Google Search.


Thanks a lot and bye-bye!


How Google Search indexes JavaScript sites - JavaScript SEO

MARTIN SPLITT


Then passes the content it sees onto the indexing stage.


That is where the content is parsed and stored in our index.


When links are detected, they are passed back to the crawler and the cycle continues.


But what if some of the content is generated by JavaScript?


Well, JavaScript requires an extra stage in the cycle, the rendering stage.


Googlebot executes JavaScript when rendering the page.


But because this rendering stage is expensive,


it can't always be done immediately.


Separating indexing and rendering


allows us to index content that is available without JavaScript


as fast as possible and to come back and add


content that does require JavaScript at a later time.


The web is big, like really, really big.


So Google has seen over 130 trillion web pages.


Rendering all those pages takes some time.


Deferring the execution of JavaScript


allows us to get most of the content as quickly as possible


while not missing out on the content that does


require JavaScript to be run.


But what does that mean for your content?


It means that Googlebot can execute JavaScript


on your site.


But it can take longer for that content


to appear or update in search.


How long it takes for Google to render your pages


depends on many different factors.


And we can't make any guarantees here.


The rendering stage is run as best effort.


If getting content indexed quickly is a concern,


check out the episodes on the different rendering techniques


and the JavaScript SEO fundamentals episode.


It's worthwhile mentioning that JavaScript


can be pretty costly.


It needs to be downloaded, parsed, and executed.


Making sure the users get the content as quickly as possible


and leveraging the progressive parsing and rendering of HTML


is a great way to do so.


It's good to keep in mind that while Googlebot can run most


JavaScript, other crawlers or social media agents


might not be able to do so yet.


There are ways you can handle those user agents gracefully,


too.


We'll go into that in one of the future episodes.


We will also explore how to make JavaScript-based websites work


well with Google Search, including


answering common questions and looking at tools


that help your content's SEO.


So don't forget to subscribe to our webmasters channel


to be notified about our new JavaScript SEO videos.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

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


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Our plan is to talk a bit about what's happening at Google Search,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

how things work behind the scenes, and maybe just maybe have some fun along the way.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

My name is Gary Gidann M, a search advocate on the Search Relations team here at Google in Switzerland.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I'm joined today by Martin and Alan, both also on the Search Relations team.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Alan's focus on our team is e-commerce in Google Search.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Say hi, people.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Hi.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

That was Martin.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

G'day.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

That was not Martin. That was Alan.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Okay.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Today we thought we could talk about something exciting that's happening on the internet.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And that is Web3.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Today's episode is a little bit different because we are not going to talk about an official position of Google on Web3,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

but rather it's our thoughts about Web3.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And this whole topic started from discussion that we started in a team meeting a few weeks ago,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and we just stopped the discussion and decided to do it in public while still off the record, but in the public nonetheless.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

What could possibly go wrong?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Martin, please don't. Just don't.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So before we jump into Web3, maybe we should define the different stages of the web,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

because it is kind of confusing sometimes, and maybe some people don't know that there are different pseudo versions of the web.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So maybe let's talk about Web1.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

What do you think Web1 means?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

My first recollection of Web1 was actually back in my university days,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and the internet was just starting out, oh, am I dating how old I am?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

We won't worry about that detail.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And it was sort of like, oh, I want to find a manual for this new bit of software.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And you'd have all these shelves of printed documentation, and it took forever to get them up to date.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And Web1 to me was really about publishers making this content available on the web.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

You can get an update to a manual, you could search and find the manual even if you didn't have the printed version.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And that was a big step forward at the time.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But the content, it was all static.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

People could read it, but you couldn't do anything with it other than read it.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

You couldn't comment on it.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

It was just a publisher model.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And some people you referred to that then as the era of the read-only web,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

people sharing content online and other people could consume it.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

It was great. Save trees.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Less printouts, less of these thousand page manuals getting printed all over the shelves.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And from that point of view, I think it was a great step forward, at least for Web1.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Yeah, and I mean, back in the days, it was also costly.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

It was simply costly that the technology was relatively affordable and simple,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

but unless you had someone with the means of storing your stuff online somewhere,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

like a university or something, it was barely affordable.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

You would have to put money in to run a website and significant money at that.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Domains were significant, I think, at the price as well.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And yeah.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Do you remember what was your first encounter with Web1, Aircodes?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I think that was when I started working part time after school for a company in town that had a website.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

That was wild.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But there was no interaction with the website.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

It was basically just you going to the website and then just reading and that's it and leaving.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Yeah.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Or from my perspective as a webmaster, as we used to be called,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

you would put stuff on the website and then people could consume that content.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Roughly like broadcast media works as well.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

You can't really, you don't have a back channel.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And then in comparison, Web2 would be more read and write in the sense that you as a user could leave a comment


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

or you could even create your own content instead of having someone create the content and then you just consume it.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I don't remember checking the dates,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

but that feels like the era of the rise of WordPress and other similar CMSs where people could...


