Welcome, everyone, to today's Google SEO Office Hours
Hangout.
I'm a Search Advocate on the Search Relations side,
and part of what we do are these Office Hour Hangouts,
where people can join in and ask their questions
around their website and web search.
Wo
w, lots of people still joining.
w, lots of people still joining.
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It looks like we have a bunch of people already raising
their hands, which is great.
So we can go through some of you all.
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There are also a bunch of questions submitted on YouTube.
If you want, you can add more questions to YouTube,
or if you're in here live, feel free to raise your hand, as
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well.
And we'll see how far we can make it today.
All right, first on my list is Diana.
DIANA BUSKO: Hi, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Hi.
DIANA BUSKO: So I wanted to ask, is
it really important for Googlebot
to be able to see a cookie consent
message that we serve to users?
Because we kind of decided to serve it upon user interaction,
so Googlebot won't be able to see it.
I wonder if that can cause us any problems in terms
of Google friendliness?
JOHN MUELLER: In general, that should be fine,
because Googlebot doesn't really need to see a cookie banner.
Googlebot also doesn't keep cookies,
so it wouldn't accept cookies, anyway,
if you gave it to Googlebot.
So if you have it set up like that, I think that's fine.
Lots of sites serve the cookie consent banner
to Googlebot, as well, just because they serve it
to everyone.
That's usually also fine.
The important part is, essentially,
that Googlebot is not blocked from being crawled--
or blocked from crawling the website,
so that you don't have a kind of an interstitial that
blocks the access to the rest of the content.
DIANA BUSKO: Yeah, yeah.
Understood.
Thank you.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
AUDIENCE: John, I've been waiting.
JOHN MUELLER: All right.
Let me see, Michael.
MICHAEL TOLOSA: Hi, John.
I have a kind of a softball question,
but it's something that I'm running into right now.
Going back to basics, so I have a directive
to use keywords, specifically target keywords, in meta tags,
use it here in the h1, use it this many times
in a piece of content.
And that really just seems outdated
to me, especially with all the advances in semantic search
and all the cool MUM, and all that other stuff that's
coming down the pipe.
I just wanted-- basic question-- do
you think that that's still a legitimate SEO tactic,
or should we not be focused on using this particular keyword
this many times on a page?
JOHN MUELLER: In general, the number
of times that you use a keyword on a page,
I don't think that really matters or makes sense.
When you're writing naturally, usually that
resolves itself automatically.
And also, with regards to the individual keywords,
I think that's something where I wouldn't disregard it
completely, but at the same time,
I wouldn't over focus on exact keywords.
So in particular, things like singular and plural, or kind
of like the different ways of writing individual words.
That's something that you probably
don't need to worry about.
But mentioning what your site is about and kind
of what you want to be found for,
that's something I would still do.
So in particular, what we sometimes
see when we look at things like news articles,
if a news site doesn't really understand SEO,
they might write in a way that is more--
I don't know-- almost like literature in that you read it,
and you kind of understand what it means,
but the exact words that are used on a page
don't really map to exactly that topic.
So that's something where, from an SEO point of view,
if there's something you want to rank for,
I would still mention that on a page.
I wouldn't go overboard with the number of mentions.
I wouldn't go overboard with all of the synonyms and different
ways of writing it, but mentioning it
at least once definitely makes sense.
MICHAEL TOLOSA: OK, thank you.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
Esben.
ESBEN RASMUSSEN: Hi, John.
So I have a question regarding the URL removal tool.
So my question is, if you use that tool,
does it only affect the canonical version of the URL,
since I guess this is affecting the live--
the index you're using for publishing your search results.
So does it only affect the canonical version,
or does it affect the entire duplicate content
cluster, which this canonical is a part of?
So for instance, if I write in a URL, which, in my opinion,
is the one to be excluded, but is basically
a canonical variant--
or sorry, a noncanonical variant,
what happens in that situation?
JOHN MUELLER: OK.
Good question.
So we don't consider the canonical at all
when it comes to URL removals, but rather
we match it one-to-one exactly as you submitted it.
And we include the HTTP, HTTPS, and WWW,
non-WWW versions of that URL.
And essentially, what happens is we
don't remove it from our index.
So the whole indexing side stays the same.
The crawling side stays the same.
We just don't show it in the search results.
So essentially, you would submit the URL
that you see in the search results,
and then we would just hide that from the search results.
ESBEN RASMUSSEN: Great.
Thanks.
JOHN MUELLER: Cool.
JAMESON SANSONE: Hey, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Let's see Jameson.
JAMESON SANSONE: How you doing, man?
My question--
JOHN MUELLER: Hi.
JAMESON SANSONE: --relates to templated content
above the fold from a mobile-first perspective.
And this relates to a blog restructuring
we're working on, where we're moving from all of our blog
articles living in a blog subdirectory to building out
topic clusters with specific topic landing pages.
And based on initial designs of the topic landing pages,
they're all going to include the same hero
banner with the same header and then the same two sentences,
and then below that will be a subnavigation
to let the user navigate to a specific topic landing page.
And my concern is, from that mobile viewport,
each of these topic landing pages,
they're unique URLs, unique titles,
but they have that same header and just
above the fold content.
But right below that is a unique subheader,
which would be like the h1 tag of the page.
