And I'm happy to take that to the product teams.


English Google SEO office-hours from November 19, 2021

And we can figure out ways to improve that.


Occasionally, when crawling a website,


I run across a spider trap infinitely expanding URLs.


And I've been wondering how Googlebot handles


such situations.


Does it somehow ignore those URLs


to focus on the rest of the normal URLs on the site?


Or does Googlebot get stuck in some way


and miss crawling URLs as a result?


Yeah, that's a complicated question.


And it is something that sometimes causes problems.


For the most part, I think we end up figuring this out.


Because what happens is this kind of this spider trap area,


which is something, for example, maybe you


have an infinite calendar where you


can scroll into March 3000 or something like that.


And essentially, you can just keep


on clicking to the next day and the next day.


And it'll always have a calendar page for you.


That's kind of an infinite space kind of thing.


For the most part, because we crawl incrementally,


we'll start off and go off and find, I don't know,


maybe 10 or 20 of these pages.


And then we'll say, well, there's not much content here.


But maybe if we'll look a little bit deeper


and we go off and crawl maybe 100 of those pages,


and we start seeing, well, all of this content


essentially looks the same.


And they're all kind of linked from this long chain


where you have to click next, next, next, next, next


to actually get to that page.


At some point, our systems are going to say,


well, there's not much value in crawling even deeper here.


Because we found a lot of the rest of the website


that has really strong signals telling us


this is actually important.


And we found this really weird long chain here.


Then overall, we'll say, well, these are probably


not that important.


We don't have to crawl them that often, if at all,


if we want to keep them.


And rather, we'd focus on the rest of the site.


And I think that relative understanding


of URLs across a website, that's something


that we don't really show in Search Console


because it's more like part of our internal systems.


It's already complicated just to show all the URLs.


And I kind of highlight that we've been crawling things.


But you see some of that when you


look at your server log files.


So if you set up a website and you


add this kind of infinite calendar,


you'll see that Googlebot goes off and crawls a little bit


and a little bit more.


And at some point, it says, well, I


think I know where this is headed.


Now just avoid crawling much deeper there.


And you'll also see that over time,


some URLs get crawled very frequently, maybe once a day


or even more often.


And other URLs get crawls less frequently.


And that's kind of very, very roughly an indicator


of what we think is important on a website.


It's not a perfect kind of correlation


with our sense of importance because there's also


an aspect there of we want to make sure


that we pick up changes.


So on the one hand, we understand the importance


of individual pages.


But on the other hand, we also think about how often


these pages change, and a page that might not


be super important might still change very frequently.


And we might still want to get those updates all the time.


But for the most part, if you look at your server logs,


you should be able to see some of that kind of balancing


happening.


And if you take an existing website and add a calendar,


you'll see it kind of bubbling up for a bit


and then settling down again fairly quickly.


Oh, OK, so many questions and running out of time.


Let me see if I can get some questions from here.


I think what I'll do is just take the hands that


are raised at the moment and then look at the chat.


It looks like people are asking questions there too.


I also have a bit more time afterwards


if any of you want to stick around after the recording.


Let's see, Praveen.


Hi, John.


How are you?


Hi.


So my question is related to an e-commerce site.


So there's a friend of mine whose client


owns an e-commerce store.


And this question basically comes from that client.


So this e-commerce business is based


in one of the metro cities in India.


But they deliver products throughout the country.


And so the products they sell online


are like furniture or home decoration stuff,


something like that.


And they have these product and product category


badges on their side, which is doing fine for them.


So the thing is the client said that a few


of their competition sites, what they are doing


is they're creating pages like product


plus location-based pages, something


like product by product x in city A, by product x in city


B, something like that.


And these competitors, they don't


have any physical presence in those cities for which they


are creating these pages.


So the client wants to know whether they can also


create such pages for traffic, whether it's ethical


or it's logical to create such pages where you don't


have any physical presence.


I think you quickly end up in the area of doorway pages


that we've talked about before, where especially if you're


talking about a country like India and saying,


I want to add all cities there, it's


easy from a code point of view to create all of these pages.


But then you end up in a situation


where you really have thousands of pages that are essentially


the same just with different cities.


And that would be considered doorway pages on our site.


Or from the web spam point of view,


the web spam team might take action on that.


The algorithmic side of search will probably also


look at that and say, well, these pages are all very similar


and just targeting variations.


And then they might take action on the site as well.


So that's something I would generally not recommend doing.


PANKAJ UDHASIRI ACHHAVAN, MD.


This is what we advise to the client.


But he said, look at the competition.


They are ranking and they're getting traffic.


So what do you think?


Yeah.


I mean, that's always kind of a tricky situation.


But it is something where the Webmaster guidelines are


pretty clear on that.


And essentially, by going off and creating


all of these pages, you're creating this big giant mass


of low quality content across your website.


And while that might not have an immediate effect on the website


overall, in the long run, we'll see, well,


there's some products here.


And there's this giant mass of low quality content as well.


And overall, the website then ends up being something,


well, it's not as good as it could be.


So that's, I think, one aspect to kind of keep in mind


that maybe you'll have some positive effect


in the short run.


But in the long run, that's really not


something I'd recommend you.


Right.


I think this is what we recommended to the client.


And just wanted to confirm with you that that condition was


correct or not.


Good.


I got the right one.


OK.


Cool.


Amit.


Hi, John.


Hi.


We have a new site that is basically public publishing


in only in English language, right?


So we want to create the same article in different languages,


like in Russian and Canadian.


So how can we do that?


I have done my research, and I have


found that I have to create a separate publisher for that.


But my question is regarding that.


Should I need to define a canonical version


and alternate version there, or what should I do?


Now, so I think in general, if you have multilingual content,


then using something like the hreflang annotation


is really useful because it helps


us to figure out which version of your content


should be shown to which user.


So that's usually the approach to take.


And with regards to the canonical, with the canonical,


you tell us which URL to focus on.


So the canonical should be the individual language versions.


It shouldn't be one language is a canonical for all languages,


but rather, each language has its own canonical version.


Like, this is the French version and the French canonical.


This is the Hindi version and the Hindi canonical.


So it shouldn't be linking across the languages.


OK, but my site is approved on Google News


and ranking well there.


And I have AMP pages crawled there, right?


So should I use their alternate version,


like we have an alternate version in Hindi language


or in Russian language?


So what do you call on this?


Yeah, so with AMP pages and normal web pages


and different language versions, it gets very complicated.


So in the AMP documentation, they have a page on,


I don't know what it's called, probably like multilingual


content that has a diagram with regards to the hreflang


annotations that you should have there.


I would check that out.


With regards to the Google News side of that,


I don't know how News would handle that specifically.


I don't know, for example, if they


would require separating that out into a subdomain


so that it's clearly like a separate news site


or what their recommendations are there.


But for AMP, I would definitely check out


that graphic in the documentation.


OK, so in the next session, we can


discuss more about this one.


Yeah, I mean, I think it's complicated with AMP pages


and normal pages and internationalization.


So it's like when you look at the graph,


you will probably say, oh, this makes a lot of sense.


But if you have a lot of different pages


and a lot of different language versions,


it's a lot of work to get all of those details right.


Yeah, can you tell me where I can


find that diagram or what you're seeing?


Let me see if I can pop it in.


I think I have it.


I'll just put it in the chat.


OK, thank you.


That's the end.


OK, cool.


I see we still have some hands raised.


I will definitely get to you.


But let me pause the recording first,


and then we can continue with the rest of the questions.


Also, the questions in the chat.


Looks like things are happening there.


So if you're watching this on YouTube, the recording,


thank you for watching to the end.


All of you here, thank you for joining and submitting


so many questions.


It's always good to kind of meet and see new faces as well.


