The SEOs Diners Club - Issue #41 - Weekly SEO Tips & News

Here are the weekly SEO insights for the SEOs Diners Club members. You may also join our free SEO Diners Club network to ask questions and share your thoughts on these topics.

What is Crawled – Not Indexed and How to Fix for eCommerce

Indexation is not a privilege but an achievement.

Search engines can have a lousy time parsing and rendering your content. During the second wave of indexing, resources critical to the user experience are the ones that are more likely to be phased out due to their complexity (e.g., stylesheets and JavaScript files).

The article, which you can find a link to below, presents several reasons why pages are crawled but not indexed and offer some practical solutions to fix it.

What is Crawled - Not Indexed?

Crawled - Not Indexed is the most important of the warnings that Google transmits from the Pages report in Google Search Console to alert webmasters that Googlebot has visited several pages but has not yet indexed them. Although it looks similar to the "Discovered - Not Currently Indexed" alert, there are important differences.

Why are Pages Crawled and Not Indexed?

The "Crawled - Not Indexed" reason for not being indexed can affect several pages.

  1. A valid XML sitemap has not been submitted

  2. Product listing pages that no longer exist

  3. Dynamic pages with query parameters

  4. Thin or Under-expressed Content

  5. Weak Header Structure

  6. High Time To First Byte (TTFB)

  7. Problems Google encounters in the rendering stage after crawling the page

You can find these problems and how to fix them in detail in the blog post below:

Learn about one of the most common non-indexing reasons affecting indexation on eCommerce and find out how to fix to improve SEO.

How to Improve E-A-T for Websites and Entities?

E-A-T affects many areas in Google's ranking algorithms. Learn how to position yourself as an expert, authoritative and trustworthy entity.

The concept of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) has played a central role in ranking keywords and websites.

Speaking at SMX Next, Google Search VP Hyung-Jin Kim explained that Google has been applying E-A-T principles for ranking for over ten years.

From this statement, it is clear that E-A-T is essential for all topics and keywords, not just YMYL pages. Today, it is seen that E-A-T affects many different areas in Google's ranking algorithms.

Based on these explanations, SEO Expert Olaf Kopp has published an excellent article explaining how websites and organizations can improve E-A-T.

E-A-T impacts many areas in Google's ranking algorithms. Learn ways to position yourself as an expert, authoritative and trustworthy entity.

Is Fresh Content a Google Ranking Factor?

What does "content freshness" mean for Google? First, look at the evidence and see if fresh content helps your SEO performance.

Fresh content is a Google ranking factor if the search query requires up-to-date content.

Does this mean you need to change the publishing date of the page constantly? No, it doesn't.

Does this mean an article can rank higher than other pages because of its publication date?

Potentially, if Google thinks freshness is critical for the user's query.

Remember that many ranking factors are involved, not just "freshness." For example, you can get a ranking boost by following popular trends, upcoming events, or breaking news, but this is not always a successful long-term content strategy.

What does "content freshness" mean for Google? Let’s take a look at the evidence and see whether fresh content helps your SEO.

Google: URLs Don't Have to Be in the Same Language as the Content of the Page

In 2015, Google said the URL should be in the same language as the page's content. However, Google's Alan Kent says the URL doesn't have to be in the same language as the page's content.

In 2015, Google said, "it's better if your URLs are in the same language as your content."

In 2022, Google said, "From an SEO perspective, there is no negative impact if the URL is in a different language than the page content."

We should add that Google's John Mueller recently said that mixed languages in URLs are acceptable. You can watch the video with Alan Kent's statement:

This is an audio-only recording of the Google SEO office-hours from November 2022 - a transcript is available at https://developers.google.com/search/blog/20...

Google Search Console Improves Discover Performance Report

Google annotated the Discover performance report in Google Search Console, saying that the information has been improved.

Google has annotated the Discover performance report in Google Search Console, saying that the report has been improved. In particular, Google said it had improved the counting of clicks and impressions within Google Discover. This improvement took place on November 28, 2022.

Google adds that this may increase your clicks and impressions in your Discover Performance reports and that this is a more accurate representation of actual clicks and impressions.

This doesn't mean that your content appears more often in Google Discover, but rather that Google is reporting better in Google Search Console.

"Google has improved its system for counting Discover clicks and impressions. As a result, you may see an increase in your Discover data that more accurately reflect your site's appearance on Discover."

