Etichetă: Google

In Search Console, the Performance report currently credits all page metrics to the exact URL that the user is referred to by Google Search. Although this provides very specific data, it makes property management more difficult; for example: if your site has mobile and desktop versions on different properties, you must open multiple properties to see all your Search data for the same piece of content.

To help unify your data, Search Console will soon begin assigning search metrics to the (Google-selected) canonical URL, rather than the URL referred to by Google Search. This change has several benefits:

• It unifies all search metrics for a single piece of content into a single URL: the canonical URL. This shows you the full picture about a specific piece of content in one property.
• For users with separate mobile or AMP pages, it unifies all (or most, since some mobile URLs may end up as canonical) of your data to a single property (the “canonical” property).
• It improves the usability of the AMP and Mobile-Friendly reports. These reports currently show issues in the canonical page property, but show the impression in the property that owns the actual URL referred to by Google Search. After this change, the impressions and issues will be shown in the same property.

When will this happen?

We plan to transition all performance data at the end of March. In order to provide continuity to your data, we will pre-populate your unified data beginning from January 2018. We will also enable you to view both old and new versions for a few weeks during the transition to see the impact and understand the differences.

API and Data Studio users: The Search Console API will change to canonical data at the end of March.

How will this affect my data?

• At an individual URL level, you will see traffic shift from any non-canonical (duplicate) URLs to the canonical URL.
• At the property level, you will see data from your alternate property (for example, your mobile site) shifted to your “canonical property”. Your alternate property traffic probably won’t drop to zero in Search Console because canonicalization is at the page, not the property level, and your mobile property might have some canonical pages. However, for most users, most property-level data will shift to one property. AMP property traffic will drop to zero in most cases (except for self-canonical pages).
• You will still be able to filter data by device, search appearance (such as AMP), country, and other dimensions without losing important information about your traffic.

You can see some examples of these traffic changes below.

Preparing for the change

• Consider whether you need to change user access to your various properties; for example: do you need to add new users to your canonical property, or do existing users continue to need access to the non-canonical properties.
• Modify any custom traffic reports you might have created in order to adapt for this traffic shift.
• If you need to learn the canonical URL for a given URL, you can use the URL Inspection tool.
• If you want to save your traffic data calculated using the current system, you should download your data using either the Performance report’s Export Data button, or using the Search Console API.

Examples

Here are a few examples showing how data might change on your site. In these examples, you can see how your traffic numbers would change between a canonical site (called example.com) and alternate site (called m.example.com).

Important: In these examples, the desktop site contains all the canonical pages and the mobile contains all the alternate pages. In the real world, your desktop site might contain some alternate pages and your mobile site might contain some canonical pages. You can determine the canonical for a given URL using the URL Inspection tool.

Total traffic

In the current version, some of your traffic is attributed to the canonical property and some to the alternate property. The new version should attribute all of your traffic to the canonical property.

	Canonical property (http://example.com)	Alternate property (http://m.example.com)
Current
New, based on canonical URLs
Change	+0.7K     |        +3K	-0.7K        |          -3K

Individual page traffic

You can see traffic changes between the duplicate and canonical URLs for individual pages in the Pages view. The next example shows how traffic that used to be split between the canonical and alternate pages are now all attributed to the canonical URL:

	Canonical property (http://example.com)	Alternate property (http://m.example.com)
Old
New
Change	+150     |        +800	-150     |        -800

Mobile traffic

In the current version, all of your mobile traffic was attributed to your m. property. The new version attributes all traffic to your canonical property when you apply the “Device: Mobile” filter as shown here:

	Canonical property (http://example.com)	Alternate property (http://m.example.com)
Old
New
Change	+0.7K      | +3K	-0.7K      | -3K

In conclusion

We know that this change might seem a little confusing at first, but we’re confident that it will simplify your job of tracking traffic data for your site. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out on the Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by John Mueller, Developer Advocate, Zurich

  const apiUrl = ‘https://api.thecatapi.com/v1/images/search?limit=50’;

  const tpl = document.querySelector(‘template’).content;

  const container = document.querySelector(‘ul’);

  function init () {

    fetch(apiUrl)

    .then(response => response.json())

    .then(cats => {

      container.innerHTML = ”;

      cats

        .map(cat => {

          const li = document.importNode(tpl, true);

          li.querySelector(‘img’).src = cat.url;

          return li;

        }).forEach(li => container.appendChild(li));

    })

  }

  init();

  document.querySelector(‘button’).addEventListener(‘click’, init);

The mobile-friendly test shows that the page is mobile-friendly, but the screenshot is missing all the cats! The headline and button appear but none of the cat pictures are there.

While this problem is simple to fix, it’s a good exercise to learn how to setup dynamic rendering. Dynamic rendering will allow Googlebot to see the cat pictures without changes to the web app code.