If you're watching the recording and you


want to ask your own questions, we


put these in the community section on our YouTube channel,


usually about, I don't know, Monday, Tuesday.


And we also add the link there if you want to join us live.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Are SEOs just imposing more constraints?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Or are they trying to help you build better web


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

projects for your users?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Do SEOs really keep up with the most recent search engine


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

changes?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Or is SEO so big that they are best at helping


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

you answer specific problems?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Isn't SEO just making your site load faster?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Or is it trying to make your website better


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

for your users in total?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

To find out the answers to these questions and more,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

watch the first episode of SEOs and Devs.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Do I not support I11?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

How do I polyfill certain things?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Do I polyfill them, or do I use progressive enhancement?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

What kind of implications do both of these choices have?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Do we actually make design fully responsive?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Do we do a separate mobile site?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

There's all these choices that I already have to make.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And then now frameworks come along and be like,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

we're just going to do most of the stuff on the client side


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because we want to write a single-page app.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And then you either have to say, do I


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

set up something for server-side rendering or static rendering


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

at build time, or do I go all in on the single-page app


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and just everything happens on the client?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

What do search engines think about that?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And then search engines come in like, well,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

you should be doing this, and you should not


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

be doing that because that gets penalized.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And actually, we don't even understand


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

what you're doing here because search engines are running


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Chrome 12 or something.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And it's just yet another constraint


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that I have to balance and make decisions


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

whether following their restrictions is more important


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

or following my business restrictions or my marketing


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

restrictions or my project management restrictions.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I feel like some people are frustrated about that


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

sometimes.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I remember when I was a web developer, there's also this user first, no mobile


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

first, no content first, no this first, no that first.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That's probably also going in the same direction.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I understand the frustration.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I see that there are lots of requirements.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And sometimes these requirements might even contradict each other.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But I think as developers, we should understand


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

what SEOs are trying to help us with and what search engines,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

separately from what we are building and doing,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

are actually trying to accomplish.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And then we would see that it's basically


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

all of these requirements are important,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

but maybe some of them are more important than others.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And they are important in different stages, I would say.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So for instance, you mentioned mobile first versus


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

or a responsive design versus having separate versions, right?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I would say that's a decision that you


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

need to make relatively early on in the development


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

process before you, yeah.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Whereas then, should I use this feature?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Should I polyfill this feature?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Should I not use this feature because I


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

need to support an old browser that doesn't support it


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and the polyfill is tricky?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That's something that probably happens a little later


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

in development, right?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Yeah, I think I agree with that.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

It depends how much flexibility you're given as a developer.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I think we all may or may not have lived the experience of working


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

with a designer who insists on a pixel perfect design, which


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

is just not something that works on the web.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But sometimes you're given a task


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and your job is to complete it and not have an opinion.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I don't want to go down the, oh, it depends route.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But in the end, whatever we end up talking about,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

we probably won't find a definitive answer.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Context matters and everyone has different constraints.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I think that's really what it's about,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that you need to just be aware of the constraints


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that you have and make decisions in the context


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

of your situation.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You mentioned something that I find quite interesting,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that you said, you know, SEOs are trying to help us


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

with something.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Because often, you know, they're kind of like villainized almost


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

as like the people who just try to get you


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to the top of the rankings whether you deserve it or not.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But in the end, I feel like there is a help going on.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Like both search engines as well as the people


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that want you to do well in the search results


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

actually are trying to make your site better in the end.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Like no search engine actually wants


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to give you results that are bad.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That just doesn't make sense.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So in the end, search engines are trying


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to put the best results on top.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And if an SEO helps you get on top,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

then ideally what that means, your site has gotten better.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

MARTIN SPLITTENBERG Yes, exactly.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I love that you were saying like, oh, yeah,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

you have to look at the context.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You have to understand the constraints.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And that's actually something that a good SEO will help you


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

with because if you look at it from a purely SEO standpoint,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

depending on what you're building and how you're


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

building it, you might have different priorities.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So for instance, if you're saying,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

oh, this is a test version of a landing page.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

We just want to see if the customer segment is even


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

interested in what we are potentially building later on.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And you don't want to build for the bin.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You don't want to build something that then later on you


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

find out doesn't actually work because there's


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

no interest in it.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So then for these things, SEO might be relatively important


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because you definitely want people to find that so that you


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

get enough data on making decisions later on.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But you might not be so constrained in terms of like,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

oh, yeah, this has to be client side versus server side.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

We don't really have to make this super fast.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

We just have to get this into people's faces,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

especially through search engines,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

so that we get some meaningful data


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to make decisions later on versus you're building


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and improving on an existing product.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And that should be long-evitable.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So a good SEO actually helps you understand


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

what kind of requirements you should take into account.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And SEO is a gigantic field.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And they should pick the bits and pieces


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that actually matter for your specific context.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So you said like, oh, we want to build a single-page


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

application.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Maybe.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Maybe you do.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Maybe you don't.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Maybe it's fine to build it to a client-side rendered.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But maybe consider doing some bits and pieces


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

server-side rendered because you reap some performance benefits


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

there.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And that also influences SEO.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Because as you say, search engines


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

want to find the good things.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So making your site better, and that includes making it faster


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

but also making it accessible.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Because if you think about it, search engines


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

are computers interacting with your website,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

working through your website, and trying to understand


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

what your website says.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So they have basic accessibility needs.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

They don't necessarily interact with things.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

They don't click on stuff.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And yet, they need to work with your content.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So it should be accessible to them.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And SEOs will point these things out.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That's really interesting that you bring that up


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because I was just thinking about both performance,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

like loading performance, for example, and accessibility.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So on the one hand, it's kind of accepted


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that loading performance is important.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But now that, for example, we have corporate vitals.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And one of their core statements is


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that they don't want to just put a number on a metric


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

or something as measurable.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

They want to measure things that are


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

important to user experience.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And so the core vitals that we currently have,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

which is just three metrics, LTP, CLS, and FID, right,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

all of these are statistically correlated to users enjoying


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

your site more or staying on your site longer.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And that means if you optimize for those,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

you actually will get something out of that.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You will get users that stay longer.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And now that search is looking into those,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that means optimizing for those metrics


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

not only gets you higher in the rankings, potentially,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

but also the people that do see your site


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

will most likely stay longer or engage with it more


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because we know that these metrics correlate


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

with user behavior.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I think that's a really interesting approach where


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

in the end, actually, search engines are


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

helping you do the right thing.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And now I'm wondering, which I don't even know,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

accessibility is something which we keep talking about


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and we know it's important.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And yet it feels like it always falls off the truck.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

In many projects, it's an afterthought.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And many people know that it needs


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to be something that needs to be considered


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

from the very beginning of a project


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because it's hard to shoehorn in at the end.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

It needs to be something that works from the start.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Has any search engine ever done anything in this space


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to help developers be better with accessibility?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

We are more or less going in that direction,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and actually these semantics are also


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

important for accessibility oftentimes


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because people need to be able to navigate your content


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

differently, maybe with a keyboard,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

maybe with a screen reader.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And for that, the semantics on the page


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

need to be in place from the get-go, basically.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So in that direction, having better semantics


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

does help search engines better understand your content


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and as a byproduct also help people better


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

navigate your content who have additional navigational needs.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So you could say search engines are a little involved


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

in terms of accessibility.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That does not cover accessibility as a whole.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

There's so much more to accessibility than just that.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But at least in the core of the semantics on the web,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that is taken care of here.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

What are the key things that you can do to help developers


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

understand their content?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Another thing that I really found interesting


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

is where you say, oh, SEOs are often


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

seen as just coming with all these additional constraints


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and requirements.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

What is there that they could do differently


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that you would think would help you and other developers


