Google Discontinues Translate Community Contribution Feature via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google announced that it’s shutting down the Contribute feature for Google Translate, which allowed users to suggest translations to improve the tool’s quality.

The decision comes as Google Translate has seen significant advancements in recent years, mainly due to the evolution and learning of its underlying systems.

The Launch Of The Contribute Feature

Launched in 2014, the Contribute feature was designed to leverage the knowledge of language enthusiasts and native speakers to enhance translations for the 80 languages supported by Google Translate.

Users could participate in the Translate Community by generating new translations, rating existing ones, and providing feedback on improving the service.

In a statement, Google acknowledged the value of user contributions, saying, “When Contribute first launched, real speakers often provided helpful translation suggestions when Translate missed the mark.”

However, Google believes that the improvements made to the service have removed the need for this feature.

Now. when navigating to translate.google.com and clicking on Contribute, you’ll see a message about its discontinuation:

New System For User Feedback

Moving forward, Google Translate users can provide feedback directly through the Android and iOS apps and on the desktop version when they feel a translation could be improved.

Google believes this new system will maintain the quality of the service while reducing the reliance on the Contribute feature.

When the feature was first introduced, it was seen as an innovative way to engage users and tap into the collective knowledge of language communities worldwide.

As Google Translate matured, the company developed machine learning techniques, such as neural machine translation, which greatly enhanced the accuracy and fluency of translations.

These technological advancements allow Google to provide higher-quality translations without relying as much on user contributions.

Looking Ahead

While the Contribute feature may be gone, Google remains committed to delivering accurate and reliable translations.

Google’s innovation in language technology means Translate will continue to be a valuable tool for breaking down language barriers and facilitating global communication.

Featured Image: Mojahid Mottakin/Shutterstock

Google: Overfocusing On Links Could Be A Waste Of Time via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit about backlinks and suggested that overfocusing on links could be a waste of time, a statement that fits a pattern from Google over the past six months.

Backlink Checkers Prioritize Their Crawls Differently

The person asking the question wanted to know why backlink checkers show different backlinks and without consensus, particularly for this site which was “relatively new” but fully indexed.

Backlink checkers aren’t choosing a site and the backlinks. They crawl the web and create a map of the link relationships between sites. The tools also prioritize what they crawl because the web is huge, so not everything gets crawled, much less included in their index.

This is what was asked:

“I have a couple backlinks on google search console on the “external links” page and I know recently I have gotten a few more.

However, on Ahrefs it says I have none. Is there a reason? My website is relatively new but I feel like that should not matter because everything is indexed and working properly. Is there a reason?”

Counting Links Is Subjective

Mueller said that there’s no “objective” way to count links, which may be a reference to the fact that every tool has to make a choice of what they crawl and include in their index.

He answered:

“There’s no objective way to count links on the web, and every tool collects its own data from crawling, which every tool does differently, so there will always be differences.”

More Important Things For Websites

Mueller’s answer first addressed not focusing on link counts and that search engines are able to discover webpages in ways other than links.

He answered:

“My recommendation would be not to focus so much on the absolute count of links. There are many ways that search engines can discover websites, such as with sitemaps.”

In the last part of his answer begins talking about links and appears to downplay them.

Mueller commented:

“There are more important things for websites nowadays, and over-focusing on links will often result in you wasting your time doing things that don’t make your website better overall.”

It’s pretty clear that he’s not talking about backlink counts anymore. He’s talking about links.

Google Has Signaled That Links Are Less Important

Over the past six months Google has been saying and hinting that links are less important than they used to be. Google’s update coincided with four changes to their documentation that downplayed the role of links, including the removing the word “important” in a sentence about links as a ranking factor. Everything else in the sentence remained the same, they only removed the word “important” from the documentation.

Before:

“Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”

After:

Google uses links as a factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.

Read about March 2024 changes to links: Google March 2024 Core Update: 4 Changes To Link Signal

The first express statement that a Googler made was at PubCon Austin last fall where Gary Illyes stated that links aren’t even in the top 3 of ranking factors.

John Mueller even gave a hint two years ago that the role of links was going to become less important.

He said:

“…it’s something where I imagine, over time, the weight on the links at some point will drop off a little bit as we can figure out a little bit better how the content fits in within the context of the whole web.”

