just because we can't crawl as much as we would like.


English Google SEO office-hours from January 28, 2022

But for the most part, if you're talking about some pages


are good and crawling is reasonably fast,


then I wouldn't expect to see a relationship between the Core


by Vital scores and the crawling and indexing of the website.


OK.


We still have a bunch of questions submitted here,


but I also want to get through as many of your hands


as possible.


Let's see.


Maybe we'll just go over to Luciana.


Oh, no, we can't hear you.


Are you?


Yes.


It's fine now.


Yeah?


Yeah.


Of course.


I work with the online publisher.


It's a website that has 25 years.


It is a website that has 25 years of experience.


It is an old website.


And my question is about migration, subdomain to domain.


It's a recurrent question here.


But in my case, we are concerned about this,


because this migration, this subdomain,


has spent 40 years, isn't recent, or new subdomain.


And we are concerned if we benefit with this migration,


because this is the main part of the section.


This subdomain is more important section


in website about news that involve politics,


daily life, public health, policy.


And for this, we are concerned about this migration.


This is case, yeah.


OK, and you're migrating from a subdomain to a different domain


or to a subdirectory?


What kind of migration?


The same direction.


The same.


OK, so to a different subdomain, from one subdomain


to another subdomain?


No, no, no.


It's the subdomain to main domain.


Yeah.


OK.


I think you can do this.


So let me see.


I think one of the aspects here that is important when you're


moving from a subdomain to the main domain


to a different directory, for example,


is that we need to look at the new website overall


and kind of re-evaluate the overall situation.


And that means that it's hard to know ahead of time


what exactly will happen.


And it's something where you can kind of use your knowledge


and your experience to figure out a little bit what


possibly could happen.


But it's hard to know exactly because if you


move from one domain to a different domain,


then it's easy for our systems to say, take everything here


and just copy it over here.


But if you move from a subdomain to a main domain,


you're essentially merging different parts of a website.


And that final outcome that you have


will depend on your final structure.


So I think overall, it's something


where you can do these kind of changes,


but you kind of have to watch out that you


do them in a reasonable way.


And what I would recommend doing here


is making sure that you have a very clear mapping


of your old website to the new one


and then really checking all of those old URLs.


You can use the various tools to test that,


but really make sure that everything is moved properly


and then double check by crawling the main domain


again separately to make sure that really


your new website structure is OK and all of the pages


can be found.


And for the most part, I assume that that will be fine.


And I mean, it's possible to do other mistakes as well,


but those are usually the more common types of issues.


I don't know what I would recommend


in terms of how long this will take


or what the final effect will be.


I suspect maybe you'll see an effect for a couple of weeks


until things settle down, but it should be possible.


If you're a Google News publisher,


then I would also make sure that you contact whoever


on the Google News site that is kind of appropriate for you


in the Help Center.


For Google News publishers, there's


also a contact form just to let them know that you're


moving from this set of URLs to a different set of URLs.


Sometimes they need to make some changes in the publisher


center or I don't know all of the details there,


but just kind of to make sure that they're aware of this


as well.


But otherwise, for Search itself, making that move,


making sure everything is lined up


is essentially what you need to do.


Thank you.


Let's see.


Michael.


Hi, John.


Thank you for taking the time and sharing


your expertise with us.


So I've been doing SEO for, I don't know, like 14 years.


Testing.


Oops.


But my experience has been solely


with enterprise-level websites, big name brands.


So a friend of mine started a new school locally,


and I have no local experience, but he's wondering why his


school is not showing up in Google.


So I said, well, it's probably a new website, et cetera.


It takes some time to build backlinks and authority.


What would you say are the signals


that Google looks for for an upstart to come in and start


ranking for local search?


Like, what things should we pay attention to?


Like, I haven't done a Google My Business account,


but I assume that that's probably step number one.


Did they shoot themselves in the foot


by not getting a.edu address?


They used.com.


I didn't think so.


So is it just they need to build backlinks?


Like, what are the things that you guys are looking for?


I think, first of all, I would double


check what the problem is.


If they're really not indexed at all or if it's something


where they're indexed, but they're just not ranking


where they would like to rank.


Yeah, they're indexed because I did a site colon, whatever.


OK.


The local business entry or the Google Business Profiles,


they call it now, I would definitely set that up,


especially if it's a local business, a local school,


because that makes it a lot easier for us to kind


of understand the address, the location, where it makes


sense to show that.


It also gives it the opportunity to show in Maps


and kind of this kind of, I don't know, combined search


result thing.


So I would definitely set that up.


The other aspect with regards to, I guess,


the ranking side of things, that's


something that essentially just takes time.


And sometimes that's something where


you can help out by making sure that you're


listed in the appropriate local directories, whatever


is relevant for schools.


I don't know.


The other aspect, now, I think those are pretty much


the main things there.


And with regards to the domain name, the TLD,


I wouldn't worry about that.


That's not something where we would say, oh, it says edu,


therefore it must rank for all school-related queries.


We essentially just see that as a different domain.


And that's fine.


SPEAKER 1 Great.


Well, thank you so much.


SPEAKER 2 Cool.


All right.


Lindsay.


SPEAKER 3 Hi.


Thanks for your time.


I think I can be quite quick.


I know we're sort of on time now.


I know that Google generally recommends, oh, did I lose you?


SPEAKER 2 No.


SPEAKER 3 OK.


Sorry.


I just lost my camera here.


I know Google generally recommends against geo-redirects


on websites for a whole bunch of reasons.


The fact that Googlebot won't be able to properly crawl


and index all of the sites, for example.


So I'm familiar with that argument.


I'm wondering if the same recommendation applies


or if the situation is different for news content or news


websites.


I ask because a number of major news providers,


including CNN, BBC, The Guardian, et cetera,


all have had geo-redirects in place for quite a few years,


and none of them seem to be experiencing negative effects


on the ability of their content to be indexed.


That definitely applies to all kinds of websites.


So from our point of view, usually the geo-redirects


are more a matter of making it technically hard for us


to crawl this content, especially if you're redirecting


users from the US to a different version of the website.


Then we will just follow that redirect


because Googlebot usually just crawls from one location.


And then it's less a matter of, I don't know, quality signals


or anything like that.


It's more that, well, if Google can't see your web pages,


then we can't index.


And that's essentially the primary reason


why we don't recommend doing these things.


I don't know if some of these sites


are doing something where some users are being redirected


and others are not being redirected,


and maybe Googlebot is not being redirected.


It's possible.


From our point of view, I don't think


that would do them any favors because it would usually


end up in a situation where you have multiple URLs


with exactly the same content in the search results,


and you're kind of competing with yourself.


And then it's less a matter of doing something sneaky


and kind of sneaking your way into the results,


but more like, well, actually, you're,


I don't know, duplicating things on your site.


We're finding your content in multiple locations.


We don't know which one to rank best,


so we'll kind of have to make a guess at that.


So from that point of view, my suspicion,


without checking any of these sites offhand,


is that we're aware of these geo redirects.


We're seeing them take place.


And we're kind of, from a technical point of view,


trying to crawl and index the right pages there,


but not that there's anything, I don't know, sneaky happening


behind the scenes there.


It's also not the case that we would see this


as kind of an attempt of cloaking


or as something that would be against the Webmaster


Guidelines.


It's really just purely from a technical point of view,


if you make it hard for us to find and index your content,


it's going to be hard for us to do what you want us to do.


So that's kind of why we have these recommendations.


Thank you.


Sure.


Let's see.


Maybe I'll take one more, and then we can pause the recording.


I still have more time afterwards, if any of you


want to hang around and ask more questions.


Isabel, you're up next.


Hi, everybody.


My question is about, for our website,


our brand keyword is filtered from the Google result.


So if we are looking for Power Planet, our brand keyword,


the result filtered our website, but just in Spain.


We would like to know why Google do that,


if maybe we are doing something wrong, or I don't know,


because this behavior is from one month ago,


because before, when we are looking for Power Planet,


the website is showing the result.


OK.


I think I saw your question in the YouTube list questions


as well.


I took a quick look at the search results there,


and I wasn't sure which website you meant,


because we do show some websites that seem to have Power Planet


in the name.


So I'm not 100% sure which ones you're looking at there.


If you have specific URLs that you


feel are missing from these search results,


I would love to have more information on that.


So if you can add maybe a reply to your question on YouTube


with the URLs, I'm happy to take a look at those examples


and see what might be happening there.


In general, it's not the case that just because you


have certain words in your domain name


that we would always show your website.


So I think just to set expectations there.


But it seems kind of weird that you say, well,


my website used to be showing for its name,


but now it's not showing at all.


That, to me, sounds like maybe something else


is happening there.


But it's also something where I would probably


need to take a look at the details


to see exactly what might be happening there.


It's really hard to guess offhand.


The usual cases for things not ranking for the domain name


are more that you have a very generic domain name,


and lots of other people would like to rank for these things.


So for example, if you call your website cheapsmartphone.com,


it doesn't mean that we will show your website


if someone is searching for a cheap smartphone.


Because we think when someone is searching


for a cheap smartphone, maybe they just


want a cheap smartphone.


Maybe they don't exactly want to go to your website.


But in a case like yours, I feel Power Planet


is kind of specific enough that we


should be able to recognize that that belongs to a website


and show that.


But like I mentioned, if you can give me some more details


on what you're seeing in the thread on YouTube


or maybe in the help forum, that would be super useful.


