Search Off the Record

In this episode of Search Off the Record, John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman sit down with Aaseesh Marina, Product Support Manager, to discuss the Search Central community forums. Did you know there is a group of Product Experts and community members that can help you navigate your SEO questions? Listen along as the Search Team takes a deep dive into the Search Central help community forum and discover why it should be your go-to guide for any SEO help.

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr069-transcript 

Search Central help community → https://goo.gle/3sViTv3 

Product Expert program → https://goo.gle/3SL6jrI

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

Speaker: John Mueller; Lizzi Sassman;

Products Mentioned: Search Off The Record;

The SEO Starter Guide is getting a refresh! Have you ever wondered how the Search team plans and writes such a document? In this episode of Search Off the Record, John Mueller, Gary Illyes, and Lizzi Sassman discuss which topics are still relevant, the right level of detail for a starter guide, and whether or not including anti-patterns in documentation is a good idea. 

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr068-transcript

SEO Starter Guide →  https://goo.gle/42alrmy

SEO Starter Guide: What’s all the drama? → https://goo.gle/4b6ZLMq

Let’s pick a domain name → https://goo.gle/3tezc6t

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

Speaker: John Mueller; Gary Illyes; Lizzi Sassman;,

Products Mentioned: Search Console;,

In this episode of Search, Martin, John, and Gary look back at 2023 and reminisce on some of this year’s Search announcements. From updates to Core Web Vitals to going back to basics of website titling, the team covers a wide range of announcements and updates in the world of SEO.

Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr067-transcript

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.  #SOTRpodcast

In this episode of Search, Martin, Gary, and John discuss aspects of SEO that website owners often overlook. From overall quality to more technical aspects, The Search team talks about where they focus on their SEO work and why the details add up to a better SEO experience. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr066-transcript

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast

In this episode of Search, John, Gary, and Martin discuss why the search team adds and removes features on their search engine, Steve. From creating a better user experience to surfacing relevant answers for search queries, maintaining an organized webspace requires continual retooling. Tune into this episode of Search Off the Record to learn about what the team considers when updating their search engine itself! Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr065-transcript

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast

In this episode of Search, John and Gary discuss the impact of quality on search results. From sitemaps to scheduling and more, the Google Search team talks about how the quality of the page and site plays a role in crawling and indexing, besides ranking. Do you need to update your site often or add many links? Tune in and find out on this episode of Search Off the Record!  Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr064-transcript Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast

The Google Search algorithm has been updated and panic quickly sets in. In this episode of Search, Martin, John, and Danny help content creators everywhere focus on the value they bring into the digital world. From changing ranking systems to updated documentation, the Google Search team discusses their holistic approach to SEO, ranking, and more! Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr063-transcript  Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast

A top-level domain (TLD) is the last part of a domain name, after the dot, and identifies the type of organization the domain belongs to, or the country the domain is targeting. Some examples include .com, .org, .ai, .ch, .xyz. In this episode of Search, John, Gary, and Martin help you choose the best top-level domain for you and your website, including price, popularity, and if a custom one makes a difference in search engines. They also touch upon second-level domains, dashes, keywords, their effect on SEO, and more! Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr062-transcript  Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast

Martin, John, and Gary discuss the potential reasons why your website or page is not indexed, both from a technical and quality perspective. Learn about the tools and reports available in Google Search Console to help determine why your website is not indexed.

Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr061-transcript

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast

In this episode of Search Off the Record, John, Gary, and Martin answer highly sought-after questions left on Gary’s Linkedin post. They share the drawbacks of client-side rendering, how Web3 would affect SEO, and more. Why do 410 response codes show the same as 404s in Search Console? Is it treated differently in the backend? Find out that, and more from how the Search team would rebuild a search engine differently from Google’s to what the team has learned from the billions of search queries it’s received over the years. 

Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr060-transcript  Check out the Google Search Centra YouTube channel → https://goo.gle/43lCh1h 

Check out the Google Search Central blog → https://goo.gle/3CJW3sH 

  Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast

In this episode of Search Off the Record, John, Gary, and Lizzi chat about launching websites. Launching a website can be a nerve-wracking experience, especially staging your website for launch, or if you’re a seasoned website owner and want to stage a new feature. How can you prevent a staging site from becoming indexed? Who are the people having the problem with the staging servers? What is the difference between a site launch and migration? Listen to this podcast episode to find out! 

