Google’s Indifference To Site Publishers Explained via @sejournal, @martinibuster

An interview with Google’s SearchLiaison offered hope that quality sites hit by Google’s algorithms may soon see their traffic levels bounce back. But that interview and a recent Google podcast reveal deeper issues that may explain why Google seems indifferent to publishers with every update.

The interview by Brandon Saltalamacchia comes against the background of many websites having lost traffic due to Google’s recent algorithm updates that have created the situation where Google feels that their algorithms are generally working fine for users while many website publishers are insisting that no, Google’s algorithms are not working fine.

Search ranking updates are just one reason why publishers are hurting. The decision at Google to send more traffic Reddit is also impacting website owners. It’s a fact that Reddit traffic is surging.  Another issue bedeviling publishers is AI Overviews, where Google’s AI is summarizing answers derived from websites so that users no longer have to visit a website to get their answers.

Those changes are driven by a desire to increase user satisfaction. The problem is that website publishers have been left out of the equation that determines whether the algorithm is working as it should.

Google Historically Doesn’t Focus On Publishers

A remark by Gary Illyes in a recent Search Off The Record indicated that in Gary’s opinion Google is all about the user experience because if search is good for the user then that’ll trickle down to the publishers and will be good for them too.

In the context of Gary explaining whether Google will announce that something is broken in search, Gary emphasized that search relations is focused on the search users and not the publishers who may be suffering from whatever is broken.

John Mueller asked:

“So, is the focus more on what users would see or what site owners would see? Because, as a Search Relations team, we would focus more on site owners. But it sounds like you’re saying, for these issues, we would look at what users would experience.”

Gary Illyes answered:

“So it’s Search Relations, not Site Owners Relations, from Search perspective.”

Google’s Indifference To Publishers

Google’s focus on satisfying search users can in practice turn into indifference toward publishers.  If you read all the Google patents and research papers related to information retrieval (search technology) the one thing that becomes apparent is that the measure of success is always about the users. The impact to site publishers are consistently ignored. That’s why Google Search is perceived as indifferent to site publishers, because publishers have never been a part of the search satisfaction equation.

This is something that publishers and Google may not have wrapped their minds around just yet.

Later on, in the Search Off The Record  podcast, the Googlers specifically discuss how an update is deemed to be working well regardless if a (relatively) small amount of publishers are complaining that Google Search is broken, because what matters is if Google perceives that they are doing the right thing from Google’s perspective.

John said:

“…Sometimes we get feedback after big ranking updates, like core updates, where people are like, “Oh, everything is broken.”

At the 12:06 minute mark of the podcast Gary made light of that kind of feedback:

“Do we? We get feedback like that?”

Mueller responded:

“Well, yeah.”

Then Mueller completed his thought:

“I feel bad for them. I kind of understand that. I think those are the kind of situations where we would look at the examples and be like, “Oh, I see some sites are unhappy with this, but overall we’re doing the right thing from our perspective.”

And Gary responded:

“Right.”

And John asks:

“And then we wouldn’t see it as an issue, right?”

Gary affirmed that Google wouldn’t see it as an issue if a legit publisher loses traffic when overall the algorithm is working as they feel it should.

“Yeah.”

It is precisely that shrugging indifference that a website publisher, Brandon Saltalamacchia, is concerned about and discussed with SearchLiaison in a recent blog post.

Lots of Questions

SearchLiaison asked many questions about how Google could better support content creators, which is notable because Google has a long history of focusing on their user experience but seemingly not also considering what the impact on businesses with an online presence.

That’s a good sign from SearchLiaison but not entirely a surprise because unlike most Googlers, SearchLiaison (aka Danny Sullivan) has decades of experience as a publisher so he knows what it’s like on our side of the search box.

It will be interesting if SearchLiaison’s concern for publishers makes it back to Google in a more profound way so that there’s a better understanding that the Search Ecosystem is greater than Google’s users and encompasses website publishers, too. Algorithm updates should be about more than how they impact users, the updates should also be about how they impact publishers.