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

understand where they're coming from


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

or have a meaningful discussion about these things


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and turn that into a positive, constructive input?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I don't know if this is the answer you're looking for.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But one thing I have seen is that some SEOs need


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to put in a bit more effort to be up to date on what is good


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and what is not good guidance, or more specifically,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

what search engines are and are not capable of processing


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

correctly.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I know that you have been fighting the no, no,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

JavaScript is fine fight for a long time now.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But I think to this day, there are still some SEOs out there


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

who insist that anything that is in JavaScript


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

is invisible to the search engine.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I think, in general, I think it goes back to the trade-off


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

thing, where I think developers need


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to realize that SEOs are trying to help you be better.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And SEOs need to realize that they can't give advice


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

as a either you do this or you're screwed kind of approach.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

It's trade-offs.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You can say, this is one way where you can make a site.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But this is another way.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And this is yet another thing that you can do.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And all of these things will accumulate


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to make your site better, ideally resulting


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

in giving you a higher rank.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But it's not like an all or nothing approach, I think.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Sometimes, certain constraints just outweigh other constraints.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And you then make a decision to go with plan A


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

rather than plan B or stick what you currently got.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

We have recently seen a shift from purely client-side app


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to this hybrid approach, where the app is rendered


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

on the server side or even at build time,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

but then turns into a single-page app


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

once loaded onto the client.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And that has upsides, and it has downsides.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

We know that statically rendered content


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

is very good for your first render, your largest


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

content full paint, your loading time.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That all goes down.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But now we have this additional blob of JavaScript state


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that is somehow inserted into the document.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And then often, the full dynamic client-side re-render


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

happens, which can create an if user experience at time.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And all these things are working for or against you


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

in certain aspects.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I think that's just something


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that the SEOs need to be mindful of as well, that the developer


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

cannot just follow everything that they say,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because they're not the only deciding force on a project.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I'm not saying that all SEOs behave like this, of course,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because I'm honestly quite inexperienced of working


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

with an SEO directly.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But just from base on the story that I hear


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and people that I see on Twitter, it's all a trade-off.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I think people need just to realize that everyone is,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

in 90% of the cases, trying to do the best they can


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and do their job well.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And just keep that in mind.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And then probably find a solution that works for both


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

or is a compromise.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Yeah.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

No, that makes perfect sense.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I just wish that both SEOs and developers would look at it


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

from a different perspective.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Both SEOs and developers want to build something


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that people are using.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You don't want to build something


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and then no one uses it.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That's neither going to pay your bills very long,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

nor is it making you happy to see, like, oh, yeah,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

we built something that helps lots of people.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That's definitely true for me.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

When I was a developer, I wanted to build things


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that actually have an impact.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And that means that they need to be used by someone.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And if we are building something that we genuinely


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

are convinced is a good thing, then that


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

should be reflected by the fact that search engines would agree


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

on that and say, like, oh, yeah, this is a good solution


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to this problem or this challenge


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that people might face and thus want to basically showcase


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

your solution.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But for that, there needs to be something


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that search engines can grasp and understand and look at


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and put into their index accordingly.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So basically, they need to understand


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

what is the page about?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

What does it offer the users?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Is it fast?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Is it slow?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Is it mobile friendly?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

All these kind of things.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And SEOs are then the ones who are,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because you as a developer are focused on making it work


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

in all the browsers that it needs to work in, making it


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

fast, using all the best practices, using tree shaking,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

bundle splitting, all that kind of stuff.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And then SEOs come in and help you making sure


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that search engines do understand


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

what you're building and can access what you're building


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and that you are following the few best practices that you


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

might not necessarily be aware of yet.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But you're right.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

For that, SEOs need to follow what is up-to-date best


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

practice guidance.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And not all of them do.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I recently, well, in beginning of 2021,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I ran a poll at one of the virtual events


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

asking if people are aware that Googlebot is now


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

using an evergreen Chrome.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So we are updating the Chromium instance


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that is used to render pages.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I think like 60% of the people were like,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

oh, I didn't know that.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Even though we announced that in 2019 at Google IO in May.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So this information is by no means.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That was amazing.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I mean, launching this has been a great, great initiative.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But I'm surprised that I think we have gotten developers


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to notice that, but not necessarily all SEOs


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

have noticed.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And it's things that are not necessarily easy, or not even


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

your job as a developer, where SEOs can really help you,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

or at least make the right connections for you.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

For instance, I know you built scoosh.app, right?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Well, not just me, but I was part of the team that built it.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Right, you were part of the team who built scoosh.app.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I think scoosh.app is awesome.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

For those who don't know it, it's


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

a web app that allows you to experiment with different image


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

compression settings, and then basically get the image


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that you put into the application in your browser.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

It's all working from the browser.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You don't have to install anything.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And basically get the best settings for the best gains


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

in terms of file size, right?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That's roughly what it does.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Yeah, it's an image compressor.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And you can fiddle with all the settings


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and can try out the next generation codecs now


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that are coming to the web.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But yeah, you have more control than I


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

think any other image compression app that I know.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And it's really, really cool.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And I really admire the work that the engineering put


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

into this, that all the developers put into this


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to make this work so smoothly, so quickly, so nice.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

It implements lots of best practices.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But for a search engine, if you were to actually sell that


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

as a product, this might not be very good.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And that's because if you look at it,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

it's an interface that allows me to drag and drop an image


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

into it.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And then it does a bunch of stuff


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

in terms of user interface controls


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to actually fine-tune settings.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But if I, as a robot, access that page,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

it's a bunch of HTML controls, but not that much content,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

right?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Agreed.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So would you want to have to sit down and figure out


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

how you would describe this and how to actually?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You probably don't want to do all that work by yourself.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You want to focus on building cool stuff with the new image


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

algorithms and actually fine-tuning


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

how to make the settings work better or more accessible


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

or easier to understand, right?


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

That's where you want to focus on.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Yeah, and I think that I actually


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

would like to get help from someone who actually knows


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

whether this site.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I would have been able to say if, like, I think our loading


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

performance is excellent because we spend lots of time


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

on making it really good and actually trying


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to pioneer some techniques.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But I wouldn't have been able to tell you


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

whether it's going to get a good ranking from a search bot


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

or a bad ranking, to be honest.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I mean, the name is unique enough


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

that it's very Googleable.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So I think even if it didn't do so well,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

people will probably find it.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But in the end, it's actually a very interesting example


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because you're completely right.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

The opening page, because it's about images,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

it mostly consists of images.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

The only text we have on the landing page


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

is the name and the file size of the demo images


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and the licensing link.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So there's not much going on for a bot


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to understand what the site does, especially


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

because something this specific, there's


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

not even much to do with semantic markup, like you said.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

OK, cool.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

There's an image, an input tag.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You can drag and drop an image.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

But even that, even the drag and drop


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

is actually only communicated via the user interface,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

not via the markup.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And so, yeah, that's a really interesting example.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I would have no idea how to optimize.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I would have probably said, like, meta description tag.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I don't know.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And then John Miller told me that apparently we


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

don't pay attention to the meta description tag anymore.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Well, we do.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

It's the keywords that we don't pay attention to.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Oh, the keywords is the one.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

OK, I take that back.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Yeah, exactly.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So I think you're right that it is very easy for developers


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to sometimes also guess what is good for SEO and what is bad,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

and actually getting input from someone who put in the time


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

to learn what is actually going on.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Keep up to date with the most recent updates.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

As you say, people apparently don't even


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

know that Googlebot is now evergreen Chrome, which


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

is amazing.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And so there's probably still lots of SEOs who go around


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

saying, no, no, no, you can't use Shadow DOM or something


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

like that, even if they know the JavaScript actually works.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I agree.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Get someone who knows.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

I mean, I've been saying for a while that even as a very


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

enthusiastic experimenter and web developer,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

one single person cannot really understand and use


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

the entire web platform.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

It's now so incredibly widespread


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

on the areas that it covers.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You can do Web Audio, Web Assembly, Web USB, MIDI,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

all these things.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

You will not have experience in all of these things.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And some of these holes, like WebGL itself,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

is a huge rabbit hole to fall into.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

So pick some stuff.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

Get good at it.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

And for things you don't know, get help, because otherwise,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

you're going to work on half knowledge that might end up,


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

very likely, going to end up to actually be counterproductive


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

for what you're trying to achieve.