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr059-transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Googlers Edu Pereda and Pascal Birchler join Martin Splitt to chat in-depth about programming languages, JavaScript and TypeScript. Learn more about the projects they use JavaScript with, why people have strong emotions towards JavaScript, what they like and dislike about the controversial programming language, and more! Has Javascript improved? Is there such a thing as modern JavaScript? Is it possible WebAssembly could replace TypeScript? Listen to find out!

Transcript →

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast #JavaScript

On this episode of Search Off the Record, guest Edu Pereda, Engineer at Google joins Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes to chat about Search Open Sourcing projects. Open source is a source code made available for the public to modify and distribute. Learn about the Search open source library projects, requirements in mind when creating open source libraries, why not every library can be open source, and more in this podcast episode!  

Resources:

Episode transcript →https://goo.gle/sotr057-transcript  Find us on Twitter → https://goo.gle/3JgUSEB Edu Pereda on Twitter → https://goo.gle/3ZntryE 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast #Opensource 

With the right resources, site moves or domain changes don’t have to be as hard as we once remember. In this episode of Search Off the Record, join Lizzi, Gary, and John for a chat about site moves. Learn about the different types of site moves, common issues, and how to move your site without harming search ranking results. Find out how site moves affect users and Search, how there could be a drop in traffic, and more.

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr056-transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Josh Cohen, a Tech Writer on the Search Console Team, joins John and Lizzi to chat about the Search Console Help Center. They dive into who drives changes in Search Console, tips for writing feedback, and questions to ask when deciding the right level of information to give in a document. Learn the differences between product and doc issues, not being able to remove content from a website you don't own, and more!

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr053-transcript 

Search Console Help Center → https://goo.gle/3k34NU5 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

John, Gary, and Lizzi wrap up 2022 by reflecting on projects, events, and past episodes of Search Off the Record. They discuss the most surprising aspect of 2022, updating Search documentation, and much more!

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr055-transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

On this episode of Search Off the Record, John, Gary, and Lizzi chat about the Google Search Status Dashboard for incident reporting. They discuss what prompted the dashboard, how this compares to reporting Search incidents on Twitter, and more! Learn how the dashboard can streamline communication between Google and those reporting incidents.

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr054-transcript 

Status Dashboard → https://goo.gle/3Wt80KL 

How To Use the Dashboard → https://goo.gle/3HvwHls 

Blog: When indexing goes wrong (2019) → https://goo.gle/3HvwHls 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Gary and Lizzi talk with a guest from the larger Search Marketing Community, Jennifer Slegg - an expert on all things Search Engine Marketing, specializing in the Quality Rater's Guidelines and E-A-T. Reminisce about the internet in the early 2000s, hand-coded websites, minimal search results, no ads, and straight-to-the-point content. Jennifer shares her experience transitioning from journalist to Search Marketer, the writing process for her well-known detailed analysis on changes in the Quality Rater's Guidelines, and more! Was there any data available about what people searched for in the early 2000s? What does E-A-T stand for? Listen to find out!

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr051-transcript 

Jennifer on Twitter → https://goo.gle/3OKwNad 

Jennifer's 2022 guide to understanding Quality Rater Guidelines updates → https://goo.gle/3OKwNad 

The SEM Post → https://goo.gle/3UjqMm9 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

Redirects are a genuine approach to moving something from one place to another. In this episode of Search Off the Record, John and Martin talk about the different types of redirects and which one you may want to use. They share the differences between 301 and 302 redirects, what type of redirects 308 and 307 are, why someone may want to use a JavaScript redirect over a meta refresh-type redirect, and more. They also cover merging and splitting domains, frustrating geo-targeting redirects, and redirects for mobile and desktop.

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr052-transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

Join John, Lizzi, and guest, Myriam Jessier, SEO Trainer, for a live recording of SOTR from brightonSEO: a conference where SEOs gather to chat, network, and learn about search marketing. In this episode, they answer a bunch of questions hand-picked before the event. They cover topics like which is better: subdomain or subdirectory, to criteria for penalizing backlinks, and the pros and cons to templated content outlines. Learn about adding schema types, image alt, and more!

