Transcript Of The Office Hours Hangout
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JOHN MUELLER: OK.
Welcome, everyone, to today's
Google Webmaster Central Office
Hours Hangouts.
My name is John Mueller.
I'm a Webmaster Trends Analyst
here at Google Switzerland,
and I'd like to help
answer your Webmaster web
search related questions.
We have a bunch of questions
that were submitted already.
There are a bunch of
people here in the Hangout
live as well, ready to
ask more questions, I bet.
So let's get started.
Let me mute you, Greg.
You have a lot of
background noise,
but feel free to unmute
if you have any questions.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: I got a
question about a disavow.
JOHN MUELLER: All right.
Go for it.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: So
this is a question
I've been waiting
for like patiently,
I guess, around two weeks.
So suppose exampleone.com
has decided
to rebrand itself and add
another keyword to their URL
or whatever for all
sorts of purposes.
And so exampletwo.com
comes around
and exampleone is 301ed
to the exampletwo,
and exampleone also
have a negative SEO
impact on their website, so they
decided to go ahead and disavow
and they left the file
in the exampleone URL.
And now exampletwo comes
around, and let's say
two or three weeks
from now, those links
transfer to exampletwo,
does that means
we need to have two disavows?
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: Is
there a reason for that,
or should the exampletwo
brand new first domain not
have a disavow?
JOHN MUELLER: Well, if you're
redirecting from exampleone
to exampletwo, then
you're essentially
forwarding that page
rank from those links,
so that's essentially what
you'd want to kind of disavow.
So what I would do there is
just take your disavow file
from exampleone and upload
it on exampletwo as well
and continue working on
that as you find more things
that you need to disavow.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: Oh,
so you can do that.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
BARUCH LABUNSKI:
Oh, OK, because I
asked many guys out
there and-- wow, so OK.
JOHN MUELLER: OK, great.
MALE SPEAKER: John,
on that, would
you do the exact
same file and not
bother making new notations
or anything or a note
in there saying,
previously uploaded to.
Each separate URL
has a line for notes.
Would you do something on there?
JOHN MUELLER: We
don't read the notes,
so those are
essentially for you.
If you think the notes are
useful, keep them there.
If you don't want to add any
notes, that's absolutely fine.
We essentially process that
automatically, so anything
you leave in the notes there
is going to get dropped.
MALE SPEAKER: And unless
there's a manual review
that is under a penalty.
JOHN MUELLER: Even
then, we would only
look at the results
of the file, so we
wouldn't look at the disavow
file that was submitted.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: So it won't
harm the site or anything
like that, John?
JOHN MUELLER: Well,
I mean depending
on what you do with
the disavow file.
Of course, if you include all of
the links in your disavow file,
then we'll treat
your site as if it
didn't have any links after
we process all of that,
so that could be problematic.
But if you take the disavow file
that you previously had and you
know that kind of covers
the bad links that you found
for your site and reuse
that on your new site,
then that's fine.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: OK.
Thank you.
MALE SPEAKER: Hey, John.
Mind if I ask a
question as well?
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
MALE SPEAKER: All right,
so I got a new client
that I'm doing link
profile review for,
and he has a lot of bad links,
so got to deal with that.
But he also had some
interesting links
that I think are
specific to his niche
and they're not really intended
to manipulate search engine
rankings or something
like that, but they
are some sort of
stealth submitted.
I'm talking about a
real estate agency that
has its own listings,
but also posts
listings to aggregate sites,
like classifieds or aggregators
of these types of listings.
And every time an
agent of theirs posts
a listing on these
aggregator sites, there's
also a profile of the
agency that posted the list.
And so we have contact details
like name, address, a phone
number, and website, the URL.
So should I disavow
these links as well,
or are those links
already ignored by Google
because it kind of
sees that, yes, this
is a feature of the platform
itself and we shouldn't
have did that account.
I'll give you an example.
JOHN MUELLER: OK.
MALE SPEAKER: And the links
of the agency's profile
is in the top right corner
of where you can see that.
JOHN MUELLER: OK.
Yeah, I'd have to take a look
at that to see the kind of value
we have that's set up there.
But in general, if you're
dropping these links yourself,
then that's something that
shouldn't be passing page rank.
So on the one
hand, we'd probably
recommend for a site like
that, like it's almost
like a directory
site, I guess you
could say, to use a
nofollow there as well.
And that's something
we probably try
to recognize in our
algorithms as well.
So if you want to
nofollow that or if you
want to use a disavow for
that, that's probably fine,
but it's not something
where I'd say
it's always extremely clear cut.
So I'd have to take a look at
that, how you have that set up,
how that's actually
working there,
to be able to give you a
little bit better advice.
MALE SPEAKER: The idea is that
the agent posting the listing
is not the one actually
posting the link.
The platform itself posts
the agency's profile
on every listing
the agent posts, so
that's just the same
profile on every page.
JOHN MUELLER: I'd have
to take a look at that.
I don't have any complete
answer for that [INAUDIBLE].
MALE SPEAKER: I'll send you a
message on Google+ with that.
JOHN MUELLER: OK, sure.
All right.
Let's go through some
of the questions that
were submitted here.
This one was really
top ranked and I
think it shows that we're
confusing people a little bit,
so we have to kind of
watch out for that.
The question is, allow
crawling of CSS JavaScript,
but don't use it.
Be user friendly but
make them scroll a lot.
Don't scroll too much on mobile,
but make them hide content.
I'm confused.
Who else is confused?