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?

MARTIN SPLITT


SEOs & web developers: friends or foes?


Tackling web spam, search quality, and more!

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the Search Off


the Record podcast.


Our plan for this series is to talk a bit about what's


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


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


My name is John Mueller.


I'm a search advocate on the Search Relations team


here at Google in Switzerland, and I'm


joined for this episode by Martin and Gary,


also on the Search Relations team.


Our guest today is Duy from the Search Quality team.


Duy, would you like to introduce yourself briefly?


Duy Ting Lian, Search Quality Team Manager, Search Quality


Team Team, Google Search


Yes.


I'm so sorry.


Gary told me to do that.


Thank you for having me.


I'm Duy.


I'm from the Search Quality team based in California.


Cool.


So maybe it's just me and me being the newbie on the team.


team?


So I mostly focused on the low quality and spam aspect


of the work.


But basically, we have a lot of signals


and a lot of new websites and pages we look at every day.


How do we rank the high quality results


while demoting low quality or spam ones?


So that's basically the search quality team.


So cool.


That's really, really nice.


Yeah.


What brought you to a team that looks at the lower quality


part of the web?


I'm a curious person.


Before joining Google, I worked a lot of different roles.


But I also worked on marketing and search engine


optimizations.


I've always been interested in how search works


and how do you get information and make sure


that people can find it.


How do you tell search engines that, oh, hey,


I have this piece of information.


Can you rank it in a way that people can search for a query


and then my results would come with the relevant search


queries?


So I saw this job posting on Google.


It looks interesting.


If people are doing SEO and some people are doing bad stuff


and spam search engine, how do you guys


fight against that as the Google search engine of the world?


So I was curious.


And with my previous web development and SEO knowledge,


I thought I could offer some help.


So yeah, here I am.


That is amazing.


I think the first time I came in contact with web spam was,


I remember the first thing I built with PHP on my own website


was a counter, like a visitor counter.


And then the second thing was a guest book.


And oh my god, it was a simple form


that was sent back to the server and then saved into a database,


I think in the beginning even just like a file.


And within days, I had so many entries in my guest book.


And I was like, woohoo, so many people commented in my guest


book.


And it was all spam.


Oh, man.


Oh, god, those were the days.


I'm sorry for that, Martin.


I mean, it wasn't me.


It wasn't me.


Not really.


I mean, I don't know.


Gary, was it you?


It was probably Gary, yeah.


Yeah, it probably was me.


Thanks, Gary.


Thanks for ruining that website for me.


You're welcome, any time.


So annoying.


OK, yeah.


So what did you end up doing, Martin?


Did you add anti-spam measures?


Did you add signals?


Oh my god, I wish I would be as smart as Dewey is back


when I wrote that.


And I couldn't figure it out.


I basically just built in a very basic version of the captcha.


And that surprisingly drove away 95% of the spammers,


apparently, because it was no longer a super simple target.


But then I still got a lot of bad posts,


and I just decided to turn it down.


Oh my gosh.


How would you actually detect that?


So for such low quality or spammy content,


it's relatively easy.


If you're a person and you look at a page that's


full of gibberish, or in this case,


guestbooks with spammy posts, you


should be able to say that emphatically, yes, this


is spam within seconds.


Even if it's more complicated, with a trained eye,


it should take less than a minute to determine


if something is spammy or not.


And as Google, we have all these signals and all these data


that we've accumulated and analyzed and studied


over the years.


So it's entirely possible to collect those data,


to study it, and build things like machine learning models


to tackle spam.


Machine learning model is interesting


because it has so many use cases.


It recommends music for you.


You trust it enough to drive cars around


so you don't have to drive.


So building machine learning models for spam


turns out to be a pretty natural step for us.


So yeah, we have so many data around not just search results,


but specifically spam.


So we were able to build a very effective and comprehensive


machine learning model that basically took care


of most of the obvious spam.


It basically took over all the heavy lifting


so we can focus on more important work.


So cool.


So if that model were to run across Martin's guestbook


with all of these friendly non-people visitors,


what would it do?


Would it say, like, Martin is a spammer?


Or how would you treat that website?


So for sites that were specifically built for spam,


we basically demote them so they never


show up for relevant queries.


For sites that are overrun with spam,


you know, like you have a mix of very good quality content.


And then part of your sites are being overrun by spam.


We have manual actions to help the webmasters


and let them know that, oh yeah, this is happening.


You should take care of that.


Actually, we just published a blog post yesterday about this.


So we will send you a notification.


And then we would explain that portion of your site


is really overrun by spam.


Mostly this is a guestbook or a forum or the comments section


that you should just go in.


And nowadays, it's relatively easy to take care of spam.


Yeah, you have a ton of measures and tools if you use CMSes.


So cool.


So basically, if you ran across Martin's guestbook,


you would try to figure out who this person is


and send them a notification.


I guess finding out who the person is just


based on things like Search Console accounts.


Like if Martin is verified in Search Console


and he still had his guestbook running


and it was overrun like this and we noticed it,


we would say, hey, Martin, clean up your site.


Yeah, we shouldn't punish the entire site


that Martin's been building because one of the pages


is spam, right?


That's something we really care about, the good content.


So yeah, we would try to ask Martin to clean it up


and help him verify that.


So it was a smart move that my guestbook content


was on a separate page.


So you would kill that page, never show it in search results.


But all the other fantastic content


that I'm sure I had back in the day,


like lots of cat images and stuff,


probably has been fantastically well-ranked.


Yeah, so it's even more important


that you are verifying Search Console.


So if we detect that your site is hacked or part of it


is being abused for spam, we can let you know immediately.


We're pretty good with that.


It happened a few times to me as well, actually,


in the past with different websites.


Yeah, that's a really nice tool, I think.


What do you do with your website, Martin?


Hey, I had comments on my blog.


I had lots of fantastically well-written content


on my blog.


Basically, I know that it's fantastically well-written


and useful because I wrote it for myself


because I forget things.


So I learned a thing, I figured out how to do something,


and then I wrote a blog post.


And six months later, I would Google for the thing


and my blog would come up.


But when I had comments enabled, I had the exact same problem.


I really could not be arsed to implement some sort of spam


fighting measures.


So I got a manual action at some point,


and I was like, oh, OK, that's annoying.


So I disabled comments.


OK, it's like way to throw everything out just because


of a little bit of spam.


That's why we can't have nice things.


Yeah, so I'm kind of curious.


How did you recognize it was spam?


Did you realize at the time that it was around SEO,


or did it just look like, why are these bots posting


on my site?


I mean, I had a tech blog and the comments were like, hey,


you want to buy cheap Viagra?


And I'm like, hmm, maybe they haven't actually


read the article.


Maybe they just are not even human.


As Dewey said, you get the feeling,


and with a trained eye, I could determine that to be spam.


So cool.


Yeah.


I don't know how cool that was, really.


It was not cool.


Don't do spam, kids.


Not even once.


When you say trained eye, do you mean


that you trained yourself to spam


and that's how you recognized the others spamming?


Or?


So I would say that if you just look at spam a few times


and you immediately know what it is, it's really not difficult.


Oftentimes, it's just gibberish or a bunch of keyword stuff


together.