Hope For Sites That Lost Traffic

Perhaps the most important news from the interview is that SearchLiaison expressed that there may be changes coming over the next few months that will benefit the publishers who have lost rankings over the past few months of updates.

Brandon wrote:

“One main take away from my conversation with Danny is that he did say to hang on, to keep doing what we are doing and that he’s hopeful that those of us building great websites will see some signs of recovery over the coming months.”

Yet despite those promises from Danny, Brandon didn’t come away with hope.

Brandon wrote:

“I got the sense things won’t change fast, nor anytime soon. “

Read the entire interview:

A Brief Meeting With Google After The Apocalypse

Listen to the Search Off The Record Podcast

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi

Google Says There’s No Way To Block Content From Discover Feed via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google officials confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that there’s no way to block content from appearing in Google Discover, despite the ability to do so for Google News.

The conversation was initiated by Lily Ray, who raised concerns about a common challenge where certain content may not be suitable for Google News or Discover but performs well in organic search results.

Ray states:

“We have experienced many situations with publisher clients where it would be helpful to prevent some content from being crawled/indexed specifically for Google News & Discover.

However, this content often performs incredibly well in organic search, so it’s not a good idea to noindex it across the board.

This content often falls in the grey area of what is forbidden in Google’s News & Discover guidelines, but still drives massive SEO traffic. We have noticed that having too much of this content appears to be detrimental to Discover performance over time.

Outside of your guidelines for SafeSearch – has Google considered a mechanism to prevent individual pages from being considered for News/Discover?”

Google’s Response

In response to Ray’s question, Google’s Search Liaison pointed to existing methods for blocking content from Google News.

However, upon checking with John Mueller of Google’s Search Relations team, the Liaison confirmed these methods don’t extend to Google Discover.

The Search Liaison stated:

“John [Mueller] and I pinged, and we’re pretty sure there’s not an option to just block content from Discover.”

Recognizing the potential value of such a feature, he added:

“That would seem useful, so we’ll pass it on.”

John and I pinged, and we’re pretty sure there’s not an option to just block content from Discover. That would seem useful, so we’ll pass it on.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 15, 2024

What Does This Mean?

This admission from Google highlights a gap in publishers’ ability to control how Google crawls their content.

While tools exist to manage content crawling for Google News and organic search results, the lack of similar controls for Discover presents a challenge.

Google’s Search Liaison suggests there’s potential for more granular controls, though there are no immediate plans to introduce content blocking features for Discover.

Featured Image: Informa Plus/Shutterstock

Google Renders All Pages For Search, Including JavaScript-Heavy Sites via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

In a recent episode of Google’s “Search Off The Record” podcast, Zoe Clifford from the rendering team joined Martin Splitt and John Mueller from Search Relations to discuss how Google handles JavaScript-heavy websites.

Google affirms that it renders all websites in its search results, even if those sites rely on JavaScript.

Rendering Process Explained

In the context of Google Search, Clifford explained that rendering involves using a headless browser to process web pages.

This allows Google to index the content as a user would see it after JavaScript has executed and the page has fully loaded.

Clifford stated

“We run a browser in the indexing pipeline so we can index the view of the web page as a user would see it after it has loaded and JavaScript has executed.”

All HTML Pages Rendered

One of the podcast’s most significant revelations was that Google renders all HTML pages, not just a select few. Despite the resource-intensive process, Google has committed to this approach to ensure comprehensive indexing.

Clifford confirmed:

“We just render all of them, as long as they’re HTML and not other content types like PDFs.”

She acknowledged that while the process is expensive, accessing the full content of web pages, especially those relying heavily on JavaScript, is necessary.

Continuous Browser Updates

The team also discussed Google’s shift to using the “Evergreen Googlebot” in 2019.

This update ensures that Googlebot, Google’s web crawling bot, stays current with the latest stable version of Chrome.

This change has improved Google’s ability to render and index modern websites.

