Google SEO Office Hours, 1 Jul 2022

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From YouTube: English Google SEO office-hours from July 1, 2022

Description

This is a recording of the Google SEO office-hours from July 1, 2022. These sessions cover topics submitted around anything search & website-owner related like crawling, indexing, mobile sites, internationalization, duplicate content, Sitemaps, Search Console, pagination, duplicate content, multi-lingual/multi-regional sites, etc.

Find out more at https://goo.gle/seo-oh-en

Timestamps:
00:31 Which number is correct, Page Speed Insights or Search Console?
04:20 How can our JavaScript site get indexed better?
07:35 Does it affect my SEO score if I link to HTTP pages?
08:40 Should I write how people speak?
10:20 Should I delete my disavow file?
12:30 Can I add structured data with Google Tag Manager?
14:20 Is it better to block by robots.txt or with the robots meta tag?
16:38 Can I list the same URL in multiple sitemap files?
19:00 How can I block embedded video pages from getting indexed?
21:15 Is it a problem if I can't get listed in the HSTS preload list?
25:05 How can I analyze why my site dropped in ranking for its brand name?

A

Oh hi, and welcome to today's google search central seo office hours session. uh It's nice that you could join us here today, uh at least virtually on youtube. My name is john mueller. I'm a search advocate on the search relations team here at google in switzerland and part of what we do is answer questions around web search and websites.

A

Maybe questions that you submitted as well, maybe starting off. I have one topic that has come up repeatedly recently and I thought I would just try to answer it in the form of a question while we're at it here.

A

So, first of all, when I check my page speed inside score on my website, I see a simple number: um why doesn't this match? What I see in search console in the core web vitals report, which which one of these numbers is correct?

A

Yeah, I think, maybe first of all the kind of to to get the obvious answer out the door. There is no correct number when it comes to speed when it comes to understanding how your website is performing for your users in page speed, insights by default.

A

I believe we show a single number, that kind of is a score from 0 to 100, something like that which is based on a number of assumptions where we assume that different things are a little bit faster or slower for users and based on that, we calculate our score in search console.

A

We have the core web vitals information, which is based on three numbers for speed, responsiveness and interactivity, and these numbers are slightly different, of course, because it's three numbers not just one number, but also there's a big difference in the way that these numbers are determined and, namely there's a difference between so-called field data and the lab data field. Data is what users have actually seen when they go to your website, and this is what we use in search console.

A

That's what we use for search as well, whereas lab data is kind of a theoretical view of your website like where our systems have certain assumptions where they think well.

A

The average user is probably like this using this kind of the device and, with this kind of a connection perhaps and based on those assumptions, we will estimate what those numbers might be for an average user and obviously you can imagine those estimations will never be 100 correct and similarly, the data that users have seen that will change over time as well, where some users might have a really fast connection or a fast device, and everything goes really fast on their website or when they visit your website, and others might not have that.

A

And because of that, this variation can always result in different numbers.

A

Our recommendation is generally to use the field data.

A

The data you would see in search console as a way of understanding what what is kind of the current situation for a website and then to use the lab data, namely the individual tests that you can run directly yourself to optimize your website and try to improve things and when you're pretty happy with the lab data that you're getting with your new version of your website, then over time you can collect the field data which happens automatically and double check that users actually see it as being faster or more responsive as well.

A

So, in short again, there is no absolutely correct number when it comes to any of these metrics. There is no kind of like absolutely correct answer where you'd say this is what what it should actually be, but rather there's different assumptions and different ways of collecting data, and each of these are subtly different all right. So, let's see first question otherwise that I have on my list here which uh all of these questions were submitted on our youtube community page and we'll try to announce the next ones there as well.

A

So you can add more questions there. You can also, of course, post in our community help forum, where other experts are able to jump in and give you some advice as well all right. So, first up uh we have a few customer pages using next.js without a robot's text or sitemap file.