So I guess in general,
the main themes here
are crawling of CSS
in JavaScript, that's
something that we recommend
doing because if you pull
in content with your
CSS in JavaScript
or if you make your web page
mobile friendly, for example,
with your CSS and
your JavaScript
and we can't crawl it, then we
can't recognize that content.
We can't use it.
So we try to pull in the content
through CSS and JavaScript,
whatever you have shown
there, but if that's blocked,
then we can't use it.
So that's something that I
think is generally little bit
more clear cut.
We probably need to explain
that a little bit better
though, I guess.
Since so many people
voted this question up,
also with regards to
being user friendly,
and hiding continent on
mobile, or not hiding
content, that kind of plays
into one of the topics
we talked about in one
of the previous Hangouts
where I said that if content
is hidden on your page
by default, if a user goes
to your page and not shown,
then that's something
that we kind of
discount in our indexing and
for the relevancy in the search
results.
And that's been something
that's been like that for years.
Someone else pulled out
a link to a Hangout,
I think, from 2012 where
we talked about that.
So that's definitely been
like that since at least then.
I think we've talked about
that from before as well.
So if content is hidden on
your page when that page loads,
that's not something that we
would treat as critical or as
important to a page
as the content that's
actually visible to the user.
But I think these
are topics that
can get quite complicated
when you take a look at all
the specifics, so maybe we need
to explain these a little bit
better.
MALE SPEAKER: John,
with that, the content
not being shown by
default, would that also
be taken into account
for the mobile algorithm,
because a lot more is hidden
to be friendly on a mobile
than a normal screen or not?
JOHN MUELLER: With regards to
the content from the mobile,
what we recommend doing is
having like the rail canonical
pointing at the desktop page.
So if you have separate
URLs for example.
And what would happened
there was we'd index the page
based on what is seen on
the desktop page primarily.
So if we can tell
that the content is
equivalent on the mobile, even
if it's formatted differently,
if things like images
might not be shown,
then that's absolutely fine.
We just expect that the primary
content actually be equivalent.
OK.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: But if a
page has 1,500 words, John,
how should we display
that on mobile?
I mean, even if
it converts it, it
doesn't look-- because
I mean, the mobile user
is completely different than
the desktop user, right?
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
I mean, that's
something where you
have to think about what you
can do to create an equivalent
experience for the user
where the primary content is
equivalent.
It doesn't have to
be exactly the same.
So kind of like,
I guess, Wikipedia
does that fairly nicely.
They have the primary
content the same
and you can expand out to
the individual sections
if you want to do that.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: OK.
JOHN MUELLER: Or
other sites I've seen
have the primary
content the same
and they treat
some other content
on the desktop page as
kind of secondary content
that they don't show
at all, or that they
show on different pages.
So that's something
that would work as well.
MALE SPEAKER: And John,
I know we've probably
discussed this a
few times before,
but I was just wondering
about the content in terms
of the position on
the page that it sits.
I think with the new
redesign we're rolling out
at the moment on our
site, we've got buttons
at the top that use a
jQuery.ScrollTo method, which
means really the content is
a lot higher and a lot more
important than it might appear
at first sort of appearance.
So is that being taken into
account at the moment in terms
of Googlebot, or if my content
was higher up, would it
actually, rather than
being lower down somewhere,
would it be better?
Because really, it
doesn't make sense
when you look at our
design, if that makes sense.
JOHN MUELLER: I don't have
your design in my head
at the moment, but in general,
if you can see the content when
you go to those
pages, that's fine.
And that doesn't mean you have
to see all of the content,
but one thing we try
to avoid, for example,
is that the primary content
you see on a page when you go
visit it is just an ad.
Maybe it's even an ad
for a different site.
So if you go to a page like
that and you feel like,
well, there's nothing
here that I search for.
But if you go to a
page that makes sense,
where the primary content is
partially visible at least,
then as a user, you
go there and you say,
well, this is what
I was looking for.
I know there's more
further down on the page.
It's clearly visible that the
main content is at least there
somewhere.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah.
I mean, we're making sure
everything's actually visible
and everything's on the page.
So there's actually
no hidden content
or no divs that hide content.
It was more of a
case of how high
up now that content should be
and whether that does actually
make a difference.
I know you say do
everything that you should
the way that you want to do it.
But obviously there are impacts.
And if this is a 0.1
of a percent that
makes a difference of us
having that content higher,
it wouldn't impact
our design massively.
Should we put that higher up?
JOHN MUELLER: I think if
it's visible on an average--
what do you call it-- the first
page, when you view the page,
then that's--
MALE SPEAKER: Above
the fold you mean?
JOHN MUELLER: Above
the fold, yeah.
It's not something--
MALE SPEAKER: But that
actually is better.
JOHN MUELLER: It's
not something where
I'd say 50 pixels is
better than 100 pixels
from the top of the page.
I don't think that's a little
detail you need to worry about.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, OK.
Thanks, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
MALE SPEAKER: John, I have
a quick question for you
if you have a second.
In regards to new websites in
highly competitive verticals
with solid on and
off page SEO signals,
can it take longer
than normal to rank
in extremely
competitive industries?
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
I mean, this is something where
essentially the answer isn't
really related to
Google's algorithms,
but if you're in a very
competitive market,
then those competitors will
have spent a lot of time
and a lot of money on
their websites getting
things set up right.
Maybe they're going to have
a lot of really happy users,
and kind of breaking
into that market
is always going to be hard.
And our algorithms look
at a bunch of stuff
when we look at different
sites, and if we
see one site that's
really new that has
some signals but
not really all the
signals that we're looking
at, then sometimes we
can guess and say,
well, this might be OK.
We'll just try it out.