What This Means for Website Owners & Developers

1. Good news for JavaScript: If your website uses a lot of JavaScript, Google will likely understand it.
2. Speed still matters: Although Google can handle JavaScript better, having a fast-loading website is still important.
3. Keep it simple when you can: While it’s okay to use JavaScript, try not to overdo it. Simpler websites are often easier for both Google and visitors to understand.
4. Check your work: Use Google’s free tools, like Fetch As Google, to ensure search crawlers can render your site.
5. Think about all users: Remember that some people might have slow internet or older devices. Ensure your main content works even if JavaScript doesn’t load perfectly.

Wrapping Up

Google’s ability to handle JavaScript-heavy websites gives developers more freedom. However, it’s still smart to focus on creating fast, easy-to-use websites that work well for everyone.

By keeping these points in mind, you can keep your website in good shape for both Google and your visitors.

Listen to the full podcast episode below:

Google’s Now Translating SERPs Into More Languages via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google updated their documentation to reflect that it added eight new languages to its translated results feature, broadening the reach of publishers to an increasingly global scale, with automatic  translations to a site visitor’s native language.

Google Translated Results

Translated Results is a Google Search feature that will automatically translate the title link and meta description into the local language of a user, making a website published in one language available to a searcher in another language. If the searcher clicks on the link of a translated result the web page itself will also be automatically translated.

According to Google’s documentation for this feature:

“Google doesn’t host any translated pages. Opening a page through a translated result is no different than opening the original search result through Google Translate or using Chrome in-browser translation. This means that JavaScript on the page is usually supported, as well as embedded images and other page features.”

This feature benefits publishers because it makes their website available to a larger audience.

Search Feature Available In More Languages

Google’s documentation for this feature was updated to reflect that it is now available in eight more languages.

Users who speak the following languages will now have automatic access to a broader range of websites.

List Of Added Languages

• Arabic
• Gujarati
• Korean
• Persian
• Thai
• Turkish
• Urdu
• Vietnamese

Why Did It Take So Long?

It seems odd that Google didn’t already translate results into so many major languages like Turkish, Arabic or Korean. So I asked international SEO expert Christopher Shin (LinkedIn profile) about why it might have taken so long for Google to do this in the Korean language.

Christopher shared:

Google was always facing difficulties in the South Korean market as a search engine, and that has to do mainly with Naver and Kakao, formerly known as Daum.

But the whole paradigm shift to Google began when more and more students that went abroad to where Google is the dominant search engine came back to South Korea. When more and more students, travelers abroad etc., returned to Korea, they started to realize the strengths and weaknesses of the local search portals and the information capabilities these local portals provided. Laterally, more and more businesses in South Korea like Samsung, Hyundai etc., started to also shift marketing and sales to global markets, so the importance of Google as a tool for companies was also becoming more important with the domestic population.

Naver is still the dominant search portal, but not to retrieve answers to specific queries, rather for the purpose of shopping, reviews etc.

So I believe that market prioritization may be a big part as to the delayed introduction of Translated Google Search Results. And in terms of numbers, Korea is smaller with only roughly 52M nationwide and continues to decline due to poor birth rates.

Another big factor as I see it, has to do with the complexity of the Korean language which would make it more challenging to build out a translation tool that only replicates a simple English version. We use the modern Korean Hangeul but also the country uses Hanja, which are words from the Chinese origin. I used to have my team use Google Translate until all of them complained that Naver’s Papago does a better job, but with the introduction of ChatGPT, the competitiveness offered by Google was slim.”

Takeaway

It’s not an understatement to say that 2024 has not been a good year for publishers, from the introduction of AI Overviews to the 2024 Core Algorithm Update, and missing image thumbnails on recipe blogger sites, there hasn’t been much good news coming out of Google. But this news is different because it creates the opportunity for publisher content to be shown in even more languages than ever.

Read the updated documentation here:

Translated results in Google Search

Featured Image by Shutterstock/baranq

Google’s Response To Experts Outranked By Redditors via @sejournal, @martinibuster

An SEO asked on LinkedIn why an anonymous user on Reddit could outrank a credible website with a named author. Google’s answer gives a peek at what’s going on with search rankings and why Reddit can outrank expert articles.