A

Simplified theoretically googlebot can reach all of these pages, but why is only the homepage getting indexed? There are no errors or warnings in search console. Why doesn't googlebot find the other pages, so maybe taking a step back next.js is a javascript framework, which means that the whole page is kind of generated with javascript, but kind of as in kind of a general answer as well. For all of these kinds of questions like. Why is google not indexing everything? uh It's it's important to first say that googlebot will never index everything across a website.

A

I don't think it happens to any kind of non-trivial non-trivialized website that google would go off and index completely everything. It's just from a practical point of view, it's not possible to to index everything across the whole web.

A

So that kind of assumption that the ideal situation is everything is indexed I I would leave that aside and say, like you really want googlebot to focus on the important pages.

A

The other thing, though, which became a little bit clearer when I think the person contacted me on twitter and gave me a little bit more information about their website uh was that this. The way that the the website was generating links to the other pages was in a way that google was not able to pick up so, in particular with javascript.

A

You can take any element on an html page and say if someone clicks on this then execute this piece of javascript and that piece of javascript can be to navigate to a different page, for example, and googlebot does not click on all elements to see what happens, but rather we go off and look for normal html links, which is the kind of traditional normal way that you would link to individual pages on a website, and with this framework it didn't generate these normal html links.

A

So we could not recognize that there's actually more to crawl more pages. To actually look at- and this is something that you can fix in the way that you implement kind of your javascript site- we have a ton of information on the search, developer, documentation site around javascript and seo, in particular on the topic of links, because that comes up every now and then there are lots of creative ways to create links and googlebot really needs to find those html links to make it work.

A

Additionally, we have a bunch of videos on our youtube channel and, if you're watching this since nobody's here, you must be on the youtube channel.

A

If you're watching us on the youtube channel, go out and check out those javascript seo videos on our channel to kind of get a bit of a sense of what else you could watch out for when it comes to javascript-based websites, we are able to process most kinds of javascript-based websites normally, but some things you still have to watch out for like like these links.

A

Okay, um let's see next up, does it affect my seo score negatively if my page is linking to an external, insecure website, so on http, not https.

A

um So, first off we don't have a notion of an seo score, so you don't really have to worry about an seo score, but regardless I kind of understand the question is like: is it bad if I link to an http page instead of an https page and from our point of view, it's it's perfectly fine. If these pages are on http, then that's what you would link to um that's kind of like what what users would expect to find. There's nothing against linking to two sites like that.

A

There's no kind of downside for your website to kind of like avoid linking to http pages, because they're kind of old or crusty, and not not as cool as on https. I would not worry about that.

A

Okay, next, up with semantic and voice search, is it better to use proper grammar or write how people actually speak?

A

For example, it's grammatically correct to write more than x years, but people actually say over x years or write a list beginning with such as x, y and z, but people actually say like x, y and z, good question, so the the simple answer is you can write. However, you want uh there's nothing holding you back from just writing. Naturally, and uh essentially our systems try to work with the natural content that we have found on your pages.

A

So if we can crawl and index those pages with your content, we'll try to work with that and there's nothing special that you really need to do there. The one thing I would watch out for with regards to how you write your content is just to make sure that you're writing for your audience.

A

So, for example, if you have some very technical content, but you want to reach people who are like non-technical, then write in the non-technical language and not in a way that only is understandable to people who are really like deep into that kind of technique. Technical information so kind of, like the I would guess, the traditional marketing approach of right for your audience uh so in our systems, usually are able to deal with that perfectly fine.

A

Okay, next up a question about links and disavows uh over the last 15 years, I've disavowed over 11 000 links in total. I never bought a link or did anything unallowed like sharing the links that I disavowed may have been from hacked sites or from nonsense. Auto-Generated content, since google now claims that they have better tools to not factor these types of hacked or spammy links into their algorithms.

A

Should I just delete my disavow file? um Is there any risk or upside or downside to to just deleting it? So this is a good question. It. It comes up every now and then and disavowing links is always kind of one of those uh tricky topics because it feels like google is probably not telling you the full information, uh but from our point of view it's it's actually like we.

