Google SEO Office Hours, 6 Sep 2023

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From YouTube: English Google SEO office-hours from September 2023

Description

This is an audio-only recording of the Google SEO office-hours from September 2023 - a transcript is available at https://goo.gle/SEO-september.

These sessions cover topics submitted around anything search and website-owner related like crawling, indexing, mobile sites, internationalization, duplicate content, Sitemaps, Search Console, pagination, duplicate content, multi-lingual/multi-regional sites, etc. The answers are compiled by the Google Search Relations team.

Need site-specific help? Post your question in the Google Search Central Help Community, and get answers from our Product Experts and other experienced web professionals: http://goo.gle/sc-forum.

Do you have a question about Google Search or SEO? It might be a good fit for the office hours. You can submit your question for Google SEO Office Hours here: https://goo.gle/seo-oh.

Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
0:30 - Is Google wrongly indexing the www version of my website?
1:31 - Why is filtered data higher than the overall data on Search Console?
3:17 - Why are the pages of my Google Sites website not being indexed properly?
4:25 - Our site has many buttons, when clicking on them they fetch links to other pages. Can Google crawl these links?
4:42 - Is a "guest post" (to gain a backlink) against Google's guidelines if I'm writing valuable content?
5:29 - Is content on an e-commerce category page valuable to improving overall rankings?
6:06 - Do incorrect semantic tags cause Google to have a poorer understanding of the website content?
8:00 - In GSC, the report for 404 pages has many URLs that appear to be from JSON or JavaScript. Should we ignore?
8:24 - Can sitemap index files have links to sitemap files on other domains?
9:32 - How does one reduce the likelihood of Google choosing their own meta-descriptions for websites?
9:57 - Is there a way to specify search engine bots not to crawl certain sections on a page?
11:15 - Do you recommend infinite scrolling on web pages? Are there any implications to the organic traffic/Googlebot?
11:37 - I have links shown on the mobile web version, but hidden on the desktop. Will Google de-value them?
12:15 - Does Google index PDF files that are saved to Google Drive that are not hosted on a website?
12:40 - How does Google crawl Scrolljacking content and will this approach to UX impact rankings?
13:47 - Why is the URL indexed, though blocked by robots.txt on my GSC?
14:36 - We have unwanted AI content! How can I fix or remove it from my website?
16:04 - We got a spike in indexed URLs from one day to another. What are the reasons?
16:24 - Can Google use multiple file sizes in one favicon file?
17:08 - Does Google judge parts of a website differently when a different CMS lies behind them?
17:19 - In Google Search, our website displays a PDF download as the main page. Can the search result be changed?
17:56 - When I search for my website on Google Search, the first result is a product page and not my welcome page. Why?
19:09 - I received a SC alert for improving INP issues. How do you calculate this and what’s the easiest fix?
20:00 - How do I remove 30K URLs from GSC from a Japanese keyword hack?
21:05 - Why are my pages getting de-indexed after submitting them for indexing in SC? I've done this multiple times now.
22:05 - Thanks for watching!

Check out past office hours → https://goo.gle/gsc-seo-oh
Subscribe to the Google Search Central YouTube Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral

#SEO #google

A

A

Of Google's SEO office hours in these videos, we aim to answer your questions about SEO and Google search. These questions were submitted using the form linked below over the past month. To answer them. We have folks from Google search quality team. Joining me today is Gary. So, let's get started. Von asks Google, wrongly indexes the www version of my website.

A

The correct page is supposed to be https and then their domain name.my without the www hi Ron I took a look at your pages and it looks like your server is automatically redirecting from the non-ww to the www version and setting the link Rel canonical element appropriately at first glance, if you're using Chrome, it might look like it doesn't, have a www in front, but if you click twice into the URL on top on the browser, it expands to the full URL with the www in practice. This is fine.

A

Both the www and the non-ww version of a site are totally okay with Google search wow. That's a lot of www's.

B

Hi I'm Gary from the search team ornel is asking: why does filter data is higher than overall data on search console? It doesn't make any sense. Well, first of all, I love this question, but probably for the wrong reason. The short answer is that we make heavy use of something called Bloom filters, because we need to handle a lot of data and Bloom filters can save us lots of time and basically, storage.