Read the Reddit discussion:

Why are my backlinks not showing up?

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Asier Romero

27-Year Search Expert Shares 5 Steps To Boost Your SEO via @sejournal, @martinibuster

In a recent Yext Summit, 27-year search marketing expert Duane Forrester shared advice on how to become a better SEO and develop the skills to better anticipate where search marketing is headed.

Who Is Duane Forrester And Why His Advice Matters

Duane Forrester is one of the rare search marketers who has experience on both sides of the search box. He has 27 years of experience in the search industry with almost ten of those years spent as a Product Manager at Microsoft. He helped build and launch Bing Webmaster Tools, wrote the original Bing Webmaster Guidelines and worked with the Core Search and Spam Teams, as well as the teams who built and maintained Schema.org, Robotstxt.org and Sitemaps.org.

Five Steps To Become A Better SEO & Predict Future Trends

Duane said that in 2022 nobody was talking about AI. Now it’s been just over a year and it’s all that everyone is talking about. He said that’s an example of how SEO is one of the fastest changing industries and said that this has always been the normal pace.

What’s going on in AI is just another change in a history of changes, not all of it visible to the search community.  Machine learning, neural networks, and AI have been a part of Search behind the scenes for many years, largely unseen and not always well understood, which underlines the importance of learning.

Duane said:

“…this industry requires a dedication to continual learning. All the time, there’s always something new. …Big steps, small steps, but it is constant.”

He suggested the following activities for attaining a strong SEO footing and maintaining it.

1. Research 60 minutes per day
2. Follow known experts
3. Use official sources for SEO guidance
4. The value of developer resources
5. Anticipate consumer trends

1. Research 60 Minutes Per Day

Duane recommended setting aside time for research.

He explained:

“…dedicate at least 60 minutes a day, an hour, to reading new sources and the official blogs, heck even the unofficial blogs, get in and read those things.”

For some it might sound like a lot of time to dedicate to researching something that they already know, SEO. But Duane is right and I’ll tell you why.

In 2005 I was caught by surprise when a Google engineer revealed that Google was using statistical analysis to identify unnatural links. It was a mind blowing moment that made it clear I had to start reading research papers to stay on top of the search engines were doing.

I contacted Duane about it and he said that now more than ever it’s important to research everything because SEO is changing so fast that at some point it might be inadequate to call it SEO anymore.

This is what he told me:

“Man, if things keep going the way they are, we will ALL need to learn a new profession. It simply won’t be called SEO if it’s on the front edge of what’s coming.

Bottom line, if you’re not investing in the work now, there is not going to be a tomorrow. Sorry, this train is stopping. A new train will be departing the station shortly – I suggest you get on it.”

2. Follow Known Experts

Duane asserts that it’s important to keep an open mind and absorb what others have to say. It’s consider that this is a person with 27 years experience who is saying how important it is for him to read what others are saying. So if it’s important for him it should be important for everyone else.

Duane recommends:

“Follow known experts on Twitter and LinkedIn threads, Bluesky, TikTok, wherever they have an account, go find it. If it’s on medium, sign up. If it’s on Substack sign up.

Make sure you’re getting direct access. You don’t want to rely on what someone said they read. Go read these things yourself. It makes a big difference in your understanding. Listen to the podcasts, watch the webinars, follow their YouTube channels and acknowledge you will be drinking from a fire hose.”

3. Use Official Sources For SEO Guidance

Duane emphasized the importance of getting as much information direct from the search engines. For the normal sources of official information (Search Central, Developer blog, Webmaster Tools) he said to keep those bookmarked and ready to be checked every day. But he also advised to expand your sources of information to sources most people don’t go to.

This is what he said about alternative sources:

“So for SEOs, you wanna be looking for Microsoft, Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Baidu, and Naver. And before you say, but why Yahoo? It’s because they’re doing a lot over the last year with search and they are poised to do even more in the next 18 months. So pay attention to what they’re doing. They’re not investing in this because they don’t think there’s a reason to do so. They very much believe there is room for them in this market, and I bet consumers will agree with them.”

4. The Value Of Developer Resources

This part of his keynote is interesting because it’s about looking at where the industry is going to be 18 months in the future. Part of engaging with developer resources is understanding the technology but he also sees it as an opportunity to get ahead of everyone else by seeing where the consumers are going (because the money will follow them).