So I just want to get your thoughts there.
I know Google in the past has said
that they weigh above the fold content,
and I think it's something important for us to look at.
But is it detrimental to non-brand rankings
for those topic landing pages?
JOHN MUELLER: Now, we--
so the important part for us is really
that there is some amount of unique content in the
above the fold area.
So if you have a banner on top, and you have generic URL image
on top, that's totally fine.
But some of the above the fold content
should be unique for that page.
And that could be something like a heading that's
visible in a minimum case, but at least some
of the above the fold content should be there.
So that's kind of the guidance that we have in that regard.
JAMESON SANSONE: OK, cool.
Actually, maybe I'll just leave the header the same
and change a sentence or something based on the topic.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
I mean, it's probably also something
where you want to look at how users interact with those pages
afterwards.
But that's kind of more from a non-SEO perspective.
But it's always, I think, important for cases like that
that you take a look and see what actually happens
with the users afterwards.
JAMESON SANSONE: Awesome.
Thank you so much.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
Promothash.
PROMOTHASH BORUAH: Hi, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Hi.
PROMOTHASH BORUAH: Doing good?
JOHN MUELLER: Pretty good.
PROMOTHASH BORUAH: Yeah.
John, I have a question regarding the domain age,
and does the domain expiry matter?
Suppose I have a domain that is a couple of years old,
and it will expire in the next six months.
So does DSU check the age of the domain?
JOHN MUELLER: No.
PROMOTHASH BORUAH: No.
[INAUDIBLE]
JOHN MUELLER: I don't think we use that at all.
PROMOTHASH BORUAH: OK, OK.
So I have one more question on the domain only.
So do you check the WHOIS is private or public?
JOHN MUELLER: I don't think so, at least not that I know of.
Because it's also something where some of the top level
domains and the registrars, they just have everything private
by default. So it's like you wouldn't
be able to compare that anyway or use that for anything
useful.
PROMOTHASH BORUAH: So John, so I am
a little bit worried right now.
So what happens is like now both of us
are talking in front so we can clear out things.
So there is a lot of crap--
[? means ?] wrong information and data
spread widely across the internet.
It is copied, and the content length keeps on increasing.
Let's suppose one SEO expert in 300 words
on [INAUDIBLE] uses [INAUDIBLE] points that you should do.
The next SEO experts come.
He writes 20 points, and the content length
increases to 100,000 words.
Then the next expert comes.
There are only five, six people, only-- if you search on Google,
they will come [? on. ?] OK, they
are the main culprits who are spreading
all the wrong information.
Then the next one comes.
He writes 2,000 content, and he lists 20 points.
And another person comes, he writes 200 Google algo points
and he has 4,500 words.
And he claims, also, like I have been increasing my word count,
and Google has increased my rank from number three
to number one.
So it is not directly my question,
but how the people that's using the skyscraper
technique to building a bigger building than, suppose,
another tower?
Next person is writing, again, crap.
There is no useful information.
His building is more bigger.
Then another is more bigger.
And they are like, if I want to see real information,
then the actual gurus are our there spreading misinformation.
But still, they're competing around-- the five
sales gurus are competing, and many people are taking
their courses and on and on.
OK.
So SEO, suppose I want to write something [? true. ?]
So we are discussing.
I am writing, and in whatever we discuss, in 200, or 300,
or 500 words, I write the real answers.
So I think maybe with new Google algorithms--
this is my suggestion.
Should Google try to read also the content,
like the meaning of the content, if the meaning of the content
is something like domain expiry does not matter?
But they explicitly like--
maybe they're an affiliate that your domain should
expire after three years.
Keep on renewing so that the expiry is longer.
OK.
So Google checks if a genuine website
will have longer expiry.
So they will have an affiliate link below.
So they want to sell the psychology in the link,
but this is the wrong information.
This is my concern only to share with Google.
You can advocate on it.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's always tricky.
And there is also the aspect of sometimes
there is just old and outdated information out there
on specific topics.
But yeah, it's-- yeah, I don't know.
People like to write a lot of things
and to promote the things that they've been working on.
So it's hard for me to say.
Yeah.
PROMOTHASH BORUAH: Why still the skyscrapers techniques
seem to work?
The [INAUDIBLE] example-- like, three months ago, I
was using a piece of content with 500 words.
And suppose on page SEO, they will give [INAUDIBLE]
take you one example.
On page SEO, I have 500 words, and I
used to rank at number six.
Then I increase to 1,000 words.
I move to number five.
Then I-- as he slowly increases, he naturally climbs the ladder
up to number one.
JOHN MUELLER: I don't think that there is really
a correlation there.
Sometimes these things happen that you
rank higher when you make changes,
when you improve things.
But just purely from increasing the number of words on a page,
that's absolutely not something that we take into account.
PROMOTHASH BORUAH: [INAUDIBLE] sometimes quality matters.
So in the next algo, will the page experience
see the number of dom?
Suppose I-- suppose you write an article with 2,000 words,
very good, relevant.
I write again with 2,000 words.
So my dom will increase dom size.
OK.
JOHN MUELLER: It depends.
It depends--
PROMOTHASH BORUAH: [INAUDIBLE]
JOHN MUELLER: --because I think the time
that it takes to load a page is partially related
to the amount of HTML that you send.
