Wrapping up 2024 | Search Off the Record

[Music]
hello and welcome to search off the
record a podcast coming to you from the
Google search team where we talk all
about search and maybe have some fun
along the way who knows my name is John
I'm a search advocate here at Google in
Switzerland and I'm joined today by
everyone I mean everyone like who joins
this podcast regularly um meaning Lizzy
Gary and Martin woohoo say hi everyone
hello hi everyone what okay two of us
clearly cannot follow directions name
names well me for one and then the
person who stayed silent I guess silent
okay this is going well this is why we
have these episodes with all four of us
it it's a magical experience it's a
magical experience and today we're here
to look back at
2024 and think about all of the fun
stuff or interesting things that we ran
across one of the things I I noticed in
preparing this is we went to lots of
different places to do events or to talk
at events uh including countries we
haven't been before like turkey or I I
think Malaysia not not 100% sure but
it's like Martin you were recently in
Turkey yes how how did that go so I
learned that turkey changed its name to
Turkey it was really really nice to be
there because I think the idea with the
search Central life event series was
primarily aimed at underserved regions
and I think turkey is one of them where
we haven't been doing much beforehand
and we worked with the local news team
and it was really really nice to see a
diverse audience in terms of different
sizes of companies were there different
uh experience levels and what I noticed
is that a lot of people told me they are
not particularly happy with the search
results and initially at the
conversation as it began at the event
they primarily said like Google isn't
giving us good results and then I said
why is that and then eventually we
worked out as a group as a whole that
there are a lot of problems with the way
that content is created in Turkish
language websites and I think we can do
a better job at helping people identify
the the problems they are facing and and
um figuring it out so we can do a lot of
Education there that will help people
make better websites and thus will help
people have better websites available to
them and I think seeing that across the
industry in Turkey was was really really
nice and um what stood out to me was
that a lot of people that described
themselves as very experienced actually
had a bunch of of questions that were
kind of like there were certain common
themes one was um that they struggled
with people copying their work and often
times it turned out that these were
legal problems in the end that we can't
really do much about and and they need
to use the existing mechanisms in their
legal system to work against that and a
bunch of it was technical so there were
questions about robots txt about no
index tags these kind of things and it's
it's really really good to see that they
are eager and keen on improving their
websites and their content for their
users and I think we can do a lot to
help them on the way which I think is
great cool the thing you mentioned about
experience I I came to realize the past
few years that that's a very subjective
thing yeah like when you when you are
asking people like what's your
experience and they they are like Oh I'm
a guru and then uh or I'm a like on the
opposite end of the spectrum like I'm a
complete new be
and then you start talking to them and
the Newbie is like knows way more about
like HTTP for example than than I do and
crawling and indexing and whatever like
how it's perceived externally and then
you talk to the guru and the guru is
like the questions themselves don't make
sense like like you can't interpret the
question that they are asking so or or
is very very basic like that happened
and I mean we try to gauge experience by
asking them how many years have you been
doing this kind of job on how many years
have you been in this industry and how
many Impressions do you manage a month
roughly and uh these are proxy metrics
and as you say it's super subjective
yeah what would be your um like criteria
I guess for assessing that they're basic
or more of a beginner so if it's very
fundamental questions that are being
answered kind of in the quick start
guide and the like SEO beginners guide
that we have in the in the fundamental
documentation basically like how can I
choose which of the URLs pointing to a
specific piece of content is chosen and
these kind of things I would consider
that like the 101 kind of things and
then there's like super technical stuff
like hey we have this web worker in the
background that is
misbehaving what's going on then that's
that's something that not many people
experience luckily and that's something
that is very very specific and very
unlikely for for you to become a blocker
unless you have been doing a lot of of
the work beforehand and have have gone
into a bit of a deeper end of the pool
so to speak but I guess it it also
depends a lot on the types of
specialization that oh yeah sure it's
like so someone could be like super
focused on web workers trying to get
them indexed and at the same time like
how do I block a page from being indexed
yeah yeah yeah and that that's probably
