Search Off the Record - Archive

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Gary and Martin dig into what "page size" and "page weight" actually mean for developers, users, and search engines. They discuss exploding web page sizes: median mobile homepages hit 2.3 MB in 2025 Web Almanac (up 3x from 2015), key insights for developers on page weight definitions, Googlebot's crawl limits, HTML bloat from structured data/images, and why size still hurts UX on slow connections despite faster networks. If you build or maintain websites, this conversation will help you rethink how much data your

Developers often talk about Googlebot as if it were a single program you could just run as "googlebot.exe", but that is not how Google's crawling actually works. In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin and Gary from the Search Relations team unpack how Google's crawling infrastructure is really built and operated.​ They cover why "Googlebot" is a misnomer and how it relates to a central crawling software-as-a-service used by many Google products​, how crawl behavior is controlled centrally to avoid overwhelming sites (throttling, handling 503s, and "don't break the

Martin and Gary unpack how HTML parsing really works, why the HTML standard is so lenient, and how messy markup can silently break key SEO signals like hreflang and rel=canonical. They revisit validators and cross‑browser hacks from the Netscape/IE days, and discuss whether semantic HTML and strict validity truly matter for search. You'll also hear when link hints like preload, prefetch, and DNS prefetch help performance (and indirectly SEO), and where meta and link tags really belong. ​ Resources: HTML Living Standard → https://html.spec.whatwg.org/ Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr105-transcript Listen to more

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin and Gary from the Google Search Relations team tackle a deceptively simple question: do you still need a website in 2026? Starting from the recurring industry claim that "the web is dead," they explore how the web has evolved through the rise of apps, AI chatbots, and social platforms, and why the answer almost always ends up being "it depends." Tune in for an engaging discussion on how websites remain relevant and what it means for content creation and discovery. Episode transcript

​Join Martin and Gary as they dive into Search Off the Record's Episode 103, unpacking the 2025 Year-End report on crawling issues. Discover fascinating insights on faceted navigation, action parameters, irrelevant parameters and more, highlighting the biggest challenges faced by web crawlers last year. With humor and expert analysis, this episode reveals critical takeaways for webmasters and SEO professionals. Don't miss valuable tips to enhance your site's crawl efficiency! ​ Resources: URL structure best practices for Google Search → https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/url-structure Crawling December: Faceted navigation → https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/12/crawling-december-faceted-nav Xkcd (programmer humor) → https://xkcd.com/327/

In this episode, John Mueller and Danny Sullivan continue their conversation about the changing landscape of Search. They discuss the practicalities of hiring an SEO professional in the age of AI: Do you really need one? How do you evaluate them? Danny also shares his thoughts on third-party SEO tools, "domain scores," and why creators shouldn't rush to break their content into "bite-sized chunks" just to please Large Language Models (LLMs). Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe to Google Search Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral Search Off the Record

In this episode, John Mueller and Danny Sullivan talk about SEO and the new kids on the block: AIO, GEO and others. Danny shares how these things interact with each other and what he thinks website owners should look for in their content creation and how Google's principles align with the way people use AI and search engines to navigate the web. Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe to Google Search Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the

Celebrate the 100th episode of Search Off the Record with Martin, Lizzi, Cherry, John and Gary as they revisit memorable moments, touching on a bunch of topics. This special episode touches on Google's mobile-first indexing, the intricacies of the Caffeine indexing system, and a deep dive into JavaScript scoping – and hoisting. You'll hear again about optimizing documentation traffic and the delightful world of Google Doodles. Discover key insights that impact your SEO strategies and web development practices. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr100-transcript Chapters: 0:00 - Welcome and 100th Episode Intro

Explore critical aspects of search engine optimization for web content that lives behind a login or paywall. In this episode, Martin and John cover how Googlebot interacts with these pages, the role of paywall structured data, and methods to prevent unintended indexing of private information. Get practical advice on improving your website's visibility and user experience while maintaining data security in Google Search. Resources: Episode transcript →https://goo.gle/sotr099-transcript Chapters: 0:00 - Intro 0:09 - Navigating SEO for login and paywalled content 2:01 - How Google indexes restricted content 10:51 - Strategies for

