English Google SEO office-hours from August 2024

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SPEAKER 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Google's SEO
Office Hours.
In these videos, we aim to answer your questions
about SEO and Google Search.
These questions were submitted using the form link
below over the past month.
To answer them, we have folks from Google's Search Quality
Team.
Joining me today is Martin.
So let's get started.
Frederick asks, my website has English and Swahili pages.
The English pages are almost always indexed,
but not the Swahili ones.
Is there any bias from the Swahili language?
For the most part, we treat content similarly,
regardless of the language used on the page.
However, they are separate pages.
So you need to make sure that they're linked
from the rest of your website.
A good way to help localize pages in terms of indexing
is to cross link the various language versions.
That way, if the English version is well-known,
we'll see the links to the other language versions
and potentially use them, too.
This would be in addition to using hreflang.
Our international sites guidance has a lot of information which
you might find useful, too.
SPEAKER 2: Anon is asking, can a lot
of internal links with nofollow tags
or many pages with noindex tags signal to Google
that the site has many low-quality pages?
No.
It doesn't signal low-quality content to us.
It just tells us that you have links that you're not
willing to be associated with, or you
have pages that you don't want to end up in the index.
That can have many different reasons for the links.
For instance, because they are user-generated content,
in which case you could tell us that they are real
UGC instead of nofollow.
Or you don't know what these sites that you're linking to
will be doing in a couple of years
or so, so you mark them as nofollow.
That's not a problem.
If you have pages that you don't want in the index,
that can have lots of reasons too,
and there's nothing wrong with marking them noindex if you
don't want them in the index.
SPEAKER 1: Maria asks, my website has a lot of 404s.
Would I lose my site's rankings if I don't redirect them?
First off, the 404s would not affect the rest
of your site's rankings.
Redirects can play a role in dealing with old pages,
but not always.
For example, if you have a genuine replacement product,
such as a new cup that functionally replaces
a cup which is no longer produced,
then redirecting is fine.
On the other hand, if you just have similar pages,
then don't redirect.
If the user clicked on your site in search of a knife,
they would be frustrated to see only spoons.
It's a terrible user experience and doesn't help in search.
Instead, return an HTTP 404 result code.
Make a great 404 page, maybe even
make a 404 page that explains why
spoons are superior to knives, if you can make that argument.
Just don't blindly redirect to a similar page, a category page,
or your home page.
If you're unsure, then don't redirect.
Accept that 404s are fine.
They're a normal part of a healthy website.
SPEAKER 2: Seongsu is asking when a crawler pulls
an image from a CDN, or Content Distribution Network,
does the response speed determine whether the image
appears in search results?
No.
The image will appear or not appear for a variety
of reasons in search results.
One out of many is that we might already have this image
index from another domain.
But users definitely will thank you if your images load quickly.
Also, some CDNs have additional features you might want to use,
like dynamically resizing or optimizing compression
based on what the user's browser supports.
So CDNs can have a few benefits besides speed as well.
SPEAKER 1: I'm the site owner, and I can't log in
to Search Console because my hosting and my site database
is deleted.
I want to remove all the URLs so that after my domain expires,
a new owner can't misuse it.
This is an interesting question that I don't
think we've run across yet.
The data in Search Console is not tied to users.
So anyone who verifies a site later on will see that data.
There's no way to reset the data shown there.
So you'd have to prevent the domain name from expiring.
The advantage of this process is that you
can reverify your site in Search Console without any data loss.
To remove all content from Search
for a site that's already removed from the server,
you can use the domain verification for Search Console
and submit a temporary site removal request.
This doesn't remove the site from the index,
but it will prevent it from being
shown for a period of time.
If you're selling the domain name,
it would be nice to tell the new owner of this removal request.
so that they can cancel it if needed.
SPEAKER 2: I have a website with different subdomains
for various markets with pages that contain the same content.
How can I make sure that these rank specifically
for the market mentioned in the subdomain, asks Anon.
Well, if it's the same content, it's the same content.