But sometimes, we just
have so many strong signals
from the existing
sites that we say,
well, this site really just
has to prove itself first
before we start putting it
high up in the search results.
MALE SPEAKER: Thanks.
And I also apologize
for the background noise
being in the coffee shop.
JOHN MUELLER: No problem.
All right.
Next question here.
Google will discount
the content added
in tabs or on click
read more links.
How will it affect rankings
for search queries related
to that content?
Will this happen in
100% of the cases?
When will you start to do this?
Google also uses tagged content.
So again, we've been
doing this for years now.
It's not really something new.
If your content isn't
really visible on a page
when we load it,
then that's something
we'll try to take into
account in our algorithms.
It's not that we'll ignore
it completely, but we'll say,
this isn't the primary content.
And we might kind of
discount its weight
when we do the relevancy
calculations in the search
results.
BARUCH LABUNSKI:
If the developer
wanted to create user
experience-- like if it's
selling something like tires,
for instance, like 9.99, 10.99,
it's like you
separate it in tabs,
and I understand the user
would not find out that hey,
you could click here in the tab.
But I mean that's
a problem, yeah?
JOHN MUELLER: It's
primarily a problem
because people might be coming
from the search results looking
for something specific, and
the snippet might say, oh,
you can read all about
our great shoe store here.
And you go to that
page and it doesn't
have anything about a
shoe store because it's
hidden away in one of the tabs.
And that's kind of the problem
that we're facing there.
And it's not that we'd say
we take this out completely,
but we kind of discount it.
So if this is secondary
content that's not primarily
relevant to those pages, then
if you search for an exact match
from that text, then probably
you'll still find it in search.
But it's not
something where we'd
say this is really
the primary content.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: I actually
found it, like you said.
I did find it and it ended
up going to the exact page.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
I mean, if that's
something that's
really unique to
that page, we'll
still kind of take
that into account.
But if you're competing
with other sites,
if you're in like normal search
results for generic queries,
then that's something
where we'd say,
well, this page
doesn't primarily
seem to be focused
on this topic.
It also includes
something about it,
but it's not the primary focus.
So what I would do, especially
with regards to tabs,
is think about whether or not
you can split those tabs off
into separate pages
and say this is really
important content in these tabs.
I really want my page to rank
for this, and in that case,
load it off into a separate page
or put it on your primary page.
If it's something that
you say, well, this
is kind of secondary
information, you're looking at,
I don't know, tires for
example like you mentioned,
and you have all the different
sizes that you have available,
then maybe that's not
critical to your page
and you could put
that into a tab.
BARUCH LABUNSKI:
John, does Googlebot
like parallax websites?
JOHN MUELLER: I don't know.
Probably.
What's parallax?
BARUCH LABUNSKI: Where you can
just continue to scroll and--
JOHN MUELLER: Oh, like the
infinite scroll type things.
MALE SPEAKER: John, I was
asking you the same thing right
exactly on this topic.
How about infinite
scroll websites
where you have all the
content on one page?
JOHN MUELLER: Like with infinite
scroll websites, on the one
hand we have our recommendations
that we published,
I think, couple months
ago, maybe longer,
on how you can kind of paginate
that infinite scroll content.
The important part there is if
this is really a gigantic HTML
page, at some point
we'll just cut off
and say we're just
indexing up to here,
and we're kind of
focusing on that.
So that's something
to keep in mind.
If it's something that
continuously gets loaded more
and more as you scroll
down, then we'll
also just scroll down
to a certain point
and say, well, we've been
reloading more content here
for a while now.
This is probably not
really that relevant
any more and we'll
stop at some point.
So it's not that
we'll index everything
on an infinite scroll page,
because I could be going on
forever, but we'll try to
get a good view of that page.
So--
MALE SPEAKER: Go ahead, please.
JOHN MUELLER: So I
guess one recommendation
I would make there is if
you're doing infinite scroll,
make sure you also have some
kind of paginated navigation
or some kind of
category navigation
as well so that people
can kind of click links
and go to that content instead
of having to go to the homepage
and scrolling down
500 times until they
reach that piece of content.
MALE SPEAKER: Do you
have a certain amount
of data you're able to scroll,
I mean, to be on the safe side
if you make this
infinite scroll?
JOHN MUELLER: I don't know.
I remember someone did
a test a while back,
and it was something like
50 megabytes of the HTML.
I don't know if
that's still relevant,
but especially
with 50 megabytes,
you can put a lot of content
into 50 megabytes of HTML.
So if you're at
that size, I think
you're probably better off
splitting things often.
MALE SPEAKER: OK.
Thank you very much.
MALE SPEAKER: Surely
you're presenting yourself
with the same issue of
hidden text at that point
that we just had the
conversation about.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah,
I mean, it starts
getting into similar
areas where we say,
well, this content
is so far down.
Is this really still relevant?
The tricky part with
really big pages
is recognizing which
parts of the page
are actually important
because sometimes, you'll
have something like a PDF
that goes on for 100 pages
and there's something
really important on page 99,
but if it's not mentioned
somewhere on the top,
then we might actually
miss out on that.
So that's something where
if there's something really
critical to your
pages, make sure it's
visible to your
users, and then we
can take that into account
a lot easier as well.
MALE SPEAKER: John, I have
one more follow up question.
I want to clearly state this
is not a penguin question.
Sorry, Barry.
In regards to third
party metrics,
such as Majestic,
and Ahrefs, and Moz,
do any part of
Google's algorithms
acknowledge and look
at those metrics
when assessing the site?
JOHN MUELLER: No.