Duane recommended developer-focused resources at Meta, Amazon, Apple, TikTok, OpenAI because those are the companies that are developing the customer experiences that impact consumer behavior. He has a point. Shein revolutionized how clothing is marketed by sidestepping search altogether by targeting consumers on social media in ways that appealed to them.

Duane said:

“I also urge you take a look at what’s going on for developers, and there’s a very important reason for this. META, Amazon, Apple, TikTok, OpenAI, they all have dedicated locations for developers to come in and engage with our latest products and services…

The reason it’s important to pay attention to this is because these are the companies that are developing the customer experiences and understand how those customer experiences impact customer action and behavior. These are the official sources where those experiences are rolled out, talked about, and developers can engage with them.”

5. Anticipate Consumer Trends

One of the things that I found interesting was how he kept returning to how technology affects the customer experience and their behavior. When he talks about Apple or Meta it’s in the context of how they’re influencing customer behavior he also ties that to how money follows the consumers.

For example, in our conversation he mentioned the prospect of an ad-free AI search and said that we have to think about where that advertising money is going to go.

“This is leaning towards “staying on top of your game” and we have to talk about how “search” is being expanded across new platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.).

So knowing how they’re thinking about business models and such becomes a very important part of the game. If ChatGPT launches an ad-free search experience, and their current consumers adopt it (100 million active monthly users), how does this affect current search models built on top of advertising? How does this affect how teams are tasked with work inside of brands, which skills are in demand, where does ad money move to?”

Do you see what he’s doing there? He’s looking at technological trends today and then thinking where it is headed and how that affects which jobs will be in demand and where advertising and consumer spending is headed.

I’ve known Duane for almost twenty years and he’s always doing that kind of thing where he puts context on what’s happening now and what it means for the future. Those questions he asks show how to anticipate where the industry is headed .

His Yext keynote ended with a hockey analogy:

“You do not want to skate to where the puck is. You want to skate to where the puck is going to be. The greatest hockey players who have ever played the sport knew that and acted on it every time they took to the ice.

Skating to where the puck is is a sure way to miss the point and fall behind. Skating to where it will be is how you stay in front and on top of things. And you can get there by being curious, learning continuously and building a robust network.”

Watch Duane Forresters’s keynote:

How to Keep Up with SEO Best Practices

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Artem Samokhvalov

Google Explains How CWV Is A Ranking Factor But Doesn’t Improve Rankings via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s Search Off the Record podcast covered the topic of Core Web Vitals (CWV), noting that while it’s a ranking factor it’s not so important that improving it will improve search visibility. The podcast explains how to reconcile how CWV can be a ranking factor while at the same not something that will noticeably help rankings.

Actual User Experience Of Website Is More Important Than CWV

Rick Viscomi (engineer and Web Performance Lead at Google) and Lizzi Sassman (Senior Technical Writer at Google) downplayed getting poor Core Web Vitals scores, emphasizing what really matters is how the actual users are experiencing the website.

Lizzi Sassman said that she tested the Core Web Vitals scores for Google’s Page Experience documentation and got different scores. She shared that Google’s own documentation on Page Experience only scored 45 (on a scale of 1 – 100).

Rick Viscomi answered that actual user experience of browsing the website matters more than the scores.

He explained:

“… I think this is such a common cause of confusion because developers see one single number and it’s red.

It’s scary. Do I need to panic?

I get this question all the time and I say ‘What really matters is what your real users are experiencing.’”

Most in the search community have gotten the memo about not worrying about CWV scores. They’re great for benchmarking performance in terms of optimizing for sales, ad clicks and conversions, which is where a good user experience literally pays off.

CWV Improvements Not Visible In Search

This next part sounds contradictory but it makes more sense when it’s read in context. John Mueller asserts that CWV is used in the ranking systems. But in the next breath he says that incremental improvements CWV scores will not be noticeable in search results.

The context is that Mueller’s team spoke to the search team and discovered that CWV is used in the “ranking systems or in search systems” and that’s why it’s reflected in Google’s documentation.

“…we do say we do use this in our ranking systems or in Search systems.”

Then Mueller added that achieving perfect CWV scores won’t make a difference in the search results. He explained that what’s missing in that statement is that CWV as a ranking factor is one part of a bigger ranking engine and how it’s applied is not something that Google talks about.