But there are also a lot of other factors.
So in particular, things like images on a page,
the way that you use CSS and JavaScript on a page,
those can have a very strong effect
on how quickly a page loads.
It's really not purely the HTML that is on a page.
PROMOTHASH BORUAH: OK.
Thank you.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
Pragyanshu.
Oh my gosh, I probably have your name wrong.
Sorry.
PRAGYANSHU LABH: Hi, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Hi.
PRAGYANSHU LABH: Thank you so much.
Yes, you pronounce it absolutely correctly.
It is difficult, though.
Yeah, hope you are doing well.
My question is related to Google Search Console,
and it has more to do with the sampling of data.
So what I'm stuck with and am confused with--
so in my-- the main property of Search Console,
if I create a subproperty, so what I see that
the subproperty--
subproperty's numbers, the clicks,
if I take from the main property,
it is only 4,000 clicks.
But when I create a subproperty, I
see 40,000 clicks for that particular subfolder.
So when I'm seeing-- analyzing the numbers
at the main property level, I might skip out
that portion of that subfolder because I
see only 4,000 clicks, and maybe these other site sections
are doing great and all.
But when I create a subproperty, it
gives me a huge number, which is a 10 times difference.
So then what I did eventually, that I created
many subproperties inside Google Search Console
to get more numbers, which gives me a better picture that, OK,
this subfolder is doing great.
It's actually not only 4,000 or 2,000.
It's actually 20,000, 30,000, like that.
So what should I do?
So should I continue pulling numbers from subproperties,
or should I go to the main property
and consider the numbers from there?
Because if I add up all the subproperties,
the total goes beyond the numbers which
I see at the main property.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
I think it depends on the size of your site and the way
that the traffic comes to your site,
because there is a limit of the number of data points
that we collect per site per day,
and perhaps that's what you're seeing there.
So from my point of view, if you're
seeing more useful numbers or more actionable numbers
that way, I think that's totally fine.
I don't know if that's something that the average site needs
to do.
My guess is most sites don't need to do it,
but maybe it makes sense for your site.
PRAGYANSHU LABH: Yeah, but the only thing
is the concerning part is that, if I
continue pulling the numbers from the subproperty,
that's fine.
But when I look at this main property--
so if I have a look at the overall numbers,
then it gets a little confusing, because the subproperties are
speaking a different story, and the main property,
the total overall website numbers
are saying a different thing.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
I mean, you're looking at a different database there.
So from that point of view, comparing
those different subproperties, that probably
doesn't make sense.
But if you need to look at more detailed information within one
of those subsections of your website,
then maybe that does make sense to look at it on that level.
PRAGYANSHU LABH: OK.
So you would recommend that it's the case to case?
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
PRAGYANSHU LABH: OK.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
I mean, I think for most sites-- like, we chose those numbers
to make sure that, for most sites,
the data was sufficient and useful
and that the totals kind of line up.
But there are definitely individual cases
where it makes sense to dig more into detail
and kind of verify subsections of a site.
PRAGYANSHU LABH: And a very short question.
Would we see anything in future like premium version
of Google Search Console, where we can pay and get
more data by--
JOHN MUELLER: I have no idea.
PRAGYANSHU LABH: Yeah, OK.
JOHN MUELLER: I mean, it's something
where-- we tend not to talk about what
is lined up for the future.
I don't know.
It feels weird to have a premium version
of Search Console for something like that, but who knows.
I think seeing what people are doing with Search Console
and seeing where they're running into limitations,
that's always useful for us.
PRAGYANSHU LABH: Thank you so much, John.
Thank you.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
Sumiti.
SUMITI GUPTA: Hi, John, how are you?
JOHN MUELLER: Hi.
SUMITI GUPTA: OK.
So my question is, for Core Web Vitals, me and my team
have been preparing and making optimization,
whether it's theme-related in CSS.
So what we have witnessed is the data in the Google Search
Console, it's completely different to when
we go to the incognito mode of the website, and go to Inspect,
and go to Lighthouse, and generate report from there.
So over there, I can see 91 performance,
and everything is good.
[INAUDIBLE] content [INAUDIBLE] time to [INAUDIBLE] everything
is green.
However, if I go to Google Search Console,
I can see 100 poor URLs.
So we are in a bit of a situation
where we don't know where to go from here.
So if you could help in that.
JOHN MUELLER: OK.
So I think the important part is these
are different ways of looking at the data.
And so we differentiate between the lab data, which
is kind of like, if you test it directly,
which is what you would see in Page Speed Insights
or in Lighthouse when you look at it
incognito in your browser.
And the other variation of the data
is the field data, which is what users actually see
when they go to your website.
And that's the data that's shown in Search Console.
And from there, the differences are essentially
that the lab tests that you do, they make a lot of assumptions
with regards to probably users will have this kind of device
or this kind of connectivity, or have
this kind of configuration.
And they will try to kind of use those assumptions to figure out
what it might be.
But what they actually see in practice
could be very different.
And that's probably what you're seeing there.
SUMITI GUPTA: OK.
So having said that, Google would
consider the practical data over the lab data--
JOHN MUELLER: Yes.
SUMITI GUPTA: --to run-- or to rank the pages?
OK.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
So in Search, we use the field data from real users.