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So comments and likes, that was an obvious first one, but then being able to write your own blog


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and you can just do it straight through a web browser, that was pretty radical at the time.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And also a bunch of hosted services.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So if you wanted to have a blog, at the beginning you would have to actually have a web server or web space.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And then if you wanted one with a database that cost you extra and yada, yada, yada,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

you might run your blog from, I don't know, Frontpage or Dreamweaver or something.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But that was tedious because then you would have to write HTML.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But then came, I think, like LiveJournal and Google blogs and all these other services


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

where I just sign up with my email address, password, username, and then I get username.whateverservice.com.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And then I can just write stuff in a kind of what you see is what you get fashion.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Yeah. And then I think the next generation started to become the social platforms.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I can publish something and I don't have to have people find me because I can be on the social platform.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I can build a relationship between friends and so they can know about it and they can start sharing it.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And the difference there, I think, is you've got a built-in audience and distribution mechanism.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And frequently the platforms would solve a monetization problem.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Like if you're trying to get money from your content, the platforms would worry about showing ads and so forth.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And they'd give a cut of that to the creators of the content.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I'm guessing that these platforms are also, or were also, I guess they still are, good for, for example,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

small businesses who don't want to deal with setting up a server or figuring out how to deploy a WordPress installation.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And they can just go to a platform like WordPress.com and sign up with a free account.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And then they have their website with one click essentially, and then they just have to put up the content.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So from that perspective, it feels like these platforms solved a problem for a large portion of the web or potential web,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

where it enabled people to create content even if they didn't have the background for creating websites.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Or the resources.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Or the resources, yes.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Because now it became a lot more accessible.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Yeah. And if you think of media like video, I mean, it's not easy to host video and do a good job.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And there's lots of bandwidth issues and lots of storage issues.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So it's actually a freaking nightmare to host video.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Because hosting images is kind of easy because you have, let's say, like up to 1.5 megabyte image.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Let's say that's your limit on the image hoster.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But with videos, you have to keep connections open for a very long time usually, unless you split it.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Or you have to multiplex the video for whatever reason.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

It's actually very, very complicated.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I think also, and it's possibly towards, I don't know if you can call it towards the end,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

but the other aspect of the monetization sort of stuff is people started to do things like,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

well, how do I get paid other than just doing ads?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And you started getting into merchandising and tipping and Patreon sites and Kickstarter projects and so forth.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

To me, it was always been interesting comparing also to China,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

because China really sort of came late to the game, I think for the internet, for the mass thing.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But it started on mobile.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And so getting ads on your page is a much worse experience than a mobile device.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And so there's actually a lot of interesting innovation.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

It's actually come out of China and the whole area of monetization, if you look into it,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

because they couldn't rely on ads as being the primary source of revenue for these platforms.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

If you ever use the web on China, like WeChat or anything like that,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

it's actually fascinating because quite literally with a tap on the screen,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

you can pay for a service without actually leaving any window.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

It's so seamless when you're interacting, I'm air quoting here, local internet.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I actually love that part of it.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And I hope that we can figure out how to do that on a larger scale, not just in just one country.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

When you mentioned tipping, I was thinking of Twitch,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

which is a platform where people can stream video games or woodworking or cooking or whatever.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And every now and then, it feels so nice to just go and find creators who don't have viewers


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and then just leave a tip for them like, I don't know, like $1 or $2 or $3.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And some of them are so excited about that


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

because it's probably also very hard to get followers on these platforms.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Very often, it might feel that you are talking into a void


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and well, it's just hard to get the followers and the viewers.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But then you have the platforms that actually help or may be able to help with that.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And dig.com, D-I-G-G.com, back in the days was one of those where you could get easily


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

hundreds or thousands of people onto your blog just by submitting your interesting


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

air-coating, again, content to that sharing site or search engines.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

If any of them like a good one, they can send you traffic every now and then.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Yeah. If only we knew someone who streamed on Twitch.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I really, really tried not to say anything here.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But yeah, I do remember how great it felt when I...