He explained:

“I think a big issue is also that site owners sometimes over-fixate on the metrics themselves… And then they spend months of time kind of working on this. And they see this as they’re doing something for their Search rankings. And probably a lot of those incremental changes are not really visible in Search.”

And this is the part where says that the details of how CWV is used as a ranking factor is the part that’s withheld from SEOs and publishers.

“The details we tend not to go into. We don’t go into thresholds or anything like that. Similar to how we don’t talk about how many words on a page you have to have or all of those details, which, from my point of view, are almost secondary.”

So the takeaway is not that CWV is a ranking factor. The takeaway is that it’s good to improve CWV but a perfect CWV won’t be rewarded with better rankings.

Conceptualizing Core Web Vitals

This next part is interesting because they again emphasize the importance of speed in the wider and more general sense (the forest) and then zoom in to the more narrow sense of ranking where they talk about factors that actually make a difference.

• Performance is good in the general sense.
• Other factors are good in the more narrow sense of ranking.

Rick Viscomi explains how web performance is important in the broader overall sense:

“It’s really good for everybody and the rising tide lifts all boats. Check your website. Make it faster. Eat your vegetables.”

Then Lizzi Harvey advises that a better use of time is to focus on content quality, which is the narrow focus on improving rankings.

She commented:

“Yeah focusing on that and then still having like a terrible article like the words on the page are not good or the design is not good and you made it really fast. Okay. Is that really going to make an improvement for your users or for search?”

Two Ways Of Looking At Core Web Vitals

I don’t think that Search Off the Record had planned to talk about CWV as a broader general concern and content as a more specific ranking-focused factor. But that’s how the podcast naturally turned out and it makes sense to conceptualize Core Web Vitals as a general big picture factor because it helps reconcile how something can be a ranking factor that on its own doesn’t really make a difference in the search results.

Listen to the podcast from the 19 minute mark:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Asier Romero

Google: Incremental Improvements May Not Impact Rankings via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

In a recent episode of Google’s Search Off the Record podcast, John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, cautioned site owners against overly fixating on incremental improvements to their Core Web Vitals scores.

Mueller suggested that these minor optimizations may yield few visible search ranking changes.

Core Web Vitals, a set of user-centric metrics measuring website performance, have been a focal point for many since Google announced they’re used in ranking systems.

The metrics, which include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and the recently introduced Interaction to Next Paint (INP), have driven site owners to optimize their pages for better scores.

However, Mueller’s comments highlight the potential pitfalls of over-optimizing for these metrics:

“I think a big issue is also that site owners sometimes over-fixate on the metrics themselves. They see some number, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to get this to like some other number, some higher state.’ And then they spend months of time working on this. And they see this as they’re doing something for their Search rankings. And probably a lot of those incremental changes are not really visible in Search.”

Mueller acknowledged the temptation to focus on metrics, given the scarcity of concrete SEO measurements:

“There are very few metrics with regards to SEO that you can look at explicitly and say, ‘Oh, it’s like 17, and I can make it 15. So it’s, I don’t know, like human nature to almost focus on them. But, at the same time, you have to be careful that you don’t over-fixate on them and spend an inappropriate amount of time.”

While Mueller didn’t entirely dismiss the importance of Core Web Vitals, his comments suggest being strategic in your optimization efforts, focusing on meaningful improvements rather than chasing incremental gains.

You can hear the full discussion in the episode linked below, starting at the 24:04 mark:

Why SEJ Cares

Mueller’s comments provide insight into Google’s perspective on Core Web Vitals and SEO.

While these metrics are important, it’s crucial to maintain sight of the bigger picture. Overinvesting time and resources into chasing minor improvements may not yield the desired results in search rankings.

How This Could Help You

Here are a few key takeaways from Mueller’s advice:

1. Prioritize impactful optimizations over incremental gains
2. Use tools to identify areas for improvement, but don’t get caught up in chasing perfect scores
3. Balance Core Web Vitals with other crucial SEO elements, such as content quality, relevance, and user engagement
4. Remember that not all optimizations will directly influence search rankings, but they can still contribute to a better user experience.

By considering these points, you can develop a well-rounded strategy that balances Core Web Vitals with other factors, driving better results for your website.