There's one tricky thing with the field data
in that it takes 28 days to update in Search
Console for various reasons.
What you can do is use something like Google Analytics
together with an extra script on your site
to track the field data yourself, as well.
So then you would have the lab data, your own field data,
and the search field data, and usually you
would see kind of the differences between the lab
and the other field datas.
SUMITI GUPTA: Right.
So our aim should be optimizing for the field data?
JOHN MUELLER: Yes.
SUMITI GUPTA: OK.
All right.
Thank you.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
Let's see.
Kaixi?
KAIXI LUO: Yeah.
Hello, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Hi.
KAIXI LUO: Hi.
I just had a question about--
yeah, I know Googlebot doesn't like cloaking on a site,
but that's essentially what happens
when you use Google Analytics A/B testing,
for example, because it reaches the content underneath your web
when it does the A/B testing.
So anything that optimize--
it's optimized for SEO cannot use Google Analytics A/B
testing.
Is that right?
JOHN MUELLER: Kind of, kind of.
So the important part for us with A/B testing
is that the A/B testing is not a permanent situation,
and that the A/B testing is something
where Googlebot essentially also falls into that A/B test.
And essentially, we can kind of see what users are seeing.
And when it comes to A/B tests, the important part for us
is also that the purpose of the page remains equivalent.
So if you're A/B testing a landing page
and you're selling one product, then it
shouldn't be that, instead of selling a car,
suddenly you're selling a vacation, or a flight,
or something like that.
It should be something where the purpose of the page
is the same so that, if we understand
this is a page that has a car for sale, for example,
then we can send users there.
And if the page looks slightly different when users go there,
that happens.
Sometimes you personalize.
Sometimes you do A/B testing.
All of that is essentially fine.
So the A/B testing that you would do with Analytics usually
is in that area where you say, oh, I
am changing my call to action.
I'm changing the colors, the layout slightly.
But you're not changing the purpose of the page.
KAIXI LUO: Yeah, totally.
We are not changing the purpose of the page,
but we do plan to run some UX enhancements
through the experiment.
But it's kind of risky, you know, to--
JOHN MUELLER: No, it shouldn't be.
It shouldn't be, especially if the purpose of the page
remains the same.
Then that's something where, even if Googlebot
were to see both of the A/B versions, then
we would be able to index a page normally.
It wouldn't change anything else.
KAIXI LUO: OK.
JOHN MUELLER: So that's perfectly fine.
The cloaking side that is more problematic is if--
I don't know-- you're selling a car,
and then when Googlebot looks at it, it's showing a car.
When a user looks at it, it's going to a pharmacy.
That's usually kind of the more spammy cloaking
that we worry about, where the web spam
team would get involved.
And all of these subtool changes--
also if you have device-specific changes on a page,
that's perfectly fine for us.
KAIXI LUO: Maybe for mobile web?
We use AdSense, for example, and maybe for mobile,
we would stop showing some ads, as well.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
Exactly, yeah.
KAIXI LUO: OK, thank you.
NEERAJ PANDEY: John, John, regarding this same thing,
if ranking goes down because of A/B testing,
is it a good sign that Google is not
finding that different version?
And if we roll out older page, then the ranking
should come back?
JOHN MUELLER: I don't know.
I-- my assumption is the ranking would not
change with normal A/B testing, because you
have the same content.
Essentially, the purpose of the page remains the same.
If you were to significantly change the page,
like remove all of the textual content in the B version
and Googlebot sees that version, then
that's something where the ranking might change.
But for the normal A/B testing, I
don't see that as being problematic.
And if the ranking did drop, then I
would, as a first assumption, assume
that it's not related to the A/B testing,
but rather maybe related to something else.
NEERAJ PANDEY: Mm-hmm, got it.
So ranking will not have any fluctuation [INAUDIBLE]??
JOHN MUELLER: I mean, there are always fluctuations in ranking,
but it shouldn't be just because of the A/B testing.
NEERAJ PANDEY: Got it.
JOHN MUELLER: Cool.
Navin.
NAVIN ADHIKARI: Hi, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Hi.
NAVIN ADHIKARI: My question is we are a WordPress site,
so we have a blog section.
We have also a services section.
Our services sections are labeled
as pages on the WordPress back-end,
whereas our blog sections are labeled as posts.
Our services section gets a lot of traffic,
but our blog section does not get
a comparable number of traffic.
So is it because Google treats pages
more favorably than blogs, or maybe we
are missing out on other fronts, like blog marketing?
JOHN MUELLER: I don't think Googlebot would recognize
that there's a difference.
So usually that difference between kind of posts and pages
is something that is more within your back-end,
within the CMS that you're using--
within WordPress, in that case--
and it wouldn't be something that would be visible to us.
So we would look at these as it's an HTML page,
and there's lots of content here,
and it's linked within your website in this way.
And based on that, we would rank this HTML page.
We would not say, oh, it's a blog post, or it's a page,
or it's an informational article.
We would essentially say it's an HTML page,
and there's this content here, and it's
interlinked within your website in this specific way.
NAVIN ADHIKARI: So my other question
is what is happening is that the blog section has a longer URL--
[INAUDIBLE] slash blog slash categories slash the article
name.
So is it because the URL is longer,
and it is getting harder to rank the blog?