OK.


I will add the domain for research.


Thank you.


Cool.


Let me pause the recording here.


I'll get back to you.


To all of you who are still raising your hands and still


have more questions, I see some in the chat as well.


If you're watching this on YouTube,


thanks for sticking around to the end.


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


I usually post the link for the office hour session


early in the week.


And you can add your questions there.


And usually they're on Fridays, either morning or evening


my time.


In any case, thank you for dropping by.


And I'll see you in the next one.


Thank you for dropping by.


And thanks for all of the questions so far.


English Google SEO office-hours from April 1, 2021

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


SEO Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I am a search advocate here at Google in Switzerland.


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


where people can join in and ask their questions


around their website and web search.


And we can try to find some answers.


A handful of things were submitted on YouTube already.


So we can have some of those to go through.


But as always, if any of you want


to get started with the first question,


feel free to jump on in.


Robin, go for it.


Oh, we can't hear you.


Oh, no.


You're not muted.


But the microphone doesn't seem to work.


Can you hear me now?


You can?


Sorry, I'm fixing this.


I'm sorry.


Here you go.


OK, it's fixed.


So thank you for your continuity.


I don't want to take too much time.


So if I take too much time, please interrupt me.


I'm wondering, how does it work when lots of links to websites


are deleted, for example, after a manual penalty?


Is it considered some kind of alarm signal


by the Google algorithm, which would, for example,


take lots of quality pages that were on page 1


and push them far, far in the pages 4 or 5?


So it wouldn't be considered an alarm signal in the sense


that it's like links come and links go,


and that's kind of normal.


I think the effect that you might


see is if the website previously was artificially


showing too visibly in search because of those links,


and then you remove those links, then


obviously that artificial support is no longer there.


And then you would see changes in search.


But that's not because we see, oh, lots of links disappeared,


or lots of links became nofollow or got disavowed.


It's more that, oh, there are fewer links,


and we do use links to some extent in our ranking.


So we don't have that support anymore.


OK.


So if, yeah, for example, on a website


I saw it goes far, far, far, far in the pages,


it's considered as where it should be by the algorithm.


I mean, where it should be, that's always


open for discussion.


But that's, I mean, it's kind of tricky


because if these were, say, more kind of like spammy


or artificial links, then usually our algorithm


is trying to recognize that and ignore that already.


So if you're removing things that we're already ignoring,


then you wouldn't see any change.


Yes.


So, yeah.


Maybe those were some good links.


Could it be because when you get a manual penalty,


in general, right, I'm speaking general, not specifically,


but it feels very urgent, and you


have to act super, super quickly,


and it feels it's very fearful because your website has


disappeared maybe.


And could it be that maybe some website's owner can take away


too many links and some of them that should be OK?


Yeah.


I think that that happens every now and then.


But I mean, the important part is also


it's like we use a lot more than just links for ranking.


So it's not like if you removed one link too many,


then suddenly your website will disappear kind of thing.


We use a lot of different factors.


And I do understand kind of the side that, oh, you


get a manual action.


And it's like, oh, I will just delete everything.


And it's like, make sure everything is clean.


It's terrifying.


It's terrifying when you do that.


I think going too extreme is not very useful.


But it's sometimes tricky.


Like if it's your website and you care about it


and you just want to get everything cleaned up again,


then I could see that some people might say,


well, I'll just remove everything I can find.


OK.


So I have the next question.


Please refer to your therapy if I take too much time.


So I understand that backlinks are not


the only signal you use.


But still, I believe they're a pretty strong signal.


And so when you read the Google guidelines,


it just says, well, for link building,


you don't have to do anything.


Just make quality, authoritative, original content,


and the links will come by themselves.


And I'm pretty sure that in the long term, that's how it works.


Sure.


But it might take years, and not one or two years,


but especially in younger markets,


like in Europe, in France, and stuff like that.


It might take years.


And so is that an inconvenience that Google assumes and, I


mean, understands and recognizes and says,


well, that's just how it is?


Or are there ways that you can, well, make it a little quicker?


Like encourage people to, hey, look,


I've done some really quality stuff here.


Yeah.


I mean, there are two aspects there.


On the one hand, if you're in an area


where it's hard to kind of get support


from the ecosystem in terms of links, then it's like,


keep in mind, everyone else who is in that area


has the same problem.


So it's kind of like if you have a knitting


store in a small city, it's kind of normal


that you wouldn't get a lot of links to a site like that.


But at the same time, the other knitting stores


in the same city, they have the same problem.


It's not that one site gets 50 million links


and the other site gets zero.


It's kind of an even playing field.


And the other thing with regards to links


is our guidelines are pretty specific around the type


of links that we would consider unnatural.


And like you mentioned, the approach


of creating something really fantastic and people


will recognize it over time and kind of link to it over time,


I think that's one aspect.


But there's also a lot that you can do to encourage that.


It's kind of similar to how when you start a small business,


you do advertising.


You encourage people to come to your website


to look at your content.


And if you have some great content,


then obviously those people have a chance


of linking to your content.


Other things you could do are kind


of the more PR-oriented outreach things, where


you do something really fantastic on your website


and you reach out to maybe local press or something.


It's like, hey, look at this cool stuff that I did here.


I'm happy to talk to you about it.


Would you be interested in featuring that?


And those are the kind of things where you're not going out


and placing links on other people's websites,


but rather you're kind of reaching out to them


and saying, look, I have this really cool stuff.


Maybe you would like to take a look.


Maybe you would like to write about it on your site as well.


And that's, I think, the kind of thing,


especially with newer businesses,


where you can kind of take a step up


and be a little bit more proactive rather than just


like I put a website on the internet


and maybe hopefully someone would find it someday.


Because if you do that, then it's


really hard for us to recognize that there's actually


something really useful and important here.


So kind of taking that step and dragging people to your website


and saying, look at this cool stuff, and if they like it,


then they can do something with it.


If they don't like it, then it's obviously a different problem.


AUDIENCE 1 – Forwarding on that subject, so in those kinds of PR moves


that you can make, how do collaborations


work in the eyes of Google?


Like what's allowed and what's not allowed?


From our side, anything where there's no exchange of value


for a link is essentially OK.


I don't know, probably not anything,


but for the most part, if you're not doing something


where you're saying, I will link to you if you link to me,


or I will pay you this much money if you link to me,


then essentially that's OK.


The important part is really that the other website


is kind of deciding on their own to link to your website.


AUDIENCE 1 – OK, OK, OK.


It gets maybe a little tricky there,


because sometimes you invite someone and they collaborate,


and they ask for something in return,


especially in younger markets like here.


Sometimes people are very like, I give,


but you give, they really want that exchange.


And you say, but we can't really, it's tricky.


Yeah.


Yeah, I don't know what exactly you're working on,


so it's hard for me to say.


But I mean, it's something where it is sometimes tricky.


But I think the important part is also, like I mentioned,


we do use a lot more than just links


with regards to our ranking.


So links are especially important in the beginning


when you're just starting out.


Like if we don't know about your website at all,


then obviously we have to find a link to it somehow.


But once we know about your website


and can kind of understand how it fits


in with the context of the web, then that kind of


can grow a little bit more organically.


You don't need to kind of like constantly add links


to the website.


AUDIENCE 1 – OK, yeah, for the original boost maybe.


And then when it flows, when it's in running speed?


I guess you could frame it like that.


Yeah, I did not.


So I might be just, if I take too much time,


please don't hesitate to interrupt me.


So on that collaboration side, so I have a good example.


So let's say you're a comparison website, right?


And you do something on the best yoga mats.


And you contact really original and the authorities


and experts, a yoga practicer who have blogs.


And you invite them to basically,


you invite them in a collaboration.


So you basically say, hey, how about you check out our article


and you make propositions to make it better.


So for example, you add, oh, OK, so you said that this is


important for your yoga mats choosing.


And I, as an expert, I mean, I'd also put that and this and that.


And so they help you make your content better.


And you give them, so you link to them in regards


and you say, we collaborated with this expert.


And you give them a link to the website,


to their website in recognition as a source.


And so and maybe after that, you say, oh, well,


if you want to mention that you were in this article


as an expert on your website, well, if you want to,


you can do it.


Just mention it on one of your article


or maybe create a new article where you say,


oh, I just intervened in that website.


Is that OK?


In general, that's OK.


I think it's something businesses over time,


like you recognize it.


And it's like, oh, they just want me to do this back


and forth thing.


But it's like as long as you're not forcing them to do that


and saying, in order to be listed in our comparison website,


you will need to link to my website kind of thing,


as long as it's open like that, then generally that's OK.


Yeah, I think, I mean, it's like all of these things


are a little bit tricky in that it's easy to take one example


like this, where I think in your situation,


that case sounds pretty reasonable.


And to expand it and say, oh, well, I


will contact 50 million people and do this game with them,


then that's something where our web spam team might say,


well, it looks like this is just a giant scheme.


It's not actually something kind of that's happening organically.


OK, well, thank you very much for that information.


But that clears things up a lot.


And so if maybe someone had a problem before,


it might be because they just made way too many of these


and so it was excessive.


Yeah, yeah.


OK, well, that's all the questions I had.


Thank you very, very much for your answers.


Cool.


All right, any other questions before we


get started with the one submitted on YouTube?


No more questions.


Well, I mean, we'll still have room


for more questions along the way.


So no pressure.