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So I do stream live coding on open source every now and then.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And it felt so nice to see people popping up.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And it has been mostly people from my network, more or less.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So I did put it out on Twitter when I did that.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And then people who follow me on Twitter already followed me on Twitch as well.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

It feels nice.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And it's bizarre because it's this enclosed space and the web is so vast


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and it's so hard to get a little bit of fellowship or people seeing you


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

on the general web. On these platforms, it can be a little easier


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

because they are made to promote connections and they are made to promote discovery.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So it feels nice.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

It always feels nice when there's a Twitch follower or someone popping into the Twitch stream


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

who I don't know before. That's lovely.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So we defined web one.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

We pretty much defined web two as well,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

which means that we can probably move on to web three and try to define it.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And I'm emphasizing try here because before this episode I was doing some research,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

basically just to not sound too dumb on the podcast.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And it feels to me that web three is not too well defined.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Am I right on that?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Let's be honest, web two itself is also not very well defined


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

because depending on who you ask about web 2.0, it meant different things.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Like we said the read, write, rep.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But then a lot of people say, no, it's only the social web.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Other people say, no, it's the web of services like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, whatnot.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So I guess web three will be as fuzzy, no?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Well, I certainly think some people are trying to define the web.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

What web three means.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And for example, I take the crypto space.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

A lot of people comment about crypto and sort of say,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

hey, is this more of a marketing push as distinct from a really true name?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Because like the names web one and web two more came about because you look at history.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Like you look back and you sort of say, I can see a pattern there.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

We'll call that web one and I can see a new pattern web two.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

It didn't define let's do web two.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And suddenly the web became that.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

No, it was more sort of saying this is what the web has become.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And here's a way of just talking about describing it.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So but certainly crypto is one of those areas that is being pitched as web 3.0.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And it sort of it comes about from, I think, partly from the decentralized web


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

definition and saying, hey, crypto payments, they're distributed decentralized payments.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So shouldn't that be web three?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I don't fall into that camp myself.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And there's a lot of voices who don't like that definition.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Yeah, me. Yeah.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Okay. We've got some on this call too.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Same. So here's my problem with it.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So I came across web three the first time,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

long after I came across people who work on decentralized web technologies.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And that's what freaks me out about it is that if you look at, for instance,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

the Wikipedia definition, which starts off right off the bat with like web based


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

the web based on black chain technology,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

incorporating decentralization and token based economy.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So basically crypto and block chain.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And I don't know, but like 90% of the cases where someone yells,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

block chain is the solution, it's not.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And crypto has its own challenges.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And it starts off with so let's put aside the fact that there are


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and have been decentralized efforts long before web three was coined.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And they still go on and they still exist.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And I still think they are amazing.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

One to mention from my perspective would


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

be the interplanetary file system or IPFS for short. That's cool stuff.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

That's really, really cool stuff based on mesh routing and distributed hash tables.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

They don't need a block chain because by definition their stuff is distributed.


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And I don't know if they are now also


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using a block chain because I haven't followed their efforts in a while.


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But a block chain is fantastic where


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you don't want the central authority to agree on things.


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And I don't think for most of the web things you need an authority to begin with.


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And you don't need to agree on things like I want to pull.


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Like there's collaborative players by definition.


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I want to pull information from your site.


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You want to provide me this information.


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Now I see that we do want the block chain for the financial side of things.


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Maybe. Okay, sure.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But that's a completely different topic.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

For me, web monetization is one topic and then decentralization is another thing.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And then the question that I asked myself,


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and I think you brought this up earlier as well before we started recording,


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is isn't the web decentralized?


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What do you think? Is the web by default decentralized?


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Well, from my point of view,


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there's different definitions of what decentralized really means.


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Like from day one, there were web servers all around the world.


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And that's what made the web special.


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And Google search would come along and it would help people find them.


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And that's what search was about.


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Search didn't host the content.


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It directed you people to the content out there on the web.


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And that was a useful service and all the search engines, of course.


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To me, I think what people mean when they talk about decentralized web


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is not that the services are distributed around the world,


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because they always have been.