why it is so subjective and uh it it's
super interesting super interesting to
see how they're like yeah we got
everything nailed down we are running a
tight ship here and then you see like
some of the stuff that is discussed at
large in all of the beginner
documentation is being missed and that
left me with a question is it that they
are not aware that this documentation
exists is it that they they had a hard
time Fielding the amount of information
we put out there is it that they they
don't know and then there's also the the
thing none of us is a native Turkish
speaker we do have professional
translations that we invest a lot of
effort and time in um but in the
end I I know from German that I am a
native speaker of our German
translations are damn good but I don't
know for all the other languages I'm
assuming they are damn good but I'm not
sure we are getting so much feedback on
them I don't and I'm I'm wondering why
is it that we we cover everything and
everyone knows everything and then they
just forget or I I don't know I I
honestly don't know I would be
interested in hearing back from the
community uh especially from from tury
uh what they think on that did you get a
sense uh just in like conversation with
them if they knew about the
documentation or if there was like sort
of a I don't know a feeling or a Vibe
about like that the translation is bad
or something like that that's that's
exactly what I don't know because we
were so busy during the event fielding
all the conversation like everyone
wanted to talk to us and that's great
that's fantastic that's why we're doing
it but it doesn't really give you the
space to reflect on things on the spot
so I reflected basically like on my
flight back home I was like hm I wonder
dang I should have asked these questions
but you know just just means we have to
go back and ask them again so I I guess
it's a good thing we have a YouTube
series called SEO Made Easy probably
yeah episode 16 and onwards are
publishing so uh enjoy
cool and and Gary you've been running
meetups when you travel kind of like
smaller meetings with with a smaller set
of people uh do you find that to to give
you different kind of information
compared to normal
conferences
uh I don't know I do those meetups
because I want to hear what's on
people's minds um like I don't really go
to normal conferences anymore for
various reasons and one of the most
valuable things that I got out of
conferences is that like when I was
doing q&as then I heard the questions
and then I could notice patterns in the
questions for example and then it's like
oh we might have a problem here or there
or whatever but if I don't do those then
I don't get the question so how do I fix
that well if I'm traveling anyway then I
might just invite people for a coffee
and then we talk about internet things
basically and then perhaps also search
things nowadays definitely also AI
things fortunately I'm very happy about
that I I think the questions reflect the
maturity of of the community in in any
particular country so for example in
Malaysia it would be different kinds of
questions than let's say Singapore even
though they are very close to each other
KL and uh and Singapore the level of the
questions are very different and
probably because the marketers and seos
here in Singapore have been doing that
kind of work for a very long time whilst
in KL maybe they just started their
journey in SEO or marketing or whatever
like the largest takeaway is that like
what's up with all the AI stuff like
everyone and my grandmother was asking
about uh AI everything and that
literally is everything like how can you
use AI in your day-to-day life like life
and also outside work life how can you
do whatever else with AI and then AI
overviews Gemini chat GPT all these
things they are all coming up and people
asking questions about them I really
wish we could put out more documentation
about how these AI interfaces work in
more simple
terms because especially the newer
things that come out like for example
example a certain company put out
something about reasoning and I wanted
to understand like how it works and
there was very little low-level
information about that like there was
some high level oh this is kind of like
magic and we like magic and whatever but
that's not very useful right yeah
they're they are really cool uh do you
think that that's something that like we
should be doing From aearch perspective
or is that like the AI team's job to
sort of educate about how how AI works
or how llms work if we're being specific
I I think I'm air quoting it's it's
probably the AI team we we have the AI
principles or our Google's AI principles
or something like that that site also
has um some white papers about how llms
work and the common problems with llms
and I've been using those white papers
in my presentations about AI I I feel
they are particularly ful in explaining
all these AI shenanigans that we have uh
or the internet has nowadays um in a
very clear way so do you think AI will
replace SEO is SEO on a dying path I
mean seio has been dying since 2001 so
I'm I'm I'm I'm not scared for it like
I'm not yeah
no I'm pretty sure that in 2025 the
first article that comes out is going to