OK, let me look at the ones on YouTube.


So the first one I think is kind of tricky.


It's like a few months ago, we started


working for a new company.


We found that one of their local websites


had some strange SEO issues.


It was indexed in Google, but not in Bing.


And later, the Bing technical support


told me there was a sort of block that they removed.


The website was launched in 2018,


but there is no organic traffic until April 2020.


And the traffic is far below the expectations.


We recently found out that this domain


hosted another website 10 years ago that looked a bit spammy.


We haven't found any manual actions,


and it kind of goes on essentially like,


is this domain OK or is it not OK?


So from looking at things from our side,


I assume you have it verified in Search Console.


If there are no manual actions that you see there


in Search Console, then there are no manual actions


associated with this website.


And taking a look a little bit further on our side,


I also didn't see anything special happening there.


And it definitely wouldn't be the case


that if there was another website hosted


on the same domain 10 years ago that was spammy,


that you would still be having any kind of side effects


from that.


So these kind of, I think, spammy after effects


are things that in general you would not


see for kind of like with a pause of 10 years


in between with a website like that.


And in any case, if there were spammy after effects,


you would see that as a manual action in Search Console,


and you'd be able to kind of resolve that, clean that up.


The one area where you might see some kind of after effects


for a while is with regards to links.


If you had, or if the old website


had a lot of really, really bad artificial links associated


with it, then that might be something that at some point


would count kind of against your website in that sense,


even if in the meantime you have a different website up there.


But my assumption is that if this was the case 10 years ago


and for 10 years now nothing kind of problematic


has been happening with regards to links with that website,


then that would kind of not be the case anymore.


So my assumption here is that this website is essentially


as ranking as it normally would with regards


to its content at the moment, and that there


is nothing kind of artificially holding it back.


And if you were to move to a different domain name


to try to escape whatever might be associated with this domain


name, I don't think you would see any change in visibility


in search.


And moving domain names is always a bit of a hassle,


and it takes a lot of time.


So my recommendation here would be more


to focus on the website itself rather than to try


to move off to other domains.


Do the Core Web Vitals affect AMP pages?


We essentially treat AMP pages like normal HTML pages


when it comes to search for the most part.


So we would rank them appropriately.


At the moment, we don't use the Core Web Vitals with regards


to ranking, but the plan is to introduce that, I think,


in a month or two.


And when that happens, that will affect AMP pages as well.


I think the useful part with regards to AMP pages


is, by default, they're really fast.


So for the most part, if you create a normal AMP page,


it would be probably normal to see


that it meets the thresholds of the Core Web Vitals,


and then you'd be kind of on the good side automatically.


So with that regard, I think AMP pages are a great way


to make really fast web pages.


You can make other kinds of really fast web pages.


And if a website is appropriately fast


and has a good user experience, then it'll


pass the Core Web Vitals thresholds.


And essentially, from the page experience ranking factor,


that would be OK.


But it doesn't need to be an AMP page.


It can be an AMP page if you want to do that.


We have a WordPress site updating the movie gallery.


We get pictures daily for the same movies.


We only create one gallery for one movie.


The pictures we get every day are


updated in the same gallery.


Can we change the date and time when it's updated daily?


Would that be a problem for search ranking?


So you can definitely update the date and time on a page


whenever you make changes on a web page.


If you're just shuffling pictures around in a gallery,


that feels kind of misleading with regards


to updating the date just because you're


shuffling pictures around.


So from a user point of view, I would find


that a little bit awkward.


I don't think it would change anything with regards


to search.


And we definitely wouldn't rank those pages differently


in search just because you're changing


the date and time on a page.


So my recommendation there would be,


if your CMS does this by default and you can't control it,


then fine.


If you're doing this manually, kind of like tweaking the date


every time you make a small change, like shuffling images,


then I would recommend just skipping that and only


update the date when you actually make


significant changes on a page.


I have a few questions.


But the overarching question is, what


are the things that a website manager should


do to ensure that URLs published are indexed in Google


as soon as they are published?


Yeah, I think everyone wants that.


You make something and you want it visible in Google


right away.


But let's see.


So are URLs in news sitemaps indexed more frequently


than regular sitemap indexes that


are submitted in Search Console?


So news sitemaps are specific sitemaps for news websites,


specifically for Google News.


So if you don't have a news website that's


listed in Google News, then you don't really need to do that.


News sitemaps are limited to 1,000 URLs per sitemap file.


And that limit is there so that we


can kind of get the fastest content as quickly as possible,


especially on news websites where we


want to get the content quickly.


So that's something where if we are already


trying to get everything indexed as quickly as possible


from your website, then using a news sitemap


is a good way to help us with that.


Just a moment.


But if we're currently not already indexing your content


as quickly as possible, then putting it in a news sitemap


won't change anything.


So from that angle, it's like if we're


trying to get everything quickly,


then obviously using the right type of sitemap file helps.


But just artificially putting it in a sitemap file like this


doesn't change it.


Go ahead.


Can we avoid index sitemaps in news websites


so that crawling frequency should


be higher via a news sitemap?


For news websites, the index sitemaps are essentially just


that mix of one for news sites, one news sitemap with all


of the fresh content, and then everything else


in another sitemap or a set of sitemap index files.


And that makes it possible for us


to try to get the new things fast,


but also make sure we're not missing any of the old things.


Thanks.


Hello.


Hi.


Yeah, hi, John, sir.


Sir, it's a very pleasure to connecting with you, sir.


Sir, my question is I am facing an issue in Google Dance.


My website position is continuously


fluctuating from page one to page fourth and fifth.


And this is the major issue I'm facing since last month.


So what can I do right now?


Would you please suggest anything?


So if you're seeing fluctuations like that,


then usually that's a sign that our algorithms are not


sure how to show your website appropriately in search.


And usually the good part there is


that it doesn't take a lot more to make our algorithms


a little bit happier, and then you see fewer fluctuations.


But it's hard to figure out what that little bit more is.


So my recommendation there is always


to try to find a way to significantly improve


the quality of the website overall


so that the algorithms are for sure always on the good side.


And I think it's hard to turn that into something practical.


And that's something where you almost


have to know your website, and you know your users,


and figure out ways to really try


to improve it with a big step.


So could you please let me know how much time it takes?


How long that takes?


Yeah.


It's hard to say.


It's really hard to say.


On the one hand, we have to recrawl the content.


If you make significant changes on your website,


we have to recrawl that.


And to recrawl that across a larger site,


that can take a bit of time, especially


if you make bigger changes across everything,


if you change the structure of your website.


I would assume something like that, just purely


from a technical point of view, would take, I don't know,


maybe a month.


And for understanding the quality changes overall,


I would see that as something where it probably


takes a few months on our side to actually understand


that this website has significantly changed.


So not something that you can fix in a week.


It's probably more like, I don't know, three, four months,


something like that, if you make significant quality changes.


OK, sir.


Thank you.


John, I have a question.


OK.


So the fact-check articles, if my website doing fact-check


article, it's a ranking signal for that website,


or that website getting any benefit from Google


in authority and anything like that?


If you fact-check.


I don't think so.


My understanding is that it's more like normal, rich results,


which are essentially just ways of showing


that information in the search results slightly differently.


It's not the case that we would be ranking that page higher


because of that.


And we have some certification from International Fact-Check


Taking Network.


So it's helping any EPA parameters,


if any of that kind of certification help any EPA


parameter?


Possibly.


I don't know.


I don't know what certifications you have


and what we would watch out for.


But if these are things that we could recognize


while crawling and indexing the web, it's possible.


We would be able to spot that and take that into account.


But I don't know.


It probably also depends a little bit


on what exactly it is.


If you reach out to a random blogger


and they give you a certificate, then that's slightly different


than if it's a really, really highly official certificate.


Cool.


Let me run through some of the other submitted questions,


and then we can get back to the live questions as well.


So I have one question, sir.


I'll get back to you.


Is that OK?


Let me just go through some of the submitted ones,


because they submitted them ahead of time.


And then we can get some more of the live questions from you


all, too.


OK.


In May 2020, it was announced that Google


will incorporate the page experience metrics


into the ranking criteria for top stories in Search on Mobile


and remove the AMP requirement from top stories eligibility.


Does this also apply to Discover as well?


In other words, will the AMP requirements


be removed from Discover?


So even at the moment, we don't require AMP for Discover.


It's something where we do show AMP pages, because we understand


that they're normal pages.


But we also show normal pages in Discover as well.


The difference primarily with regards


to AMP and non-AMP pages in Discover


is with regards to the size of the thumbnail image


that we show.


By default for AMP pages, we can show a slightly bigger


thumbnail image.


By default for web pages, we have


to show a slightly smaller thumbnail image.


However, if you use the, I think,


max image preview robots meta tag,


you can let us know that we can also show a larger thumbnail


image for your web pages.


And if you do that, then essentially the way


that the pages are shown in Discover


are essentially the same, in that you


have the larger thumbnail image if you choose to do that,


plus your normal snippet.


And you can be shown essentially like any other page there.


When comparing core web vitals between AMP and mobile pages,


does a mobile site page need to outperform the AMP page,


or meeting the web vitals target set by Google


is sufficient for the mobile page


to replace the AMP in the top stories and Discover.


So essentially what we watch, so I don't actually


know how we would handle that specifically


in the top stories carousel.


So with regards to the ranking, especially there.