Optimize your website's performance with lazy loading techniques. In this episode, John Mueller and Martin Splitt discuss lazy loading, and its SEO implications. Find out how lazy loading affects indexing, ranking, and Core Web Vitals. Whether you're using native lazy loading or custom JavaScript libraries, this episode provides insights for developers on how to enhance website speed and user experience. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr098-transcript Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction 0:43 - What is lazy loading? 1:57 - HTTP chunking 3:13 - Primary drivers behind lazy loading 6:19 - Why not default

In this episode of Search Off The Record, John and Martin explore the intersection of SEO and photography. Is a website essential for photographers, or is social media enough? Martin, a technical SEO expert and photography enthusiast, dives into the challenges of building a photography website, optimizing images, and attracting the right audience. Whether you're a professional photographer or a hobbyist, this podcast offers valuable insights into how Search Engine Optimization can help you showcase your work and connect with your audience. Find out how to make your images more findable,

Martin and John dive into the world of CSS and explore its connection to SEO. Discover why CSS files matter for SEO, how modern CSS frameworks impact pages, and the SEO implications of CSS class names and pseudo elements. Moreover, learn practical tips for ensuring your CSS enhances - rather than hinders - your website's search performance. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr096-transcript Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction 0:56 - What is CSS? 1:37 - CSS file crawlability 3:52 - CSS flexibility and power 4:55 - Website and CSS growth 5:43 - CSS

Are you a developer or small business owner struggling with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? In this episode of Search Off the Record, Google Search Advocates John Mueller and Martin Splitt break down the essentials of SEO for small businesses. Learn practical tips for understanding your target audience, crafting a content strategy, and measuring your SEO efforts. They debunk SEO myths and explain when it's time to hire an SEO expert or agency. Get clarity on content strategy, technical SEO basics, the importance of relevant content and how to measure success. This

Developers often have misconceptions about SEO. In this episode of Search Off the Record, John Mueller and Martin Splitt clarify what matters and what doesn't. They cover areas including: Optimizing themes for SEO, The indexing API, and common HTML mistakes. This podcast delivers essential knowledge for developers to enhance their SEO strategies and avoid common pitfalls. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr094-transcript Chapters: 0:00 - Intro to SEO misconceptions 0:15 - Why developers should care about SEO? 0:59 - Technical vs non-technical SEO 4:38 - The importance of naming things 6:03 -

In this candid episode of Search Off the Record, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt from the Google Search team peel back the curtain to reveal a more human side of their work and challenges. Instead of diving deep into technical concepts, they reflect on their personal journeys—touching on everything from public speaking nerves to building empathy between developers and SEOs. Through playful banter and thoughtful commentary, they share how communication, context, and curiosity play vital roles in their day-to-day roles, both internally at Google and in the broader web ecosystem. The

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin and Gary from the Google Search Relations team take a deep dive into how Googlebot and web crawling work—past, present, and future. Through their humorous and thoughtful conversation, they explore how crawling evolved from the early days of the internet, when scripts could index a chunk of the web from a single homepage, to the more complex and considerate systems used today. They discuss the basics of what a crawler is, how tools like cURL or Wget relate, and how policies like

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt from the Google Search team dive deep into the foundations of how the web works—specifically HTTP, TCP, UDP, and newer technologies like QUIC and HTTP/3. The two reflect on how even experienced web professionals often overlook or forget the mechanics behind these core protocols, sharing insights through technical discussion, playful banter, and analogies ranging from messenger pigeons to teapots. The conversation spans key concepts like packet transmission, connection handshakes, and the importance of status codes such as

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Google's Martin Splitt, Cherry, and Gary Illyes discuss the exciting expansion of Search Central Live with the introduction of Search Central Live Deep Dive. They share the history of Search Central events, the inspiration behind creating a more advanced, multi-day experience, and how community feedback helped shape the new format. Cherry explains how the Deep Dive events will offer in-depth sessions, practical workshops, and greater opportunities for networking within the Search community across the APAC region. The team also offers a behind-the-scenes look