So if there's variations due to the country,
you can tell Google Search that by using hreflang, for example,
in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland,
where content might be pretty much the same,
but currencies and prices might differ,
you can use hreflang to suggest to show a certain variation
in a certain country.
But just because you have regional subdomains
or subfolders doesn't make the content unique
and show up for specific regions.
SPEAKER 1: Craig asks, my rich results show the wrong currency.
Can you help me resolve this issue?
Often, this is a side effect of Google's systems
seeing the page as being mostly duplicate.
For example, if you have almost exactly the same content
on pages for Germany and Switzerland,
our systems might see the page as being duplicates
even if there is a different price shown.
One approach is to make sure that the pages are not
that similar.
Another approach can be to try to use the Merchant Center feeds
for pricing information instead of using
structured data on the page.
I'm curious to see what you work out.
If you get a chance, feel free to drop me a note on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER 2: Anon is asking, our website is experiencing
significant disruptions due to targeted
scraping by automated software leading to performance issues,
increased server load, and despite IP blocking
and other preventive measures, the problem persists.
What can we do?
This sounds a lot like a distributed denial
of service issue if the crawling is so aggressive that it
causes performance degradation.
But you can try to identify the owner of the network
where the traffic is coming from, like their hosters,
for instance, and send an abuse notification.
You can use WHOIS information for that usually.
If that doesn't work, then maybe a traceroute helps.
Alternatively, you might want to use a CDN.
CDNs often have features to detect this kind of bot traffic
and block it.
By definition, they usually take traffic away from your server.
And also, they distribute it nicely.
So it's a win-win really.
Most CDNs do recognize legitimate search engine bots
and won't block them.
But if that's a major concern for you,
I would consider asking their customer support
before you choose a specific CDN to go with.
SPEAKER 1: On Search Console, I have a shopping tab,
but my website is not an online shop.
How can I fix that?
Thanks for asking.
There's nothing you need to do in a case like this.
Our systems have recognized some product-related information
on some of your pages, which is why we suggest this to you
in Search Console.
It doesn't mean that our systems assume
your website is an online shop.
And even if that were the case, there's no downside to that.
This is just a way of showing you some options that
might be useful for you.
SPEAKER 2: Anon is asking, if I create a YouTube video
and then take that exact text or content and place it
on a web page, could Google flag that web page
or site for duplicate content?
Well, no.
One is a video, and the other one is text content,
and that would be unique content then.
It's also not a bad idea to do that because some users,
like me, for instance, might prefer a text version
and others might not even be able to use
a video version of the content in the first place
due to bandwidth concerns or visual constraints.
SPEAKER 1: Chaz asks, how can we ensure
proper prices are displayed in the organic text
results for products on a retail website?
I'd recommend using the Merchant Center feeds if you can.
There are ways to submit pricing information
in Merchant Center that don't require a lot of work.
So I'd check that out.
If you can't find ways to resolve this,
then please drop us a note in the Help forums
with the details needed to reproduce the issue that you're
seeing.
SPEAKER 2: Can we use aggregated reviews from a specific service
and feed it to Google via structured data for products
on our shop?
Would this negatively affect SEO, asks Sumit Punia.
Yeah, don't do that.
If you check our documentation on the technical guidelines
for reviews, you will see we specifically have
a guideline against that thing.
So it means your pages won't anymore
be eligible for review, which results if you do that.
SPEAKER 1: Does Google crawl subfolders in a URL path
which don't have pages.
Would it be a problem?
Great question.
I've seen variations of this over time.
It's very common to have URLs with paths that don't actually
exist.
The easy answer is that Google systems generally don't just
try variations of URLs out.
They rely on links to discover new URLs.
This means that unless you're linking to those subdirectories,
most likely Google wouldn't learn about them and try them.
That said, even if Google were to try them,
and they return a 404, that's totally fine.
Having pages on your site return 404 when they're not used
is expected and not a sign of a problem.