So I don't think it's as easy as it's like your page has


to be faster than we will show it in top stories instead


of someone else's pages.


It's probably the case that we just


use lots of different factors with regards


to ranking in the top stories carousel.


And we also plan on using speed there.


So that's something where I don't think blindly focusing


on speed makes sense.


A good comparison that I've used is,


or that I think is a good comparison,


is you can make an empty page really fast,


but it's not very useful for users.


So similarly, if you made a non-AMP page super fast


by removing all of the content, then for us


that wouldn't be very useful to show in the top stories,


even if it's super fast.


So there are lots of things that come


into play with regards to ranking in situations like this,


and they also apply in top stories.


I have no idea how we do ranking in Discover.


That's kind of a mystery to me.


But within top stories, it seems like something


where we could take a lot of the existing web search ranking


factors too.


I have a website that mainly deals


with providing services for approvals and certifications


that are mandatory for importers and manufacturers


of electronics and IT products.


On the services page, I've put the JSON-LD for contacts, logo,


addresses.


If I put FAQ structured data markup on every services page


to make it appear in the rich results,


will it affect any way my website is appearing


for the search results intended for service providers


kind of query?


So it's perfectly fine to have multiple kinds of structured


data on a page.


The structured data should be appropriate


for the primary content of the page, though.


So that's something where it's like you wouldn't


put the same FAQ on all of your product pages


because those questions wouldn't apply to every product


individually.


So with that in mind, I think if you


focus on what is the primary content of this page


and provide structured data for that,


then you're probably on the safe side.


It's not the case that we would say,


if you have this kind of structured data,


we will ignore all of the other kinds of structured data.


We will always take that into account.


However, we might not always show that in the same way.


So for example, I don't know what the current mix is


for things like this.


Like if you have recipe structured data on a page


and maybe you also have FAQ structured data on a page,


then probably we would choose one of those two types


when it comes to picking which way to show that page.


We wouldn't show all of the types of structured data


at the same time.


But it's not that there is a defined order or priority


with regards to the different rich results types.


So my recommendation there would be


focus on the primary element of the page.


And if you could provide structured data around that,


that's a great use.


If you just have generic structured data


that you put on all of your pages,


then probably that's not a good use of your time.


One of my websites has fallen down.


I think we talked about this briefly.


For which cases do I need self-referential canonical?


So self-referential canonical is when


you have a link rel canonical and you essentially


point to the same page that you're already on.


And from our point of view, this can make sense


because a lot of pages on the web


can be crawled with different variations of URLs.


So for example, you might have the same page under www


and on www on your website.


And if we crawl one version and we don't have any link rel


canonical on that page, then we don't know,


is this the version that you want to have indexed


or do you want the other version to be indexed?


And then we might pick one.


Whereas if you do have the rel canonical on that page,


then we would know, oh, this is the www version,


but you want the non-www version indexed.


So we will focus on that one.


Similarly, if you have URL parameters, for example,


if you're tracking events with analytics or some other reason


that maybe you're tracking refers or something


else with the parameters where you have the question mark


and then parameter equals some text,


if you don't want to have those parameters indexed,


then having your self-referential canonical


to the primary version of that page


is a good way to catch that.


So in particular, if you have an HTML page that is static HTML,


then you can't really check to see if all of these factors


in the URL are perfect.


You can, however, put the self-referential canonical


on the page.


And then we would be able to see, oh, this HTML page


with these parameters, actually the canonical


should just be the HTML page.


And then we can focus on that.


So that's kind of the angle that I take there,


is that using self-referential canonicals is kind of a good


way to, I don't know, make it so that it's easier for us


to pick the right version when it comes to search.


Are link rel next and rel previous ignored?


Yes, they're ignored.


At some point, we use that to understand pagination better.


But our systems have gotten kind of a little bit further


in that we're able to recognize kind


of common types of pagination setups on our own.


And we can process those as normal internal links


and understand the context from there a little bit better.


So we no longer need these special kind of link attributes.


You can keep them on your pages if you have them there already.


They can be useful for things like accessibility,


where if someone is using maybe a screen reader


or some other kind of assistive technology


and they want to see the next version of that page,


then this kind of markup can help them too.


So it's not something that you should kind of remove


by default. But rather, it's just, well, Google


doesn't use it.


But maybe other systems do use it.


How to optimize a knowledge-based website


like dictionary.com with very short content and less than 400


words per page?


So first of all, I would not focus on the number of words


per page.


I think that's a terrible metric when


it comes to kind of understanding


if content is good or not.


Sometimes it's useful as a metric,


which you can use kind of like internally


as a guideline on your side.


Like, I want to provide a lot of information.


Or where there is a strong information need,


I will provide more information.


Or where there is a lower information need,


I'll just provide less information.


All of these things are useful maybe on your side internally.


But it's not something that Google is going to use.


So Google is not going to count the words on your page


and say, oh, 300 words.


We will never show this page in the search results.


With regards to kind of a knowledge-based website


like that, I think you really need


to work hard to make sure that you're


providing unique value and something really


interesting for your users with regards to a website like that.


It's very tempting as a programmer to go in and say,


well, I have this database of information.


I will just make a website out of it.


And the database of information is something


that I've collected from the internet or whatever.


It's very easy to go off and create


a website that has millions of pages based on a database.


But it's hard to do that in a way that


is actually useful for people.


And that's essentially what our systems are looking out for.


Because this database of information


will probably already be on the web a number of times.


And then going off and it's like,


you can create all of this again.


But making sure that we show your version instead


of the other versions that we have, for that,


you really need to provide something more than just


a dump of the data there.


And similarly, we sometimes see that for businesses


where they take, as the database,


they take a list of cities or a list of countries


or a list of different types of services.


And you take this database of 1,000 services and 50,000


cities, and you cross them together


and you create this website with a giant mass of pages, which


are just database driven.


And you can do that, of course.


But our systems, when they look at that, they'll say, well,


what is the value here?


Why should we be showing this to users?


And for that, you need to do more than just, well,


it's correct data and it's short content, but it's good content.


You really need to provide something that users pick up on


and that they'd like to see in search.


And I think that's always the hard part there.


Going off and creating these things is easy,


but doing that in a way that is actually useful,


that's kind of tricky.


Cool.


Let me see.


Maybe we even ran out of questions.


Yeah, I think we got through pretty much everything


that was submitted.


So cool, we can go more.


More live questions from you all.


Fido.


FIDO GALUCHI-RODRIGUEZ-MARTINI Yes, John.


Before asking my question, I wanted


to support your answer about the content line


that me and Nicola have tested this


with several different articles for websites.


And I can confirm that it's more about how you write


and what you write and how you provide the answer to the user


compared to how lengthy is the answer,


because it could be 2,000 words, but it could be


absolutely pointless and so on.


OK, so my question regarding the content


is we were wondering about future snippets here in Bulgaria.


Is it possible to expect them soon?


Because they are really good elements of Google.


They're really attracting, and we do our best


to provide usually the best content when we


prepare articles for the websites.


Thank you.


Yeah, I don't know.


I thought we had featured snippets everywhere,


so they're not in Bulgaria?


No, no, not yet.


OK, that's weird.


OK, I don't know what the plans are there,


but I can check to see what the team there says.


I mean, I can't give you a date and say we will do this then,


because I don't know.


And even if the team tells me, oh, we're


going to launch next week, I can't really


tell you ahead of time.


But it can happen that something like this gets stuck,


and they're like, oh, we have five countries left


where we need to launch this in.


And it's like, oh, let's go off and do it.


Yeah, I mean, sometimes with some of these search features,


there are also tricky policy questions associated with that,


where they say, we would like to do it here,


but actually because of some local laws or some local policies


we can't easily do that.


So that's sometimes a bit tricky.


But I'll pick the team and see what they say.


Yeah, thank you.


Thank you.


Sure.


Hello.


Hi.


What's your tone?


I have a question.


Actually, I wrote down some.


We have M version, mobile version website.


M-en.abc.com.


And we have also desktop version, en.abc.com.


And the problem is that our concern says M-en.abc.com is not


a mobile domain.


So Googlebot cannot.


We have some kind of advantage, disadvantage for the website


indexing and domain ranking.


Do we need to change the domain?


That's the first question.


So the M version is not mobile friendly?


Or how do you mean it's not a mobile?


It's mobile friendly.


And we have crawling already.


But it's kind of possibility that we could


have great disadvantage.


So we don't know.


So we have to maybe change the domain


or make it the other site?


Yeah.


I don't think you would need to change that.


So we support the separate mobile URLs configuration,


where if you have one URL for desktop


and one URL for mobile, I think that's what you have, right?


Right.


If you have that set up and you link between the versions


appropriately, there is the link rel canonical to desktop


and link alternate to the mobile version,


then we would be able to understand that configuration.


And we would be able to treat that the same


as any other website.


We don't recommend that anymore.


It's not that we say you shouldn't do it.


We just say, if you make a new website,


we recommend just making one version.


The main reason for just having one version


is to make it so that it's easier for you to maintain


and that you understand what is happening better.


Because we will try to index the mobile version of the site,


but you have the canonical set to the desktop version.


And then in Search Console, you see both versions.


It gets a bit confusing.


So we recommend just one version.


But we support the other setups.


And in the past, we have recommended that as well.


So it's like a lot of websites out there


use that separate setup.


OK.


Quick question, Mr. John.


We have a new website, da-da-da, abc.com.