A

We do work really hard to avoid taking these kind of links into account, and we do that because we know that the disavow links tool is somewhat a niche tool and seos know about it, but the average person who runs a website has no idea about it and all of those links that you mentioned there are the kind of links that any website gets over the years and our systems understand that these are not things that you're trying to do to kind of a game, our algorithm.

A

So from that point of view, if you're really sure that there's nothing around like a manual action that you had to resolve with regards to these links, I would just delete the disavow file and move on with life and kind of leave.

A

All of that aside, um one thing I would personally do is just download it and make a copy so that you have kind of a record of what you deleted, but otherwise, if you're sure these are just kind of the normal crafty things from the internet, I would just delete it and move on uh there's much more to spend your time on when it comes to websites than just disavowing these random things that happen to any website on the web.

A

Okay, um so, let's see adding schema markup with google tag. Manager is a good or bad for seo. Does it affect ranking?

A

So, first of all, you can add structured data with google tag manager. uh That's definitely an option. Google tag manager is a simple piece of javascript, you add to your pages and then it does something on the server side and it can modify your pages slightly using javascript for the most part, we're able to process this normally and the structured data that you generate like this. That can be counted just like any other kind of structured data.

A

On your web pages and from our point of view, structured data, at least the types that we have documented, is primarily primarily used to help generate rich results. We call them which are kind of like these fancy search results with a little bit more information, a little bit more color or detail around your pages, and, uh if you add your structured data with the tag manager, that's that's perfectly fine.

A

From a practical point of view, I prefer to have the structured data directly on the page or directly on your server, so that you know exactly what is happening. It makes it a little bit easier to debug things. It makes it easier to test things so trying it out with tag manager.

A

From my point of view, I think is: is perfectly legitimate, it's an easy way to try things out, but for the long run I would try to make sure that your structured data is on your site directly, just to make sure that it's easier to process for anyone who comes by to process your structured data and it's easier for you to track and debug and maintain over time as well. So that you don't have to check all of these different separate sources.

A

um Okay, let's see simplifying a question a little bit, which is better blocking with robots text or using the robots meta tag on the page. How do we best prevent crawling?

A

So this also comes up from time to time we we actually did a podcast episode recently about this as well. uh So I would check that out. The podcasts are also on the youtube channel, so you can click around a little bit.

A

You probably find that quickly uh in in practice, there's a subtle difference here, where, if, if you're an seo and you've worked with search, engines then probably understand that already, but for people who are kind of new to the area, it's it's sometimes unclear exactly like where all of these lines are and with robots text, which is the first one that you mentioned in the question. Essentially, you can block crawling, so you can prevent googlebot from even looking at your pages and with the robot's meta tag.

A

When googlebot looks at your pages and sees that robot's meta tag, you can do things like blocking indexing in practice, both of these kind of result in your pages not appearing in the search results but they're subtly different. So if we can't crawl, then we don't know what we're missing and it might be that we say well, actually there's a lot of references to this page.

A

Maybe it is useful for something we just don't know and then that url could appear in the search results without any of its content, because we can't look at it, whereas with the robot's meta tag, if we can look at the page, then we can look at the meta tag and see if there's like no index there, for example, then we stop indexing that page and then we drop it completely from the search results.

A

So if you're trying to block crawling, then definitely robots text is the way to go. If you just don't want the page to appear in the search results, then I would like pick whichever one is easier for you to implement on some sites, it's easier to kind of set a checkbox saying that I don't want this page found in search and then it adds a no index meta tag on others. Maybe editing the robot's text file is easier kind of depends on what you have there all right.

A

Let's see, are there any negative implications to having duplicate urls with different attributes in your xml sitemaps, for example, one url in one sitemap, with an hreflang annotation and the same url in another sitemap without that annotation?

A

So maybe, first of all, from our point of view, this is perfectly fine. This this happens every now and then some people have hreflang annotations in sitemap files, specifically kind of separated away, and then they have a normal sitemap file for everything as well and there's some overlap there. From our point of view, we process these sitemap files as we can, and we take all of that information into account.

