Next stop: 2015
December 2014
Google Confidential and Proprietary
John MuellerWebmaster Trends Analyst
Google Zuerich
Connecting webmasters with engineers
Regular webmaster central office hours viahttps://google.com/+googlewebmasters
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Mobile web & apps
Webmaster Tools
Structured data / rich snippets
Security
Crawling, indexing, serving
Themes 2014
Google Confidential and ProprietarySource: think.withgoogle.com/mobileplanet
Would rather give up TV than smartphone.
Would rather give up desktop/ tablet PC than smartphone
Google Confidential and ProprietarySource: think.withgoogle.com/mobileplanet
Smartphone penetration % of population
Google Confidential and Proprietary
67% uses their mobile phone every single day
Source: think.withgoogle.com/mobileplanet
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Source: Google User Behavior Study 2010, Google Internal Data 2010Source: Gomez, “Why the Mobile Web is Disappointing End-users.” March 2011Source: PRWeb, “51% of Consumers are more likely to shop at retailers who have websites designed for devices like the iPhone.” November 16 2010. Research by Brand Anywhere and Luth Research, “Supply and Demand of the Mobile Web” November 2010
61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble with.
40% said they’d visit a competitor’s mobile site instead.
Mobile Users Hold a Grudge
Google Confidential and Proprietary
People Willing to Go Without Sex, Shoes and Caffeine Rather Than Give Up Their Cellphones, Ina Fried, 2011
55% would give up caffeine to keep their phone
Mobile users can be addicted to your site
Google Confidential and Proprietary
My phone is my castle
Mobile web & apps
Google Confidential and Proprietary
What happened in mobile?
● Highlight mobile-friendly pages
● App-Indexing shows apps in search
● Mobile testing & reports in Webmaster Tools
● Googlebot smartphone user-agent
● Flag & demote critical mobile errors in search
● Improved mobile search query data in Webmaster Tools
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Read & use primary content without left/right swiping
robots.txt
Google Confidential and Proprietary
For more than just webmasters
Webmaster Tools
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Tools for your search activities
● Rendering pages with "Fetch as Google"
● Interactive robots.txt tester
● Search query data significantly improved
● Site move tool & detailed help
● Improved URL removal tools
● APIs for verification & more
● Index stats for site variations (http/htttps/www/non-www)
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Fetch and render + robots.txt for embedded content
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Rich snippets & more
Structured data
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Updates in structured data
● Local company information: phone numbers, addresses, opening hours
● Structured data dashboard with errors & counts
● Events rich snippets & Knowledge Graph
● Improved sitelinks search box
● more to come!
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Getting hacked is no fun
Security
Google Confidential and Proprietary
On-site and off-site security builds trust
● HTTPS as a ranking factor
● More help for hacked sites :-(
● Safe browsing download protection
● Chrome considering signaling HTTP pages as insecure
Providing a safe web experience is not optional.
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Googlebot is on the run
Crawling, indexing, serving
Google Confidential and Proprietary
What's been happening in search?
● Googlebot renders pages! Updated webmaster guidelines
● Crawl error reporting for redirecting URLs
● Learn: faceted navigation, infinite scroll, sitemaps & feeds
● Hreflang: diagnosis tools & guidelines for homepages
● Removal of Authorship
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Understand robots.txt & crawling
Critical for web, mobile, and apps!
JS
User-agent: *Disallow: /template/
/template/
CSS robots.txt
Google Confidential and Proprietary
That's all?
… even more!
Google Confidential and Proprietary
We're not stopping yet :-)
● Google+ page for webmastershttp://google.com/+GoogleWebmasters
● Webmaster Academy! http://g.co/webmasteracademy
● Bring your local business online / videos
● Over 100 Office hours hangouts across 7 languages
google.it/+JohnMueller
Grazie!
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Internet
Crawler
Scheduler
Parser IndexingURLs Index Serving
Query
Results
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Criteria for PageSpeed Mobile Usability
★ Working viewport○ must be configured (meta-tag)○ not fixed-width○ content size matches○ readable font size
★ Tap targets (links, buttons) clickable
★ Primary content not in Flash
Google Confidential and Proprietary
In Chrome: (ctrl+shift+i or cmd+opt+i > )
Google Confidential and Proprietary
PageSpeed Insights
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Responsive web design
Separate mobile siteDynamic Serving
Google Confidential and Proprietary
URLs & content changes
Responsive web design
Dynamic serving
Separate mobile site
Does my URL stay the same?
Does my HTML stay the same?
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Watch out for mobile-specific errors
www.example.com/news404 Not Foundm.example.com/news
Mobile-specific 404s
www.example.com/
www.example.com/shop
www.example.com/aboutus
m.example.com/
Faulty redirects
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Avoid interstitials!
https://youtube.com
Google Confidential and Proprietary
… don't forget speed! (webpagetest.org)
Google Confidential and Proprietary
What is structured data?
<p>Hotel Lorem ipsum review. Reviewed by John. Fusce tempor dictum eros et rhoncus. Pellentesque vel urna sit amet eros pharetra euismod. Maecenas quis massa ac tellus rhoncus venenatis quis a lacus.<br />
<br />
Rating 4.5 from 5 stars.</p>
<div itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Review">
<span itemprop="itemreviewed">Hotel Lorem Ipsum</span>
Reviewed by <span itemprop="reviewer">John</span> on
<time itemprop="dtreviewed"
datetime="2013-01-06">Jan 6, 2013</time>.
<span itemprop="description">Fusce tempor dictum eros et
rhoncus. Pellentesque vel urna sit amet eros pharetra
euismod. Maecenas quis massa ac tellus rhoncus venenatis
quis a lacus.</span>
Rating: <span itemprop="rating">4.5</span>
</div>
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Structured data in rich snippets
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Structured data in web-search
★ Structured data doesn't change crawling, indexing, or ranking!
★ Some structured data isn't shown in search at all.(We still use it to understand your pages better.)
★ Rich snippets aren't guaranteed.
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Implementing Structured Data
★ Data Highlighter (to start)
★ Markup Helper & testing tool
★ Various vocabulary / markup
○ schema.org - recommended○ microformats○ microdata○ RDFa○ (JSON LD)
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Data Highlighter in Webmaster Tools
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Checking your markup
Check our Help Center, use the testing tool,and use valid HTML :-).
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Rich Snippet policies
★ Usually visible markup
★ Should not be misleading
★ Rich snippet represents the page's topic
★ Follows appropriate usage guidelines
Check the Help Center for details.
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec nisi quam, condimentum eget tempus vel, adipiscing id urna. Fusce consequat dapibus elit, viverra volutpat nulla auctor eu. Duis dignissim orci vitae justo commodo fringilla.
Please review this page:
Please review the product on this page:
No! Yes!
Watch out for reviews
Google Confidential and Proprietary
Other common difficulties
★ Watch out for date & number formats: use the local formats or be extra-clear (eg. write out month).
★ Testimonials are not reviews.
★ Don't blindly add review-widgets!