Google has annotated the Discover performance report in Google Search Console, saying the report has been improved. Specifically, Google said it improved the system for counting clicks and impressions within Google Discover.

Google: Backlinks Have Less Impact Today Than In The Past

A Google employee shared that links as a signal have less impact than when Google started.

In the Google SEO Office Hours video, a Google employee answered a question about backlinks and rankings and presented that backlinks have less influence as a ranking signal than they did in the past.

Interestingly, Google employees often say that backlinks have less impact these days. But perhaps the critical point to keep in mind is that the power of backlinks is being compared to when Google first started.

Backlinks have much less influence today than they did when Google first started. This is because backlinks' quantity (number) has become more important than where they come from (E-A-T).

For example, if you are a doctor, getting backlinks from dozens of junk sites is of much less value than getting backlinks from a Medical School or Hospital website.

A Googler shared that links as a signal have less impact than when Google first started

Google: Noindexed Pages Don't Affect Crawl Budget

Google says there's no amount of noindexed pages that will adversely impact a website's crawl budget.

Google's Search Relations team has confirmed that unindexed pages, no matter how many there are on a site, do not negatively impact a website's crawl budget.

Google Search spokespeople John Mueller and Gary Illyes took turns answering three similar questions from people concerned about too many unindexed pages on their sites.

To summarize the answers;

The noindex tag is there to help you keep some pages out of the index and has no unintended adverse effects, as Google has previously stated. If you want to ensure that these pages, or their URLs, don't end up in Google's index, keep using the noindex tag, and don't worry about the crawl budget.

Google says there's no amount of noindexed pages that will adversely impact a website's crawl budget.

Google More Hesitant to Send Users to Websites

A former Google employee who played a key role in Google Search thinks Google is more hesitant to send users to the web.

In a podcast where she was asked why Google search results have been so bad lately, former Google executive Marissa Mayer explained that it's not Google that's bad; it's the Internet. She then explained that one of the reasons Google tries to keep users in Google search results is that the web doesn't always provide a good experience.

Marissa Mayer was Google's number 20 employee. She played key roles in almost all of Google's major products, including Google search, local, images, and Google Ads.

With all due respect to Marissa Mayer, I have to say that I don't find this statement very realistic. If Google thinks a source is untrustworthy, it would be expected not to show that source and featured snippet in Google results.

Google seems to have found the "bug" of today's people here. Most of us are content with superficial, pill information. However, if we are not doing academic research, we may find this summary information provided by Google sufficient.

We may not even deign to click on the page that appears as a featured snippet in Google. This will please Google the most because the user will gradually think that Google provides the most reliable information and will never get into the habit of doing additional research or utilizing different websites.

Ex-Googler who played a key role in Google Search thinks that Google is more hesitant to send users out into the web

Google: We Have Algorithms to Detect and Reduce AI-Modified Plagiarized Content

Duy Nguyen, a Google engineer, said that Google has algorithms that can use artificial intelligence to detect plagiarized content.

In a Google Office Hours video, Duy Nguyen, a member of Google's search quality team, said that Google has AI algorithms to "go after" those who publish plagiarized content, with the result that the algorithms can "lower the rankings of a site that scrapes content from other sites."

The question was: "How should content creators respond to sites that use AI to plagiarize content, modify it, and then rank them high in search results?"

"Scraping content, even with some modification, is against our SPAM policy," Duy Nguyen said. However, Google "has many algorithms in place to go after this behavior and downgrade sites that scrape content from other sites," Duy added.

"If Google makes a mistake," he said, "and you come across sites that consistently scrape content and perform well in Search, please feel free to report them to us using our SPAM reporting form.

Duy Nguyen from Google's search quality team said in the Google office hours video that Google has

Book Of The Week: Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's Computers - James MacCormik

We use our computers every day to do amazing things. From the world's most enormous haystack, billions of pages of online content, we find and extract the needles that work for us. We shop online, post on social media, or make purchases.

But how do our computers accomplish all these tasks with such ease?

The Nine Algorithms Changing the Future is a must-have book that explains this question and the intricacies behind the nine fundamental computer algorithms that have changed our world, from artificial intelligence to Google PageRank, data compression algorithms to error correction algorithms, with striking examples and in language, everyone can understand.

I hope you enjoyed my weekly SEO insights. Hope to see you the following Sunday in the new episode. I wish you all a great week.

Best,

Mert Erkal