Like, do spammers really think that this is 1998,


we're still building web pages with Frontpage or Dreamweaver?


And adding 500 spammy keywords would make it do well


in search engines in general?


I'm very curious to understand why they think that would work.


But it should be very obvious.


So do you think a lot of this is just old scripts just being


run on autopilot?


Or how do you see that?


I think it's just lazy.


I think they just, basically, they


want to rank a piece of content.


Maybe it's low quality.


Maybe it's spam.


But then instead of spending that time


to write a relevant article for it,


building a site with good user experience, with categories,


with tagging, with all these helpful user experience,


they simply write a script to generate something very fast


and simple and just spread around,


hoping that one of these would rank well in search


and make them some small amount of money.


I mean, this is very similar to the phishing and scam attacks


on email.


Because when you read the emails,


the scam emails about the Narnian prince sending you


an email about heritage and whatever, or inheritance,


when you read it, it's very obvious to you


that maybe I shouldn't reply, perhaps.


But then, I don't know, one person out of 1,000


will actually reply with data that they


can use to make some money out of.


If you have a script that's running on autopilot


and spamming the web, quite literally the whole web,


then if you make money out of, I don't know,


with one spam comment that you left out of, I don't know,


millions of comments, there's your money.


And you didn't invest all that much into it.


Yeah, I think that the fact is that there's


a lot of people trying to spam Google.


Actually, we publish every year that we,


for the most recent figure we had was every day


we discover about 40 billion pages that are spam.


It's actually not a typo.


It's billion with a B. And when users search stuff on Google,


less than 1% of search queries would land on a spammy page.


So a lot of work went into detecting and removing


those spammy queries.


So at the end of the day, I think


it's still possible to do that to prevent


these spammy and manipulative content from reaching users.


And that's what we focus on every day.


We have enough signals and solutions to deal with these.


Now, when I read that number of the number of spammy pages


we discover every day, it really blew my mind.


It's amazing to see how much energy


must be put into just creating a giant mass of pages.


And it's really cool to see that the quality of the search


results is extremely high.


Every now and then, I will run into something where I'd say,


oh, this is pretty spammy, or this is redirecting,


or this is obviously someone's expired domain


and they're hosting something else on it now.


But it's really rare that I run into these kind of things


on normal searches that I do.


So that's like, I don't know.


I don't know how many gazillion people


you have working on this, but it's been working really well,


I think.


Yeah, that's an Asian proverb.


I'm not sure how to translate this, but it's


literal translations.


Like, the more you sweep the floor, the more dust you find.


So if you really try to find spam, you may come across that.


But overall, even in my personal day-to-day uses of Google


Search, I really don't come across spam all that much.


And that's what we strive for, less than 1% of whatever


you search for should be surfacing some bad stuff.


And more than 99% of your time should


go towards high quality and relevant results.


So what kind of things do you still


find problematic on the web?


Where does our impact come to its limits?


I don't know how to frame it.


I would say hack spam is still a problem for the ecosystem.


Many sites still run on older versions of CMSs,


or they use outdated plug-ins or templates.


If you think about it, well, personally, I


don't know anyone that still runs Windows Vistas.


And if you have friends that still run Windows Vistas,


you probably judge them, right?


So can we do that as the web ecosystem


if people still run really outdated CMSs?


Can we help them to get on a version that


is extremely more secure?


A lot of the hack spam that took place today


is barely any hacking.


A lot of the tools and scripts that people discovered


like five, six years ago, sometimes still being


used today to exploit websites, especially like older websites.


I think at the very least, we should


make it a lot more difficult for these spammers


to hack into sites and spread spammy or malware content.


Because when users visit your website,


like if they visit Martin's Tech Blob,


they don't expect to walk away with ransomware or malware.


I think we have enough resources and cooperation in the ecosystem


to make that happen.


I really look forward to that.


Yeah, I think that's super tricky, too,


because I don't know how other people run their websites.


But for me, I would put up a new blog


and put some content on it because I thought,


oh, I will spend a lot of time, write a lot of stuff here.


And then I just never get to it.


And then it just keeps running and running and running.


And if you don't activate the automatic updates,


then suddenly you're running this old version.


You're like, oh, I don't really have time to deal with it.


And you don't even realize what is happening there.


And I imagine at mass, like looking


at the bigger part of the web, there


are lots of small companies that just have their site kind


of running like that, where it's like, oh, people


can find my phone number and that's good enough.


And they don't realize that they're potentially


causing a problem for the bigger web


just by keeping things running on something


that is essentially outdated.


I would also say that the very least they


can do in those situations is to sign up for Search Console,


because then they would have more data where they would


realize that, oh, yeah, running this very old version of CMS


really hinder the site's potential.


Maybe it's just a whole lot slower


if you have a bunch of improvements that Search


Console say you should do.


It's just extremely difficult. So now, suddenly, they


realize there's a lot more incentive


to keep the sites up to date.


And obviously, if you're signed up with Search Console,


if we find a hack or any problems,


we would notify you immediately.


Now, we're pretty fast, and we're


pretty effective at detecting hacks.


So yeah, that's the least you can do.


And hopefully, by signing up for Search Console,


you find more incentives to keep your sites up to date,


do all these improvements that, in the end,


would benefit users a lot.


Yeah.


I don't know, Martin.


Were you signed up for Search Console in the beginning?


Or when did that come up on your radar?


It didn't happen in the beginning.


It happened eventually when I grew the blog a little more,


and I noticed that a lot of people are actually using it.


And it did show up a bit in Search.


I was like, hmm, maybe I should actually sign up


for Search Console to get a little more insights into it.


And I didn't even realize that that would help me


with things like manual actions and hacked issues.


I didn't really have that many hacked issues


because it is a static site, so that's nice.


But yeah, I think it's a pretty useful tool.


But I doubt that every so I think


like a lot of the old websites that are around


are probably from people who are necessarily primarily concerned


about the website.


I don't know, like the bakery around the corner,


the cafe in a small town.


They want to have a website in case someone needs


to discover them or wants to find out


something like what's on the menu today or something


like that.


But they don't necessarily care enough to update


or know enough to update their CMS,


and they probably also don't really


are the main audience for Search Console.


So that can be a little tricky.


I think with a bunch of CMS communities,


we are now working on closing that gap.


Things like Site Kit that tries to get the key information


into the CMS control panel so that you


don't have to go to third-party tools.


So I think that's a pretty cool approach.


Yeah.


I also moved my whole site to a static site as well,


partially also because of all of the hacking things.


I mean, I had everything set up to automatically update,


and every week or so I'd get an email saying,


oh, we installed another update.


And at some point, I was like, I get so many emails


that my blog is updating automatically,


and none of my content has been updated for 10 years.


So it's like, I might as well just make a static site out


of it.


And also kind of protect from the hacking angle there.


I don't know.


One of the things that I think came up to me out


of all of the hack discussions and seeing


how things are hacked on the web from Google internally


and from the help forums is that, especially


for smaller businesses, it makes sense


to kind of offload all of that and just say,


use some hosted platform instead of trying


to host your own website.


Do you think that would protect against most of these hacking


things, or what additional things should small businesses


kind of do?


Yeah, I think that would be a good solution.


Actually, we just published a number that, in 2020, we


sent over 140 million messages to site owners


in the Search Console.


That's a lot more messages than previous years, right?


And the bulk of that was from sites


that were coming onto Search Console for the first time.


So a lot of businesses, because of the pandemic or whatnot,


realized that they need better online presence.


So suddenly, they invest a lot more


into building the website.


Even simple things like menu were suddenly


updated a lot more frequently.


And now you can order online to pick up or get delivered.


And I noticed they also worked with a lot more hosted


platforms.


So I think that's a good solution if you don't


have your dedicated team to manage your website


or social media presence.