And that's our website.


But we use abc.kr as 302 redirection.


So does it affect SEO in a bad way?


And also, we try to register abc.kr domain in Search Console


because we need to delete some news when


there is problems in the news.


Yeah.


Is it such that everyone is redirected to the.kr website?


Yes, sir.


Yes.


From abc.kr to abc.com.


Not everything about.


Some of them are in the abc.com.


And some of them are in abc.kr.


But all the directions, destinations are abc.com.


OK.


I think that that should be fine.


So the 302 redirect is theoretically


a temporary redirect.


And we might choose to index the source URL instead


of the destination URL.


But if you have that redirect in place for the long run,


like more than a short period of years,


then we will treat that as a permanent redirect.


And we will try to index the destination page.


And it's not that there is any value that is lost


because it's a 302 redirect.


We have these two URLs, and one is


redirecting to the other one.


Which one should we index?


And we'll try to index the one that is clear for us


as the primary version.


No problem.


Yeah.


I think that should be fine.


Thank you, sir.


Sure.


Let me just see.


There's one more question I think


I missed from YouTube.


How long does Google give a persistent error if the site


is temporary using 503?


So 503 is a temporary server error code.


And from our point of view, it's something


where we don't have a fixed timeline with regards


to when we drop individual URLs from our index


when they return 503.


But we recommend doing that at most for a couple of days.


So somewhere between two to seven days, something


like that at maximum.


And at that point, we will start dropping URLs


from the website.


So it's not that there is an exact date or time


limit that is there.


If it's a temporary error, then it should be temporary.


It shouldn't be something that is in place for a longer time.


All right.


I think someone else had a question.


Sir, hello.


Hi.


Yeah.


So again, I have one question.


I'm working on a YMIL site, like a pharmaceutical industry.


And what I realize is that this industry is totally different


from any other industry.


If I'm working on any IT company or any other industry,


so pharmaceutical basically is totally different.


We need to follow each and everything, like EAT.


So I'm just asking you, what kind of link


I can create for YMIL site?


Content is good, but we need to create some link, quality link.


So what do you suggest?


What kind of link is good for YMIL site?


I mean, the link should be natural links.


So it shouldn't be the case that you're going off and creating


links to your website, right?


So that's kind of the starting point there.


And based on that, I don't think you


would need to do anything different in that regard.


Essentially, creating useful and helpful content


that people want to link to makes sense.


And you can't really control who is linking to your website.


So from that point of view, it's not


like you should avoid having these kind of people


linked to your website.


And instead, you should make sure these kind of people


are linking to your website.


That's rarely something that you can really control.


So from that point of view, I think


focusing on what kind of link should I get from my website,


that's probably the wrong approach there.


But I do kind of appreciate that, especially


when it comes to pharmaceutical and medical websites,


you do need to be a little bit more critical with regards


to what you put on your website, how you work with your website,


all of these things.


And that's something like I think


Nicola dropped a lot of links in the chat about EAT


and things like that.


I think that's all worth looking into.


And it does make sense to spend a little bit more time


to think about what you want to do here


and how to do it in a way that is long-term, sustainable,


and where users, when they go to your website,


they understand this is a trustworthy website.


All right.


Thank you.


So one more question is there.


Like in Google Search Console, I have submitted my sitemap.


But after a couple of days, what I found


is sitemap is indexed properly.


All the web pages are indexed properly.


But what I observe is there is a number of links found is zero.


So why it is showing zero, I'm not getting.


Could you please let me know why it is showing zero,


number of link count?


Where are you seeing that?


Inside the Search Console.


In Search Console.


Yeah.


The number of links Search Console found is zero.


It is showing zero.


But earlier, it was showing like 200 links were there.


But right now, it is showing zero.


But each and every page is indexed properly.


But the figure is zero.


Earlier, it was 200.


So that's the external links report that you're looking at?


Or?


No, no.


It's a complete website internally.


There are 200 pages on the website.


All of them are indexed properly.


But right now, the figure is not 200.


It's a zero, showing zero.


N-A-N. It's showing N-A-N.


OK.


I don't know.


Could you post maybe a screenshot or link


to a screenshot in the chat?


I can take a look at that.


Yeah.


I will definitely share the screenshot.


Cool.


All right.


I think, let's see.


We have your Dindo.


I think you're next.


Yes, I just wanted to add a little bit about the links


on Shared by Nicola and the certification of the team


members of a website.


That this is another thing we have tested.


It really counts.


I don't mean that you have a blowup of visibility


or something like that.


But it supports the trustworthiness of the people


to your website.


And it really works.


It really works.


It's way better.


People are trusting a website and a brand better


that way because these people work more like experts


coming from the company.


Yeah.


OK.


So it's kind of like your coworkers and people


who are working on the website to include


more information on those.


And the credibility of the team members.


Yeah, this is really, really important


because it's like, let's imagine we have a doctor's website.


And yes, we know that the doctor has his degrees


and so on and so on.


But once they share some certificates


about conferences, seminars, additional practices


they have passed within their background and so on,


this looks like a little bit more


credible, more trustworthy to trust your health,


this specialist.


Sounds like a good idea.


Let me pause the recording here.


I still have a bit more time.


So if you want to stick around a little bit longer,


you're welcome to do so.


But thanks for all of the questions.


Thanks for all of the comments along the way.


And thanks for submitting questions on YouTube as well.


If you're watching this recording,


I hope you found this useful.


And hopefully, I'll see you all again


in one of the future Hangouts as well.


All right.


Let me see.


Thank you.


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from 23.08.2019

The infinite spinner.


Some people will be OK.


Welcome, everyone, to today's Webmaster Central office hours


hangouts.


My name is John Mueller, and with us is Martin Split.


We're webmaster trends analyst at Google here in Switzerland.


And part of what we do are these office hour hangouts.


We have a slightly different setup this time,


which is more like a meeting room,


because we're expecting one more person to join.


So that'll be pretty cool.


But I have all of your questions here.


So we can go through those.


Or if any of you want, you're welcome to jump in


with the first question from your side.


Hi, guys.


Hi, Arnie.


I asked a question about the ranking of one


of the biggest domains, amazon.com.


And there are product pages which lack the content part,


but get the high SERP positions.


Can you please give some information how it works?


Or is there a secret why they're getting all those top ranked


without even having a proper content on the web pages?


There's not really a secret.


So I looked at those pages that, so you mentioned a query there.


And I looked at that, and from my point of view,


there's content on there.


There are reviews on there.


It feels like there's stuff on there


that would make sense to show in the search results.


So I don't see anything specifically


problematic with those pages where


there would need to be some kind of a secret Amazon bonus


or anything like that.


Sometimes really large sites do have


pages that aren't really perfect,


but the rest of the site is really good.


So sometimes it can happen that we rank pages that individually


might not be fantastic but are otherwise


on a reasonable website.


So that might be happening to some of those pages


that you're seeing, but even for the query that you mentioned,


that content looks reasonable.


You can buy the product there.


It has the technical details from my point of view that.


Well, that's basically the case, certified interview.


So technically, there is no technical information.


There are five sentences, and there


are short two-word sentences, and there are five of them.


Basically, it's 15 words of description of the product,


and everything else is completely


links to other PDPs.


And in terms of review, there was just one review.


That's why we got kind of concerned,


because we started working on the platform,


and we closed our products.


But this kind of weird PDP just simply appear from nowhere.


And there is no useful content, because I


work in this field currently for the specific products,


and got really surprised when I saw just really 10 to 15 words,


and it's not even looks like to be a proper description


of the product.


That's why I asked this question.


Maybe I saw a different page, or maybe they


serve different pages to different users.


But from my point of view, looking at the query


and looking at the product, it looks OK.


And I think, in general, it's always


possible to find pages that are kind of suboptimal on larger


websites.


And when you're competing with a really large competitor


like that, it's always going to be hard.


So that's something where I wouldn't purely


focus on the number of words or the amount


of technical information that you have there.


If you're competing one to one with a really big website that


does a lot of stuff really well, then that's


going to be really hard.


So my usual recommendation would be


to try to find angles that are unique, that you can cover,


that they're not interested in even trying to cover.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG


Also, I wouldn't fall for the, oh, it's only 17 words.


As John said, we might see a different page.


But the page that I'm seeing, if I would be a user


and wanting to buy this camera, it


tells me the video resolution.


It tells me the frame rate.


It tells me the interface, the measurements, the price,


the shipping information.


It has reviews.


It has answered questions.


It has all the manufacturer data.


It's not the length of a product detail page.


It's the content.


And as far as I'm aware, the content page


that I'm being served looks pretty decent.


I think what you might also want to keep in mind


is that we generally crawl from the US.


So if, for example, they serve an empty page to users outside


of the US, but they serve the full content to users


in the US, then we would still be able to index


that full content page.


And that sometimes throws things off for our side,


because nobody likes to do things for Switzerland.


So we always see empty stuff, or you can't buy it.


But we would still index that in Google


and show it worldwide, because we only see the US version,


because technically, that's where our data centers are


that do the crawling.


And at least in my search results,


it's on position seven for that query.


So there's a bunch of other pages


that are ranking higher, at least for me right now.


Something changed during the last week, honestly.


I was going to start dropping down.


I don't know if it's a coincidence or something else.


It was surprising to me.


But yes, and you see top two results is our pages, basically.


That's good news, but also bad news.


