English Google SEO office-hours from April 2024

Google Search Central
Google Search Central
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Published 2024-04-18
This is an audio-only recording of the Google SEO office-hours from April 2024 - a transcript is available at goo.gle/SEO-april24.

These sessions cover topics submitted around anything search and website-owner related like crawling, indexing, mobile sites, internationalization, duplicate content, Sitemaps, Search Console, pagination, duplicate content, multi-lingual/multi-regional sites, etc. The answers are compiled by the Google Search Relations team.

Need site-specific help? Post your question in the Google Search Central Help Community, and get answers from our Product Experts and other experienced web professionals: goo.gle/sc-forum.

Do you have a question about Google Search or SEO? It might be a good fit for the office hours. You can submit your question for Google SEO Office Hours here: goo.gle/seo-oh.

Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:33 - Is it likely my rankings have dropped because Google found out I have two websites?
1:10 - Does it matter if one uses underscores or hyphens to separate keywords in the URL?
1:45 - How do I tell Google not to crawl and index only paginated search results on my site? Should I use "follow, noindex"?
2:56 - Should I continue counting impressions and clicks from an old domain after a new address relaunch?
3:13 - Should I use hashtag color or ?color in the URL for a T-shirt product with different colors in a dropdown?
3:51 - How do I remove my website from Google Search?
5:01 - When linking to a URL with a highlighted text feature, does the PageRank flow to the page in the same way?
5:55 - If my site is down (503 status code) 4 times a week, for 10-15 mins, is that a concern for SEO?
6:40 - I changed the Facebook page URL to a new one. What do I need to do next?
7:24 - My site disappeared from search results after it was transferred from WordPress to self-publishing.
7:58 - If we switch to another website hosting provider, will this have a negative and lasting effect on our SEO rankings?
8:23 - Google is indexing URLs from my website which seem to have been created by a bot in Chinese.
9:07 - We have blocked some IPs from App Engine and when we submit sitemaps, we get the HTTP 403 error.
9:33 - How do I remove the old cached version of my site from Google Search results?
10:15 - Can I use Indexing API for a real estate ad?
10:44 - Is it ok to integrate headlines in images as HTML text (e.g. as an H1 tag)?
11:13 - Is there any sanction if a website has a hidden burger menu with the same links as the desktop menu?
11:28 - Can you use multiple hreflang tags to indicate preferred locations if a domain is using a regional subdomain?
12:08 - Should I create a new Search Console property when moving my website from HTTP to HTTPS?
12:27 - How can I fix fake 404s hitting my site from an external source? Is it related to a ranking drop?
13:02 - Does the Google account used to verify a domain in Search Console have to match the owner of the new website?
13:39 - Does a sitemap file name have to be sitemap.xml or sitemap_index.xml? And is it mandatory to have a sitemap?
14:08 - Should I redirect my mobile site URL to my desktop URL instead of responsive web design or dynamic serving?
14:44 - Wrap up

Check out past office hours → goo.gle/gsc-seo-oh
Subscribe to the Google Search Central YouTube Channel → goo.gle/SearchCentral

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All Comments (12)
  • @alexanderbauer8759
    The funniest thing is Google won't even show you relevant results anymore. Most of the time I'm searching myself, they show absolutely unrelated results. Like you search for banana and they show you apple. There are better search engines nowadays.
  • @Tciganskybaron
    Мы установили плагин Core Web Vitals и видим, что фиксируется длительное ожидание отклика при клике пользователей на неинтерактивные элементы сайта: заголовок h1 и уже выбранный пункт меню. Как указать Гугл-боту на это? Или другой способ решения проблемы. Спасибо! We installed the Core Web Vitals plugin and see that there is a long wait for a response when users click on non-interactive elements of the site: the h1 header and an already selected menu item. How can I point Googlebot to this? Or another way to solve the problem. Thank you!
  • @vinaykumarboddeti9825
    Do we need to include the company name in the address for local citations, or should we perform citations without mentioning the company name in the address?
  • @vutuankiet.hoc2k
    00:03 SEO tips from Google office hours 02:05 Google SEO outcomes for website indexing 04:00 Ways to prevent your website from being found in search results 05:54 Serving a 503 status code for 10-15 minutes is not a concern for SEO. 07:50 Changing hosts should not have negative effects on SEO rankings. 09:50 Google SEO office-hours summary 11:47 Internationalization and moving to HTTPS 13:42 Use a clean responsive setup instead of separate URLs for mobile and desktop versions Crafted by Merlin AI.
  • @DBlockn05
    Can you talk a bit more about PBN, Private Blog Network(s)? If you have multiple sites, example, let's say I have a website that is about Samsung products and another that is about Apple Products, can I link the sites to each other if it's relevant? Maybe in a blog post etc or would this be considered a PBN/illegal?
  • @alexanderbauer8759
    SEO is a scam. If you're a big site you can post the biggest garbage and rank. If you're a small site the best content won't help you.