Set up the server

To serve the web application, let’s use express, a node.js library, to build web servers.

const express = require(‘express’);

const app = express();

const DIST_FOLDER = process.cwd() + ‘/docs’;

const PORT = process.env.PORT || 8080;

// Serve static assets (images, css, etc.)

app.get(‘*.*’, express.static(DIST_FOLDER));

// Point all other URLs to index.html for our single page app

app.get(‘*’, (req, res) => {

 res.sendFile(DIST_FOLDER + ‘/index.html’);

});

// Start Express Server

app.listen(PORT, () => {

 console.log(`Node Express server listening on http://localhost:${PORT} from ${DIST_FOLDER}`);

});

You can try the live example here – you should see a bunch of cat pictures, if you are using a modern browser. To run the project from your computer, you need node.js to run the following commands:

npm install –save express rendertron-middleware
node server.js

The form to create a new Google Cloud Platform project.

1. Create a new project in the Google Cloud console. Take note of the “Project ID” below the input field.

   
   

2. 
   
3. Clone the Rendertron repository from GitHub with:
   

   git clone https://github.com/GoogleChrome/rendertron.git 

   cd rendertron 

4. Run the following commands to install dependencies and build Rendertron on your computer:
   

   npm install && npm run build

5. Enable Rendertron’s cache by creating a new file called config.json in the rendertron directory with the following content:
   

   { “datastoreCache”: true }

6. Run the following command from the rendertron directory. Substitute YOUR_PROJECT_ID with your project ID from step 1.
   

   gcloud app deploy app.yaml –project YOUR_PROJECT_ID

7. Select a region of your choice and confirm the deployment. Wait for it to finish.

   
   

8. Enter the URL YOUR_PROJECT_ID.appspot.com (substitute YOUR_PROJECT_ID for your actual project ID from step 1 in your browser. You should see Rendertron’s interface with an input field and a few buttons.

   
   

Rendertron’s UI after deploying to Google Cloud Platform

When you see the Rendertron web interface, you have successfully deployed your own Rendertron instance. Take note of your project’s URL (YOUR_PROJECT_ID.appspot.com) as you will need it in the next part of the process.

Add Rendertron to the server

The web server is using express.js and Rendertron has an express.js middleware. Run the following command in the directory of the server.js file:

npm install –save rendertron-middleware

This command installs the rendertron-middleware from npm so we can add it to the server:

const express = require(‘express’);

const app = express();

const rendertron = require(‘rendertron-middleware’);

Configure the bot list

Rendertron uses the user-agent HTTP header to determine if a request comes from a bot or a user’s browser. It has a well-maintained list of bot user agents to compare with. By default this list does not include Googlebot, because Googlebot can execute JavaScript. To make Rendertron render Googlebot requests as well, add Googlebot to the list of user agents:

const BOTS = rendertron.botUserAgents.concat(‘googlebot’);

const BOT_UA_PATTERN = new RegExp(BOTS.join(‘|’), ‘i’);

Rendertron compares the user-agent header against this regular expression later.

Add the middleware

To send bot requests to the Rendertron instance, we need to add the middleware to our express.js server. The middleware checks the requesting user agent and forwards requests from known bots to the Rendertron instance. Add the following code to server.js and don’t forget to substitute “YOUR_PROJECT_ID” with your Google Cloud Platform project ID:

app.use(rendertron.makeMiddleware({

 proxyUrl: ‘https://YOUR_PROJECT_ID.appspot.com/render’,

 userAgentPattern: BOT_UA_PATTERN

}));

Bots requesting the sample website receive the static HTML from Rendertron, so the bots don’t need to run JavaScript to display the content.

Testing our setup

To test if the Rendertron setup was successful, run the mobile-friendly test again.

Unlike the first test, the cat pictures are visible. In the HTML tab we can see all HTML the JavaScript code generated and that Rendertron has removed the need for JavaScript to display the content.

Conclusion

You created a dynamic rendering setup without making any changes to the web app. With these changes, you can serve a static HTML version of the web app to crawlers.

Post content

Posted by Martin Splitt, Open Web Unicorn

Last year, we launched job search on Google to connect more people with jobs. When you provide Job Posting structured data, it helps drive more relevant traffic to your page by connecting job seekers with your content. To ensure that job seekers are getting the best possible experience, it’s important to follow our Job Posting guidelines.

We’ve recently made some changes to our Job Posting guidelines to help improve the job seeker experience.

• Remove expired jobs
• Place structured data on the job’s detail page
• Make sure all job details are present in the job description

Remove expired jobs

When job seekers put in effort to find a job and apply, it can be very discouraging to discover that the job that they wanted is no longer available. Sometimes, job seekers only discover that the job posting is expired after deciding to apply for the job. Removing expired jobs from your site may drive more traffic because job seekers are more confident when jobs that they visit on your site are still open for application. For more information on how to remove a job posting, see Remove a job posting.