A

There's no downside to having the same url in multiple sitemap files. The only thing I would watch out for is that you don't have conflicting information in these sitemap files, so, for example, if with the href link, annotations, you're saying oh, this page is for germany and then on in the other sitemap file, you're saying well, actually this page is also for france or in french.

A

Then our systems might be like what is happening here. We don't know what to do with this uh kind of mix of annotations, and then it can happen that we pick one or the other. uh Similarly, if you say this page has been last changed 20 years ago, which doesn't really make much sense, but like say you say 20 years and in the other side file you say well, actually it was five minutes ago.

A

Then our systems might look at that and say well, like one of you is wrong, we don't know which one maybe we'll follow one or the other. Maybe we'll just ignore that last modification date completely.

A

So that's kind of the thing to watch out for, but otherwise, if it's just mentioned, multiple sitemap files and the information is either consistent or um kind of works together in that maybe one has the last modification date. The other has the ahref laying annotations. That's perfectly fine, um okay, a little bit more technical question. I guess uh I'm in charge of a video replay platform and simplified our embeds are sometimes indexed individually. How can we prevent that?

A

So by embeds? I looked at the website and basically these are iframes that include kind of a simplified html page with a video player embedded in that and from a technical point of view.

A

If a page has iframed content, then we see those two html pages and it is possible that our systems index both of those html pages, because they are separate html pages one is included in the other, usually, but they could theoretically kind of stand on their own as well and there's one way to prevent that which is a fairly new combination with robots meta tags that you can do, which is with the index, if embedded, robots, meta tag together with a no index, robots, meta tag and basically on the embedded version.

A

So the html file with the video directly in it. You would add the combination of no index plus index if embedded, robots, meta tags, and that would mean that if we find that page individually, we would see oh there's no index. We don't have to index this, but with the index, if embedded, it essentially tells us that.

A

Well, actually, if we find this page with the video embedded within kind of the general website, then we can index that that video content, which means that the individual html page, would not be indexed but the html page, with the embed with the video information uh that would be indexed normally. So that's kind of the setup that I would use there, and this is a fairly new robot's meta tag.

A

So it's it's something that not everyone really needs, because this combination of iframe content or embedded content is kind of rare, but for some sites it just makes sense to to do it like that.

A

um Okay, let me see what else we we can squeeze in here. um Let's see another question about https, maybe um I have a question around preloading ssl via hthsts, we're running into an issue where implementing hsts into the google chrome preload list and the question kind of goes on with a lot of details. But what should we do for search?

A

So maybe just taking a step back when you have https pages and you have an http version, usually you would redirect from the http version to https, and the https version would then be the secure version, because that has all of the properties of the the secure urls and the http version, of course, would be the one that is kind of open or a little bit vulnerable.

A

And if you have this redirect, then theoretically an attacker could take that into account and kind of mess with that redirect and with hsts, basically you're telling the browser that once they've seen this redirect, it should always expect that redirect and it shouldn't even try the http version of that url and for users. That has the advantage that nobody even goes to the http version of that page anymore, which makes it a little bit more secure and the preload list for google chrome is basically a kind of a static list that is included.

A

I believe in in chrome, probably in all of the updates, or I don't know if it's downloaded separately, not not completely sure. But essentially, this is a list of all of these sites, where we have confirmed that hsts is set up properly and that redirect to the secure page exists there, so that no user ever needs to go to the http version of the page, which makes it a little bit more secure.

A

From a practical point of view, this difference is very minimal and I would expect that most sites on the internet just use https without kind of worrying about the preload list. Setting up hsts is always a good practice, but it's something that you can do on your server and as soon as a user has seen that, then their chrome version keeps that in mind automatically anyway.

A

So, from kind of a general point of view, I think using the preload list is definitely a good idea if you can do that, but if there are practical reasons why that isn't feasible or not possible, then from from my point of view at least like only looking at the seo side of things, I would not worry about that when it comes to seo for google, what really matters is essentially the url that is picked as the canonical and for that it doesn't need hsts.