SPEAKER 2: Narayan Patel asks, why does Google
crawl our hacked pages after a year, where those pages are 404,
and delete it?
Well, Narayan it takes a while until Googlebot will give up.
Sometimes people remove pages by mistake.
Sometimes hacked pages come back with legitimate content
after a while.
So Googlebot does not want to miss out on that.
And who knows?
Maybe there are even links somewhere on the internet
pointing at these pages, too.
So it will get kind of rediscovered and retried
for a while.
The good news is that that doesn't hurt your site
in Google Search.
And eventually, Googlebot will move on.
SPEAKER 1: Victoria asks, Hello, I'm based in France,
and I want to target the US market with my online shop.
Should I change anything in my Search Console settings?
The geotargeting setting no longer exists in Search Console,
so there's nothing that you can or need to change there.
The main thing that comes to mind is that you might want
to consider a generic top-level domain like .com
if you're currently using a country-specific,
top-level domain like .fr.
We have more information about how
to work with international websites in our documentation.
For online stores, I'd also recommend
checking out the Merchant Center documentation
SPEAKER 2: Aiken is asking, I ran several free website audits.
Some of them suggested me things that
were never mentioned in the Search Central documentation.
Do these things matter for SEO?
Well, it can-- a lot of these audits don't specifically
focus on SEO.
And those that don't still mention
a bunch of outdated or downright irrelevant things,
unfortunately.
I'll give you some examples.
The text-to-code ratio, for instance, is not a thing.
Google Search doesn't care about it.
CSS, JavaScript not minified that you got apparently
as well is suboptimal for your users
because you're shipping more data over the wire,
but it doesn't have direct implications on your SEO.
It is a good practice, though.
SPEAKER 1: I'm having issues with indexing since updating
our WordPress plugins.
Well, I can't speak for WordPress plugins,
but it's important to keep in mind that a content management
system, like WordPress, and plugins or themes that you
install can significantly change how your website is presented
to users and search engines.
Settings there can block or break search completely.
If you're uncertain and seeing issues after making changes
there, I'd recommend getting help
from someone who has worked with the specific systems
that you're working on who can help
to diagnose issues and guide you to appropriate settings.
SPEAKER 2: Anon is asking, do UTMs
in a link with medium referral remove
the SEO value of a backlink?
No It doesn't, but you should still
canonicalize the target page of that link to the URL
without the UTM parameter.
It makes reporting and tracking a lot easier for you.
SPEAKER 1: How can software as a service companies
ensure their login page appears in their sitelinks?
Well, you don't have direct control
over what's shown in sitelinks.
These are essentially normal web results.
However, there are a few things that you can do specifically
with login pages.
First off, if you have content behind a login page,
redirect logged out users to the login page
and let search engines see that.
Secondly, make sure your login page is indexable.
Don't use no index, and don't block crawling with robots.txt.
If you do those things, then your login page
will be seen as a normal page on your website
and can be indexed accordingly.
SPEAKER 2: Josh K. is asking, what
is the SEO impact of leaving user comments unanswered
on the blog posts?
None.
There is no SEO impact.
It's text on your pages.
The comments are text on your pages.
But Google Search doesn't check if that piece of text
means that you haven't answered a comment
or have answered a comment.
Text is either there, then it matters,
or it isn't, then it doesn't.
SPEAKER 1: Risov asks, my robots.txt file
is showing as a soft 404 in Google Search Console
while it's visible to users.
Why does that happen?
This one's easy.
That's fine.
You don't need to do anything.
The robots.txt file generally doesn't need to be indexed.
It's fine to have it be seen as a soft 404.
SPEAKER 2: Eric Richards is asking,
it looks like I'm missing an X-Robots-Tag.
How do I resolve this issue?
Eric, it's not an issue.
It's not an issue.
It is a mechanism to do specific things.
So the X-Robots HTTP header or the robots meta tag
are only relevant if you want Google Search or other search
engines to treat a page differently
from any page on the web, really.