So I was really curious if there is a small secret to what you


just because they have a large volume of pages and links


everywhere.


Like, they have a very high rank for the overall domain.


OK, good to know.


Thank you very much.


Sure.


All right.


Any other questions from you all before we jump in?


Hello, John.


Hello, Martin.


Hi.


Yeah, so I have a client, and it is a federal medical center.


And all content obviously goes through the doctors


before it publishes on the website.


So do you think it is a good idea


to let users know that information was checked


by doctors and also put relevant structured data?


What I mean, it's a medical center, after all.


And it is a logical assume that you can trust the information.


So for example, a page which provides information


about a surgery, where you can read about the surgery,


check prices, and make an appointment.


And the content of such pages also checks by doctors,


because it contains medical facts.


So do I need to put information about this particular doctor


who checked the page there?


What do you think?


I think you don't need to do any of that.


But if you're doing something good for your users,


then I would highlight that and tell people


what it is that you're doing and highlight the value that


is behind your content.


I think, in general, if you're spending time and money


to make things better, then don't hide that.


Don't be shy with that.


I realize with all of the EAT things,


people would want to do that especially.


But I think just generally, from purely a user point of view,


if you're doing something good and it's not directly


visible on your pages, then users


might not realize that you're actually doing that.


OK.


OK, I get it.


Thank you.


Sure.


OK, let me run through some of the submitted questions


so we don't lose track of them completely.


Let me just refresh the list so that we get the newer ones.


When I select the domain property in Search Console,


the property has no disavow tool.


Yes, that's true.


Some of the tools in Search Console


are only available in the older version of Search Console.


We're working on moving everything over.


But as some things are still in the old one,


you still need to use the traditional properties.


Usually, verification is pretty easy.


So that should be less of an issue.


With the desktop version, I have structured data


but no AMP versions.


So does it violate Google's policy


because of two different versions?


It doesn't violate our policies.


But we really, really want you to have the AMP version


be equivalent to the normal version of your website.


So structured data is usually less of a problem,


but especially content-wise, navigation-wise,


internal linking, all of that should be equivalent on AMP


so that when users go to your AMP page,


they're not served a stripped-down page that


doesn't serve their needs.


I know that's something that the AMP team is always


kind of struggling with because people think, well, I'll


just make a really fast page.


And to make a fast page, I will show no information.


But for users, that's a terrible experience.


And in the long run, that's not going to be good for your site.


When the 90 days is up after you've


used the URL removal tool, does Google


try to recrawl the URL directly?


If so, does it see the robots.txt file,


or is it only when it spiders the site?


So the URL removal tool only hides the search result


in the search results page.


It doesn't change anything with crawling and indexing.


So usually what happens is we hide it in the search results,


and we will continue to crawl the page.


And if that page is blocked from indexing, if it has a no index,


or if it's blocked by robots.txt or it's a 404,


then we'll drop it from our index,


and we won't have to crawl it as much anymore.


So it's not after the 90 days.


It's more that during this time, we'll


work to reprocess that page.


So I think the question goes in the same thing


and also covers the quirk about robots.txt and noindex.


So if you have a noindex on a page


and you block it by robots.txt, then we


don't see the noindex because we can't crawl it.


So I'd recommend doing either or.


If you do both of them, then we just don't see the noindex.


Question about JSON schema markup for my handmade


one-of-a-kind products.


I don't have a global identifier,


and Search Console gives me a warning for not adding one.


I refuse to just make one up.


So there are two things here.


On the one hand, this is a warning.


So it's not an error that will block everything.


It's basically just saying, well, it would really


help us to have an ID here.


So if there were multiple versions of this product


or multiple people selling the same product,


we could group them together potentially.


So that's kind of the one thing.


It's not that we would not process it at all.


It's not an error.


It's just a warning.


You don't have to fix all warnings.


A lot of sites have warnings with structured data,


and that's perfectly fine.


On the other hand, depending on how much or how many products


you're selling, it might make sense


to try to get one of these IDs so that you can use that,


especially if you're selling something


that other people are reselling.


Then maybe that makes sense.


But ultimately, that part is definitely up to you.


I certainly wouldn't go out and just make them up.


Apparently, you just register your company,


and then you can start enumerating your product.


So maybe it's not that much of a hassle.


I don't really know.


But again, it's a warning.


It won't break everything.


I'm working.


Yeah?


SPEAKER 2


Question about the jackpot position.


We see that one of our products that we manufacture basically


has the wrong name and descriptions just


because it was launched or submitted


to Google a long time ago.


And all other, let's say, distributors


use the same wrong name.


Is there a way that we can just feed Google


the correct product description, its correct GTI number


or whatever unique identifier so it fixes all the problems


so it fixes the overall index so it


fixes the major product information so it


doesn't use the legacy one?


Yeah.


I don't know.


That's something you'd probably need


to check with the folks from the shopping side.


I don't know who would be best to get in touch with that.


If you want, you can drop your information in the chat,


and I can forward that on to the shopping team.


Maybe there's something that they can send back to you.


Would be great.


Thank you.


Cool.


I'm working on geographical pages.


For UX, I hired a photographer to capture


relevant images of the region.


I'm wondering how Google distinguishes


between new photography and existing stock photography


and if this can change search results.


So what would definitely happen is


we would see these as separate images,


and we would index them as separate images.


In Google Images, we would show them individually.


They're unique images.


Even if it's the same scenery, even


if it's a similar view to existing ones,


they're new images.


The lighting is different.


Everything is slightly different.


So that's something from that point of view,


we would treat them as individual things


and rank them individually.


From a web search point of view, we


would not really care what you use with regards to the images.


So in web search, we focus on the textual content there.


We don't have this differentiator


where we'd say, well, this image is stock photography.


Therefore, it's bad.


We essentially just say, well, there's an image here.


There is an alt attribute.


We can index the image for Google Images.


We can double check to see if that's a unique image that we


need to index individually.


But for normal web search, we wouldn't really


need to take that into account.


So from a web search point of view,


that would probably not change a lot.


For Google Images, it would change things.


For users, I imagine it would change things as well.


With EAT, how much value do external links carry?


Surely providing that you're an expert on page


is not sufficient.


What else matters?


Mentions or external links from relevant sites?


So we don't have any explicit information


with regards to what you need to do there.


A lot of this comes from the Google radar guidelines, which


are not direct search results or search ranking factors.


But rather, this is what we give folks


when they evaluate the quality of our search results.


So from that point of view, it's not


that you would need to kind of gain this through links


or anything like that.


But rather, this is something that normal people


look at when they review the quality of the search results


and which, perhaps, normal users would kind of think about


as well, like, can I trust this website?


So from that point of view, it's not a matter of,


like, you need to put these five words on your website


and then get a link from this other site.


That's definitely not the case, but more a matter of really


how you present your website overall


and how users would perceive that.


My website is still crawling with desktop Googlebot.


How much time will it take to change to mobile Googlebot?


So we've switched over a significant part of the web


to mobile-first indexing, but we haven't switched everything


over.


You don't need to do anything to kind of force that switch over.


Our systems use a number of algorithms


to try to determine when a website is ready overall.


When we do that on a per-domain basis.


And when we think that it's ready overall,


we'll switch things over.


So that's kind of the setup that we have there.


There's no specific time where we'd say, well, this is.


Whoops.


So from that point of view, you don't


need to do anything specific.


Hi, John.


Hi.


This is Alex from Greece.


How are you?


Can you hear me?


Yes.


OK.


I have a question regarding this crawling issue


with the desktop bot.


We had switched to mobile-first index on November of 2018.


But a couple of months ago, we have switched back


to desktop bot.


Do you think that is normal?


Is this something that you have seen before?


That usually wouldn't be happening.


But I don't know exactly what you're seeing.


So it's really hard to say.


Would you able to add the URL maybe in the chat?


Then I can take a look at that afterwards.


Yes, of course.


I have made a comment with the whole situation.


So you might read my question later in the conversation.


I saw your question.


But I think you didn't mention the URL.


So I don't know which site it is.


But I'm dropping it to the chat.


Thank you.


Cool.


Thanks a lot.


Hi, John.


Just a quick question here.


Yeah, so this is with regard to content duplication.


We usually understand that duplication is not


on the Google guideline.


And I think that's a very, very fair point to put across.


But we were facing an issue where, if I could put it,


a product, a very unique product,


was being offered by multiple brands.


And we were creating the pages for those brands.


So if I think from a content perspective,


the technical specifications or the way the product is


structured will be the same.


The only thing that it will be differentiated


is by the brand name that it's offering.


So how is that content being?


Will that be treated as duplication?


Or how will it be handled?


We treat it on several levels, the duplicate content.


On the one hand, if the whole page is copied,


then that's easy, like the whole HTML page.


Then we can see that it's a duplicate.


On the other hand, if a part of the page is copied,


then we can see that that part of the page is duplicate.


And what happens when just the part of the page is duplicate


is we will index the whole page.


We will index all of those versions.


And if someone is searching for a specific part that


is only in that duplicated section of the page,


then we will try to pick one of those pages to show.


So from our point of view, that's kind of normal


because we can recognize that the same content is available


on different sites.


It doesn't make sense to show all of the different versions


of the same content.


Usually what happens, especially with e-commerce sites,


is that there are other things involved that


help us to pick the right one.


So if someone is searching for something local


and we can recognize the store as local,


then we know it's duplicated content.