A

It doesn't need the preload list that has no effect at all on how we pick the canonical, but rather for the canonical.

A

The part that is important is we see that redirect from http to https, and we can kind of get a confirmation within your website through the sitemap file, the internal linking all of that that the https version is really the one that should be used in search and if we use the https version in search, then that automatically gets all of those kind of subtle ranking bonuses from search and the preload list and hsts is not really necessary there.

A

So that's kind of the the part that I would focus on there.

A

um Let's see, maybe one one more question here: I don't really have a great answer, but I think it's important to to at least mention as well.

A

What are the possible steps for investigation if a website owner finds their website is not ranking for their brand term anymore and they checked all of the things and it doesn't seem to be related to any of the the usual things.

A

So from from my point of view, I I would primarily focus on the the search console or the search central help community and post all of your details there, uh because this is kind of the the place where all of those escalations go and where the the products in the help forum. They can take a look at that and they can give you a little bit more information.

A

They can also give you kind of their their personal opinion on some of these topics, which might not match 100 what google would say, but maybe they're a little bit more practical, where, for example, like probably not relevant to this site. But you might post something and say well, my site is technically correct and post all of your details and one of the product experts looks at it and says: well, it might be technically correct, but it's still a terrible website.

A

You need to kind of like get your act together and write, create some better content and, from our point of view, we would focus on kind of the technical correctness and what you really need is someone to give you that I don't know personal feedback almost but anyway, in in the help forums.

A

If you post the details of of your website with everything that you've been seeing, uh oftentimes the the product experts are able to take a look and give you some advice on specifically your website and the situation that it's in and if they're not able to kind of figure out what is happening there. They also have the ability to escalate these kind of topics to the community manager of the help forums and the community manager can also bring things back to the google search team.

A

uh So if there are things that are really weird and every now and then something really weird does happen uh with regards to search it's it's a complex computer system, anything can can break, but the the community managers and the product experts can bring that back to the search team and they can take a look to see.

A

Is there something that we need to fix, or is there something that we need to tell the site owner, or is this kind of just the way that it is which sometimes it is, um but that's generally the direction that I would go for these kind of questions?

A

The other thing that that is kind of like subtlely mentioned here is: uh I think, that the site not ranking for its brand name, uh one of the things to watch out for especially with regards to brand names, is that it can't happen that you say something is your brand name, but it's not actually a recognized term from users for, for example, you might say I don't know you might call your website bestcomputermouse.com and uh for you that might be like what you call your business or what you call your website best computer mouse, but when a user goes to google and enters best computer mouse, that doesn't necessarily mean that they want to go directly to your website.

A

uh It might be that they're looking for a computer mouse and in cases like that there might be a mismatch of what we show in the search results with what you think you would like to have shown for the search results for those queries. If it's something more of a generic term actually, and these kind of things also play into into kind of search results. Overall, the product experts see these all the time as well, and they can recognize that and say well actually, just because you call your website, that's computermouse.com.

A

I hope I hope that site doesn't exist but anyway, just because you call your website. This doesn't necessarily mean it will always show on top of the search results. When someone enters that query, uh but that's kind of something to watch out for, but in general I would definitely go to the help forums here, and I would include all of the information that you know that might play a role here.

A

So if there was a manual action involved, you're kind of I don't know ashamed of that which it's kind of normal, but all of these informations they they help the product experts to better understand your situation and to give you something actionable that you can do to kind of take as a next step or to understand the situation a little bit better.

A

So the more information you can give them from the beginning, the more likely they'll be able to help you with your problem, cool all right and with that I think we're pretty much uh out of time. At least my meeting room time here is running out. uh So thank you for watching so far um I'll see if we can add the the next office hour sessions to the youtube community page as well, to kind of make sure that we stay on top of the things that people are asking.

A

If, if you like, this feel free to subscribe to the channel, we have lots more seo content on the channel as well, including the javascript seo things that I mentioned um yeah and otherwise. Thank you for watching and uh wishing you a great time, bye.