For example, if you want a page excluded from the index,
you can use either the X-Robots HTTP header or the robots meta
tag to tell search engines that you don't want that
indexed using a no-index value.
If you don't have an X-Robots-Tag or a Robots meta
tag, the page will just be treated like any other page.
And most importantly, can and possibly will be indexed.
SPEAKER 1: Anita asks, how can I fix the page
with a redirect issue?
I have an international website targeting
USA, China, Japan, and Korea.
They all use Geo IP redirects.
I added hreflang, but when I checked the China website
in Search Console, I get the error
that the page is not indexed.
It's a page with a redirect.
How do I fix this?
Can all sites be indexed in Google?
Geo IP redirects are when a website automatically
redirects users in specific regions to their local pages.
This can cause significant issues with search engines,
as their crawlers would also be redirected.
This prevents them from seeing the other local versions
of your pages.
Anecdotally, these redirects are also
annoying to me and probably many other users.
Instead of redirects, we recommend
showing banners to users on other country versions
and allowing them to click to their local versions as needed.
We have more on this in our documentation.
SPEAKER 2: MSB is asking, if the law for calculating
the circumference of a circle is 2 times pi times r,
then the condition for the existence of a real circle
is the number pi.
And this number is not real because it is infinite.
And therefore, there is no real circle in nature.
And every circle in nature ends at a certain precision.
And real circles exist in our minds and hearts only.
I, uh-- um--
my, uh-- what?
I mean-- uh--
hmm.
I guess-- I guess that's a good point,
but, ah, please don't make me question my model of reality.
SPEAKER 1: Leonard asks, I changed my website a year ago,
and I did a lot of work on SEO.
Should this be affecting my website's traffic by now?
It's tricky to say much here.
I don't know what specifically you did to work on SEO.
And I don't know if that would have resulted
in significant changes.
There are many best practices which
have minimal effect on the day-to-day performance
of a website.
For example, having a clean page structure
helps search engines to better understand
the content on a page, but it might not necessarily
result in immediate search ranking or traffic changes.
The most effective elements of SEO will vary across websites.
It takes a lot of experience to go
from a long checklist of possible items
to a short, prioritized list of critical items.
Your experience here will grow over time as you practice.
I recommend getting input from others
and practicing by helping with challenges that others
pose in the Help forums.
Good luck.
SPEAKER 2: Fabio Subzwari is asking us,
do I have to be concerned about bad actors trying
to make our site appear untrustworthy by sending spam
or fake traffic to my site since site trustworthiness is binary?
Well, it's not really binary.
And just by sending traffic from questionable sources to a site,
that site won't be tainted.
If a site as spam content or has malware on it,
these kind of things, that's a problem, yes.
But nobody gets to choose or control
where traffic or links are coming from.
So that's not something that Google Search
will look at to judge a website's trustworthiness.
SPEAKER 1: Will asks, we have a website with satisfying ranks,
and now our product added new features.
We need to modify the page meta title and description.
Does that affect the current rankings?
Yes, or better, maybe.
Changing things, like titles or headings on a page,
can result in changes in search.
Similarly, changing the meta description on a page
can result in changes with how the snippet of the page
is shown in search.
This is expected and usually something
that SEOs or site owners focus on in an attempt
to improve things in search.
How do I increase my Google Search Console property limit?
We run a digital agency and want to avoid
making multiple accounts.
It's great to hear that your agency is growing.
But unfortunately, it's not possible to increase
these limits in Search Console.
Sorry.
And that was it for this episode.
I hope you found the questions and answers useful.
If there's anything you submitted
which didn't get covered here, I'd
recommend posting in the Search Central Help Community.
There are lots of passionate experts active there
who can often help you to narrow things down.
And, of course, if there's more on your mind,
please submit those questions with the form link below.
Your questions here are useful to us and to those who
catch up on these recordings.
So please keep them coming.
If you have general feedback about these episodes,
let us know in the comments or ping us on social media.
In the meantime, may your site's traffic go up,
and your crawl errors go down.
Thank you, and see you soon.
Bye.
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