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I think it's more about the idea of communities.


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And you start getting into...


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I think about my kids.


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They're on Discord servers around the place


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and they hang out there with a group of friends


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and they talk about one topic.


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They might be talking about the games they're playing together.


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It might be a group of school kids and so forth.


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But it's really that community is the aspect of the decentralized.


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Because the thing about Discord in particular, for example,


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is it's not public. It's not on the open web.


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You can't search and find your content on it.


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And so you get these small communities.


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And so to me, decentralized is more about,


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I've got this content and only members of that community


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have got access to that content.


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And so it's a more personal relationship with it.


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And you've got many of these sort of communities.


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And to me, that's really what decentralized is more about.


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Right. But isn't that textbook definition of walled gardens?


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It's an interesting question.


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And walled gardens is usually, to me,


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incurs the idea of paywall.


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And these communities is more a matter of,


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I'm going to have this group of people that I trust,


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that I can share my opinions.


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And because it's a community in a smaller group,


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I'm going to be more open with them.


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And so to me, that's the more the intent


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or the feeling of the decentralized community


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is more, it's a community aspect.


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It's not that it's a paywall in front of it.


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Now, you can disagree with that sort of thing,


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but that's sort of the feeling I get between them.


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The awkward feeling I have about these,


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and I will name them walled gardens,


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because to me, they are walled gardens.


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And it doesn't matter who runs them.


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It can be YouTube. YouTube is a walled garden.


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If I upload my content to YouTube,


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it is in YouTube's hands.


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And that's us, Google.


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And I don't have a problem with Google doing that


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because they provide me a lot of,


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as Gary said, video hosting is a pain in the lower back.


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And they take that away from me.


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So I can create content on YouTube.


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The problem there is that everything that I create,


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my community that I create and plant into a walled garden,


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doesn't matter which can be Facebook,


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can be MySpace, doesn't matter,


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is in the house, on the property of someone


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that can make whatever rules they want


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and they can change these rules.


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So if I take my community there,


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trusting my host to be playing nice,


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and they push me out of the window


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and close the window behind me,


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then there's nothing I can do about that.


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And that is okay because it's their house.


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They can do whatever they want inside their house.


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But I lose sovereignty.


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I lose the freedom to do what I think I want to do.


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And now you can argue, yeah,


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but that's the nice and decentralized nature of the web.


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You can build your own, just like host your videos


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on your own server.


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But then I have all these hassles


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of hosting video for myself.


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Or you can host your community with your own Discord server,


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or you can run your own TeamSpeak server,


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or you can run whatever on your own machines.


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But that is tricky to do in reality.


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I'm picking up on the sovereignty


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and making your own rules.


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That reminds me of Tor, the Tor network, the Onion network,


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which in the great scheme of things


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and the idea itself is actually pretty neat.


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I could see that this might go in a very nice direction,


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but then it very fast became this,


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I don't know how to say this nicely,


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but a cesspool of garbage.


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And if you want to find shady things on the internet,


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then you go to the Tor.


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And perhaps the lawlessness that came to be on the Tor


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might be the result of people making their own rules


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about what can you host on your site and what you cannot,


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plus the privacy that Tor offers to the hosters,


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to whoever created the websites.


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So that's also a very scary aspect


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that comes with a decentralized web


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where moderation might not be the easiest.


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And I absolutely think that moderation should exist


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because, well, we are humans.


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Yeah, absolutely true.


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Nonetheless, I do think it's tricky


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if the moderation is out of your hands


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because, yes, for as long as we know,


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most of us agree with how the moderation is done currently


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in most of these walled gardens,


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but we don't know if that's continuing to be the same thing.


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And also it hinders us in finding things.


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And I worry about, we hear this in the context of politics a lot,


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that there's like these bubbles that form


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and people might fall into a trap of misinformation


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and then engulf themselves in a walled garden that is full of it.


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And it's hard to be informed about what you are seeing


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or what you might be coming across


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if that is hidden from everyone's eyes.


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I mean, the privacy of a non-public community is great until it isn't.


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And also, what if it's a great non-public community


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and I just can't find it?


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On the web, I have a chance of finding it.


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How do we find good communities if they are not visible to the public?


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How do you discover these communities?


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To me, I think an interesting segue here is into content creators.


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Like Google has got the Google Creator channel now.