be about how SEO is dying again but and
then Counterpoint how SEO is still
relevant in
2025 yeah considering it's been doing
that for the past 25 years or something
it's
like so you've been doing uh like a gen
talk at search Central live last year
and this year have you seen questions
change or how do you see 2023 compared
to 2024 in terms of of people's
perception or the type of question that
they're
asking um they are pretty much the same
um and that's because we try to vary the
audience we prefer not to reinvite
people who attended one of our
conferences in a certain location
because one thing is that our talks
don't change that much like for example
there's one way to tell how search works
right like if you have to John's making
faces he's going with the second way
using pasta as a vehicle for information
delivery explain yourself
Mo no okay but the questions are are are
generally about how how you can use Ai
and will you be penalized in some way if
uh you are using Ai and in more mature
uh markets it's uh more about like
understanding hallucinations like like
one particular thing that come up in one
of the meetups uh was how AI
hallucinations work and basically that's
the reverse question because usually
it's like how AI works and then explain
how how it fails like it's it's a very
good question it's a like a
thought-provoking question do you talk
about Raj at
all what Rich uh he means
rag generation I feel like not help me
understand retrieval augmented
generation that's rag rag rag rage is it
JF or G oh we are not going there never
mind JF is the peanut
butter yes but also no I think like like
the people are are trying to
ask that question but it it comes out
very awkward and then I I would not know
how to how to answer I I I think it's a
it's a relatively complex topic and for
the longest time we haven't had good
ways to explain it or show showcase what
it what it can do and how it can do it
probably nowadays it's it's much better
and you can just show that like here you
upload these five documents and then
based on those five documents you get
something out of the out of the bag ah
okay is so this question is about how
the thing knows its information and
where it goes and gets the information I
found it useful when when talking about
things like Ai and search results or
combined with search results where seos
I I feel initially when when they think
about this topic think oh this AI is
this big magic box and nobody knows what
is happening in there and when you talk
about kind of the retrieval augmented
part uh that's basically what what seos
work on like
making content that's crawlable and
fible for search and that kind of flows
into all of these AI overviews so I I
kind of found that angle as being
something to show especially to seos who
are kind of afraid of AI and all of the
these things that actually like these AI
powered search results are often like a
mix of the existing things that you're
already doing and it's not that uh it
suddenly replaces crawling an index
on that note I noticed we we updated our
crawling and indexing docks in some
places this year uh are is something
fundamentally changing there or are we
just documenting more edge cases what's
what's up with that whether it's
fundamentally changing well that's easy
no we've been publishing block post
since 2006 or 2005 I think 2005 we have
lots of good information in those block
posts
still that haven't been converted to
docs so that's one thing the other thing
is that even in our existing docs every
now and then we find holes in the
documentation um like for example we
never directly documented what kind of U
encodings we accept like that that
information floats on the internet but
it was never in an official Google
documentation so yeah we are trying to
like plug those holes also trying to
move towards like a more transparent
crawling in general like where where we
can document stuff that we do with the
things that we do with like the
different crawlers and Fetchers and
whatnots why not do it because
essentially it is public information
because we kind of have to craw it craw
with those things publicly so might as
well just document it I think that's the
thing that I was wondering for some of
the Chang that you had sent over to me
is this a new thing or not with the
encodings and I was curious how like why
now if this is something that we had
talked about 10 years ago why is it all
of a sudden like hello we found the hole
we would like to fill it with some
documentation I mean that particular
thing that was because of some internal
work that we've been doing um we were
evaluating other encodings that we might
want or we might have wanted to use in
in our HTTP clients and when I was
basically checking our documentation
about what we already have for example I
was I was looking up the particular
response header for for encodings the
accept encoding and then colum and then
the three encodings that we support I
couldn't find it and then I found it
buried in some block post from
1972
um and um I tested it again looked up in
our configuration like what we have and
then like why not document it like I I
can't possibly be the only person who's
looking for this well maybe I am but so
practically speaking like an external
