At Google I/O yesterday, Google detailed some issues surrounding the use of JavaScript when it comes to both crawling and indexing content. One thing they revealed is that Googlebot will process JavaScript heavy pages in two phases – an initial crawl, and then a second one a few days later that will render the JavaScript […]
Archives for May 2018
Google Indexes and Ranks JavaScript Pages in Two Waves Days Apart
Tom Greenaway from Google spoke at Google I/O yesterday about how Google handles JavaScript pages, and he mentioned something pretty significant – Googlebot treats indexing and ranking of JavaScript pages much differently than non-Javascript rendered pages. More specifically, when Googlebot crawls JavaScript sites, it does so in waves. And the result is it will have […]
Google: Types of Links That Googlebot Will & Will Not Follow
At Google I/O yesterday, Google clarified the types of links that Googlebot will follow. While “a href” is the standard link type, they also covered various other link types and whether Googlebot would follow them or not. In particular, they clarify some uses of the JavaScript onclick attribute within links and which ones Googlebot will […]
Googlebot Still Uses Older Chrome 41 for Rendering
At yesterday’s Google I/O John Mueller revealed that Google is still using the older version of Chrome – Chrome 41 – for their official rendering by Googlebot. This means that some newer coding features available in the newer versions of Chrome and other browsers won’t be rendered properly by Googlebot. What’s not immediately clear from […]
Google Testing Product Listing Ad Carousels With 30 Products on Mobile
By default, Google’s Product Listing Ads have 10 or less products in their mobile carousels. While we have seen them play with having two carousels, one on top of the other, most product carousels are still fairly limited in the number of products. Google is testing a new version of their Product Listing Ads Carousel […]
Google: Keep Same URLs When Replacing Old Content With New
When content becomes outdated, sometimes site owners remove the old page and replace it with a new one. And they don’t always remember to use a redirect when doing so. The question came up on Twitter about whether it is best to replace the content or redirect from the old page to the new one. […]
Google Uses Machine Learning for Crawling, Indexing & Ranking
There has been plenty of speculation about just how much Google uses machine learning when it comes to the search algorithm, especially outside of RankBrain itself. During a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours, the role of machine learning in the algo came up. The question was specifically about Panda and whether it uses a machine […]
Google Rankings & Ugly or Difficult to Use Sites
Does Google’s algo devalue sites that are ugly or with poor usability? Are there any direct or indirect links between this and a site’s rankings on Google? We do know that usability and site perception plays a large role in the Google Quality Rater Guidelines. Raters are specifically asked to look at how easy to […]