You can go with the hosted platform,


and that probably takes care of a lot of the overhead.


Cool.


So what about your site, Gary?


When are these recipes going online?


And what would happen if someone were to hack your recipes


and change the butter for mayonnaise?


Oh, no.


That would probably work, actually, in many cases.


But my recipes are online, actually.


I keep them in Apple Notes, and they are kept in the cloud.


Oh, I mean publicly online.


Or can we share your password with the podcast listeners?


I would prefer not to share my password for reasons.


I have stuff, recipes that I would prefer not sharing.


At least not yet, because I have to perfect them.


Like the doriaki that I was eating


before we started recording this podcast, that


was one of those recipes, which I


took the original Japanese recipe,


and I made it, well, different.


Swiss cheese.


Yeah, I added Swiss cheese.


I'm glad that you are not obsessed with cheese.


Cool, what other things do you kind of like,


what keeps you awake at night when it comes to search quality?


Don't say the cats.


I learned that's the wrong answer.


I would try not to.


The other bits that kind of keep me up at night is scam.


There's a lot of scams going around, all sorts of scam.


But for example, customer support scam


used to be a popular one.


If you're looking for Gmail customer support number,


a lot of people try to rank for that


and would publish a false number to make you call them.


And then for some reason, somehow


at the end of the conversation, you'd


be sending them money or buying them gift cards.


There's a lot of YouTube videos you can find


about how this scam works.


So we did a lot of work into preventing that.


We were able to protect hundreds of millions of queries


since 2018 that go into customer support queries.


We basically demoted most of the scam there.


But I think there's also the awareness part.


People, if they're similar to very pure spam,


very obvious spam, if you know such scam exists,


you probably won't fall for that.


A lot of time people click on these sites


or call these weird numbers maybe because they don't know


that it's a possibility that someone were out to trick them.


But apparently that's a common problem


that government departments like the IRS


deal with that all the time.


And now it may spread to other parts of the web,


but we're doing a lot to prevent scam from reaching users.


But users should also research more


to protect themselves against scam.


It's relatively easy once you know that


and once your family members know that.


It probably won't happen.


I don't know, for a while they were quite visible


in the search results, but it feels like I haven't seen them


for a really long time.


So I don't know what you've been doing,


but it seems to be working pretty cool.


One question I always get where maybe you


have some insights or some tips as well


is what if a competitor of mine were doing something


kind of spammy where maybe they're just


keyword stuffing on their pages or they're creating


some kind of a doorway page.


And I know that this is spammy because I read


the Webmaster Guidelines, and my competitor


is getting away with it.


They're ranking right above me.


What could I do there?


Is that something where I can report them to, I don't know,


the spam police and they'll take care of it for me?


Or what are the options?


Or is it even something where I can do anything about it?


Yeah, I would say that a lot of times


maybe the competitors is not necessarily ranking well


because they do spam.


There are so many factors when it comes to ranking.


I'm sure Gary will touch on them.


But if you're really concerned about that,


you can report them to us.


We have a spam report that we review pretty frequently.


So yeah, please send us a spam report.


You can also seek help in the support forum, the Webmaster


help forum.


And then we will also be able to take a look.


Yeah, so cool.


I don't know.


I always feel a bit sorry for people


who are seeing that kind of thing where they're kind of


almost stuck in a situation where they're thinking, well,


maybe I should be spamming as well so that I


can rank above my competitor who is spamming.


But that always feels like a bad idea.


Yeah, if everyone was doing that,


then where does that leave the users?


Will they have good user experience and good content


to consume?


I really don't think that's a solution.


I think everyone should be focusing on doing what's right


and doing what's best for not just your website


but for your users.


If you focus too much on a single metric or something


that you think that would, for some reason,


propel your site, most of the time


it would lead to a pretty negative outcome.


Yeah.


I think it's also, like you said,


kind of like one of those things where you don't even


know if it will actually help your site.


And potentially it'll just harm your site.


And then you're just digging a bigger hole for yourself


rather than working on something positive for your website


to improve things for the long run.


An example of that that we observed


was webmasters or spammers tend to focus


on improving one or two particular metrics that


are external that we absolutely do not use.


They, for some reason, think that if they


put a lot of time and money in improving such scores,


it would perform really well on Google Search.


I've never seen a case where that actually worked well.


And I find it pretty sad, right?


Because all that time and money were


spent on building up the website with better user experience,


more functionality, writing better quality content,


producing high quality images, they probably


do a lot better on Search.


And that's obviously a lot more sustainable for the site


itself.


Yeah.


The one area where I kind of see where people, I don't know,


use that almost in a reasonable way


is when it comes to monetizing their site, where they just


want some externally visible metric to go to some advertiser


and say, look, my site is actually


pretty reasonably placed.


And if you spend some money with me,


then I can get your message out to a broader audience.


But it feels like sometimes I see people in the forums just


saying, I want to improve this metric.


They don't really want to kind of focus on the site overall.


They're just like, I just want to change this number from 7


to 25.


And they're like, why?


It doesn't change much.


I love data myself.


I think the more data you have, the better


you would be at your role, whatever that may be.


As a site owner or a online marketer,


I think it's really great to have a bunch of metrics


that you monitor and measure and try to improve,


as long as you don't focus on one thing.


As a site owner, I used to look at bounce rate and time


spent on pages all the time, for example,


to know which content that are really hitting it off


with my audience so I can improve more.


Or if for some reason I find that nobody really


discover our contact or support pages, why is that?


Do we have a problem there?


If people need to contact us, maybe we


should just put it somewhere else.


We write better content.


So yeah, as long as you don't focus on one single thing,


because we have hundreds and hundreds of ranking signal,


focusing on one thing doesn't mean


you will improve it across the board


and we would rank your site better.


Yeah.


So many ranking signals.


I don't know.


Gary, what do you think?


Which is a signal people should just focus on?


Like, just pick one.


The JMO30.


I haven't heard of that one.


You haven't?


I'll have to Google that.


I think it involves the meta cheese tag,


if I remember correctly.


The meta cheese tag.


I just wish search engines would serve cheese instead of pages.


I'd be down for that.


That's a horrible idea.


That's one of the worst ideas that you've ever had, actually.


I will go as far.


That's something to think about for Steve.


I don't know.


I mean, cheese smells kind of bad, but it can be OK, right?


Smells like a big seller for Steve 3.0.


Steve 3.0 serves cheese, not pages.


But if you only serve cheese, then you


are not going to find recipes about how to prepare the cheese,


how to prepare food that contains


said cheese that you found.


See?


Something to think about.


OK.


So tell us a bit about serving, Gary.


How does it actually work?


I was telling you about that for the past four episodes,


or three episodes, or whatever.


Come on.


You are not listening again.


Cheese.


Cheese?


Yeah.


So ranking is one of those topics


where we don't want to say too much, and that's on purpose.


But if you ever went to an information retrieval class,


then you heard about ranking there


and the public version of it.


Because ranking results is actually just math


and figuring out first basic relevancy and then some magic


that's the part that we are not talking about.


Basically, the magic part is the.


It's card tricks, really.


Card tricks.


Sometimes coin tricks.


Thanks, Martin.


That was very useful.


Every search engine has its own kind of magic


that they are using that they were brewing for years,


and typically the part that we don't want to talk about.


But the other part, the thing that you


can hear about in computer science classes,


that's actually there's no reason not to talk about it,


because it's kind of public.


So once you had the query and you found a bunch of results


in your index, then you will have


to start ranking those results that you found before


presenting them to the user.


And that is done, I mean, I'm waving my hand here,


using hundreds of signals, but some of them


are quite obvious, one that we typically


refer to as topicality, basically, relevancy,


that is based on the query and the contents of the page.