Place structured data on the job’s detail page

Job seekers find it confusing when they land on a list of jobs instead of the specific job’s detail page. To fix this, put structured data on the most detailed leaf page possible. Don’t add structured data to pages intended to present a list of jobs (for example, search result pages) and only add it to the most specific page describing a single job with its relevant details.

Make sure all job details are present in the job description

We’ve also noticed that some sites include information in the JobPosting structured data that is not present anywhere in the job posting. Job seekers are confused when the job details they see in Google Search don’t match the job description page. Make sure that the information in the JobPosting structured data always matches what’s on the job posting page. Here are some examples:

• If you add salary information to the structured data, then also add it to the job posting. Both salary figures should match.
• The location in the structured data should match the location in the job posting.

Providing structured data content that is consistent with the content of the job posting pages not only helps job seekers find the exact job that they were looking for, but may also drive more relevant traffic to your job postings and therefore increase the chances of finding the right candidates for your jobs.

If your site violates the Job Posting guidelines (including the guidelines in this blog post), we may take manual action against your site and it may not be eligible for display in the jobs experience on Google Search. You can submit a reconsideration request to let us know that you have fixed the problem(s) identified in the manual action notification. If your request is approved, the manual action will be removed from your site or page.

For more information, visit our Job Posting developer documentation and our JobPosting FAQ.

Posted by Anouar Bendahou, Trust & Safety Search Team

Last year, we launched Google Home with recipe guidance, providing users with step-by-step instructions for cooking recipes. With more people using Google Home every day, we’re publishing new guidelines so your recipes can support this voice guided experience. You may receive traffic from more sources, since users can now discover your recipes through the Google Assistant on Google Home. The updated structured data properties provide users with more information about your recipe, resulting in higher quality traffic to your site.

Updated recipe properties to help users find your recipes

We updated our recipe developer documentation to help users find your recipes and experience them with Google Search and the Google Assistant on Google Home. This will enable more potential traffic to your site. To ensure that users can access your recipe in more ways, we need more information about your recipe. We now recommend the following properties:

• Videos: Show users how to make the dish by adding a video array
• Category: Tell users the type of meal or course of the dish (for example, “dinner”, “dessert”, “entree”)
• Cuisine: Specify the region associated with your recipe (for example, “Mediterranean”, “American”, “Cantonese”)
• Keywords: Add other terms for your recipe such as the season (“summer”), the holiday (“Halloween”, “Diwali”), the special event (“wedding”, “birthday”), or other descriptors (“quick”, “budget”, “authentic”)

We also added more guidance for recipeInstructions. You can specify each step of the recipe with the HowToStep property, and sections of steps with the HowToSection property.

Add recipe instructions and ingredients for the Google Assistant

We now require the recipeIngredient and recipeInstructions properties if you want to support the Google Assistant on Google Home. Adding these properties can make your recipe eligible for integration with the Google Assistant, enabling more users to discover your recipes. If your recipe doesn’t have these properties, it won’t be eligible for guidance with the Google Assistant, but it can still be eligible to appear in Search results.

For more information, visit our Recipe developer documentation. If you have questions about the feature, please ask us in the Webmaster Help Forum.

Posted by Earl J. Wagner, Software Engineer

Google I/O 2018 is starting today in California, to an international audience of 7,000+ developers. It will run until Thursday night. It is our annual developers festival, where product announcements are made, new APIs and frameworks are introduced, and Product Managers present the latest from Google.

However, you don’t have to physically attend the event to take advantage of this once-a-year opportunity: many conferences and talks are live streamed on YouTube for anyone to watch. You will find the full-event schedule here.

Great websites are the result of the hard work of website owners who make their content and services accessible to the world. Even though it’s simpler now to run a website than it was years ago, it can still feel like a complex undertaking. This is why we invest a lot of time and effort in improving Google Search so that website owners can spend more time focusing on building the most useful content for their users, while we take care of helping users find that content. 

Most website owners find they don’t have to worry much about what Google is doing—they post their content, and then Googlebot discovers, crawls, indexes and understands that content, to point users to relevant pages on those sites. However, sometimes the technical details still matter, and sometimes a great deal.

Posted by Juan Felipe Rincón from Google’s Webmaster Outreach & Support team

What we did at I/O

The event was a wonderful way to meet many great people from various communities across the globe, exchange ideas, and gather feedback. Besides many great web sessions, codelabs, and office hours we shared a few things with the community in two sessions specific to Search:

The sessions included the launch of JavaScript error reporting in the Mobile Friendly Test tool, dynamic rendering (we will discuss this in more detail in a future post), and an explanation of how CMS can use the Indexing and Search Console APIs to provide users with insights. For example, Wix lets their users submit their homepage to the index and see it in Search results instantly, and Squarespace created a Google Search keywords report to help webmasters understand what prospective users search for.