Ever wondered how web standards are made? Martin and Gary from Google Search take you behind the scenes of the internet's governing bodies. From the IETF to the W3C, learn about the consensus-driven processes that shape the web. Find out why these standards are crucial for ensuring a consistent and reliable online experience. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr089-transcript Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe to Google Search Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search

As 2024 comes to a close, we're reflecting on what SEO things happened this year. Listen along as we chat about what we learned from going to events, the importance of understanding how AI works, and whether everything will be replaced with JavaScript. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr088-transcript Encoding + Googlebot → https://goo.gle/4iZEKXO Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe to Google Search Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral 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, John and Martin talk to Allan Scott from the Google Search team that handles duplicate content. They explore how Google Search deals with duplicated content, clustering, and canonicalization. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr087-transcript Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe to Google Search Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast #SEO Speakers: Allan Scott, John Mueller, Martin Splitt Products Mentioned: Search

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Lizzi and John are joined by Rio Ichikawa, a product manager working on UX, CRO, and SEO, to discuss the intersection of SEO and UX. They explore how user experience impacts SEO, emphasizing the shared goals of attracting and converting users. Tune in for a discussion on common UX mistakes - like carousels - and how heatmaps can be a valuable tool for understanding user behavior and optimizing web pages for better engagement and conversion rates. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr086-transcript Transcript in

Sometimes talking to your users is the best way to figure out why that pesky bounce rate is high. But how do you actually do that, especially if you're on a budget? In this episode of Search Off the Record, we're learning all about user experience research (UXR) and how getting a better understanding of how your users interact with your website can help when you're looking for ways to improve it. Tune in as Iva Barisic Hafner, a user experience researcher on the Google Shopping team, explains how to use

What does recursion, Weather Frog, and Momo the Magic Cat have in common? In this episode of SOTR, Lizzi and John go behind the scenes of a Google Doodle with Jessica Yu, the lead for Doodles and delight on Google Search, about designing experiences that resonate with your audience. Listen along as we learn more about what's involved in getting an easter egg into Google Search, from hatching the idea to designing (and deploying) the experience and measuring success. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr084-transcript Jessica Yu on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3BKgSq1 Momo's

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Ben Walton and David Yule from the Google Search Site Reliability Team (SRE) walk us through their day to day work, which surprisingly is not just about putting out fires! Learn what Search SREs really do, how they handle incidents that occasionally occur, and what it takes to be an SRE for Google Search. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr083 SRE handbook → https://goo.gle/3XSbVUF David on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3XQKavR Ben on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/4ewAkEX Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe

It's been a few months since you hired an SEO; how can you tell if things are headed in the right direction? In this episode of Search Off the Record, Lizzi and John interview Erika Varangouli, head of Branded Content at Riverside.fm, about all things hiring and working with SEOs. Just because uplift isn't happening doesn't mean they're not doing work; we walk through practical things to check throughout the process, such as how things are prioritized, is there regular reporting, and proactive communication around things that don't go as planned.

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Irina Tuduce from the shopping team joins John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman to chat all things shopping data, from schema.org to feeds spec. Listen along as we chat about how shopping infrastructure gets its data, why pricing data can be tricky, and what the Shopping team has been working on this year. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr081-transcript Irina Tuduce on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3Xuiywf Product structured data → https://goo.gle/4eaPJus Feed spec in Merchant Center → https://goo.gle/3Tdl2MU How to set up Merchant Center account →

We sat down with Mihai Aperghis, a Google Product Expert (PE) for Search, when he visited the Zurich office for the PE Summit this year. In this episode we talk about how he started his SEO agency, the tools he built, and his role as a Product Expert in the Search Central Help Community. Mihai explains how he built tooling to get data from Search Console into Google Sheets and how he automated this process as well as what features he'd like to see coming to the Search Console API. Resources:

In this episode of SOTR, John Mueller, Lizzi Sassman, and Gary Illyes talk about misconceptions around crawl frequency and site quality, what's challenging about crawling the web nowadays, and how search engines could crawl more efficiently. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr079-transcript Gary's post on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3YAT55q Crawling episode with Dave Smart → https://goo.gle/3WShUsf If-Modified-Since → https://goo.gle/3ywXvja About the IETF → https://goo.gle/3SGVVlo Robots Exclusion Protocol → https://goo.gle/4dgmBSg Proposal for new kind of chunked transfer → https://goo.gle/3AgMF1c Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe to Google Search Channel →

Managing websites that use different languages and serve different countries is no easy task. That's why Lizzi, Gary and Martin sat down to talk about all things internationalization, hreflang and what's making managing international, multi-language websites easier. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr078-transcript Docs for international and multilingual sites → https://goo.gle/3WtolAL How x-default can help you → https://goo.gle/3Y8AdKB Web Almanac hreflang usage in 2022 → https://goo.gle/4bKX2Hv Hreflang tags generator by Aleyda Solis → https://goo.gle/4bVRVEI Merkle Hreflang testing tool → https://goo.gle/3WaWbKj Hreflang Builder → https://goo.gle/4cW8fGi Listen to more Search Off the Record →

In this episode, Zoe Clifford from the rendering team joins Martin and John from Search Relations to talk about how Google Search deals with JavaScript sites, how rendering works and what the mysterious "iteratorect" was. They also discuss what's the DOM, if all pages get rendered, how long it takes and what website owners should look out for when building JavaScript-driven websites. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr077-transcript JavaScript SEO basics → https://goo.gle/3W0XnjB Fixing search-related JavaScript issues → https://goo.gle/3S2bMdY Google I/O 2019 presentation → https://goo.gle/4bCdZ6M Listen to more Search Off the Record

In this episode of SOTR, Lizzi and John sit down with Elizabeth Tucker to go behind the scenes of Search Quality product management. Listen along as they discuss using data science to measure quality and make improvements, how search behavior is changing over time, and how to think about E-E-A-T and the Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr076-transcript BERT paper → https://goo.gle/3XroKpe E-E-A-T for site owners → https://goo.gle/4c5E0fQ Search Quality Rater Guidelines → https://goo.gle/3z07OvN Improving Search with Rigorous Testing → https://goo.gle/45x7OQ0 Day in a life of a Search

How does Google address incidents that affect Search results, like indexing problems or crawling issues? Join John, Lizzi, and Gary in this episode of Search off the Record as the team discusses internal processes Google uses to detect, investigate, and communicate these incidents to users and website owners. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr075-transcript Google Search Status Dashboard → https://goo.gle/3Vcs9pi Lifecycle of an issue → https://goo.gle/3KsgjCe SRE Playbook's chapter on troubleshooting → https://goo.gle/3V9NPCj Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe to Google Search Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral Search Off the

In this episode of Search off the Record, John and Lizzi invite Michael Chidzey and "Jo" Juliana Turnbull to talk all things SEO Office Hours. Listen along as they discuss why they picked this format, whether community building has an impact on SEO, and how you can get involved in this growing community of SEO practitioners. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr074-transcript Join the next Good Signals SEO Office Hours → https://goo.gle/4avilfM Good Signals SEO Office Hours announcements on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/450vo7F Jo Juliana Turnbull on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/4bISYbP Jo Juliana Turnbull

What's the best way to handle outdated content? Does old content affect SEO? In this episode of Search Off the Record, Lizzi Sassman and John Mueller discuss the importance of addressing old content and updating it to continue being useful to users today. Listen along as Lizzi and John discuss content decay's effect on Google Search results and practical steps to tackle it. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr073-transcript Crypto redirects → https://goo.gle/4dq7Ywe Outdated blog post on traffic drops → https://goo.gle/3y8UNQd Mobile-Testing Tool blog post → https://goo.gle/4bsCJ1Q Structured Data Tool landing page