B

The long answer is still that we make heavy use of Bloom filters because again we need to handle a lot of data, but I also want to say a few words about Bloom filters. When you handle large number of items in a set and I mean billions of items, if not trillions, sometimes looking up things fast becomes super hard.

B

This is where Bloom filters come in handy. They allow you to consult a different set that contains a hash of possible items in the main set, and you look up the data there in your smaller set. Since you are looking up hashes. First, it's pretty fast, but hashing sometimes comes with data loss, either purposefully or not, and this missing data is what you're experiencing less data to go through means more accurate predictions about whether something exists in the main set or not.

B

Basically, Bloom filters speed up lookups by predicting if something exists in a data set, but at the expense of accuracy and the smaller the data set is the more accurate. The predictions are.

A

There was a question submitted in French, which basically asks why the pages of my Google sites website aren't being indexed properly. It's great to get questions in other languages, taking a step back websites created on Google sites can and do get indexed in Google search. However, the URLs used in Google sites are a bit hard to track, since the public version can be different from the URL that you see when you're logged in. To be blunt, while it's technically indexable, it's not ideal for SEO purposes and can be complex for tracking in search console.

A

If SEO is your primary consideration, it might be worthwhile to explore other options and check the pros and cons before committing for performance tracking in search console. You can also use your own domain name for the Google sites. Content using your own domain name makes it easier to migrate. Should you choose to do so and allows you to verify ownership of the whole domain for search, console.

B

Sir object is asking: our website has multiple buttons on clicking them. We are fetching links to other pages. Will Google be able to crawl? These links well, generally speaking, Google, but doesn't click on buttons.

A

Brooke asks most websites only offer the option to purchase a guest post to gain a backlink from them nowadays is. Is this against Google's guidelines if I'm writing valuable content?

A

Hi Brooke thanks for posting your questions, it sounds like you're already on the right track. Yes, using guest posts, four links is against our spam policies. In particular, it's important that these links are flagged in a way that signal that they don't affect search results. You can do this with the Rel nofollow or the Rel sponsored attributes on links. It's fine to use advertising to promote your site, but the links should be blocked, as mentioned.

B

Brooke is asking: is content on e-commerce category page valuable to improving overall rankings? You can add whatever content you like to your pages. They are your pages after all, but please don't do those auto-generated low quality, repeated blurbs of text over and over again on all your category Pages, it just looks silly even for the average person. If you need content on your pages, add content that people will actually find useful, don't add content because search might require it or so you think.

A

Do incorrect semantic tags cause Google to have a poorer overall understanding of a website's content and thus a poorer ability to assign it to a branch, in particular HR tags signal a change of topic, but I might only use them for design purposes.

A

Well, that's an interesting question in general. Using semantic HTML correctly can help search engines to better understand the content of a page and its context. For example, if you mark up headings on a page, that's a clear sign that you believe your content fits to that heading. It's not a secret path to number one rankings, but if we have trouble understanding what you mean in the text, then providing a clear summary in the form of headings does help, because it's a subtle thing that depends on how well we otherwise understand the page.

A

It does a good practice to make sure you have everything covered, reversing that going from semantically correct to semantically incorrect HTML is also subtle. Can search engines still understand your page? Then probably you won't see a difference in how they understand it is the meaning suddenly blurry then well, maybe make.

B

A

Blurry, perhaps with some semantic structure, to your specific example of HR tags, I can't think of a situation where there would be a difference in understanding of a page due to them being used incorrectly. There are infinite ways to use something incorrectly, but the ones which I think a web designer might accidentally run into with HR tags seem pretty safe, I guess that's a long way to say it depends you're welcome.

B

Reza is asking in GSC Google search console. The report for 404 pages is filled with URLs. That appear to be somehow picked up by mistake from within some Json or JavaScript code. Should we ignore this? Well, you can ignore those or just add no index HTTP header for them, but you can just ignore them really Groove.

A

Asks can sitemap index files have links to sitemap files on other domains, hi drove interesting question. The answer from Google side is a definite, maybe, and because of that, my suggestion is not to use a setup like that. You can submit sitemaps for URLs that aren't on the same domain. In two situations, either you submit the sitemap with robot's a text or you have verified ownership of all of the domains in search console, especially search consult ownership can be subtle and not immediately visible when you analyze the website.