person why would they want to look for
this piece of information I I guess they
don't need to change anything it's more
about like confirming that what you're
doing is working which probably most
people will notice already like it's not
it's working or it's not working for
search m uh but it's more like a
confirmation that oh I'm doing this and
Google says it's okay yeah I mean
technically an edch case would be that
they uh switch off uh all encodings and
then um they switch on this brand new um
stroll easy compression on their web
server and then everything is failing
basically we just get gibberish from the
server because we don't support that uh
encoding and then you could look up like
what en codings does Google bot support
or Google scroller support ah but then
we get those like crazy questions that
are like oh it's not listed does that
mean it's not supported or your docs are
just out of date and then we have to say
h we don't support straw lizy is that a
people problem or an us problem like
seriously
ah okay let's let's move to something
less
controversial JavaScript Javas
JavaScript excellent segue
so I I heard at some of the events that
I was that developers really love
JavaScript and everyone wants to convert
their site to JavaScript Frameworks is
this a thing or is it just the the
people who who want
confirmation I I think that is something
that is has been happening in the past
and will continue to happen and some of
it uh sparked
around 2012
2010ish where uh the iPhone was
introduced and apps came to the market
and people wanted to make their websites
compete with apps that was the goal and
then people were told oh the web can't
do what apps can do and so a lot of
functionality needed to be added to the
web to to go along with uh with what
apps can do like push notifications
working offline these kind of things um
and these things have historically been
done with JavaScript and will continue
to be done with JavaScript but I think
we have seen that calm down a little bit
as the web platform became more capable
and people have discovered oh this can
be an application platform and now we're
in this weird state where websites can
be just that websites basically pages
and information that is presented on
multiple pages and
linked but it can also be an application
like you can do podcast recording in the
browser like we do right now that is a
web application we don't have to install
anything it just works in our browser or
a cad application where you can design
parts for a new machine or you can edit
photos or cut videos these kind of
things can be done on the web as well
and then the interesting thing is that's
a spectrum and these are kind of like
the two ends of a spectrum you have
pages and then you have these
applications and then you have things in
between like you can do apartment
viewings in the browser is that a
website yes in the sense it is a website
because it presents information like the
square footage uh how which Which floor
is this on what's the address how many
rooms how many bedrooms blah blah blah
but it's also an application because you
can use a 3D view to walk through the
apartment for something
um what is this how do I represent this
and it's using a JavaScript uh
application base to kind of present this
information but maybe then it also uses
the same JavaScript that does the 3D
rendering to also present the rest of
the information on the page and I think
we are seeing more and more of this
where we are somewhere in between an
application and a
website and yeah I I think that might be
why more people are asking us about
JavaScript because they're in this weird
in between
place okay I guess when you get this
question John are are they having a
problem or are they wondering like
before they have the problem like hey I
want to implement this thing like will
it be okay for search or I implemented
this thing it's not working hello please
fix it uh
both um I I see kind of people who who
have problems and kind of pointing them
at our existing documentation especially
all of the content that Martin has
created over the years that's that's
been really helpful and sometimes I have
people who come to me and like my
developer said they only like JavaScript
it's like is it okay and then there it's
like you also have to point them at the
existing documentation say like hey for
the most part yes but you still have to
watch out it's not like a simple just
replace everything with JavaScript kind
of
thing and usually that's that's pretty
helpful but it it kind of feels like
like that thing that Martin mentioned
it's where there are lots of people that
like these JavaScript Frameworks and
they use them for things where
JavaScript really makes sense and then
they're like why don't I just use it for
everything yeah and sometimes that makes
sense sometimes it's like I have a
hammer I will use it for everything uh
which doesn't doesn't actually work well
if you want to make a toast for
example you can make a very thin
toast I think you're really hammering
this point home John yeah you nailed it
nailed
it so in last year's episode uh we
talked a little or you guys talked not
me I wasn't there um but you were
talking about using llms and playing