Why Do Anonymous Redditors Outrank Experts?

The person asking the question wanted to know why an anonymous author on Reddit can outrank an actual author that has “credibility” such as in a brand name site like PCMag.

The person wrote:

“I was referring to how important the credibility of the writer is now. If we search for ‘best product under X amount,’ we see, let’s say, PCMag and Reddit both on the first page.

PCMag is a reliable source for that product, while Reddit has UGC and surely doesn’t guarantee authenticity. Where do you see this in terms of credibility?

In my opinion, Google must be focusing more on this, especially after the AI boom, where misinformation can be easily and massively spread.

Do you think this is an important factor in rankings anymore?”

This is their question that points out what the SEO feels is wrong with Google’s search results:

“As we can see, Reddit, popular for anonymous use, ranks much higher than many other websites.

This means that content from anonymous users is acceptable.

Can I conclude that a blog without any ‘about’ page or ‘author profile’ can also perform as well?”

Relevance And Usefulness Versus Credibility

Google’s John Mueller answered the question by pointing out that there are multiple kinds of websites, not just sites that are perceived to be credible and everyone else. The idea of credibility is one dimension of what a site can be, one quality of a website. Mueller’s answer reminded that search (and SEO) is multidimensional.

Google’s John Mueller answered:

“Both are websites, but also, they’re quite different, right? Finding the right tools for your needs, the right platforms for your audience and for your messages – it’s worth looking at more than just a simplification like that. Google aims to provide search results that are relevant & useful for users, and there’s a lot involved in that.

I feel this might fit, perhaps you have seen it before -“

Does Reddit Lack Credibility?

When it comes to recipes , in my opinion, Reddit users lack a  lot of credibility in some contexts.  When it comes to recipes, I’ll take the opinions of a recipe blogger or Serious Eats over what a random Redditor “thinks” a recipe should be.

The person asking the question mentioned product reviews as a topic that Reddit fails at credibility and ironically that’s actually a topic where Reddit actually shines. A person on Reddit who is sharing their hands-on experience using a brand of air fryer or mobile phone is the epitome of what Google is trying to rank for reviews because it’s the opinion of someone with days, weeks, months, years of actual experience with a product.

Saying that UGC product reviews are useful doesn’t invalidate the professional product reviews. It’s possible that both UGC and  professional reviews have value, right? And I think that’s the point that John Mueller was trying to get across about not simplifying search to one ranking criteria, one dimension.

This a dimension of search that the person asking the question overlooked, the hands-on experience of the reviewer and it illustrates what Mueller means when he says that “it’s worth looking at more than just a simplification” of what’s ranking in the search results.

OTOH… Feels Like A Slap In The Face

There are many high quality sites with original photos, actual reviews and content based on real experience that are no longer ranking the search results. I know because I have seen many of these sites that in my opinion should be ranking but are not. Googlers have expressed the possibility that a future update will help more quality sites bounce back and many expert publishers are counting on that.

Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that it must feel like a slap in the face for an expert author to see an anonymous Redditor outranking them in Google’s search results.

Multidimensional Approach To SEO

A common issue I see in how some digital marketers and bloggers debug the search engine results pages (SERPs) is that they see it through one, two, or three dimensions such as:

• Keywords,
• Expertise
• Credibility
• Links

Reviewing the SERPs to understand why Google is ranking something is a good idea. But reviewing it with just a handful of dimensions, a limited amount of “signals” can be frustrating and counterproductive.

It was only a few years ago that SEOs convinced themselves that “author signals” were a critical part of ranking and now almost everyone (finally) understands that this was all a misinterpretation of what Google and Googlers said (despite the Googlers consistently denying that authorship was a ranking signal).

The “authorship” SEO trend is an example of a one dimensional approach to SEO that overlooked the multidimensional quality of how Google ranks web pages.