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We've been doing a bit of work talking about


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how can you get small content creators and how can they succeed on the web?


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And one of the things that we've been hearing from them


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is they see creating their own website as a logical step in their growth.


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So they'll start on a platform and they'll start on Facebook


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or on Twitter or whatever the platform they're on.


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But they also have a fear.


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Like if there's an algorithm change,


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even if they don't get knocked off the platform,


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if there's an algorithm change,


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it can make a big difference to their traffic and it's out of their control.


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And so one of the things some of them like to do is


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they stay on those platforms, but they want to have their own home.


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They want to own their content. They want to control their destiny more.


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And so they'll actually set up their own website with their own domain name


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where they've got complete control over that content.


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And then they publish some of their content on the public forums.


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And so they can still be found. They still share some information.


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But then they reserve some of their content for their own community,


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either on their own website or wherever it is.


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And so then they have more control.


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They sort of feel safer in a way because they're less,


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and I won't say completely not at the mercy,


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but they're less at the mercy of these platforms and algorithm changes


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that might otherwise have a big impact on the amount of traffic they get.


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And I think you can see this, especially on platforms like TikTok,


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where they are quite tricked about what you can post,


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but it can bring for the creator a ton of traffic,


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as in to the content itself.


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And then the creators very often move or expand to other platforms as well.


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Like, let's say that a creator starts creating Vimeo videos as well,


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or videos on Vimeo.com, or they get into Twitch,


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the streaming platform, or YouTube or whatever.


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And then some, as you said, Ellen,


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they reserve some of the content for Patreon patrons,


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and then that content will be only accessible to the patrons of the creator.


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And then they make some money.


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And that's supposedly good for them,


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because money brings happiness.


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I was just wondering though, in terms of creating your own website,


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how these days...


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Do you really want to create your own website?


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I think these days it's easier than ever to create your own website,


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because you get to choose your own adventure, kind of.


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Like, you can...


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Let's say you are a not so technically adept creator,


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and you just want a photo blog, for instance,


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because that's what you do, photography.


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Then I think uploading your photos onto some service that hosts them for you,


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and then putting it into a hosted WordPress or whatever CMS you choose,


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is relatively simple.


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And at least for WordPress, if you don't care for your own domain,


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and are fine with a WordPress.com subdomain, it's pretty much free.


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At least you get started for free, and then you can move from there.


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If you're more tech-savvy, then you can also choose to use GitHub


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or GitHub Pages to host your stuff.


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You can set up your own server.


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Servers are really cheap these days.


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Cloud platforms have free quotas and free tiers


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that, again, get you started for free.


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So you can start your own website under your own control


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without investing heavily, which I think is great.


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If you necessarily want to do that, I don't know,


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because there's maintenance attached to it too.


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How do you think this would work on a decentralized web?


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Where you...


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How would you create your website on a decentralized web?


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Would it be any different?


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I think there are multiple options for this.


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One is to, instead of publishing it to a known destination,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

which is your server that is under your control,


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you publish it to some sort of distributed storage.


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I think that's the approach that IPFS is taking,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

where everyone has part of the routing information


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and everyone has part of the content as well.


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And thus, you have some more decentralization


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in the sense of, if I am creating my own server, great.


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Now I am making the rules.


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Unless someone emails my hosting company and says,


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this guy is a fraudster, or I stop paying my bills


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and then this information gets taken down.


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With a truly decentralized system, that would not be possible.


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I don't know how exactly publishing would look like.


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As far as I know, publishing on IPFS looks pretty much like uploading to a web space.


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One of the projects I was playing with recently was using Firebase for this.


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I actually, using the Firebase database in the backend,


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and then I actually built the whole application in JavaScript


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running in the browser.


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And so, I was using React, using Next.js,


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put it together, upload static files onto Firebase.


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Firebase did the authentication stuff for me with a simple JavaScript API.


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It did all the database access, so I just did client API calls


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and Firebase looked after all the authentication.


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And so, I knocked up some simple web apps quite easily,


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even with authentication and persistence.


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And there's no code running on the server at all,


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which I like from a security aspect.


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I'm sorry, I think, did you mention JavaScript?


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Yes.


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Are you saying that JavaScript is the future?


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It's the present.


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Hahahaha!


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High five, Alan! High five!


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That just ruined my day.