So for example, if you are writing about cookies,


I don't know, lemon coconut cookies,


then if the query contained those terms,


then your page will be in the retrieve set.


Now, search engines don't return all the results all the time,


because for some queries, like for example, cookies,


just the term cookies, there might be billions of results,


quite literally.


And there's no reason to return all of them,


because there's no person who is ever going


to go through all of them.


So what we need to do, don't make that face,


because really there is no person that


is going to go through billions of results.


So what we need to do is limit the number


to something more reasonable, say 1,000 or 10,000


or whatever the number is at the moment.


How do you do that?


Basically, you start ranking the pages.


You apply the things that you could collect during indexing,


the, I don't know, page rank, for example, again,


topicality and other simple quality signals


that you can use already to create a reverse order


list of the results that you intend to send up


to the user from the index.


And then once you created that list, the reverse order list,


then you make a cut at whatever the number of results


that you can present is, say 1,000.


And then from there on, you only have


to work with those 1,000 results.


But those results are not finished with yet,


meaning that you can still tweak those results to make them


better.


And that's usually where the magic is.


And those are the signals, the magic signals,


that we still apply on the result set


to make them better for the user's query.


You probably heard of RankBrain, for example, as the listener.


I hope here everyone else heard about RankBrain, right?


Right?


OK.


Martin?


Oh, Martin.


Sorry, sorry, Martin is sleeping.


Yeah, yeah, no.


Martin was like, RankBrain, RankBrain.


I have heard that before, yeah.


OK, OK.


We don't have to fire you.


Fun fact, actually, I'm not allowed


on a bunch of the documents that you guys have access to.


Just saying.


OK, snap.


Anyway, so we still have to reorder the documents


to make them more relevant to the user's query.


And that's where we would apply, for example, RankBrain.


And these magic signals or magic algorithms,


they can still make massive changes in the result set,


but they are only working with the 1,000


that we already presented to them.


Now, ranking is number-based.


Basically, for each result, we will assign a number,


and we calculate that number using the signals


that we collected during indexing


plus the other signals.


And then, essentially, what you see in the results


is a reverse order based on those numbers that we assigned.


The magic signals or magic algorithms


that we use, like RankBrain, what they do


is multiply those numbers that we assign to each result


by a number.


Like, for example, if they want to promote a result,


because it was determined that that would be a better


result for lemon coconut cookie, then let's say


that it would multiply the result's score by two,


basically doubling its score, which means that it will jump


up in the result set.


I have no idea why I'm gesticulating with my hand,


because no one can see it.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG It looks great, though.


It looks great.


GARY ILLYESISIOSAKE ILLYESISIOSAKE At this stage, thanks, Martin.


Very disturbing.


MARTIN SPLITTENBERG You're doing well.


GARY ILLYESISIOSAKE Anyway, if we


wanted to remove a result from the set for whatever


reason, we could multiply its score with zero,


because then that will turn the score to zero.


And then, like, a score with zero,


why would you present that?


So just to pause you for a moment,


what happens if multiple pages have the same number


in the end?


Is it like someone throwing dice?


So that almost never happens.


It's highly unlikely that you would


see a result that has the same score as another result.


If that happens, then it will be just fluttering,


basically one jumping up and down.


As you refresh the page, basically, they


will just switch positions.


But I think it's highly unlikely that will happen.


We have all these algorithms that are actually kind


of designed to cut ties, like the HTTPS boost, which


is one of those magic algorithms, that


would cut this tie.


Like, if one of the pages or one of the URLs


is HTTPS or starts with HTTPS, then that


would get a tiny, tiny boost to actually propel it a little


further up in the result set.


I actually recently got asked if the tie-wreckers are only


applied in those situations, or if they are always applied,


they just don't have such a large impact than others.


They are always applied.


But they are designed to not have a large impact.


So I can only speak for the HTTPS ranking boost,


in this case, as a tie-breaker, because we created


that with the teammate, Zinap.


Anyway, and there the design was,


or we designed it such that it will work all the time,


but it will not rearrange the result set unless there is a tie.


And then it would boost one of the results,


well, all the results, actually.


But it would be more visible for the results that had a tie.


And it actually happened quite often, in some locales,


more often than others.


I still remember that in Hindi, India,


Hindi, India, as in like the country language there,


it happened 17% of the cases or something like that.


So it was actually pretty active in some locales.


So cool.


And less so in others.


OK, so I guess these are like real numbers, not integers,


where it's like you have seven and the other one has eight.


I want to say these are floats.


OK, so it's like there's a lot of room, I guess,


what I'm saying in the search results.


It's not that there's just like one number jump.


And if you can only get that one extra point,


then you rank higher.


No, so I was actually looking, I think


you sent an email about site colon queries,


and then I was doing some query debugging.


And I was looking at site colon johnmoo.com results.


And the scores were like 0.76 or something like that.


Whoa, that's like a bad site.


No, for the results set, that was a top score.


It doesn't mean anything.


Basically, the scores are relative to the results set,


not to the whole index.


And then the second one would have had like 0.74,


but then one of these magic algorithms


kicked in and boosted a little, so it migrated one up.


Well, I got the extra HTTP ranking boost.


Of course, it's boosted up now.


It's like ranking number one.


I still don't know which queries, but it's HTTPS.


Oh, OK.


I think for your site, we should design an FTP ranking boost.


I should move to FTP.


No, that's the article that you wrote about hacking FTP,


and I still remember that.


That's a long time ago.


Man.


Oh my god, sure.


So what happens when everyone's on HTTPS?


Do we prefer sites as serve better cheese?


What?


The cheese tiebreaker.


Yeah.


Unfortunately, Matt is not around anymore,


so I'm not sure that we could launch that.


But I would design that.


I mean, we can launch cheese.


That's easy.


Like with a catapult or?


I was about to ask, like a catapult or?


Yeah, we could go up to, I don't know,


Glutalp or something and just launch cheese down from there.


They're already shaped like a projectile,


so I think that's possible.


We could do a literal moonshot.


Mm-hmm.


So this is the worst ideas ever podcast.


OK.


I don't know.


I think Google is missing out by not having me


as a product manager who's making decisions here.


No, I think that's the right decision.


I mean, launching cheese has actual impact.


That hurt.


No more cookies for you.


Oh, come on.


If you're at the receiving end, that will hurt.


You're right.


What, by cookies?


You said that hurts, and if you get hit by cheese, it will hurt.


Oh my gosh.


Depends on the kind of cheese.


Anyway.


Can we just stop?


OK, maybe we should take a break here.


Too much cheese.


Way too much cheese.


It seems like people are getting hungry.


You have more?


Tell me more, Gary.


What did we miss?


We missed cookies.


Cookies.


Yeah.


And kale.


It's like by not going to the office,


you're missing out on a lot of kale.


Imagine all of the kale that you didn't eat because you


weren't in the office.


And I'm much healthier because of that.


Wait.


Because you're not eating kale?


Yeah, like mentally.


Oh.


OK.


It improves my mental health if I'm not eating kale.


Yeah, I got that.


I just, you know, you do you, man.


Martin's missing the kale.


I see.


No, I'm absolutely not.


I really am not.


Do we?


Are you missing kale?


Or do they have kale in Mountain View?


Is that just like a Swiss thing?


They do.


And I'm sorry.


I'm on Gary's side for this one.


Well, that's a first.


Cool.


Interesting.


Then let's take a break here.


Thanks for taking the time to join us here, Doi.


If people have any questions around search quality


or kind of comments or ideas for search quality,


where should they go?


Yeah, thank you for having me.


You can file the spam reports.


We are really happy to see them.


We review them very frequently.


If you have problems or if you think


you need help with something, you


can always go to the help forum at the Webmaster Help Forum.


And yeah, those feedback will also reach us.


