Search Off the Record

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.