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Ah, it made mine. That's so nice.


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No, but I think that's an interesting thing.


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So, for us, it's quite natural to type in URLs,


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at least short URLs, or scan a QR code that has a URL on it.


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I remember when COVID hit,


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pretty much all the restaurants, once they were open again,


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or every takeaway place that allowed me to take away food,


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didn't have a printed menu available,


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but they had a QR code on the table so that you could scan the QR code


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and then see the live version because it might change on a daily basis


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and they don't want to reprint and laminate a menu every day.


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And I can see...


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So, I had a coworker once, Jose Perez-Arguinaga,


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if I pronounced his name correctly, I hope I do if you listen.


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I'm sorry if I butchered your name, Jesus.


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He had this one post on some platform that went viral


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because he basically used a data URL


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that was relatively short and relatively easy to just drag into your toolbar


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or just as a bookmark or something.


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And that was a full-blown editor.


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So, you had a text editor, like a JavaScript application, if you wish,


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or like an HTML application rather than anything,


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that allowed you to edit a text file in your browser


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that ran from a copy-pasteable URL so you could make it a QR code.


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No server whatsoever.


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It just put the HTML straight in a data URL and that worked.


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And I found that very, very interesting.


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And I was like, we should probably explore this concept more


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

of how can we encode the content into something that we can share more easily


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so that we don't have to have a backend infrastructure


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for things that don't necessarily require backend infrastructure.


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But then it's also not searchable.


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Like, that is only where you are at that moment.


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Yeah, because there's literally no place that can be crawled.


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Right.


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It doesn't exist.


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It's ephemeral.


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It floats in space.


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That's true.


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Yeah.


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So, in a Web3 world, how do you think a search engine like Steve


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or Google Search would exist?


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How would that work?


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Because we've been talking about world gardens, for example.


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We've been talking about JavaScript as a choice of programming language


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for whatever reason.


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And it feels like search engines in general are not well equipped


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for these kinds of things.


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That would require us to go away from the crawl index and serve kind of pattern


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that we have where we are discovering resources through URLs


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and then these URLs point to documents or things that have other URLs embedded in them.


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And then we go there, be it a site map or be it just links on an HTML page.


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We would probably have to figure out a way to tap into where people are exchanging information.


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And that might be a social platform.


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That might be a non-public community.


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That might be a blockchain storage.


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Who knows?


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But I'm guessing we still will continue to communicate information somewhere.


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It's not that these like, I can't just create a non-hosted or un-hosted application


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that just floats in space and then expect people to stumble upon it and then use it.


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There will be some form of human communication.


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And it could be, let's just play a game of Let's Pretend.


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We have Steve and we want to make Steve ready for the future.


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We are now 20 years in the future or 100 years in the future.


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And there is such a thing as local communities


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where people are exchanging information based on where they are.


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Well, then this exchange needs to happen somewhere.


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Maybe it's QR codes that are being exchanged on phones.


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So in that case, Steve would have to be on the phones where the QR codes are being


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scanned in order to grab the QR codes as they have been scanned and then present


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them somewhere where people can find them.


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So if I'm like, oh, dang, how did I get the information of the cafe around the corner again?


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Oh, I'll ask Steve.


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And then Steve knows that, oh, yeah, this other person has scanned this QR code


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and told us it's for this cafe.


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You're searching for this cafe.


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So here's the information that would be encoded in the QR code if you were in front of that cafe.


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Something like that, I guess.


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I don't know.


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If you ask my point of view, I think it comes back to the content creation strategy


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and deciding where to publish your content.


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I think the creators should have control over what gets available in search engines.


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It sort of ties in a little bit to the value.


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So one of the definitions of Web3 is it's going to be the value web.


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How do I do a better job of allowing people to get online and make a living out of it?


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Even though they're sharing content and new models of getting it.


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We've talked about patron and tipping and you've got concepts like product placements


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and ads and consulting and training, paid training content.


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It's a whole lot of different models around for actually doing that.


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But I think it's up to the content creator to decide what they want to make available


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to what level of community.