So cool.


Yeah.


If you like the help forums, there's


always a good place to go if you don't know what to do.


Because also the experts there, they can kind of guide you


in the right direction.


Where if they realize that actually you


should be filing a spam report or actually you


should be contacting Gary directly on Twitter,


then they can point you that direction.


That's always a good thing to do, yeah.


No.


He's way too free nowadays.


Or just launch cheese.


No?


Just don't send any cheese or kale.


I love cheese.


I don't like kale.


Oh my.


Cool.


Well, it's been fun doing these podcast episodes.


And I hope you, the listener, have


been enjoying them as well.


At any rate, let us know how you're liking these.


If there are any topics that we should


be including in any of the future episodes,


like drop us a note, send us a comment on Twitter,


or comment wherever you comment on podcasts.


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


So with that, thank you.


And until next time, bye everyone.


Bye.


Cheers.


What goes into Page Experience

Hi, welcome to Getting Started with Page Experience, a brand new series where we explore this exciting


What goes into Page Experience

new addition to the web performance landscape.


What goes into Page Experience

Throughout this series, we'll dive into what Page Experience is and how you can use it


What goes into Page Experience

to better your site.


What goes into Page Experience

Page Experience is a new input to Google's search ranking that will come into effect


What goes into Page Experience

later this year.


What goes into Page Experience

Because of advancements in browser capabilities, we can now confidently list any content in


What goes into Page Experience

the Top Stories carousel and within normal search results based off of how good an experience


What goes into Page Experience

the page actually is for actual users.


What goes into Page Experience

We've always said that user experience is essential for ranking while in search, and


What goes into Page Experience

now you have a roadmap to follow to make sure you get there.


What goes into Page Experience

And you did hear that right.


What goes into Page Experience

AMP is no longer a requirement for being included in the Top Stories carousel.


What goes into Page Experience

Every relevant news article that provides a good user experience can qualify for it,


What goes into Page Experience

whether or not it uses AMP.


What goes into Page Experience

The concept of web performance has always been subjective.


What goes into Page Experience

What's fast on my computer may be unacceptably slow for the people using the site.


What goes into Page Experience

Page Experience lets us focus on those people and make sure that they are actually experiencing


What goes into Page Experience

the site in a way that we are happy with.


What goes into Page Experience

It sets a baseline goal that teams can develop towards to ensure users are getting that great


What goes into Page Experience

user experience.


What goes into Page Experience

How does it do that?


What goes into Page Experience

By actually looking at the user's experience.


What goes into Page Experience

Metrics that make up Page Experience are, in part, collected from the Chrome User Experience


What goes into Page Experience

Report.


What goes into Page Experience

This is a public dataset that shows just how fast, or not so fast, millions of URLs across


What goes into Page Experience

the internet have loaded and behaved on actual people's actual devices.


What goes into Page Experience

So what goes into Page Experience?


What goes into Page Experience

There are two different groups.


What goes into Page Experience

The first are things you either have or you don't.


What goes into Page Experience

These are things like mobile friendliness, HTTPS, safe browsing, and no intrusive interstitials.


What goes into Page Experience

The second group are metrics that grade your page based off of what your real user experiences


What goes into Page Experience

are on their actual devices.


What goes into Page Experience

These metrics are called Core Web Vitals.


What goes into Page Experience

Core Web Vitals is an annually updated list of metrics that define what it takes to have


What goes into Page Experience

that great user experience we're trying to talk about.


What goes into Page Experience

Currently, it's made up of First Input Delay, Largest Contentful Paint, and C++.


What goes into Page Experience

And Cumulative Layout Shift.


What goes into Page Experience

In the coming episodes, we're going to deep dive into each and every one of those and


What goes into Page Experience

take a close look at issues you may be having on your site, and even some potential fixes.


What goes into Page Experience

In the meantime, you can find out more about Page Experience and Core Web Vitals at the


What goes into Page Experience

links below.


What goes into Page Experience

If you're anything like me, you have a bottomless development backlog of to-dos.


What goes into Page Experience

Why should you care about yet another one?


What goes into Page Experience

Well, I'm so glad you asked.


What goes into Page Experience

Page Experience is all about making sure your users are getting what they want in the best


What goes into Page Experience

possible way.


What goes into Page Experience

It gives you a custom report from your real users exposing actual ways that you can improve.


What goes into Page Experience

Since Page Experience is all about what the user is actually experiencing, it isn't


What goes into Page Experience

something that applies to your entire website.


What goes into Page Experience

Every user uses a site differently.


What goes into Page Experience

Instead, every single URL gets looked at individually.


What goes into Page Experience

To see what I mean, you can check out the search console for your website.


What goes into Page Experience

You may need to sign up if you haven't already, but once you have, you can click on the Page


What goes into Page Experience

Experience report to see just how you're doing.


What goes into Page Experience

This will give you an awesome insight into what parts of the site need the most work.


What goes into Page Experience

For instance, your homepage may have fantastic results, but your content pages may be less


What goes into Page Experience

than ideal.


What goes into Page Experience

If that's true, you may find that your homepage starts to rank a little higher, and your other


What goes into Page Experience

pages start falling behind.


What goes into Page Experience

But the great news is that none of this is a black box.


What goes into Page Experience

All of the Core Web Vitals are pulled in from the monthly Chrome User Experience report.


What goes into Page Experience

You can check out more about it at the link below.


What goes into Page Experience

There's still a lot of road to cover on our way to a great Page Experience, and we're


What goes into Page Experience

so excited to share it with you, but our time's running short for this introductory video.


What goes into Page Experience

In the coming episodes, we'll cover some of the most common problems sites have, as well


What goes into Page Experience

as steps you may be able to use to improve your site.


What goes into Page Experience

So make sure to subscribe to get notified of future episodes where we'll be diving into


What goes into Page Experience

each part of Page Experience.


What goes into Page Experience


Immersive storytelling on the web | Session

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning into our talk. We're excited to speak with you


about what's new with Web Stories and how you can use this format to better engage your


audience. My name is Ryan Warrinder and I work on web product partnerships, and with


me today is Wei Hong, the design lead for Web Stories.


On the surface, all story variations may appear to be the same. They're always full screen,


portrait, and immersive. And of course, stories allow you to tap to go forward or swipe right


to go to the next story. So what are Web Stories? Well, Web Stories are a web-based version


of the popular Stories format that blend video, audio, images, animation, and text to create


an immersive way to reach new audiences on the web. Web Stories keep the consistent experience


you've come to love, but offer some distinct benefits to you as a developer and web creator.


First, Web Stories are made for the open web and allow creators and publishers to take


control of their content. These stories are yours. They're published by you and hosted


on your server. And since Web Stories are just standard web pages, they have no expiration


date. Second, it's easy to monetize your stories. Third, you have creative freedom to tell your


story your way. And finally, you can use the latest interactive components to create a


visually immersive storyline. We wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that 2020 was


a difficult and very long year for all of us. We wanted to say thank you to every creator


and publisher. Thanks for educating us, for inspiring us, and for entertaining us. Your


Web Stories continue to fill the lives of millions of people around the world with creativity,


inspiration, and joy. Now let's take a look at what's launched recently. Our goal at Google


is to help connect users looking for answers with the publishers and creators who have


the content they're looking for. Web Stories are no different. We want you to find relevant


stories about the things you care about. So last year, we brought Web Stories to Discover,


part of the Google app on Android and iOS that is used by more than 800 million people


each month. The Stories carousel is now available in the United States, India, and Brazil in


Discover. This carousel helps you find some of the best visual content from around the


world from the brands and creators that you love. In the future, we intend to expand Web


Stories to more countries in Discover and additional Google products. In addition to


Discover, we will continue to surface more stories across Google search. Since the Discover