But this is the local version, so we'll try to show that one.


So those are kind of the things that come up there.


In general, when it comes to making sites,


oftentimes you don't have time to write product descriptions


for everything.


So it makes sense to try to add additional value


through other parts of the page, maybe


through reviews on the page.


Maybe you have your own product photos.


Maybe you have something else that you're


doing unique to your website, unique


to those specific products.


And highlighting all of that makes it a lot easier for us


to say, well, this is actually a unique version.


We need to make sure that we don't just filter it out


because it has a small description that's


the same across different sites.


SPEAKER 2


Would you lose ranking within that region


because you're no longer region targeting?


It just goes to the.com?


So if you're using geotargeting, then that


would be kind of a generic page instead of the local page.


And for queries where we can tell


that a user is looking for something local,


then that might have an effect.


But if you're not using geotargeting


or if people are not explicitly looking for something local,


then that wouldn't change anything.


Sure.


Thank you.


Hi, John.


Hi.


Hey, Dan.


Greetings from Dublin, Ireland.


I have a question for you regarding sitemaps.


So I wanted to get a couple of pages in a XML sitemap.


So I ran a crawl in Screamin' Frog


and lashed them up to the developers


to put on our server so that I could submit it


in Google Search Console.


But when I got it, it was actually on a subdomain


and not on the domain itself.


Now, it's in the sitemap index.


So I was just wondering, will Google, the Googlebot,


come in, find the sitemap index, find that,


even if it's on a subdomain and the URLs are


for the actual main domain, can it find that XML sitemap


and will it crawl those URLs, or does it


have to be on the domain itself?


If we get the sitemap submitted individually,


then it has to be within the same path.


On the other hand, if it's submitted through Search


Console and you have the subdomain also verified


in the same account, then that would work.


So that's kind of the way that sitemaps works,


is for kind of unauthenticated submissions, I guess.


Like, if you don't do it in Search Console,


then the URLs within the sitemap have


to be below the path of that sitemap file.


If you're doing it through Search Console,


then the URLs in the sitemap file


can be for any valid property within your Search Console


account.


Yeah, thank you.


Take a switch to mobile Googlebot.


OK, can take a while.


There's another question in there that asks,


can I switch to mobile Googlebot?


There's no way to opt in or out.


We're just progressively changing or moving sites


to mobile-first indexing.


But there's no way to tell you, oh, yeah, next week


it's going to be you.


Be patient.


It'll happen.


It'll be fine.


Hi again.


Hi.


I've asked this a couple of minutes ago,


but I think you weren't in the conversation regarding


the switch from Google Smartphone Bot


to the Google Desktop one.


We have switched to Google Smartphone Bot


on November 2018.


But a couple of months ago, we have switched back


to Google Desktop.


Do you think that this is something normal?


And why this might have happened?


I don't know.


I think you dropped the link.


I dropped the URL.


Yes, yes, yes.


Yeah.


Yeah, I need to check with the team,


what the status is there.


Did you get a notification in Search Console?


No notification whatsoever.


And what is more?


But for the switch to mobile, did you get one?


We had the notification that we have


switched to a smartphone bot, but never a notification


that we have switched back.


OK.


I don't think we have notifications


that we switched back.


But it's something, in talking with the team,


they generally wouldn't switch sites back.


So that's something where, from discussions with them,


if they switch one site over and it turns out


the website does a redesign and then doesn't work so well


on mobile anymore, then it's tough luck,


like we switched over.


So I think maybe something weird happened in your case.


What is strange is that we are still


top-performing at Google Search.


We are top-performing at Google News.


Our AMP pages are at top performance,


99% accessibility, sale rankings, et cetera.


And the crawling we see at our logs from Google Smartphone Bot


is at about 70%.


And Google Desk Bot is about 30%.


That's why we are a little bit skeptical.


Yeah, yeah, it's normal.


But why is that mentioned as a Google desktop?


And I can send you the screenshots.


Yeah, screenshots would be useful.


But in general, when we switch to mobile-first indexing,


we still have a split of 80, 20, or 70, 30 desktop and mobile.


So it's not purely mobile then.


And for some kinds of requests, we just


use a desktop Google Bot.


For example, I think the shopping requests


are done with desktop Google Bot.


I think for a new site, that doesn't really matter.


But depending on the website, if you look at the overall traffic,


then it won't be 100% mobile or even 90% mobile.


There will always be 20%, 30%, 40% still with desktop.


But I can definitely take a look at that with the team.


OK, thank you.


Thank you very much.


Sure.


You also, I think, asked about the Chrome, what was it,


the new Chrome suggestion.


Google Chrome suggestion, yeah.


Yeah.


I have no information on that, how that comes together.


Because in the Discover feed, that's


something where we do use the normal crawling and indexing.


And it's kind of separated out.


But I don't know how the Chrome suggestions works there


or how you would rank there.


And I suspect it wouldn't be a matter of a technical issue,


but rather that, I don't know, some fancy Chrome ranking


factor, which apparently is now a thing.


Cool.


I will double check with that too with the team though.


Thanks a lot.


Sure.


All right.


We're kind of running low on time.


But if any of you want to ask more questions,


we have a bunch of you here.


I have another question.


OK, go for it.


You mentioned before that the version of the desktop


should be exactly the same as the mobile one in regard


of content or markup-wise as well,


because we don't have the exact same template


on desktop and the mobile.


We detect the user agent.


And we are using a separate desktop template


and a separate mobile template to be


more optimal for the user.


It's much better performance if you are using less markup,


more optimized images, smaller images, et cetera.


What is your opinion on that?


That's perfectly fine.


OK.


Thank you.


So the thing I would watch out for


is with mobile-first indexing, when we do that,


we will only use the mobile version for indexing.


Like I said, we still crawl with the desktop sometimes.


But we use the mobile for indexing.


So things like internal linking, we would use the mobile version.


So if on the mobile version you don't


have any of the navigation, then that would be a problem.


If the navigation is there and the layout is different,


the HTML is different, that's totally fine.


Perfect.


One last JavaScript question.


So I was just wondering, I know you don't just


it's a little bit close to my previous question.


But what's the factor?


What's the metric that looks, OK, you look at that.


OK, this website is going to go into two waves.


And this one is easy.


So we see that quite a lot of JavaScript websites


are not within two waves.


Maybe there is not enough JavaScript or whatever.


Actually, we have quite a lot of bots recently


to play with that because we're investigating that.


Do you want to answer that or should I answer that?


I can hand wave.


I know that John answered some of the worst questions.


So these days, two wave indexing or the two waves of indexing


play less and less of a role.


So basically, generally speaking,


you may see a lot of websites that are not using JavaScript


that are still going through basically two waves.


And you might see some.


You might see a bunch of.


Wait, wait, wait.


Explain that.


Right.


OK, so how do I put this?


So basically, pretty much, no.


So here's the thing.


Pretty much every website, when we see them for the first time,


goes through rendering.


So there is no indexing before it hasn't been rendered.


And there are certain heuristics that if we see after a while,


like, oh, this page, actually the renderer does not


diff as much or doesn't diff.


Like, it looks the way before.


Like, we get.


So what happens is we do a crawl.


We do a crawl, which means, yeah, let's say


you get a new domain.


You learn how much CPU this new domain was taking.


No, that's not what we do.


What we do is we do an HTTP request.


We get something back, right?


Some HTML.


Maybe it's a bare bones HTML.


And all it does is it loads some JavaScript


and runs the JavaScript.


Then this HTML that we got from the original HTTP get request


from the crawl goes into rendering.


Rendering lines to JavaScript, boom, a lot of content


happened that wasn't there before.


So we're like, aha.


OK, so this needs to be rendered.


But there is a heuristic that is very, very.


GARY ILLYESISIOSAKE LOUISHAVYREVICIUS OBSERVERO


So you look at the difference between your initial HTML.


And then after rendering, you see extra content.


Yeah.


And the interesting thing is that, so what


I want to make very, very clear, because I talked to the team


and I was surprised about this, I


thought this is a lot more, this is still a lot more frequently


happening that we are going like, oh, all right,


we're going to skip rendering.


It is not as frequently happening anymore.


So for many, many websites, even if they do not run JavaScript,


they might still go through the render phase


because it doesn't make a difference as much.


Because it's cheap for us.


It's cheap.


It's cheaper than the complexity that we infer.


So there's very, very few cases.


And the internals of that are very complicated.


And I still haven't fully grasped what exactly


triggers the heuristic.


Because what we see that there are


quite a lot of JavaScript websites that never


go through two waves.


And there are some websites that go through two waves.


Like, again, we don't see really a difference.


So one of the factors for you is the difference


between the initial crawl and whatever,


or then the rendered DOM.


Yeah.


And OK.


Crawl DOM and render DOM.


And I wouldn't say that two waves of indexing are dead.


But it's definitely something that they're not.


But it's definitely, I expect, eventually, rendering,


crawling, and indexing will come closer together.


We're not there yet.


But I know that teams are looking into it.


No plans, no deadlines, no roadmaps to be announced yet.


You winked twice.


You winked.


What about link juice, Martin?


How does link juice play into with rendering?


Just to finish that, because I have this concept in my head


that JavaScript SEO is dying slowly.


It's going to eventually dissolve,


because you guys are getting better with that.


So basically, you are on the path of just killing


two waves eventually completely, right?


Can we complete it?