JOHN MUELLER: It shouldn't be, no.
I think-- I mean, I don't know your website,
so it's hard to say.
But what might be happening is that the internal linking
of your website is different for the blog section as
for the services section or the other part of your website.
And if the internal linking is very different,
then it's possible that we would not
be able to understand that this is an important part
of the website.
But that's-- it's not tied to the URLs.
It's not tied to the type of page.
It's really the-- kind of like, we
don't understand how important this part of the website is.
NAVIN ADHIKARI: OK.
So how important is the length of the blog?
We are following the guideline of 300
plus words, so-- and recently, I've read in many places
that Google favors long form content.
So maybe are we missing on that front?
We are writing shorter blogs?
JOHN MUELLER: We don't use the word count at all.
So the number of words in your articles,
that's totally up to you.
I think some people like to have a guideline with regards
to the number of words, but that's
really an internal guideline for you, for your authors.
It's not something that we would use for SEO purposes.
NAVIN ADHIKARI: Yes, thank you, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
Let's see, Tomas.
TOMAS HVIZDAK: Hi, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Hi.
TOMAS HVIZDAK: So I have a question about Google Search
Console.
My website has around 120 external links, and about 40%
of them are non-working Japanese domains.
I have no idea where they came from,
and what do I have to do with them?
So, yeah.
JOHN MUELLER: Probably you don't need to do anything with them.
If these are just random links from the internet,
I would just ignore them.
It's not specific to Japanese links,
but sometimes spammers include normal URLs within the URLs
that they use to promote spam, and that
means on random forums and blogs,
they will drop these URLs, as well.
And sometimes that ends up with a lot
of links that are posted in non-English
or in foreign language content.
And I've seen that a lot with Japanese, Chinese, Arabic,
all kinds of languages.
TOMAS HVIZDAK: OK.
And the almost 50% count doesn't matter?
JOHN MUELLER: It doesn't matter.
TOMAS HVIZDAK: So I shouldn't be worried
that I get some kind of penalty for that or--
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah, no.
I mean, if these are not links that you placed, if--
things that you bought where you put these links there,
then I would just ignore them.
TOMAS HVIZDAK: Yeah, what if my competition was the one buying
those links for me?
JOHN MUELLER: I wouldn't worry about it.
TOMAS HVIZDAK: I mean, they are not--
you wouldn't worry?
JOHN MUELLER: No.
No.
I mean, those are the kind of links that--
I mean, on the one hand, if they don't exist anymore,
then we will ignore them over time, anyway.
So that doesn't matter if you disavow them or not.
If they don't exist, they don't have any value.
And on the other hand, these are the kind
of links that we see so often, since 10, 20 years.
And we just ignore them.
TOMAS HVIZDAK: But why do you show them
in Google Search Console?
JOHN MUELLER: Just because we want to show you everything
that we know about.
So--
TOMAS HVIZDAK: [LAUGHS]
JOHN MUELLER: I agree.
In a case like this, it's like, oh,
if Google knows these are stupid links,
then maybe they shouldn't show them.
But in Search Console, we try not
to make a judgment with regards to the links.
And we also include things that are nofollow and all of that.
So it's like we show them to you, but if you look at them
and say, oh, these don't matter for me,
then you can just ignore them.
TOMAS HVIZDAK: OK.
Thank you very much.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
All right, let me run through some of the submitted
questions, and then I'll get back
to all of the hands that are still raised.
Wow, so many people.
Let's see.
Maybe I'll see how I can go through these a little bit
faster.
And I have a bit more time afterwards, as well.
Let's say I have 500 physical shops that
are selling my products, and I want
to create, for each of them, a specific landing page.
Would this be considered doorway pages?
No, that would be essentially fine.
It'd be kind of like having different products,
because these are unique locations.
These are physical locations.
Having individual pages for them is perfectly fine.
Sometimes it might make sense to combine these and put them
on a shared page, such as if you have a lot of shops
in specific countries.
Maybe just the list the shops there
instead of individual pages per shop.
But that's totally up to you.
Then second, from a ranking point of view,
does Google treat nofollow UGC and sponsored rel attributes
any differently?
We do try to understand these and try
to treat them appropriately.
So I could imagine in our systems
that we might learn over time to treat them
slightly differently.
But in general, they're all with the same theme in that you're
telling us these are links that I'm
placing because of this reason, and Google doesn't
need to take them into account.
Let's see.
The WordPress site we looked at briefly--
how might a poor site structure affect indexing?
Some of my older articles are getting de-indexed,
but these were articles on page eight to nine of my blog.
I've since created static category pages
that make it easier for Google to keep track
and to find these pages.
But what could be the indexing issues here?
It's certainly the case that we don't index all content of all
websites on the web, so at some point,
it can happen that we say, oh, these pages are not
critical for the web.
Maybe we're not showing them in the search results.
Maybe just generally we don't think these
are critical for the web.
So maybe we will drop them from our index
so that we can focus more strongly on the important pages
within your website.
And that's something where we use the internal site
structure quite a bit to try to figure that out in that,
if we understand that your site is important
and we see, within your website, that you're telling us
this part of my website is important for you,
then we will try to focus on that.