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Gary Illyes, Lizzi Sassman, and John Mueller put Large Language Models (LLMs) to the test and compete to create the best social post using generative AI. Listen along as they weigh the pros and cons, assess how accurate the posts are, stumble on some owl facts, and see how Google's own GenAI tool, Gemini, can be used as a creativity tool. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr072-transcript SEO Starter Guide → https://goo.gle/42alrmy rel=prev/next isn't a signal → https://goo.gle/4aIWz8F Managing Multi-Regional Sites → https://goo.gle/3J3u5e9 Bubble

In this episode of Search Off the Record, John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman are joined by Rick Viscomi from the Chrome Web Performance team to discuss the importance of understanding what users seek to accomplish and optimizing accordingly, rather than focusing solely on metric scores. Listen along as the Search team touches on metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and the latest Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as pieces of the pie for a better user experience. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr071-transcript Introducing INP to Core Web

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Gary Illyes and Lizzi Sassman take a deep dive into crawling the web: what is a web crawler, and how does it really work? Listen along as the Search team is joined by an expert web developer in the SEO community, Dave Smart, for an in-depth and technical discussion of all things crawling, and maybe dispel some myths along the way. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr070-transcript Managing your crawl budget → https://goo.gle/3IzRZxl Dave Smart on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3wPSuRA Tame the Bots → https://goo.gle/4cfCQ1P

In this episode of Search Off the Record, John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman sit down with Aaseesh Marina, Product Support Manager, to discuss the Search Central community forums. Did you know there is a group of Product Experts and community members that can help you navigate your SEO questions? Listen along as the Search Team takes a deep dive into the Search Central help community forum and discover why it should be your go-to guide for any SEO help. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr069-transcript Search Central help community → https://goo.gle/3sViTv3 Product

The SEO Starter Guide is getting a refresh! Have you ever wondered how the Search team plans and writes such a document? In this episode of Search Off the Record, John Mueller, Gary Illyes, and Lizzi Sassman discuss which topics are still relevant, the right level of detail for a starter guide, and whether or not including anti-patterns in documentation is a good idea. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr068-transcript SEO Starter Guide → https://goo.gle/42alrmy SEO Starter Guide: What's all the drama? → https://goo.gle/4b6ZLMq Let's pick a domain name → https://goo.gle/3tezc6t Search

In this episode of Search, Martin, John, and Gary look back at 2023 and reminisce on some of this year's Search announcements. From updates to Core Web Vitals to going back to basics of website titling, the team covers a wide range of announcements and updates in the world of SEO. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr067-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, Martin, Gary, and John discuss aspects of SEO that website owners often overlook. From overall quality to more technical aspects, The Search team talks about where they focus on their SEO work and why the details add up to a better SEO experience. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr066-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, John, Gary, and Martin discuss why the search team adds and removes features on their search engine, Steve. From creating a better user experience to surfacing relevant answers for search queries, maintaining an organized webspace requires continual retooling. Tune into this episode of Search Off the Record to learn about what the team considers when updating their search engine itself! Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr065-transcript Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations

In this episode of Search, John and Gary discuss the impact of quality on search results. From sitemaps to scheduling and more, the Google Search team talks about how the quality of the page and site plays a role in crawling and indexing, besides ranking. Do you need to update your site often or add many links? Tune in and find out on this episode of Search Off the Record! Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr064-transcript Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google

The Google Search algorithm has been updated and panic quickly sets in. In this episode of Search, Martin, John, and Danny help content creators everywhere focus on the value they bring into the digital world. From changing ranking systems to updated documentation, the Google Search team discusses their holistic approach to SEO, ranking, and more! Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr063-transcript Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast

A top-level domain (TLD) is the last part of a domain name, after the dot, and identifies the type of organization the domain belongs to, or the country the domain is targeting. Some examples include .com, .org, .ai, .ch, .xyz. In this episode of Search, John, Gary, and Martin help you choose the best top-level domain for you and your website, including price, popularity, and if a custom one makes a difference in search engines. They also touch upon second-level domains, dashes, keywords, their effect on SEO, and more! Resources: Episode

Martin, John, and Gary discuss the potential reasons why your website or page is not indexed, both from a technical and quality perspective. Learn about the tools and reports available in Google Search Console to help determine why your website is not indexed. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr061-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, 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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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