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr050-transcript 

brightonSEO website → https://goo.gle/3TVlfm0 Mryiams Jessier’s website → https://goo.gle/3W6iUGU 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

Find out if Google Search Central implements its SEO best practices and guidelines on its own website and documentation! Hosts John and Lizzi discuss SEO tools, sitemaps, hreflang links, robots.txt, click-through rates, and more. They cover what they’ve implemented, what they are thinking of updating, and what they are passing on. Hear all things link related, categorizing, and working with an external SEO agency during rebranding. 

Episode transcript → http://goo.gle/sor049-transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

Do you want to know how to increase traffic to your website with images? What about making your website more accessible for screen readers with alt text for an image? Our hosts John and Lizzi chat about optimizing for image search. They cover everything from naming your image file, how often Googlebot crawls images, increasing visibility of your page through image search, to improving alt text and image accessibility. 

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr048-transcript 

Google images best practices → https://goo.gle/3CAevUD 

SEO for Google Images | Search Central Lightning Talks → https://goo.gle/3e76PQo 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Vanessa Fox, a former Google employee, joins hosts John and Lizzi to talk about the early days of Google Search Central (or shall we say, Webmaster Tools). She shares the beginnings of the Sitemaps tool, Webmaster Help group, Webmaster Tools, and more!

Resources:Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr047-transcript Our very first blog post, authored by Vanessa Fox → https://goo.gle/3qEM6WM URL Structure guidelines → https://goo.gle/3U3T8BU SEO Compendium → https://goo.gle/3C0RsCn Keylime Toolbox → https://goo.gle/3xIipIn Vanessa Fox on twitter → https://goo.gle/3xJmOLa 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

Join hosts Gary and Lizzi for a chat about file types on the web beyond HTML, like PDFs, PowerPoints, and images. We cover issues with all sorts of file types, if you should convert your weird file into HTML, what file types are indexed, and more on non-HTML files.

Resources: PDFs in Google search results → https://goo.gle/3RZ16dV 

Episode transcript →  https://goo.gle/sotr046-transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

What is Search Off the Record? Listen to our podcast trailer! Do you geek out about SEO? Are you interested in exploring on-going projects with the people that work on Google Search? Well, look no further! Listen to the Search Off the Record podcast to go behind the scenes of SEO and Google Search, all while having fun and mischief with our hosts from the Search Relations team from Google: Gary Illyes, Lizzi Sassman, John Mueller, and Martin Splitt.

Watch the Search Off the Record podcast trailer on YouTube → https://goo.gle/3RmjuNe 

Listen to Search Off the Record on YouTube → https://goo.gle/3PShrA2 

Listen to Search Off the Record on Libsyn → https://goo.gle/3am6jMx 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

There is a lot of confusion around crawl budget so Martin, Lizzi, and Gary from Search Relations are here to bring clarity for everyone unsure about it. Are you worried about your website not being crawled quickly? Not sure what consumes and wastes your crawl budget? Learn when you should and shouldn’t be worried about your crawl budget. This episode covers misconceptions and frequently asked questions concerning crawl budget.  

Resources: 

What Crawl Budget Means for Googlebot → https://goo.gle/3pIwXTM

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr045-transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

#SOTRpodcast

In this episode of Search Off The Record, guest Danny Farra, UX Interaction Designer at Google, joins Lizzi Sassman to chat about accessibility of websites. We explore how to get started with accessibility, from using a screen reader for the first time to assessing contrast ratio and cognitive accessibility. Listen to this podcast to learn about assisted technology tools like screen readers and more!