Whereas if you're saying these pages are also on my website
and they're linked, like you mentioned here,
like eight to nine pages away from essentially
your home page, then we might say,
well, you don't think these are important,
so maybe we won't focus so much on them.
We'll focus on the other ones.
So that's something where your internal site structure can
help us a little bit to understand that,
but it's definitely also the case
that we just don't index everything on all websites.
How much of an impact disavowing links in bulk is going to make?
We recently disavowed many backlinks on our site.
They were all HTTP sites with low domain authority.
Many of them were comments with a link back to our site.
However, we haven't seen any positive improvement.
There are currently no manual actions against us.
Is disavowing not necessary these days?
Probably you could save yourself the effort
of disavowing those links.
So probably, they wouldn't have any effect at all.
I would mostly use a disavow links tool really
for cases where you either have a manual action,
or where you look at what you've done in the past,
and you realize probably I will get a manual action if anyone
from Google sees this.
And in those cases, I would go off, and try to disavow that,
and try to clean that up.
But just generally, links from low domain authority
sites or links that essentially are
part of the web since years and years,
I would not disavow those.
I don't think that makes any difference at all.
Let's see.
Could you-- oh, some questions around the sources
behind Google News.
So I don't really have much insight
into the Google News side.
So if you have questions about Google News,
I'd recommend going to the News publisher forum
and posting there.
So I don't really have much insights on the labeling
and how kind of things have to be set up for that.
Subproperties we talked about briefly.
Does Googlebot still heed pagination and breadcrumbs,
or does it affect the ranking?
What's the best practice?
We use pagination and breadcrumbs
as a way of understanding the site's internal structure
a little bit better.
So that's something that definitely still plays
a role with regards to crawling and indexing a site.
So if you have pagination and breadcrumbs on your site
and you remove that, then that does
mean that the internal structure of the site is now different.
A good way to kind of double check
how those factors play a role within your website
is to use an external crawler, some kind of a tool
that you can run across your website to kind of crawl
the website the way that it is now,
and then you could analyze from there,
are these breadcrumb links the reason why these pages are
being crawled or not?
And then based on that, you can make decisions
on whether or not to remove them, or to change them,
or however you want to kind of modify things
within your website.
A question on 301 redirects.
In a scenario where a group of URLs
have been changed, but for some reason
the 301 redirects have not been set up
right away, roughly how long is the time frame that you have
to implement redirects to transfer
the ranking authority from the old to the new pages
and prevent ranking drops?
So it's tricky, because there is no specific time for this,
especially because there are different variations
of this kind of problem situation that you have here.
In particular, if the old content still exists and you've
created a copy of that on a new URL, then in a case like that,
we will treat those two URLs as being a part of a same cluster,
and we'll try to pick a canonical URL between those two
URLs.
And it can happen that we switch over to your new URL for that.
And if that's the case, then, essentially, we
will forward all of the signals from the old URL to the new URL
automatically, even without a redirect in place.
So in that scenario, probably you
will not see a big difference if, at some point later on,
you add a redirect.
The main difference you would see
is that it would be a lot clearer for us
that you want the new URLs to be indexed and not the old URLs.
So in that set up, probably you wouldn't see a ranking change,
but probably you would see that we
would switch over to the new URLs a little bit more
consistently.
In a situation where you delete the old URLs
and just add the same content somewhere else on your website,
then that's something where we would essentially,
in a first step, lose all of the information
we would have about this page, because suddenly it's a 404.
And we would treat the new page as being something new.
And we would essentially say, well, there's a new page here,
and we would not have any connection between the old page
and the new page.
And that's something where, at some point,
we will drop the old page from our index
and lose all of those signals.
And if you wait too long and add a redirect much later,
then those signals are already gone
and that redirect is not going to forward anything anymore.
So that's kind of-- in that situation,
where if you delete things and just move it somewhere else,
then probably after a certain period of time--
I don't know how long that would be.
Depends on the website--
you would not see any improvement
from adding redirects.
And in a case like that, it would, from my point of view,
still make sense to start adding redirects there,
just so that you're sure that, if there
is any small value still associated with those old URLs,
then at least that is still forwarded over.
So those are kind of the main scenarios there.
Can you tell us something about the new Lighthouse Treemap?
I haven't actually taken a look at the Lighthouse Treemap,
and probably for questions around Lighthouse,
it would make more sense to check
in with the folks from the Chrome side
and kind of pick their brains on that, on what you
should be focusing on there.
I saw some screenshots, and they look pretty cool,
but it's like all of these speed-related topics,
they can get pretty complicated.
Some insight into the optimization of free listings
on Google Shopping?
If we manually edit a description and title
to match keywords that we're interested in in positioning
our listings for, will we be penalized if these keywords
do not appear on our site?
For example, edit the free listing
to include the word "low cost" or "cheap" in the description
of a product like a gold-plated ring,
where the words are not referenced on the reference
domain for that listing.
I don't know.
My feeling-- or my understanding is
we do try to map the landing page with the products
that you have in your Merchant Center feed.
And if they don't align, then we will
have to make a call with regards to which of these versions
do we actually use.
So that's something where I would generally
recommend trying to make sure that these two versions align
as much as possible so that you don't give Google
kind of this situation where you're saying,
this data doesn't really match.
Which version should we take into account,
or should we ignore kind of half of your data completely?