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And I think that's the right model myself.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I think they own their content.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

They should control what they're going to share and what they're not going to share.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And I think there's also this divide between something that exchanges value


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and something that is providing a value in itself.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

As in like, if I am a service and I want to announce my services to other people,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

then that monetizes itself because then people will use my services and pay for my services.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

But what if I am a creator, as you say?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So there's like this divide between people using it as a way to engage in conversations.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And then there's something where the conversation itself has a value.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Like if I create a cooking tutorial or if I create a book or a video series


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

or an animated series or a cartoon or whatever, then that has value in itself


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and is not to establish value later on.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So then, yeah, for the latter kind of content,


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

we definitely need to figure out monetization.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And that means also giving creators the control and who they want to share to what level with.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And then search engines also have to figure out how to present that to users who are looking for that, right?


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Yeah, because you still want the discovery. Yeah, true.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Okay. So I think we already spent like 30 minutes on defining different versions of the web.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And maybe we don't want to dig further in without actually researching this more because, well, we are not experts.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

We are just three people who are excited about the future of the internet.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

So maybe we can cut it here and maybe in a few months we can come back to this topic


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and then discuss it further as we learn more about how the web is evolving.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

And that's it for this episode. Thank you, Alan, for joining us.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

You can find Alan on Twitter at aaacant99.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Next time on Search Off The Record, we'll be carrying on with our spotlight series


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

and chatting to Michelle Robbins, who is one of the most inspiring web professionals out there.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

We've been having fun with these podcast episodes.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

I hope you, the listener, have found them both entertaining and insightful, too.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

Feel free to drop us a note on Twitter at Google Search C or chat with us at one of the next virtual events we go to if you have any thoughts.


Let’s talk about Web 3.0

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


Let’s talk about Web 3.0


Claim Your Knowledge Panel (WMConf MTV '19)

Hi, I'm Lauren from our search team.


Oh, back one.


And this is Alex from our Geo team.


And we're really excited to share a little


about knowledge panels today and how you can claim them


and engage with them.


So as we heard earlier this morning, billions of searches


take place on Google every year.


And many of those are about people and organizations.


When searchers find the people and orgs that you represent,


we want to give you the tools to make a great first impression


with your knowledge panel.


Next.


So for those of you that are intimately


familiar with knowledge panels already,


indulge me for a moment.


And for those that may be new to knowledge panels,


here's a quick overview.


But the knowledge panel is an information box


that appears when you search for entities that


are in the knowledge graph.


People, businesses, things, places, locations, those.


They give you a quick snapshot of information


on a topic based on Google's understanding


of available content on the web.


So if you hear about an awesome new restaurant


or a great nonprofit and you come to Google,


this is a quick way for you to learn more and get


to know the topic.


So based on the topic of the knowledge panel,


there may be different information or features


included.


For example, if the topic of the knowledge panel


is a business that serves a specific location or a service


area, the knowledge panel may have options


that are specific to businesses.


So we know that people and organizations


with information included in knowledge panels,


like those that you may work with or represent,


are authoritative on the topic.


You are arguably one of the best authorities on yourself.


And we have tools for you to provide direct feedback


and suggest any additions or changes.


So the tools may look a little different


based on the topic of the knowledge panel.


But the first step is always to do a search


and look for a prompt to claim.


You'll be guided through a verification process


where we validate that you, in fact, do represent that topic.


So once you've claimed the knowledge panel,


you'll want to take a look at the info in it,


review that information, and suggest any needed updates


or additions.


In a study done with location-based businesses,


they found that businesses that complete their information


are twice as likely to be considered


reputable by consumers.


So this is definitely something that you


want to do to make a great first impression if you haven't


already.


So to suggest those changes, after claiming the knowledge


panel, the next time you do a search for the person,


the business, the organization that you represent,


you'll see a special header at the top that invites


you to suggest changes.


When prompted, add any required information and documentation


from the open web.


Your suggestions will be reviewed by a dedicated team.


And you'll receive email updates along the way,


letting you know about the status of your suggestion.


If you represent a business that serves a location,


Alex is going to take you through that suggestion flow.


ALEX RUSSELL-GARNIER-WILSON Thanks, Lauren.


And so when you see something like this,


you'll be able to edit things like hours, customer service


numbers, street addresses, websites.


The same information that shows up on the knowledge panel


also shows up in Google Maps and other local search formats


for Google.


So this is a primary way for people


to understand and identify the business


and get in contact with it.


An important part here is also making sure


that once searchers finally discover or rediscover you,


you should let them know where to go next so they


can continue their journey.