around with them how has your view on
them changed since last year so to
remind you uh Gary said that he was
using it to cause problems and John said
that he sometimes uses it to structure
documents and Martin I think asked the
question so I I think I I don't know
it's like maybe it's more of a kind of
an element of the time right now but one
of the things I I noticed is is some of
these llms are really good at writing
code uh so maybe we can get rid of all
of our developers no just kidding sorry
oh boy nope nope oh boy but I I for
example it's like I found found this
really cool llm that uh does code really
well and I had it write python code that
trained an llm model to solve the Fizz
Buzz problem I don't know have you heard
of this Gary you know fizzbuzz Martin
fizzbuzz I heard that before and I've
done my fair share of Fizz buzzes this
okay for those who do not know what a
fizzbuzz is it's it's basically a very
basic program that counts the through
the numbers and every number that's
divisible by three it says Fizz instead
of the number every number that's
divisible by five it says buzz
and th this is what it does so so I
asked an llm to write python code to
train a Transformer model to do
this why and it worked it worked it
worked it had it had a very very good
accuracy the the why question the llm
asked me repeatedly is like are you
ready to do something serious but I I
just found kind of the process of like
the llm spitting out the code and saying
here's a code and then you try to run it
and it's like oh no it throws this error
and you just give the llm the error and
it's like oh my bad it's like tries to
fix it you do that a few times and then
in the end it actually works so I had
this really long code that took I don't
know like a half an hour to run to train
a Transformer model to do FS buuz so
Martin um like if you sit down and you
have your favorite te next to you how
much time would it take to write a
python thingy that
does yeah does
fpas well if I if I like take care of my
tea first and like zip it and stare a
little bit into the distance because I
have a really nice panoramic you five
minutes okay yeah that's I I wanted to
say seven but sure oh okay if if it
makes you happier seven I I can I think
I can stretch the tea out a little bit
more I I thought it was fantastic and I
loved having a llm write code to make
another llm it's like this is great so
you're still using it for fun and uh
chaos well I I just noticed that like
when when I need to create some small
scripts it's it's sometimes helpful to
to get that I mean oftentimes it in in
practice it probably takes just as much
time to make this code like if if you
make it less complex uh then if you did
it yourself and sometimes it advin
things so it's like pros and cons but I
mean I I I think this year I went
through all the phases uh of of a like a
kind of relationship with AI situation
so at first I was skeptical then I got
mildly excited for it then I got really
excited as I tried like different things
um for instance I was skeptical at first
when I saw how clunky it it feels clunky
to me to have to chat with this thing I
don't want to chat with the thing I just
wanted to like click a button and then
be done with it um and and then I got
excited as I realized how much I can
actually do with AI enhancements to
photos and how how much quicker I can I
can do certain things and I tried like
uh I think on Tik Tok if I remember
correctly I tried the AI cutting thing
that kind of cuts a video for you it was
surprisingly reasonable it wasn't
exactly my editing choices but you know
if you if you have like 5 minutes and
you want to produce something for social
media real quick it's probably better
than just not doing it because you don't
have more than 5 minutes cool so I got
really excited and then at some point I
I used it a bunch to to draft um like
articles and blog posts and slide decks
and these kind of things but I realized
then and that's that's when it peaked
kind of for me in around the summer um
and I realized that actually in the end
I pretty much threw away everything that
it created for me and just redid it so
I'm like I mean gets me started but
maybe that's like a discipline issue and
I could just like do it without AI
really instead of just like sitting
there and being like I don't have the
perfect story line so I'm not going to
start the slide deck just start with
something and then enhance enhance
enhance because exact that I don't
really save time using AI there and
recently I got really excited because
someone was like there's this like AI
website builder and I sometimes get I'm
not really a good web designer but I can
tell if I like a website or not from its
design design um or from its design
perspective and I usually overcome this
whenever I make a website by just using
themes that's or like designs that
someone with an i4 design put together
and it takes me a bunch of time because
I have to browse these so an AI website
maker sounded interesting and I clicked
on it and it took ages to come out with
the first design and it was utter
crap and then I I wanted to iterate and
it took like honestly not even lying it
took like 60 seconds to generate a
second version and it was it was
different but it was even the same