During the event, we also presented the new Search Console in the Sandbox area for people to try and were happy to get a lot of positive feedback, from people being excited about the AMP Status report to others exploring how to improve their content for Search.

Hands-on codelabs, case studies and more

We presented the Structured Data Codelab that walks you through adding and testing structured data. We were really happy to see that it ended up being one of the top 20 codelabs by completions at I/O. If you want to learn more about the benefits of using Structured Data, check out our case studies.

During the in-person office hours we saw a lot of interest around HTTPS, mobile-first indexing, AMP, and many other topics. The in-person Office Hours were a wonderful addition to our monthly Webmaster Office Hours hangout. The questions and comments will help us adjust our documentation and tools by making them clearer and easier to use for everyone.

Highlights and key takeaways

We also repeated a few key points that web developers should have an eye on when building websites, such as:

• Indexing and rendering don’t happen at the same time. We may defer the rendering to a later point in time.
• Make sure the content you want in Search has metadata, correct HTTP statuses, and the intended canonical tag.
• Hash-based routing (URLs with “#”) should be deprecated in favour of the JavaScript History API in Single Page Apps.
• Links should have an href attribute pointing to a URL, so Googlebot can follow the links properly.

Make sure to watch this talk for more on indexing, dynamic rendering and troubleshooting your site. If you wanna learn more about things to do as a CMS developer or theme author or Structured Data, watch this talk.

We were excited to meet some of you at I/O as well as the global I/O extended events and share the latest developments in Search. To stay in touch, join the Webmaster Forum or follow us on Twitter, Google+, and YouTube.

 Posted by Martin Splitt, Webmaster Trends Analyst

A few months ago, we introduced the new Search Console. Here are some updates on how it’s progressing.

Welcome “URL inspection” tool

One of our most common user requests in Search Console is for more details on how Google Search sees a specific URL. We listened, and today we’ve started launching a new tool, “URL inspection,” to provide these details so Search becomes more transparent. The URL Inspection tool provides detailed crawl, index, and serving information about your pages, directly from the Google index.

Enter a URL that you own to learn the last crawl date and status, any crawling or indexing errors, and the canonical URL for that page. If the page was successfully indexed, you can see information and status about any enhancements we found on the page, such as linked AMP version or rich results like Recipes and Jobs.

URL is indexed with valid AMP enhancement

If a page isn’t indexed, you can learn why. The new report includes information about noindex robots meta tags and Google’s canonical URL for the page.

URL is not indexed due to ‘noindex’ meta tag in the HTML

A single click can take you to the issue report showing all other pages affected by the same issue to help you track down and fix common bugs.

We hope that the URL Inspection tool will help you debug issues with new or existing pages in the Google Index. We began rolling it out today; it will become available to all users in the coming weeks.

More exciting updates

In addition to the launch of URL inspection, we have a few more features and reports we recently launched to the new Search Console:

Thank you for your feedback

We are constantly reading your feedback, conducting surveys, and monitoring usage statistics of the new Search Console. We are happy to see so many of you using the new issue validation flow in Index Coverage and the AMP report. We notice that issues tend to get fixed quicker when you use these tools. We also see that you appreciate the updates on the validation process that we provide by email or on the validation details page.

We want to thank everyone who provided feedback: it has helped us improve our flows and fix bugs on our side.

More to come

The new Search Console is still beta, but it’s adding features and reports every month. Please keep sharing your feedback through the various channels and let us know how we’re doing.

Posted by Roman Kecher and Sion Schori – Search Console engineers

Last June we launched a job search experience that has since connected tens of millions of job seekers around the world with relevant job opportunities from third party providers across the web. Timely indexing of new job content is critical because many jobs are filled relatively quickly. Removal of expired postings is important because nothing’s worse than finding a great job only to discover it’s no longer accepting applications.

Today we’re releasing the Indexing API to address this problem. This API allows any site owner to directly notify Google when job posting pages are added or removed. This allows Google to schedule job postings for a fresh crawl, which can lead to higher quality user traffic and job applicant satisfaction. Currently, the Indexing API can only be used for job posting pages that include job posting structured data.

For websites with many short-lived pages like job postings, the Indexing API keeps job postings fresh in Search results because it allows updates to be pushed individually. This API can be integrated into your job posting flow, allowing high quality job postings to be searchable quickly after publication. In addition, you can check the last time Google received each kind of notification for a given URL.

Follow the Quickstart guide to see how the Indexing API works. If you have any questions, ask us in the Webmaster Help Forum. We look forward to hearing from you!

Posted by Zach Clifford, Software Engineer

Google webspam trends and how we fought webspam in 2017

Working with users and webmasters for a better web

Posted by Cody Kwok, Principal Engineer