Depending on, again, the topic of the knowledge panel,


you should be able to add things like websites, social media


presence, so that searchers can take the next step in terms


of finding you and discovering what you do.


Engaging searchers is also super important.


And so we have a format that allows


for certain types of knowledge panels to create content


and engage with consumers and searchers on Google.


All those billions of people that were searching for you


that Lauren mentioned, they should


be able to see those updates.


Depending on the type of knowledge panel you own,


they should be able to see those types of content


immediately once you've surfaced them in the knowledge panel.


And to get started, it's pretty easy.


For people and brands, all you need to do


is search for yourself.


And you should be able to see the claim knowledge panel link.


And then for local businesses, you


should go to business.google.com.


Thanks.


Year in review 2022

Let's move on.


Year in review 2022

Welcome to another episode of Search Off the Record, a podcast


Year in review 2022

coming to you from the Google Search


Year in review 2022

team discussing all things search


Year in review 2022

and maybe having some fun along the way.


Year in review 2022

My name is John, and I'm joined today


Year in review 2022

by Lizzie and Gary from the Search Relations team,


Year in review 2022

of which I'm also a part of.


Year in review 2022

Today, we're doing a year-end review episode.


Year in review 2022

Hi, everyone.


Year in review 2022

LIZZIE KENDRICK-HAWKMANN.


Year in review 2022

Hello.


Year in review 2022

GARY ILLYES.


Year in review 2022

So today, we're recording in the studio, which is a lot of fun.


Year in review 2022

But unfortunately, we're missing Gary.


Year in review 2022

Where are you today, Gary?


Year in review 2022

I'm right here.


Year in review 2022

Thank you for asking.


Year in review 2022

Wait, wait.


Year in review 2022

Are you saying that you're missing him?


Year in review 2022

Yes.


Year in review 2022

In your heart.


Year in review 2022

GARY ILLYES. Thank you for making this awkward.


Year in review 2022

Appreciate it.


Year in review 2022

That's why you invited me here, right?


Year in review 2022

It's my special talent.


Year in review 2022

It's fine.


Year in review 2022

GARY ILLYES. More awkward.


Year in review 2022

Fantastic.


Year in review 2022

So today, like I mentioned, we're


Year in review 2022

going to do a year-end review, kind of looking back


Year in review 2022

at the last year of the podcast and at some of the stuff


Year in review 2022

that team has done.


Year in review 2022

Maybe thinking about the podcast first,


Year in review 2022

do you have any special or favorite episodes


Year in review 2022

that you really enjoy doing or really enjoyed listening to?


Year in review 2022

I really liked the interview-style episodes.


Year in review 2022

It was loads of fun recording them and loads of fun


Year in review 2022

listening back to them when they were processed and released.


Year in review 2022

And I would want to do more of those,


Year in review 2022

but maybe not with people.


Year in review 2022

What do you mean?


Year in review 2022

I don't know.


Year in review 2022

Like, create a bot, like a GPT-3 bot that answers our questions.


Year in review 2022

Questions, maybe.


Year in review 2022

We could do an episode that's interacting with the bot.


Year in review 2022

Yeah.


Year in review 2022

Or we create two bots, and then they interact with each other.


Year in review 2022

What can possibly go wrong?


Year in review 2022

We don't have to do the podcast anymore.


Year in review 2022

We outsource the work.


Year in review 2022

Yes.


Year in review 2022

And we don't have to pay them.


Year in review 2022

What do you think, John?


Year in review 2022

I think that's a terrible idea, Gary.


Year in review 2022

It's like, I don't know.


Year in review 2022

Thank you.


Year in review 2022

I'm missing your good ideas.


Year in review 2022

That is a burn.


Year in review 2022

John, have you and Gary switched places?


Year in review 2022

Are you telling me something?


Year in review 2022

Oh, so that's my line, right?


Year in review 2022

This is disconcerting.


Year in review 2022

I don't know.


Year in review 2022

Have you switched roles?


Year in review 2022

OK.


Year in review 2022

So more guest posts.


Year in review 2022

That sounds like fun.


Year in review 2022

Guest posts?


Year in review 2022

Oh.


Year in review 2022

Did you say guest posts?


Year in review 2022

Guest recordings, I guess.


Year in review 2022

Cool.


Year in review 2022

But more people in the podcast to kind of chat with,


Year in review 2022

people who are outside of the team.


Year in review 2022

Yeah.