Essentially, if you can give the data in a clear way
such that Google can actually take that
into account immediately, then usually that's
a lot better in the long run than kind of just short term
tweaking individual keywords, where you probably
don't see much value out of that anyway.
Question about two different anchor texts to a unique URL.
Which anchor link does Google value?
Does Google value the size of the anchor text--
or size that the anchor text takes up on the screen?
I don't think we have that defined at all.
So those are the kind of things where, from our systems,
it can happen that we pick one of these,
and we try to understand which one is the most relevant one.
But I wouldn't make the assumption
that we just naively take the first one on a page
and just only use that, or only take
the one that has the longest anchor text
and ignore the other ones.
We essentially try to understand the site structure the way
that a user might understand it and take that into account.
And the way that this ambiguous situation is handled,
that can also vary over time.
A question regarding AMP.
We're a news site, and we're thinking
about implementing AMP, but Google announced
that AMP is not necessary to rank in the Top Stories
carousel, and the AMP badge will be removed.
So my understanding is that we need
to focus on Core Web Vitals and fine tune
our website to make it fast and create high-quality content.
Can you give us some more information
on getting into Top Stories carousel?
So yes, we did announce that AMP is no longer required
for the Top Stories carousel.
And instead, we will be focusing on things like the Core Web
Vitals and the page experience factors
to try to understand which pages we should be showing there.
I think the important part with AMP
is that it's a really easy way to make pages extremely fast
and to kind of make sure that you're in an easy way,
almost by default, achieving the metrics for the Core Web
Vitals.
So that's something where, if you're
trying to make your pages fast and you don't know which
framework to use, and maybe AMP has a good approach there,
maybe that's also something where
you can take individual elements out of AMP
and just reuse those on your pages, and then,
over time, migrate more of your pages to the AMP framework.
But I would see it more as a framework, rather than
a feature that you have to turn on or turn off.
So with that in mind, there are other ways
you can make your pages really fast.
You don't have to use AMP, but sometimes
using AMP is an easy way to do that,
especially if you have something like WordPress.
If your site is built on WordPress
and you can just enable the AMP plugin, then sometimes that
can kind of automatically shift your site over
into the good side of the Core Web Vitals.
OK, we're kind of running towards the end,
so maybe I'll shift back to some live questions from you all.
And like I mentioned, I have a bit more time afterwards,
as well, if any of you want to stick around and ask
even more questions.
Let's see.
Neeraj, I think you're on top now.
NEERAJ PANDEY: Yeah.
Yeah, John.
So actually, I was talking to someone that does SEO and SEO
[INAUDIBLE].
And he has the problem he was saying--
so this kind of websites-- there are so many websites like this.
So this is related to Job.
And in Job, what happens is that one website has
the structure where, in India, it just shows one generic page,
asks the user to give--
forcefully, in fact-- his city, and then
redirects that particular user to their respective city jobs.
So he was just trying to discuss about whether this will
be cloaking or not for Google, because to Google, they
had the structure that, in the USA, they will be [? showing ?]
the page as it is, more forcefully as country--
city selection.
Also, from my understanding, as I know,
it was for different country specific domains.
We can redirect user to respective countries,
and for Google, we are allowing [? calling. ?]
So I was just thinking that this can also not
be cloaking from Google's side, if we are
[INAUDIBLE] one page to Google.
But in users in the same country,
we are just asking for the city and redirecting them
to that respective city.
You know, please just give me your ideas on this [INAUDIBLE]..
JOHN MUELLER: So the important part for cloaking in a case
like this is that Googlebot sees the same content
as other users from the same country where Googlebot
is crawling from would see.
And most websites would crawl from the US.
So if a user in the US were to access this website,
they should see the same thing as Googlebot would see.
So that's kind of the general assumption.
And the extra situation, like in your case,
where maybe in India or in some other country,
they're doing something slightly different
to personalize the experience for users in that region,
from our point of view, that's perfectly fine.
So it's really just a matter that Googlebot sees the content
that other users would see in the US,
and if you're doing something more unique in a country
where Googlebot is currently not crawling from,
that's perfectly fine and up to you.
The important part here is, I think, also
to keep in mind that Googlebot will be crawling from the US.
So if, for example, you have different jobs
in different countries, and when a user from the US
comes to your website, they only see the listings for the US,
but most of your users are based in India.
Then we will index your homepage, at least,
as looking like a Jobs website for the US.
So if someone is looking for a job in San Francisco,
then we would say, oh yeah, here's one on this website.
But if someone is looking for a job in Mumbai
or some other place in India, then we might not necessarily
know that the homepage of this website
would be relevant, because we never see jobs from India
listed on the homepage.
On the lower level pages of the site, usually that's--
there's less personalization there.
But especially with the home page,
that's one area that you kind of need
to watch out for if you're doing a lot of personalization.
My recommendation there would be to say
you have one part of the homepage
that is very personalized, that kind of matches where
the user's location is, and another part of the homepage
is essentially very static, something that is something
that all users would see.
And then you can kind of guide Google to index the homepage
and say it's like there is some US jobs information here,
but there's also some worldwide jobs information here.
And the homepage is kind of relevant for all of that.
NEERAJ PANDEY: Mm-hmm.
