- 06 Nov 2019
- 3 Min read
5 hot topics from the Google Webmaster Conference Product Summit
- by Marc Swann
On 4 November 2019, the first ever Google Webmaster Conference Product Summit (GWCPS) was held at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. The event was designed to “facilitate an open dialog between the webmaster and SEO community and Search product teams”.
We’ve gone through the #GWCPS tweets to bring you what we consider to be the biggest takeaways from the event.
1. Deduplication
Deduplication is surprisingly complicated and cool. It was neat to have one of the engineers talk about it.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) November 4, 2019
Having duplicate or near-duplicate content on your site creates internal competition, making it harder for Google to identify the most relevant result. And that affects your rankings. Deduplication means taking steps to ensure only unique pages are indexed.
TIP: Consolidate duplicate pages and implement 301 redirects wherever possible. Signals such as canonical, noindex and hreflang tags can also be used to help Google identify your preferred page.
2. Robots.txt
Seriously? One out of four times googlebot cannot reach a site’s robots.txt? 🤯 then they won’t crawl the entire site!! #gwcps pic.twitter.com/wC49yC40zI
— Raffaele Asquer (@raffasquer) November 4, 2019
If the robots.txt is “unreachable” they won’t crawl the whole site #gwcps
— MyCool King (@iPullRank) November 4, 2019
26% of robots.txt are unreachable. And when Googlebot can’t reach your robots.txt, it won’t crawl your whole site.
TIP: Make sure your robots.txt delivers a 200 or 404 code — 5xx codes are ok temporarily, but indicate you have a webserver issue that needs to be addressed.
3. HTTPS
HTTPS has really grown significantly in a few years, but there’s still a bunch of room. Use secure protocols, folks! #gwcps pic.twitter.com/DaZDAltuZF
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) November 4, 2019
At the moment, HTTPS URLs receive approximately 75% of traffic, indicating that Google’s efforts to promote and reward secure protocols are working. But it wants the number to be even higher.
TIP: If you haven’t switched to HTTPS, do it. As soon as possible. Check out Google’s guidance here.
4. URL history
Wow -> Does google hang onto history of a URL? ie. page originally had crap content. Google tries to judge thing as they are, but reputation of a site and page is often based on historical behavior. #gwcps
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) November 4, 2019
Sure.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) November 5, 2019
At the event, Google confirmed that site/page history can affect rankings. This suggests that improving your content is unlikely to deliver instantaneous results, so you’ll need to give changes time to work.
TIP: When replacing poor-quality content, consider publishing on a new URL and redirecting the old one. And do your homework before purchasing a domain.
5. Image optimisation
Best practice tips from Google on optimising images:
1. Use structured data (ie product)
2. Use descriptive titles, captions, and file names
3. Use high quality optimised images, placed next to text on mobile friendly pages #GWCPS— Kieron Hughes (@kieronhughes) November 4, 2019
Image search changes.. Algo not just looking at images, but the landing pages as well to ensure support for user click through #gwcps
— Jake Bohall (@jakebohall) November 4, 2019
Images can help you secure valuable exposure through Google Images and rich results. So, it’s well worth investing time into optimising them.
TIP: Incorporate well-optimised, high-quality images into your content wherever suitable, keeping the file size as small as possible for speed’s sake. Take a look at Google’s image optimisation guide.
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Marc Swann
Search Director