Resources:

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr044-Transcript 

Google Accessibility → https://goo.gle/3A5C6LG 

Danny Farra on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3A6OJX6 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Lizzi Sassman, John Mueller, and Gary Illyes have an insightful conversation around how removals work in Google Search. Specifically, they chat about how Google Search operates when removals are in the mix. How does crawling, indexing, and blocking work in the backend? What really happens at each of these stages when it comes to removals? Listen to this podcast to get a behind-the-scenes look at Google Search  

Resources: 

Check out our episode about blocking → https://goo.gle/3P1UWYq 

Control what you share with Google → https://goo.gle/3oUyoym 

In-depth guide to how Google Search works → https://goo.gle/3bx2CV2 

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr043-Transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Lizzi Sassman and Gary Illyes sit down with Barry Schwartz - a search engine connoisseur. Specifically, they explore how Barry runs his online career, balancing RustyBrick and Search Engine Roundtable. We even talk about website development, and the origin story behind RustyBrick  - a web construction firm specializing in website development, web page design, SEO optimization, and more!

Check out and subscribe to Barry Schwartz’s YouTube channel → https://goo.gle/3z3FCWw 

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr042-Transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

In this episode of Search Off the Record, we take a look at what it takes to block content from Google Search. Lizzi Sassman, Gary Illyes, and John Mueller chat about the role of robots.txt files and robots meta tags. What roles do they play in crawling and indexing? What other practices can you employ to remove unwanted content from Google Search? Listen to this podcast to discover some useful Search tips and tricks when it comes to barring content. 

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr041-Transcript

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes, and Lizzi Sassman sit down to talk about user experience and SEO. What is UX? Besides Core Web Vitals, what other things could we try to automatically infer about the user experience of a site? From interstitials to site structure, our team of Search experts sit down and chat about the relationship between UX and SEO. 

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr040-Transcript   

Let’s talk Core Web Vitals video → https://goo.gle/3xyX0k9 

Let’s talk Core Web Vitals podcast → https://goo.gle/3xWcQGJ 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

In this episode of Search Off the Record, we talk with Michelle Robbins - a software engineer by trade and member of the Search Marketing community. Lizzi Sassman and Gary Illyes sit down with Michelle to discuss how she got interested in SEO and even talk about data’s relation to SEO. How can data improve your SEO? Moreover, they explore common issues with data: bias, misrepresentation, and correlation vs. causation. Listen to this episode to see where the worlds of data and SEO overlap.

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr039-Transcript 

Michelle Robbins on Twitter → https://goo.gle/3Nd8jVE

Michelle Robbins on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3PWnpAM 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

With Web 3.0 on the horizon, it’s hard to not talk about the next evolution of the internet. In this episode of Search Off The Record, Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes, and Alan Kent offer up their thoughts about the World Wide Web’s next iteration, and fondly recollect their experiences with older versions of the web. They ponder what people think Web 3.0 is and what it might become. Is it decentralized? Is it crypto? Both or none of that?

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr038-Transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

A sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. In this episode of Search Off the Record, we sit down with Gary Illyes, John Mueller, and Lizzi Sassman to discuss all things sitemaps. How do they help with website SEO? What is the future of sitemaps? Listen to this episode to find out!

Episode transcript →  https://goo.gle/sotr037-Transcript  

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

In this episode of Search Off The Record, we talk with Kenichi Suzuki, a member of the larger search marketing community. Lizzi Sassman and Gary Illyes talk with Kenichi about his career in SEO, how he got started, and what advice he would give to those just starting out. Listen to this episode to gain valuable insight into the SEO world, and SEO in Japan! 

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr036-Transcript 

Follow Kenichi on Twitter → https://goo.gle/3Li7BoX 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

In this episode of Search Off The Record, we take a deep dive into structured data. Our hosts Martin Splitt and Lizzi Sassman talk with Ryan Levering, a software engineer at Google, about the importance of structured data, impactful things you can do with it, how Google uses it, and more! If you’re wanting to know the in’s and out’s of structured data, this episode is for you.  Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr035-Transcript  

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

fullname: Lizzi Sassman, Martin Splitt;

Get videos on Google with schema markup → https://goo.gle/3JwayBn 

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr034-Transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr033-Transcript

Video indexing best practices → https://goo.gle/3vFuAWg 

Google's Artificial Brain Learns to Find Cat Videos blog post → https://goo.gle/3Moy4T2 

Try out Muffin Films → https://goo.gle/3CdodKZ 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr032-transcript 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr031-transcript  Episode 17 → https://goo.gle/3uoiVup 

Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.