John, regarding this cloaking, I was also
going through Google Documents, and I also personally feel
that there should be more content available, because
from cloaking, there is very less content available where we
are saying that, if you are having
different behavior for users and different for Googlebot,
then it could be cloaking.
JOHN MUELLER: That's good feedback to have.
Yeah.
So what I would recommend doing in a case
like this is trying to find the most related page
within our documentation and using the feedback link there
to let us know that it would be useful to have more
examples or more details there.
But I can also pass that on to the team.
But the feedback link is kind of the best way
to get the information directly to the team.
NEERAJ PANDEY: Yeah, sure, I will do it.
And my only concern was that let us share it with you, too.
I will also do that one.
And the dos and don'ts will always be welcome,
like please do this.
Please don't do this.
So at least there is no need to getting confused,
and then coming and asking you the same question.
JOHN MUELLER: Well, I don't know.
People are always confused.
I think that's always fine.
NEERAJ PANDEY: Definitely.
OK, thank you, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
Let's see, Michael.
JAMESON SANSONE: Michael, I think you're on mute.
MICHAEL LEWITTES: Can you hear me now?
Sorry about that.
JOHN MUELLER: Yes, yes.
MICHAEL LEWITTES: OK, sorry about that.
So in a previous question about keywords,
you mentioned how it's important that the writing is good,
that people use plurals correctly.
And it made me think about a headline I saw a few days ago
from a major outlet that read so-and-so announces
they're engaged to so-and-so.
So I read it, and I said, good for that outlet for correctly
referring to that particular non-binary individual
as "they."
And then, of course, my mind immediately went to SEO
and wondered whether Google understands
that this isn't poor grammar, but rather inclusive English.
Is Google's natural language processes--
does it understand a plural followed
by a singular form of verb, like "they is doing this"
or "they is doing that," that that's grammatically correct?
JOHN MUELLER: I don't know.
Probably?
I mean--
MICHAEL LEWITTES: [INAUDIBLE]
JOHN MUELLER: I mean, it's something
where usually, our systems would learn this automatically.
We would not manually define English grammar
to be like this.
And I could imagine that especially these kind
of shifts in language, where, over the years,
this becomes more and more common,
that's something that probably takes
a bit more time for our systems to learn automatically.
And probably, if we were to run into situations where
we obviously get it wrong, and we receive feedback about that,
then I could imagine that our researchers would say,
oh, then it's like, on the web overall,
this is kind of rare still.
But it's important, so we will try to tune our models to also
deal with that properly.
MICHAEL LEWITTES: Yeah, I was wondering
whether that was affecting, actually,
the way that that particular story ranked,
because it was a subject about one person.
Other people just used the person's first and last name
to sort of get around it.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah, I don't think that would be affecting
the ranking there, because it's--
we would probably be picking up--
if we're taking that headline apart,
we would pick up the two individuals,
and we would focus on like, oh, these two are now
related or mentioned in the same headline kind of thing.
But the individual words there are probably
less critical for us.
MICHAEL LEWITTES: Great.
Thank you.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
Ritu.
I think you're also on mute, if you were speaking.
Ritu?
OK, otherwise, we'll get back to you.
Let's see.
Giacomo.
GIACOMO ZECCHINI: Hi, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Hi.
GIACOMO ZECCHINI: So a question about links, but not
ranking related.
Don't worry.
The scenario is Googlebot crawls a page and gets links.
Those links are pointing to somewhere else on the internet
or internally.
So the question is, is there a span of time after which,
not crawling a specific page, you
delete the links contained in that page,
let's say, from the link href, or you
keep those links till Googlebot crawls again that page?
And just to clarify, I mean the links
that are contained on the page and not the links that
are pointing to the page.
JOHN MUELLER: OK.
So kind of like if we would ignore the link
if we haven't recrawled the page in a period of time, or--
GIACOMO ZECCHINI: Yeah, yeah.
If you crawl a page, for example, a year ago,
and after one year, you stop using the links on that page
because you didn't crawl the page again.
Just that.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah, I don't think so.
I think we would continue to use those links.
What would probably happen is the rest
of the web and kind of that website would evolve over time,
and it could happen that those links are
less relevant after some period of time.
But we would still keep them.
So for example, if you have a link in an article on "The New
York Times" and it's currently an article on the home page,
then that link might be seen as very relevant for us.
But five years later, that link is
within an archive section of "The New York Times"
and somewhere hidden away in the cellar.
Then that link would still be there,
but it's a lot less relevant within the context of "The New
York Times."
So those are the changes that tend to happen.
But it's not that we would say, oh,
we haven't looked at this link in five years.
Therefore, we will ignore it.
GIACOMO ZECCHINI: Perfect.
Thank you very much.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
OK, let me take a break here for the recording,
and you're all welcome to stick around a little bit longer,
and we can answer more questions, as well.
But just so that we have a reasonably sized recording.
Thank you all for joining in.
Thanks.
It's cool to see so many of you here.
Wow.
And thanks for all of these questions that you submitted.
And hopefully, if you're watching this on YouTube,
you're definitely welcome to join us
in person at some point in the future, as well.
I try to do these on a weekly basis,
alternating between early my time and later my time,
to try to get more time zones involved.
But you're always welcome to join in.
So with that, let me pause the recording,
and then we can move--
English - CC (English)