A

So it's easy to forget about that connection. If you're working on sitemap files and decide that you do want to use a setup like this, my tip would be to add an XML comment to the sitemap file so that you remember these requirements and don't accidentally break them in the future, since search console is Google. Specific you'd also want to check the requirements that other search engines might have about this.

B

Sam Bowers is asking: how does one reduce the likelihood of Google choosing their own meta descriptions for website good question? Not always, but usually our algorithms will use your meta description when there's not much content on the page itself or when the meta description is more relevant to a user's query than the actual content of the page.

A

Is there a way to specify to search engine Bots, not to crawl certain sections of a page? The page is allowed for crawling and indexing, otherwise they go on to mention that they have a lot of duplication in mega menus and would like to block them.

A

Yes, there are things that you can do to prevent the indexing of parts of a page, but especially for common page content like headers menus, sidebars Footers, it's not necessary to block them from indexing search engines deal with the web as it is, and sometimes there are just giant mega menus or over Footers, and that's fine for other pieces of content on a page. You could either use an iframe with a source, that's disallowed, by robots text or pull in content with JavaScript, that's similarly blocked by robots.txt.

A

If you want to avoid something being shown in a snippet using the data, no snippet attribute is a good way to do that. But again, there's no need to add this much complexity, just to hide the menu. Unnecessary complexity brings a risk of things breaking unexpectedly. So it's good to limit that to cases where it's really needed.

B

Jitu is asking: do you recommend infinite scrolling on web pages? Are there any implications to the organic traffic or Google bot? If I add that feature well, it depends on how you implement infinite scrolling. If each piece of virtual page is also accessible and findable through a unique URL generally, it should be fine to having infinite scrolling Ryan.

A

Asks if a home page has links that are shown on the mobile version, but hidden behind the JavaScript toggle on desktop and not included in the HTML, unless clicked will Google devalue them hi Ryan with mobile first indexing, we use the mobile version of a page as the basis for indexing and for discovering links. If the mobile version has a full content you're all set. It feels surprising to me that you'd have less content on desktop, but I guess you have reasons for.

B

That Anonymous is asking does Google index PDF files that are saved to Google Drive that are not hosted on a website? Well, yes, Google can index public PDF files hosted on Google Drive, it's just another URL on a site as with any URL, it can take anywhere between a few seconds to pretty much never to get these PDFs indexed.

A

Matt submitted a question: scroll jacking is increasingly popular across the web. Generally, it's seen as a poor user experience. How does Google crawl this content and will this approach to user experience impact rankings? They also added a link to an article about scroll jacking, which I'll link to in the transcript hi Matt. That's an interesting question. I didn't realize it was called scroll jacking. So thanks for the link, I, don't think we'd see this set up as abusive. So it's not going to be a direct effect.

A

However, there might be technical second order effects that you might see. For example, Google renders Pages by loading them in a theoretically really large mobile device. If the page doesn't display the content there, due to Shenanigans with scroll events, then our systems might assume that the content isn't properly visible. So, in short, I'd see this more as a potential rendering issue than a quality. One.

B

Denise Khan Aral is asking why indexed, though blocked by robots txt on my GSC Google search console well, this is a relatively common question: Google can index the URL and only the URL, not the content, even if that URL is blocked for crawling through robots txt.

B

The number of such URLs in our index is very tiny, though, because this happens only if the blocked URL is highly sought after on the internet. If this is problematic for you, you can allow crawling the URL and use a no index rule in the HTTP headers or a meta tag, if possible also check out our docs about no index while you're at it.

A

Sonya asks we hired some content writers, but they just gave us AI content. How can I fix it? Do I just delete the AI content, replace it with new content, scrap and create a whole new website with a new URL. Please advise I, don't know what to say Sonia. It sounds like you just blindly published content from external authors without review.

A

That seems like a bad idea, even without the AI content aspect. Well, regardless of the reasons and Source. If you published low quality content on your website and don't want to be associated with it anymore, you can either remove the content or fix it. I'd suggest, looking at the bigger picture, is content like this missing from the web and your site could add significant value for users overall or is it just rehash content that already exists on the rest of the web or think of it?

A

This way, if your content is essentially the same as what others have already written, why should search engines even index it much less show it highly in the search results and, of course, making a great website takes more than just a collection of good articles. It takes a clear strategy and processes that ensure that everyone on your team is on board with your goals.