I would say that we're hoping to make it all a little bit


better, and so that you don't have to do more things.


But kind of like with normal technical SEO,


I don't see JavaScript SEO dying,


because there's just so many things that you can do wrong.


And it takes a lot of experience to be able to debug and find


out and improve things.


And it keeps changing, right?


There's new stuff coming in.


And with every new bit on the web platform,


you're like, does this work with Googlebot?


So this is interesting.


Sorry, but I want to follow up on what you said.


So you're saying that even if you guys get so good


with JavaScript, obviously, basically resources,


and I'm guessing some kind of technology


that you use to optimize that, you still


think that JavaScript SEO is going to be in two years


or three years.


You still think it's going to be a thing?


Because I have this concept that it's going to dissolve.


I mean, it's going to be a thing in that we'll be better at it.


But there are always technical details


that you can get working well or get working kind of terribly.


Oh, yeah.


JavaScript is huge.


Like with JavaScript, with normal technical SEO,


it's already hard.


And it's something that a lot of people


struggle with, where it's like the internal linking,


you have new unique URLs, and all of these things.


And with JavaScript, it's all hidden away.


So you really have to know how JavaScript works.


And when something goes wrong, that's


really not going to be trivial to find.


And new frameworks, like new elements in Chrome,


all of these things, they kind of come together.


But my logic is that you guys are using, sorry,


the latest version of Chrome.


So with new frameworks, they actually


work in the latest version of Chrome.


So eventually, it's going to be one to one.


They are still yes and no.


Is it like naive thinking here?


It's a little naive to think that, because the thing is


that you are, in the end, still not.


It's not that there's a human being sitting in front of it,


looking at your website and going like, huh, OK.


It is a technical infrastructure.


No, I know.


There is technical infrastructure.


And there are so many interesting implementation


details that can interact with the web platform


in interesting ways to give you a very simple example.


What we are doing with web components,


I'm writing the guidance right now.


So excuse me if I'm not having a very polished answer


at this point.


You get the raw answer from me.


Web components work fine in Chrome.


We have the latest version of Chrome, Chrome 76,


as of today, actually a couple of days ago, in Googlebot.


That's fine.


The thing there is we have to make a decision what to index.


So as the user, depending, let's say,


if I go to a website that has a web component,


and there's something in the Shadow DOM,


then I see the Shadow DOM content.


If I would run an Internet Explorer 10,


I see the Light DOM content, which gets overridden.


So some people might be like, oh, yeah.


So if I have a fallback for crawlers that do not understand


JavaScript, or I think I'm going to be


in the first wave of indexing first,


I put my fallback content into the Light DOM.


But then Googlebot never sees that.


So that's still something that you need to know and be aware


of, so you might end up with some person coming to you


and going, this content is there.


It's in the DOM.


We don't understand why it's not showing up.


And then you have to know, oh, that's


because of JavaScript, specifically


because of Shadow DOM.


The Shadow DOM overrides the Light DOM.


And the way that the Googlebot works


is it flattens the Shadow DOM into the DOM,


overriding the Light DOM in this specific case.


So to make my point from earlier,


JavaScript SEO is not going to go away.


It's going to change, right?


It used to be that it's still much more technical.


That, on one hand, and the thing is like today JavaScript SEO


is about finding the pitfalls and the gotchas


in today's technology and working around them


or figuring out a better way to do them.


And in the future, it's going to be more like,


this is what can go wrong.


It works out of the box, but these


are the things that can still go wrong.


And these are the things that we need to do to debug them.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG


Because we got a little bit geeky here.


So just to summarize that, I know


you are trying to simplify that.


But just to simplify that even further,


basically what you're saying, in the future,


JavaScript SEO is going to evolve


into making your job, so Google's job,


a little bit easier and making sure


that everything we push out to clients


is basically very easy to crawl, index, and understand.


I think that's one thing, but also


all of the troubleshooting stuff kind of comes in that.


And that's something where we can provide some tools to help,


but things like Shadow DOM, Light DOM,


it's like, how are you going to figure that out,


unless you already know that this is a thing?


Or things like you're using Canvas


to put content out there.


And we think, oh, Canvas is an image,


so we index it as an image.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG There's a bunch of consulting.


Right now, it's more figuring out what's going wrong,


probably, and helping troubleshooting.


And it's going to turn more into,


there's 10 ways of doing this in JavaScript.


Nine of them are terrible because.


While developers are trying to figure out the right way,


that's one of the reasons why I want developers and SEOs


to sit on the same freaking table.


Developers are like, OK, so this is really hard for us.


This is making everything slower.


And they're not necessarily thinking about,


can Google index this?


Or can search index in the engine see this?


Because I found out that for, I know we have to finish the work.


I found that for a while, a lot of developers in the SEO


sphere, JavaScript SEO is just advising developers


to pre-render.


And that was, I was waking up at night crying when I, you know.


JOHN MUELLER I mean, I think that was a good first step.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Because this is actually


what's happening.


Yeah.


JOHN MUELLER I think that was a good first step.


And I think.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Good first step.


But.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Three years ago, maybe.


I'm sorry, but I'm not a huge fan of pre-render.


I mean, it's also one of those things where,


in the first step, you have to know what the limitations are.


And when you know the limitations,


you can kind of work around them.


And if you have a website and you need to get it indexed,


you can say, well, Google will figure it out


in a couple of years.


That's not a good business model.


You have to do what you have to do.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Completely looking at how quickly you


catch up to technologies, how well you're doing competitively,


like, from a year ago.


I had this vision in my head, OK, in one or two years,


just for this year.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG And it warms my heart,


because you're one of the few people who say,


we quickly catch up.


Oh, we're going to publish that quickly.


We're going to publish that soon, because the heavy lifting


you did with indexing is tremendous,


because just two years ago, you couldn't


index six pages of JavaScript when


the length was nested in JavaScript.


So yeah, sorry.


So basically, you're saying it's going


to evolve into being much more complex.


I actually, sorry.


Sorry.


I got excited.


I like that idea.


Cool.


It's going to be technical, yeah.


OK.


OK, let's take a break here.


I'll pause the recording before we fill up YouTube.


I mean, I think we could go on forever.


And probably there are a million questions from your side


as well that you want to shove in.


But we have to take a break somewhere.


So I'll stop here.


I'll set up the next sessions.


You're welcome to drop the questions there.


Or of course, ping us on Twitter or post in the Webmaster Help


Forum, folks that are really helpful as well.


With that, take a break.


And wish you all a great weekend.


Thank you very much.


Have a great weekend.


Bye.


Now if I could find the Stop button.


Do I Need a Website? | Search for Beginners Ep 1

Do you need a website?


Before you start, you should ask yourself,


who are your customers and where can you find them?


Do they search for products and services on the internet?


Users often use search engines to find what they're looking for,


so it's important for your business to be easily found online.


When users search for something, they usually already have a clear intention,


such as making a purchase.


For example, if someone searches for where to buy a nice t-shirt,


we can assume there's a clear business opportunity there.


There are many ways to create an online presence.


You can create a website from scratch,


or use a do-it-yourself web page generator.


You could use a content management system, such as WordPress or Joomla.


You could start a blog using a blog publishing service, like Blogger.


Or you can create pages on social media,


for example, on Facebook or Instagram.


Are you wondering which type to choose?


Think of what you want to achieve with your online presence.


It could be getting more walk-in customers,


more online sales, or more newsletter subscriptions.


Alternatively, you may just want people to recognize your product


or know about your business.


Your purpose will determine which types of presence are more suitable.


For example, if you own a physical store like a clothing store,


add the location to Google My Business,


to let thousands of people find it easily on Google Maps and Search.


Social media or messaging apps will allow you to inform your customers


of new products or promotions.


You can sell your products there, or on e-commerce marketplaces.


As your business expands, building your own website from scratch


can help it grow even more, reinforce your brand,


and lend your business more authority and legitimacy online.


Being able to customize your website means you can decorate your store


in the way that represents your business best.


You can also leverage an off-the-shelf content management system.


Many are free and easy to get started.


Even though there are many options, you don't need to choose just one.


You can use multiple channels at the same time,


as long as it aligns with your marketing and brand strategy.


If you already have a website,


make sure to keep your content and technology updated.


Make sure to add your new products, events, or discount information


just as you would in an offline store.


At the same time, make sure your web presence is friendly to search engines,


so that search engines can understand them and people can find them.


Take a look at our basic search visibility checklist


to see some of the points we recommend you review on your website


for better discoverability on Google Search.


Check out the link in the video description below.


If you don't have an online presence yet, why not create one?


Take your first step to showcase your business online today.


In the next episode, you will learn about how to measure a website's performance


and the goals of having websites in the first place.


So don't forget to subscribe to the Google Webmasters channel


and tap the little bell to receive notifications


if you're watching on your mobile, so you will not miss any future videos.


English Google SEO office-hours from September 25, 2020

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


Office Hours Hangout.


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate at Google.


And part of what we do is these kind of office hours and events


where people can come to us and ask us questions


around their website, around search,


and we try to find answers or figure out what's


happening to some extent.


A bunch of things were submitted already on the YouTube listing


for the event.


But if any of you want to get started


with your first question, you're welcome to jump on in.


Hi, John.


Hi.


Hey, I got a question regarding ranking.


So I've written an article that ranked number one the day


after it was posted.


And it was with a feature snippet,


but then it dropped to page six within about 24 more hours.