amount of crap like it didn't get better
just switched the fonts and the colors
like lavender and dark slate blue for
purple and cream or something like that
and you're like this is this is still
making me sick so why did you take a
minute to do that like I could have done
that in 10 seconds in a in a web editor
of my choice so it didn't it didn't help
at all myty what have you have you heard
of uh Dream
Weaver yeah but Dream Weaver was
faster it was crap but it was faster
your experience reminded me of Dream
Weaver yeah yeah I me too and I'm like
but to be honest like Dream Weaver in
worse I didn't know that was possible
but yeah yeah and so and and I'm at this
point I'm like there are users or use
cases of AI where I get excited for it
uh but this is not it it's not as
universal as you would think I saw a
talk recently in London as SX
London uh where someone who does not
have python skills actually built uh an
AI thing with python using chat GPT and
that was really impressive and they
walked us through the process kind of in
real time and it yes it took half an
hour but that's still impressive iive
they had like a keyword categorization
thing uh built in like half an hour
without actually knowing coding great I
think that's great I finally had a
positive experience with uh
llm sounds terrible um but all these
like llm use cases they're all like
content generation or like help me do a
thing and what I really like about
notebook LM is that it's seems to be
more focused on help me understand the
thing um and more of a maybe because
we're in the end of the year like
reflection mode um but I can then ask it
more questions about the documentation
and see how it can like compare and
contrast um or find themes maybe for
from like all the podcast episodes that
record we recorded this year um or maybe
like uh inconsistencies if we were
saying something a certain way can you
find like all the times that we talked
about sitemaps and then compare yeah I'm
also using notebook them quite
expensively for like some personal
research that I'm
doing just hobby things um and it's it's
mindblowing
mind-blowing
um I'm I'm sure there are
other um similar apps or whatever it is
out there but like I heard about this
from uh AJ con who's a longtime
SEO and uh he brought it up and back
then it was not available in the uh
outside the US and I was relatively
upset about it because he was uh he he
was uh singing ODS about it and uh
finally when we got it then I tried it
with some uh Publications from journals
and and stuff like that like like elsewh
and whatever it's mindblowing like
finding connections like you upload like
five Publications uh like research
papers or something and then it finds
connections between the thing that you
are asking about in those five PDFs and
then you also have the citations and
whatever it's freaking awesome do you
use the audio overview feature why I was
just curious because this is an audio
format so it seems relevant no I like s
okay okay one one quick last thing what
is your favorite thing on the internet
that you discovered this year this year
this year I nothing can it be like what
this Cent this Century this decade this
decade no this Millennium that's oh wait
that's also the this decade oh no this
is this Century okay Martin your turn oh
boy I rediscovered like old German memes
and I'm just loving it and also I
rediscovered the old uh Vine uh oh yeah
videos oh they're so good that's not
this year well no but I rediscovered
them this year so this year on the
internet I discovered or I liked these
things I'm sorry okay then uh this year
I rediscovered the million dooll
homepage
oh I think my favorite moment was a uh
timu croissant video what that I will be
sending to you after this podcast
recording please do I'm not a
serious moment but uh discovering it was
this person uh who uploaded their first
Tik Tok video and it was them uh
wondering why they found ants crawling
out from under a croissant lamp that
they bought on
timu and it wasant a croissant croissant
cantas and I will have
AAS a quasa dipped in resin
um then Shi to your house you can see
where this is going and it was tested in
the video and confirmed to be
edible
what no
way okay mine on that note mine was I I
ran across an Australian cheese maker on
YouTube who does videos about making
cheese and he opens up he opens every
video
with good day kurd
nerds kurd nerds I like it oh that's
good cool all right amazing well that's
it for this episode and maybe you'll
hear more from us um if people want to
find you on the internet and ask you
more questions where can they reach you
LinkedIn yep we will put the million
doll
homepage did you buy them Million Dollar
Homepage no but I'm considering buying a
pixel all right
pixel oh my gosh pixel 9 XL nine nine
nine okay so we will see you next year
yes all right thanks y'all for listening
thank you for joining and
goodbye cheers
bye-bye we've been having fun with these
podcast episodes I hope you The Listener
have found them both entertaining and
insightful too feel free to drop us a
note on LinkedIn or chat with us at one
of the next events that we go to if you
have any thoughts and of course don't
forget to like And subscribe thank you
and goodbye
[Music]