B

Lorenzo is asking we got a spike in indexed URLs from 1D to another. What are the reasons? Well, maybe we got more hard drives. Maybe we've freed up some space. Maybe we just discovered those new URLs, it's hard to tell open the public. Nonetheless celebrate.

A

Dave asks can Google use multiple file sizes from one favicon file. Does it understand multiple icons marked up with the size attributes and pick an appropriate one, hi Dave, technically the dot Ico file format allows you to provide files in multiple resolutions.

A

However, with the rise of the number of sizes that are used for various purposes, I suspect it's generally better to specify the sizes and files individually. Google does support multiple favicon sizes in HTML. So if there are specific sizes that you want to provide, I'd go with that.

B

Vivian is asking: does Google judge parts of a website differently when a different CMS lies behind them? No.

A

Anna asks the Google search result from our foundations. Website needs to be recrawed. It displays a PDF download as the main page. Our website is a Dutch human rights. Foundation can the search result be changed.

A

Hi Anna I took a look at your website and the reason why other pages are being shown instead of your home page is that the home page has a no index robots meta tag on it. This meta tag will prevent indexing of that page. Once you remove it, things should settle down quickly.

A

Julian asks when I search for my website on Google search. The first result is a product page, not my welcome page. Why is that? The product page is not even prepared with SEO, but my welcome page is hi. Julian Google uses a number of factors to figure out which Pages might be the most relevant to users for specific queries in information retrieval. One of the concepts is based on the perceived user intent. In short, what are they trying to do when they search for this?

A

Are they looking for more information about a product or a company, or are they looking to buy that product right now? This can change over time for the same query too.

A

In short, though, this means that even when a page is not prepared for SEO, if you will, it can still be that it shows up in search if our system think that it's relevant at the time in practice, my recommendation is to understand the different ways users might come to your website and to try to cover their needs appropriately, so that, regardless of where they end up, they have a good experience.

A

Alejandro submitted a question hi John and Google team today, I received a search, consult alert regarding improving inp issues. How do you calculate this data and what is the easiest way to correct it?

A

I don't have a full answer here, but there's quite a bit of documentation on interaction to next paint or inp for short on the web.dev site. I'd recommend checking that out. If you're interested in improving your scores, there keep in mind that inp is not yet a part of the core web vitals and that the core web vitalist is just one of many things that play a role in our helpful content systems, while improving inp can definitely help user experience. I wouldn't expect it to visibly change search.

A

Ranking Heather asks how do I remove 30 000 URLs from search console from a Japanese keyword, hack, hi, Heather, I'm, so sorry to hear about getting hacked I hope you were able to resolve it in the meantime. But we have a bit of content on this kind of hack over on web.dev I'll link to it from the transcript keep in mind that this hack tends to cloak the content to Google. So you may need some help to double check that it's fully removed and with regards to search results.

A

Given the number of pages involved, I'd recommend focusing on the more visible pages and getting those removed manually by either removing or re-indexing them, and then let the rest drop out on its own. If you're explicitly looking for the hack content, you will still be able to find it for quite some time, but the average user would be looking for your website and the goal should be to make those search results.

A

Look okay, Grace asks why are Pages getting de-indexed after submitting them for indexing in search, console I've done this multiple times now, hi Grace, I can't really say without knowing the pages involved. However, to me this hints at our systems not being fully convinced about the value of your site and its content. We almost never index all pages from a website, so some of that is also to be expected. You may be able to push for indexing once, but our systems will re-evaluate the content and the website over time and may drop those pages again.

A

The best course of action is not to keep trying to push these pages in, but rather to make it so that our systems are convinced about the overall quality of your website, the unique value that it's adding to the web and the match for what our users are actually looking for. Then we'll go off and index. It on our own, and that was it for this episode. I hope you found the questions and the answer is useful. If there's anything you submitted, which didn't get covered here, I'd recommend posting in the search Central Health Community.

A

There are lots of passionate experts active there who can help you to narrow things down and, of course, if there's more on your mind, please submit those questions with the Forum linked below your questions. Here are useful to us and to those who catch up on these recordings. So please keep them coming. If you have General feedback about these episodes, let us know in the comments or ping us on social media. In the meantime, may your site's traffic go up and your crawl errors go down. Thank you and see you soon. Bye.