There are thousands of contexts that contribute to what is ranked, like solving a problem from the user perspective, interpreting user needs, adapting to cultural and language nuances, nationwide trends, local trends, and so on. There are also ranking contexts (dimensions) that are related to Google’s Core Topicality Systems which are used to understand search queries and web pages.

Ranking web pages, from Google’s perspective, is a multidimensional problem. What that means is that reducing a search ranking problem to one dimension, like the anonymity of User Generated Content, inevitably leads to frustration. Broadening the perspective leads to better SEO.

Read the discussion on LinkedIn:

Can I conclude that a blog without any ‘about’ page or ‘author profile’ can also perform as well?

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Master1305

Google Says These Are Not Good Signals via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s Gary Illyes’ answer about authorship shared insights about why Google has less trust for signals that are under direct control of site owners and SEOs and provides a better understanding about what site owners and SEOs should focus on when optimizing a website.

The question that Illyes answered was in the context of a live interview at a search conference in May 2024. The interview went largely unnoticed but it’s full of great information related to digital marketing and how Google ranks web pages.

Authorship Signals

Someone asked the question about whether Google would bring back authorship signals. Authorship has been a fixation by some SEOs based on Google’s encouragement that SEOs and site owners review the Search Quality Raters Guidelines to understand what Google aspires to rank. SEOs however took the encouragement too literally and started to parse the document for ranking signal ideas instead.

Digital marketers came to see the concept of EEAT (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) as actual signals that Google’s algorithms were looking for and from there came the idea that authorship signals were important for ranking.

The idea of authorship signals is not far-fetched because Google at one time created a way for site owners and SEOs pass along metadata about webpage authorship but Google eventually abandoned that idea.

SEO-Controlled Markup Is Untrustworthy

Google’s Gary Illyes answered the question about authorship signals and very quickly, within the same sentence, shared that Google’s experience with SEO-controlled data on the web page (markup) tends to become spammy (implying that it’s untrustworthy).

This is the question as relayed by the interviewer:

“Are Google planning to release some authorship sooner or later, something that goes back to that old authorship?”

Google’s Gary Illyes answered:

“Uhm… I don’t know of such plans and honestly I’m not very excited about anything along those lines, especially not one that is similar to what we had back in 2011 to 2013 because pretty much any markup that SEOs and site owners have access to will be in some form spam.”

Gary next went into greater detail by saying that SEO and author controlled markup are not good signals.

Here is how he explained it:

“And generally they are not good signals. That’s why rel-canonical, for example is not a directive but a hint. And that’s why Meta description is not a directive, but something that we might consider and so on.

Having something similar for authorship, I think would be a mistake.”

The concept of SEO-controlled data not being a good signal is important to understand because many in search marketing believe that they can manipulate Google by spoofing authorship signals with fake author profiles, with reviews that pretend to be hands-on, and with metadata (like titles and meta descriptions) that is specifically crafted to rank for keywords.

What About Algorithmically Determined Authorship?

Gary then turned to the idea of algorithmically determined authorship signals and it may surprise some that Gary describes those siganls as lacking in value. This may come as a blow to SEOs and site owners who have spent significant amounts of time updating their web pages to improve their authorship data.

The concept of the importance of “authorship signals” for ranking is something that some SEOs created all by themselves, it’s not an idea that Google encouraged. In fact, Googlers like John Mueller and SearchLiaison have consistently downplayed the necessity of author profiles for years.

Gary explained about algorithmically determined authorship signals:

“Having something similar for authorship, I think would be a mistake. If it’s algorithmically determined, then perhaps it would be more accurate or could be higher accuracy, but honestly I don’t necessarily see the value in it.”

The interviewer commented about rel-canonicals sometimes being a poor source of information:

“I’ve seen canonical done badly a lot of times myself, so I’m glad to hear that it is only a suggestion rather than a rule.”

Gary’s response to the observation about poor canonicals is interesting because he doesn’t downplay the importance of “suggestions” but implies that some of them are stronger although still falling short of a directive. A directive is something that Google is obligated to obey, like a noindex meta tag.