MALE SPEAKER: Not domain
authority or anything
like that?
JOHN MUELLER: I mean,
what might happen
is that some of these metrics
overlap with other things
that we look at, but it's
definitely not the case
that we have a Majestic
API license and we go
and look up sites there.
I think to some
extent, these tools
are pulling in similar metrics
and trying to recreate metrics
that Google might be using,
and I think some of them
do a really interesting
job of that.
But it's not the case that
we would use their metrics
because we have
enough metrics to take
into account on
our side directly.
MALE SPEAKER: Thank you, sir.
JOHN MUELLER: All right.
Is a new start up ranking
based on how many pages you
have overall on the
site, which is difficult
when there are competitors
with lots of content,
or is it OK to focus on a
smaller number of high quality
pages in the initial stages?
I think this is similar to
the previous question we
had about existing markets.
Essentially, we're
looking at your pages
based on what we find
there and it's not
a matter of the
quantity of content
you have on your pages
and more of the quality
and how that actually
fits in overall.
And what I recommend doing there
is the same thing you would
do with any new business that
kind of goes into an existing
market is find something
that you do really well
and focus on that and
kind of build up on that.
Instead of trying to
be the same as everyone
else in that market, really try
to find something that sets you
apart, that makes you
unique, and focus on that.
So don't just create
the same number of pages
that other people have.
Don't just focus on
the bulk of content.
Really find something that
makes your business unique,
that makes-- kind of gives
us a reason to show your side
as well in those kind
of search results.
Our homepage and
department pages
have a cache date
of 22nd of October.
We had a big drop in
crawl rate for a few days
but then went back
to normal rankings.
Organic traffic
has also reduced.
Is this a sign of a penalty?
If it were a penalty,
you'd definitely
get a notice in
Webmaster Tools, so I
don't know if you looked
there, but I'd double
check there at least.
We did have a technical
problem on our side with regard
to the cached pages
where a lot of sites
were seeing cache dates around
20th, 21st, 2nd of October,
and that should be
resolved in the meantime,
so that's not
something that should
be causing any problems there.
And the cache date
isn't something
that affects how we
crawl or index your site.
So if you're seeing
changes with regards
to your ranking
or your crawling,
then that would be completely
unrelated to the cache date.
Oh, a penguin question,
maybe just a real short one.
Is the Penguin
update done rolling?
Essentially, I think it's still
rolling out to some extent,
so this is something
where they're
doing a really slow and cautious
rollout of this data there,
but I don't have anything new
to add to those discussions.
MALE SPEAKER: Is it rolling
out across the board?
JOHN MUELLER: Sorry.
Sorry?
MALE SPEAKER: Is it rolling
out across the board,
like across-- or let's say
North America's already
been completed and
now it's overseas,
or is it like everywhere,
it's being rolled out still?
JOHN MUELLER: We try
not to split things up
by country or by
language unless there's
specific reasons for
that, like policy reasons
or legal reasons.
For example, when it
comes, I don't know, maybe
to the snippets, or
titles, or things
like that where it's
also hard for us
to understand the
different language content.
So those are the kind of cases
where we kind of split this up
by country.
But general web spam,
general quality algorithms,
are things we try
to do globally.
What's Google's view
of duplicate content,
and how does that
relate to feeds
such as MLS feeds for
real estate listings?
Real estate sites
end up competing
against each other over
exactly the same content.
That's always a
problem, I guess,
especially if you kind of have
your own content duplicated
like that, if you syndicate
your content like that.
I think that's the
same across the board.
It's not specific to
real estate sites,
but as soon as you
syndicate your content,
we crawl and index all of
those different versions.
And in the search
results, we have
to make a decision which
one we want to show there,
so if all of this content
is essentially the same,
we'll see that as
duplicate content.
And in the search results, we'll
try to pick one or the other
and show that as appropriate.
So that's not something
I see specific to MLS
sites or real estate sites.
It's really across the board.
If you're syndicating your
content, then people might be--
or we might be picking
one or the other one
to actually show in
the search results.
MALE SPEAKER: And John, in
terms of duplicated content,
another thing that we
touched on in the past
is your internal
duplicated content.
And the one thing I've
noticed that hasn't recovered
on our site is the office space
search related information.
So we have a lot of tailored
virtual office products,
but we also broker a
lot of office space,
and so that means that
we have multiple pages
with multiple duplicated
content in areas
that have a close proximity.
And due to the fact that
I feel like the content is
fairly high quality,
especially compared
to others I'm seeing
out there, I'm
still concerned that there
is a problem with having
this many locations--
let's say 3,000
or 4,000 different locations
with various duplicated
internal content-- that maybe
is being looked at by Panda
and not giving us
the best results.
And I'm wondering, what is
my best course of action?
Am I better off reducing the
amount of pages I actually
have, focus only on a
core set of locations?
Is that actually going to
make a difference or am
I dealing with a factor that
I'm not taking into account?
Sorry for the long
winded question.
JOHN MUELLER: I
guess it's always
hard to make a decision
between having more pages that
are kind of similar and
having fewer pages that
are very focused.
But it's not something where
I'd say is primarily a quality
reason where we'd say these
are really low quality pages,
we'd kind of demote the
site because of that.
Most of the time,
it's just a matter
of having a lot of
pages that have very,
let's say, diluted signals.
And compared to a few pages,
I have very strong signals.
So depending on your
website, it might make sense
to kind of shift the
balance a little bit
over towards having
fewer pages that
are really strong on their
own or it might make sense
to say, well, these pages are
so strong I can afford to split
them off into two
separate pages.
MALE SPEAKER: What
do you mean strong?
JOHN MUELLER: How do you--
MALE SPEAKER: What do
you mean by strong?
I mean, what would
happen is essentially
I would be taking
5,000 pages and I
would remove 4,000 of them,
but nothing would actually
physically change
in those pages.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: What if he
rewrites those 5,000 pages?
Then it's fine, no?
JOHN MUELLER: That's a
lot of content, yeah.
MALE SPEAKER: We already
wrote half a million words
when we realized that we had a
problem as the previous person
in the question
asked there about MLS
and whether or not you
should be sharing content.
We had that issue, so
we rewrote everything,
half a million words.
It was huge, so
we're just trying
to find what the
right avenue is.
I mean, this is what you've
been telling people to do.
I'm trying to also give people
some help on multiple forums
who seem to be having
similar issues.
So for the car industry, for
the real estate industry,
for our industry and
office space-- and there
are a lot of others who are
probably listening and watching
this that don't know what
to do in this situation.
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
It's really hard.
So one thing I'd recommend
doing is making sure
that you don't have
search pages indexed.
That's one aspect that
sometimes kind of explodes
the number of pages that
we find from a site.
If you have a search form,
you can enter any word
and it'll find any
number of pages
on your site, that
essentially creates
a ton of different pages,
which generally end up
being not so
important for a site.
So that's, I think, one aspect
I kind of exclude from there.
If you're essentially
looking at the,
I guess you could say, category
level of pages on your site,
where you have one
category and all
of the different products
roughly speaking listed there,
then that's something where
sometimes it makes sense
to have those indexed like that.
If people are looking,
for example, I
don't know, office space
in specific cities,
then maybe it makes
sense to create
this kind of a category page.
If that's something that
kind of explodes on its own
as well where you have like
you can enter a city name
and it'll say office space
within 500 miles of this city,
then that's going to bring a lot
of information that's probably
not so relevant for the user.
So somewhere between
something that's very targeted
and something that's
too broad to actually
be useful for the user,
I think that's where
you kind of have
to find the match.
And I don't think
there's one size that
fits all for this
kind of question.
MALE SPEAKER: And what's the
result of that, then, if it is?
I mean, is it a
quality algorithm?
Is it Panda?
What's actually
affecting whether or not
that page ranks well compared to
maybe having a reduced amount?
Is it content quality?
JOHN MUELLER: On the one hand,
it's something like quality.
But I think the
primary thing that
happens there is if you have
fewer pages on your website,
then all of the good signals
that we have for your website
will be kind of split
among those fewer pages
as compared to being split among
thousands of different pages.
So that's kind of where
you're concentrating
the value, the signals,
all kinds of signals
that we've collected
for your website,
and can kind of focus
those on fewer pages
to make those pages a
little bit stronger.
And this is something
that comes up,
for example, with
international websites
as well where maybe you
have content for Germany,
Switzerland, and Austria,
but it's all in Germany.
And maybe it makes
sense to combine that
into one page that's
in German that's
valid for all of these
countries instead of creating
separate pages for
each of these countries
because it's essentially
the same thing.
So kind of finding the balance
between spreading things out so
that you have information that's
relevant for specific users.
And being able to focus on
something and collecting,
like really concentrating
the value of your website
onto those pages, is, I guess,
a tricky balance to find.
And it really depends
on your website,
so it's not that there's
one solution for all.
MALE SPEAKER: John, I
have a follow up question,
sort of a hybrid
question regarding
the third party
linked metric tools.
For new top level
domains, I know
this question's
been asked before,
but how does Google view
new top level domains?
And part of the reason I'm
bringing up the third party
metrics is because new top
level domains always show zero
according to Moz's
domain authority, and Moz
rank, and all that stuff.
So I just was wondering how
Google handles new top level
domains versus the
traditional ones.
JOHN MUELLER: We
essentially treat them
as generic top level domains.
So that's something where
if you can't get a dot com
but you can get a dot company
or whatever top level domain is
out there now, then
that's essentially fine.
That's something you could use.
You can set geotargeting
in Webmaster
Tools for those domains.
You can essentially
use them normal.
So it's not that we're
treating them with caution
or we're holding them
back or anything.
They can rank just as well.
Sometimes they rank really well.
So I don't know.
I think I saw some
report externally
about some of those
new top level domains
saying they actually ranked
better than the previous ones.
And it's not really
the case that they
ranked better because of
the top level domains.
It's just that if you
have a really good website
and you redirect it to
a new top level domain,
we'll try to follow
that information
and rank them appropriately.
MALE SPEAKER: Is it safe to say
to steer clear from dot infos?
JOHN MUELLER: No.
That's absolutely fine to use.
I think one of
our-- I don't know
who is like the leader
of research department.
Amit Singhal, for example,
has a dot info website.
So if he believes in
dot info websites,
then I think it's
safe to say that they
can rank just as well
as anything else.
MALE SPEAKER: I've just noticed
that there's so much spam out
there.
I mean, these spam
networks specifically
use so many dot
infos, which is why
I was wondering if
Google had any sort
of downward connotation towards
ones that are traditionally
used for spam.
JOHN MUELLER: We try to
avoid doing that too broadly.
I mean, when it comes
to free hosters,
for example, that have
like a subdomain, that's
something where sometimes
we'll take fairly
broad action because we'll
say, well, this free hoster
has like so much time on here.
We can't even find the
good content on there.
We'll just treat everything
as being kind of problematic.
But with top level domains,
I think that's not something
that we're doing at the moment.
That's not something
that really makes sense,
because people are using
them for different purposes
and if spammers picked up
on one of these ones, that
doesn't mean that all sites
there are necessarily bad.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: What's
the limit to sister sites,
like same?
JOHN MUELLER: There's is no
hard limit in that regard,
but I think it's like
with everything else,
keep it to a reasonable amount
and try not to kind of go
overboard with those
kind of things.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: [INAUDIBLE].
JOHN MUELLER: Sorry?
BARUCH LABUNSKI: I sent
you an email regarding that
and it's still been
around for over a year.
MALE SPEAKER: Yes.
Now it is.
MALE SPEAKER: I'm going
to mute, mute, mute, mute.
Sorry, what?
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah,
I mean, that's
something where we don't have
any strict guidelines where
we'll say you're
only allowed to have
like two websites in search
or something like that.
So to some extent,
if you have sites
that are significantly separate,
that's absolutely fine.
If you have sites that
are exactly the same,
then we should be
treating that the same
from a technical point of view.
It's not something that
we'd kind of like manually
curate and say, well, this
is from the same company,
therefore they should
never be showing up
in the same search results.
BARUCH LABUNSKI:
It's the same TLD.
It's the same TLD, but
one is without a dash
and one is with a dash.
JOHN MUELLER: That
can be fine as well.
I mean, it's not something where
we kind of take and kind of,
let's say, look at
the search results
and say we need
to clean these up
and manually curate the search
results because we can't really
do that.
I think, what is it,
10% of all queries
we see everyday are new, so
we couldn't realistically
ever clean up all the
search results manually
and say, well, this site is
kind of the same as that one.
We can fold those together
and this is actually
the same company, or
this site is actually
selling the same product
as the other site there.
That's not the level of detail
where we'd get involved,
and that's something
that our algorithms
should be able to figure out.
And sometimes they
do a good job.
Sometimes they don't
get it completely right,
and that feedback
is good to have,
but it's not the case that we
would manually kind of clean
those things out
when we're talking
about a small number of pages.
But I remember your
email and I know
we've talked about
it with the engineers
a few times, so
it's not something
that I'd say is
completely lost most case.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: Sounds good.
It's just, crowding
the elevator is unfair,
and others are waiting.
It's just--
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah.
It's really hard to say.
I mean, it's similar
to the same kind
of search results
from the same site
where we also don't
have a hard limit
and say, well, you
can only show up twice
in the same search results.
So that's kind of something
that the quality engineers
like to have the freedom to kind
of expand or kind of contract
as they think is necessary
by the algorithms.
But let's go through some
of the other questions
here before they get lost.
Does every single
product page need
to have a product description
for optimal ranking,
or if the product is obvious
and all the user wants
is a picture and
price, will that
suffice for optimal ranking
as long as the user is happy?
If all you have on a page
is a picture and a price,
then we probably won't
be able to figure out
what this page is about.
So to some extent, we need
some information on these pages
to be able to figure
out what we should
be ranking this page for.
So I would definitely at
least put something on there
that you'd like to
rank for that you
think is relevant for the user.
What if one of the
tabs is for reviews
and there are hundreds, in some
cases thousands, of reviews?
I guess one of the
things you could do here
is create separate
pages for this.
You could paginate that
separately if you wanted to.
You could filter out the best
reviews and only show those.
This is essentially a
question of like how
you want to design it
on your website, what
you want to do there.
And there are different
options available
depending on what
you want to do,
what you want to
have indexed, what
you don't want to have indexed.
When using ajax
to serve content,
is it OK to show a dynamic
URL in the address part
but have a search engine
friendly canonical URL
if the content is the same?
For example, domain.com
category/product and domain.com
categoryid=123, productid=15.
Generally, I'd recommend
using the same URLs
that you want to have indexed
as the ones that are actually
shown to the user.
To some extent,
we'll figure it out
if you have something like a
rail canonical on these pages.
But especially with
the newer techniques
that you can use with HTML5,
you can use normal looking URL
and essentially have
those indexed as well.
So that's something where I try
to show exactly the same URL
to both search
engines and users.
My website got negative SEO
with thousands of spammy links.
I'm the only one in the
company with Penguin 3.0.
It lost 70% of its traffic.
I've already disavowed, but
I'm losing in the meantime.
Can you advise what to do?
I took a quick look
at the site beforehand
and I don't see
anything particularly
critical with regards to those
links that are really causing
a problem there, so I'd continue
focusing on your website
and make sure it's really
the best of its kind.
It's not something where I'd say
you need to do something really
specific with the
links, or where
this negative SEO that
you might be seeing there
is causing you problems.
Webmaster Tools is giving
an error, a missing title
tag in robots.txt.
Is this a glitch?
I don't think the robots.txt
should have a title tag.
That's probably true, yeah.
I think there are
a few cases where
we want to index
the robots.txt file,
so if you're seeing
something like this,
I think that's definitely
safe to ignore.
LYLE ROMER: Hey, John.
Also just a real quick
follow up in Webmaster Tools.
A couple Hangouts ago, I
brought up the crawlers issuer
where when we switched
to the secure HTTPS,
that you lose the
traceability of where
the crawlers came from.
Just wanted to follow
up and see if anything
had been looked at
as far as that goes.
JOHN MUELLER: That's
definitely something
I passed on to the
team to kind of look
at what they could do
there to improve that.
I don't know if they've been
able to change anything there,
but in theory, you should
see the original source
of those links in the meantime.
I think that should have
been the case beforehand as
well, so I don't
know if that was just
like a temporary stage
from the redirects
there that were
showing up there,
but that should actually show
the external or internal source
of that link.
LYLE ROMER: Well, check again.
They still weren't showing.
I mean, basically because
the non HTTPS Webmaster Tools
account shows everything's fine
because it gets redirected,
and then when the HTTPS
version just shows everything
as being referred from
just the HTTP version.
JOHN MUELLER: Do you have a
redirect from [INAUDIBLE]?
LYLE ROMER: Everything blank,
it redirects from the non-secure
to the new HTTPS, and I think
that's where the problem is
because the non-secure
Webmaster Tools doesn't
see a problem because
it's getting redirected.
But then when the page doesn't
exist and there's a crawler,
the secure side just
sees the referral URL
as being from the non-secure.
JOHN MUELLER: That should
actually catch up as we
kind of re-crawl and
re-index everything.
So that should be cleaning up,
at least from what I've seen
and from looking at other sites.
But I can definitely
take another look
at your site to see if
there's something maybe
different happening there that's
kind of holding that back.
LYLE ROMER: OK.
I'll pop you the URL.
Thanks.
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
MALE SPEAKER: John, can I step
in with a question please?
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
MALE SPEAKER: I'm seeing
in Webmaster Tools
that Google recognized a lot
of structural markup data,
including hlisting microformat.
Can you please tell
me in which way
it is used by Google, as I
can't see it applied in search
results, at least not
in a visible manner?
JOHN MUELLER: The
structure data dashboard
that we have in Webmaster
Tools essentially shows
all structured data that
we find on your website.
So if you are using this
mark up on your pages,
then we'll show that
in the dashboard.
That doesn't necessarily mean
that we use it in search,
but essentially
what you're saying,
we found this markup
on your pages.
That could be a
schema.org markup
that we don't use,
for example, or could
be a specific type
of microformat
that maybe you have on
your page but we don't use.
We show that regardless
in Webmaster Tools.
MALE SPEAKER: I see, because
I'm starting to clean it up,
I mean, to make it
more proficient.
I'm seeing the
errors dropping down
and I was wondering if there
is any benefit from it?
JOHN MUELLER: Any benefit from
using structured data that
essentially isn't shown
in the search results?
So that's always
a tricky question,
because on the one hand, it
makes it a little bit easier
for us to recognize
what your page is about
if we have more
markup on those pages,
but it's not the case that
we'd say this significantly
effects your site's ranking.
So primarily, what
you would see there
is the difference between
content that, at the moment,
we don't use in rich
snippets, for example,
but that we might
use in the future.
And for example, when the
engineers look at this,
they'll often say, well,
this is the type of markup
if we could find
this on the web,
we'd be able to show
that in rich snippets.
And then they look at
the web as it is now
and they say, well, nobody
is ever using this markup.
Therefore, we
probably won't even
set up any rich snippets for it.
Or if they look at the
web and say, well, look,
there are lots of sites that
are using this markup already,
then it makes it a lot
easier for us actually
start using that
for rich snippets.
So in a sense,
you're kind of ahead
of the curve if you do
that, but you're also
kind of betting that this
specific type of markup
might at some point be
used for rich snippets.
So it's something--
I think if you
like spending the time
on structured data
and you think it
makes sense to kind
of markup your page,
then that's fine.
But if you need to focus
on something that's
visible in the short
term, then that's
probably not something
that you'd need to do.
MALE SPEAKER: OK, thank you.
MALE SPEAKER: John,
I have a colleague
who their website received
a manual penalty back
in, I believe, March.
And it was revoked a month
later and they've still
seen no traffic gain, even
after manually removing links
and doing a thorough disavow.
JOHN MUELLER: Sometimes that
happens when the manual action
kind of matches something
that our algorithms will
be doing at about the same time.
So sometimes, from the
time it's very clear
that this manual action took
place and it got cleaned up
and then the algorithm
took effect, but sometimes
that border is kind of
washed out from the timings.
So what might be
happening there,
or probably is happening
there, is that a manual action
was taken based on some
issue that was found there.
At about the same time or
sometime in between there,
the algorithms also found
something problematic
and took action on that.
And it might be the same thing.
It might be something
completely different.
MALE SPEAKER: Is
it OK if I maybe
shoot you a message after
this just with that domain?
JOHN MUELLER: Sure, sure.
I'm happy to take a look.
I can't promise that I'll have
anything specific back for you.
MALE SPEAKER: Thanks.
JOHN MUELLER: Sometimes
we can find something.
Sometimes it's useful to pass
on to the engineers to say, hey,
people are confused
with this kind of thing.
But it's not always
the case that we'd
be able to let you know
what exactly was happening.
MALE SPEAKER: I appreciate it.
JOHN MUELLER: All right.
We redesigned our
website so that some URLs
will be different.
We have a big AdWords
account that runs daily.
Is there any way to change
URLs to correct them
because users will see
404 pages and we'll
be charged for useless clicks?
This isn't something
that Webmaster Tools
will be able to help you with
because, on the one hand,
the data in Webmaster Tools
is based on the crawling
and not necessarily
based on the ads.
On the other hand, the
data in Webmaster Tools
is generally a little bit
delayed by a couple of days,
depending on how we crawl
and index your site.
So that's something where
I think about setting up
a tool on your site that
actually crawls these URLs.
There are lots of existing tools
that crawl like a list of URLs,
but making your own is
generally pretty easy as well.
Let me run through a whole
bunch of the questions
that we have left
in a few minutes.
John, will there be a formal
notification when the Penguin
update has actually completed?
I don't know.
To some extent, we're hoping
that these things will just
keep on updating, so
maybe it'll just kind of
roll over into that.
Would you be able to
say why my site suddenly
lost its rankings?
This is the site I
looked at before,
and from our point
of view, it's not
that there's anything
specifically bad
about the site.
It's just that algorithms
have changed over the years,
so if your site was ranking
really well a couple of years
ago, that doesn't mean it'll
always be ranking really well.
Any update on the expandable
hidden content issues?
We talked about that.
I understand Google
Places and Maps
are separate from
organic search.
Do the local place results
show search exposures
in the average keyword
ranks in Webmaster Tools?
And no.
If you're shown within the
map, then that's not something
we show in Webmaster Tools.
Seems everywhere
[INAUDIBLE] actions
connected to the
target link network.
Those affected get
very quick attention
to reconsideration
requests, but those
who just are working and
submitting seem to wait longer.
Does web spam prioritize
over those already waiting?
No.
We essentially have our
normal list of sites
that we go through, and we
go through them step by step.
So it's not something where
we prioritize them differently
depending on what
actually happened.
All right, oh.
Lots of questions left.
But maybe I'll just take
one or two from you guys
before someone tries
to grab this room.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: When
is mobile usability
going to kick in in 2015?
I'm not asking for a specific
date, time, where, what.
I just wanted to know
because is there still
time to get prepared?
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
I mean, there's a lot of time.
Like, if you have
any issues, it's
always a good time
to fix those issues.
So with regards
to mobile, we are
looking at what we can do
there past just showing
that label in the
search results.
But if you notice that there
are issues with your sites
with regards to
mobile, I'd definitely
clean those up just
whenever you can.
So it's not that I'd
say you have to give up
and say oh, I missed this train,
I'll wait for the next one.
Users are going to
continue using smartphones
and want to use your site.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: No,
no, no, because you
said it's going to kick in
for ranking, that's all.
You said there's
going to be ranking
involved for mobile usability.
I think [INAUDIBLE].
JOHN MUELLER: I think that's
something that's still
being talked about, so I don't
have any specific news on that.
But like with everything else,
if that takes place tomorrow,
it still makes sense to
work on your site today.
If it takes place
in a half a year,
it still makes sense
to work on your site
to clean those issues up.
So I wouldn't focus
on when it kicks in,
but rather if you see problems,
try to get those fixed.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: Three
weeks around we have.
JOHN MUELLER: No, no, no.
I didn't say any dates.
BARUCH LABUNSKI: No, no, no.
I'm saying I have about
three weeks, I guess.
It's going to be cleared
up in three weeks,
but there's like
thousands of pages.
MALE SPEAKER: John, can I
have you another question?
JOHN MUELLER: Sure.
MALE SPEAKER: The technical
Webmaster guidelines
have been updated to include
progressive enhancements.
How should this influence the
way we create our websites?
BARUCH LABUNSKI: Hm.
MALE SPEAKER: I mean, if
today browsers support
CSS for tooltips and
expendable contents,
why shouldn't we use
that in our advantage--
I mean in a SEO point of view?
JOHN MUELLER: Good question.
I don't have any quick
answer for that, but--
MALE SPEAKER: I'll come back
with this question next time.
JOHN MUELLER: I think
the important part is
just that Google bot is more
and more like a normal browser
and we try to pick up
on more information
as we can kind of find
it from the HTML pages.
So we try to get as much
from there as possible.
And using things like
progressive enhancement
makes it easy for us to
pick up the primary content
as quickly as possible.
And if we can give up a
little bit more information
by processing more of
the page, then that's
something that kind of adds
a little bit more value.
But it's not the case that kind
of focusing on something that
only works in the
modern browsers
and doesn't work anywhere
else, then that's
something where we're going to
have trouble kind of including
that directly in search.
MALE SPEAKER: I understand.
I was saying that
because you said
you won't be using CSS
tooltips small windows
and expandable
content, and this is
one of the features for
which I think you just
put the progressive
enhancement in your guidelines.
So there has to be somewhere
an advantage for it.
JOHN MUELLER: I don't have the
exact text from the guidelines
off hand, so I'd have to think
a little bit what exactly we
put in there.
MALE SPEAKER: No problem.
Thank you.
MALE SPEAKER: John, quick
question about hreflang.
JOHN MUELLER: OK.
MALE SPEAKER: So I
got a website that
has content translated
into multiple languages.
And for the English language,
they use a hreflang with n-us.
Would that be a problem
for somebody searching
from, like, UK, or
Australia, or Canada?
Should they use a en
address or x default?
JOHN MUELLER: It depends.
So en is probably
a good match there.
If this is the only English
version that you have,
then we know that this applies
to all English countries.
So that's probably
a good match there.
If that's also the page that's
relevant for all random users
that you don't have a
specific language for,
then you can also use x default.
So you can use the same
page and say, this is en-us,
but it's also en.
It's like a generic
English page.
Maybe you have a
en UK page as well.
And you could also say
this is the x default page.
So the same page can have
multiple annotations like that.
MALE SPEAKER: OK.
So I can use en-us and
en at the same time?
JOHN MUELLER: Yes.
Yes.
MALE SPEAKER: Oh, OK.
OK, cool.
Thanks.
JOHN MUELLER: All right.
Let's take a break here.
It's been great having you guys.
Thank you all for joining
in and maybe I'll see you
guys again next time,
one of the future times.
Have a great week.
MALE SPEAKER: Thank you, John.
MALE SPEAKER: Thanks, John.
Same to you.
JOHN MUELLER: Bye.
MALE SPEAKER: Bye.
MALE SPEAKER: Bye bye.
MALE SPEAKER: Take care.