Gary explained about rel-canonicals being a strong suggestion:

“I mean it’s it’s a strong suggestion, but still it’s a suggestion.”

Gary affirmed that even though rel=canonicals is a suggestion, it’s a strong suggestion. That implies a relative scale of how much Google trusts certain inputs that publishers make. In the case of a canonical, Google’s stronger trust in rel-canonical is probably a reflection of the fact that it’s in a publisher’s best interest to get it right, whereas other data like authorship could be prone to exaggeration or outright deception and therefore less trustworthy.

What Does It All Mean?

Gary’s comments should give a foundation for setting the correct course on what to focus on when optimizing a web page. Gary (and other Googlers) have said multiple times that authorship is not really something that Google is looking for. That’s something that SEOs invented, not something that Google encouraged.

This also provides guidance on not overestimating the importance of metadata that is controlled by a site owner or SEO.

Watch the interview starting at about the two minute mark:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Asier Romero

Google Search Now Supports Labeling AI Generated Or Manipulated Images via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google Search Central updated their documentation to reflect support for labeling images that were extended or manipulated with AI. Google also quietly removed the “AI generated” metadata from Beta status, indicating that the “AI Generated” label is now fully supported in search.

IPTC Photo Metadata

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) is a standards making body that among other things creates standards for photo metadata. Photo metadata enables a photograph to be labeled with information about the photo, like information about copyright, licensing and image descriptions.

Although the standards is made for by an international press standards organization the meta data standards they curate are used by Google Images in a context outside of Google News. The metadata allows Google Images to show additional information about the image.

Google’s documentation explains the use case and benefit of the metadata:

“When you specify image metadata, Google Images can show more details about the image, such as who the creator is, how people can use an image, and credit information. For example, providing licensing information can make the image eligible for the Licensable badge, which provides a link to the license and more detail on how someone can use the image.”

AI Image Manipulation Metadata

Google quietly adopted the metadata standards pertaining to images that were manipulated with AI algorithms that are typically used to manipulate images, like convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and generative adversarial networks (GANs).

There are two forms of AI image manipulation that are covered by the new metadata:

• Inpainting
• Outpainting

Inpainting

Inpainting is generally conceived as enhancing an image for the purpose of restoring or reconstructing it, to fill in the missing parts. But inpainting is also any algorithm manipulation that adds to an image.

Outpainting

Outpainting is the algorithm process of adding to an image, extending it beyond the borders of the original photograph, adding more to it than what was in the original image.

Google now supports labeling images that were manipulated in both those ways with a new metadata property of the Digital Source Type that’s called compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia.

compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia

While the new property looks like structured data, it’s not Schema structured data. It’s metadata that’s embedded in a digital image.

This is what was added to Google’s documentation:

“Digital Source Type

compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia: The image is a composite of trained algorithmic media with some other media, such as with inpainting or outpainting operations.”

Label For “AI Generated” – algorithmicMedia Metadata

Google also lifted the Beta status of the algorithmicMedia metadata specifications, which means that images that are created with AI can now be labeled as AI Generated if the algorithmicMedia metadata is embedded within an image.

This is the documentation before the change:

“algorithmicMedia: The image was created purely by an algorithm not based on any sampled training data (for example, an image created by software using a mathematical formula).

Beta: Currently, this property is in beta and only available for IPTC photo metadata. Adding this property makes your image eligible for display with an AI-generated label, but you may not see the label in Google Images right away, as we’re still actively developing it.”

The change in the documentation was to remove the entirety of the second paragraph to remove any mention of Beta status. Curiously, this change is not reflected in Google’s changelog.

Google’s Search Central documentation changelog noted:

“Supporting a new IPTC digital source type
What: Added compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia to the IPTC photo metadata documentation.

Why: Google can now extract the compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia IPTC NewsCode.”

Read Google’s updated documentation:

Image metadata in Google Images

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi