DION ALMAER: I feel like there's this weird, interesting
spectrum on the web where, on one end is content,
and the other is app.
But it blends at a certain point.
MARTIN SPLITT: It does blend, it does.
DION ALMAER: And it's that blending part that I find
is always interesting, where I'd hate
for us to be building something in a way
that, then, search can't understand that piece.
MARTIN SPLITT: Right.
Because you want to find the content that
lives inside the applications, and you want to still find
the applications, right?
DION ALMAER: Right.
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MARTIN SPLITT: Hello, and welcome to "SEO Mythbusting."
Today, I have Dion Almaer with me.
What do you work on?
DION ALMAER: I work in the Web Developer Ecosystem group
here at Google.
And so that's within the Chrome organization,
but we work across Chrome, and search, and ads,
and all of the different areas of Google
that care about the web.
Personally, my passion is about the ecosystem.
Hence the name.
So it's about looking at the health of the web,
and what are we doing to really help developers,
but even beyond developers-- hence the SEO world
and the like--
to make sure that people are being successful.
So that could be successful in building amazing user
experiences, but it's also successful in actually
being able to pay the bills, and so they
can keep making those amazing user experiences.
MARTIN SPLITT: That is great.
So when I have you here today, I would love to talk about SEO
and the web platform going forward.
So we want to look into it, like, what are the new use
cases, what are the things that are coming up next,
and what are the things that we from the search side
should be preparing for, let's say.
Do you have any highlights that you want to talk about?
DION ALMAER: Yes.
So I gave a keynote at the Chrome Dev
Summit. in November 2018.
And it's kind of going through sharing
all of these great, amazing web platform updates and tooling
updates.
In the back of my mind, you're always thinking about, like,
are we getting closer to search and helping the word?
Or are we causing more problems going on?
MARTIN SPLITT: Yeah, it's--
DION ALMAER: I'm actually really curious to get
some of your thoughts on some of these items.
MARTIN SPLITT: Amazing.
Do you have any specific things that you
would like to address there?
Like is there any showcases, or anything
that we should look into from a search perspective?
DION ALMAER: Yes.
So one case study, actually, that we showed was Pinterest.
And it really got me thinking, because they came along,
and their growth team built this new PWA that--
MARTIN SPLITT: That's fantastic.
DION ALMAER: --was-- it's amazing.
Like the performance is top notch.
It's a great experience.
So they've got this great PWA that's really exciting.
Then they've got their kind of regular desktop site.
They've got-- they're using an AMP for different things.
And so if I'm a team like that, how do I, like--
I've got all of these kind of different sites,
in a way, which is almost like the opposite of the promise
of the web at times.
Like, build it once, and it was everywhere.
So, like, which of these-- how do--
what's the one that I want to give to search?
Like how do I think about that?
MARTIN SPLITT: That's a really good question.
So I think, generally speaking, if you
have the same content and multiple ways
that you present them to the user,
find out the one that is most likely to apply
to as many people as possible.
So if you have one specific thing
for, let's say, like, sign up users, to actually remix it
or something, that might not be the thing
that you want to surface to search.
Because me coming into it from outside and not having
ever used it, and I might not even
be able to use the feature, and then
it's like why am I getting here?
So try to think of what are people
typing into a search bar?
What is the purpose they are coming from?
I want to see this image board that Dion has created
for a Chrome Dev Summit.
So I might type in, like, image board dev summit.
And then I want to get the PWA probably,
because it loads fastest, and it is available
even if I'm offline, and stuff like that.
So give me that.
But also link to the end version,
because then we can also show the end version next to it.
So it's not really a ranking signal,
so we might see, like, different rankings there
depending on the purpose and the user characteristics,
what they type into the search bar.
But if you link them, then we can make the decision for you
so you do not have to worry about that kind of stuff.
If you then have a desktop site as well, that is great as well.
If it's responsive, that's even better.
If it's not responsive, then give us an alternate link
so that we can decide, OK, so this is the Google crawler that
uses mobile first, so we're probably
going to highlight the PWA experience
over the desktop site.
Versus, if someone's using the desktop site,
we might give them the other version rather than that.
But we are trying to make the right decisions for your user
so that you don't have to worry about these things.
But, strategically speaking, give us
a canonical that makes sense to as many people as possible
so that we can surface the related information based
on what people are looking for, rather than any differences
in the presentation.
DION ALMAER: Got it.
Cool.
The other thing that comes up a lot
is integrating our tools together
instead of having it in silos.
So we've already been working--
we've got Lighthouse over here.
We have PageSpeed Insights.
We've got search.
We've got all of these different pieces.
We announced at Chrome Dev Summit
the unification of some of these.
The PageSpeed Insights now uses Lighthouse and the like,
and that's super exciting.
Wayfair, another company, built this performance portal
to kind of help the team make sure that they don't regress.
Because we see that, a large percentage of the times,
people will, like, do an investment, have a quick burst,
get their performance good, and then it will slowly go down.
So they have this awesome performance culture
that's trying to fix that.
And I'm just looking at that, and thinking
about it's yet another example.
Like here's all the performance stuff.
Couldn't we be surfacing the kind of SEO pieces
into that too?
How do we bridge these worlds together--
MARTIN SPLITT: That is [INAUDIBLE]..
DION ALMAER: --so both sides can kind of
see the other things that are going on?
MARTIN SPLITT: So Lighthouse gets more SEO audits,
which is great, I think.
That probably, at some point, feeds into PageSpeed Insights
as well.
Search Console integrates some of these metrics
as well, because performance is also important for search's
core ability.
We want to, like, reward the content
that gets you-- that gets the user quicker into the content
rather than having to wait forever until something loads,
especially on mobile networks.
But for external tools and external companies
who want to dig into the data, I think
Search Console is a great way of already
doing that in a packaged way.
But, but we are working on ways of integrating
external parties and external content providers and platforms
to get the data that we are collecting already
for Search Console.
So, for instance, if you know one
of the many larger content management systems or platforms
that exist out there where people are creating content,
we don't want them to have to specifically
go into Search Console, and now, like,
deal with the interface they are used to,
and then deal with something new.
That's why we are bringing the data into these platforms.
And, eventually, hopefully, once we
have gathered enough information to understand
how the data is used and what data
is necessary and meaningful to external parties,
we will open these interfaces.
There will literally be an API to integrate the data
from Search Console, which gives you information like click
through rates, how many impressions
you get from search, how many clicks you get from search, all
this kind of thing, how many pages of your pages
are indexed actually.
Because not all of it might be indexed.
There might be an issue.
You might have a markup problem.
We want to surface this where people already are.
That can be an IDE integration.
That can be something like Wayfair does.
But, at this point in time, we are too early on
to open that up to the general public,
but eventually that's going to happen.
DION ALMAER: That's so exciting.
And some people were talking about how, like, they
want to understand the unknown things.
Like they wonder where like, what's--
if I do this, that, or the other,
how does it affect my customer lifetime
value, and these things?
And we keep running into something on the performance
side where they'll do this work, and they'll
make something that's a lot better,
but their metrics actually show in the field that it's slower.
And we're like, what's going on?
Like, in the lab it's faster.
It's obviously faster.
I can see it's so much better.
How is it slower?
And then it's because the reach that they
got just totally changed.
So these people are on, like, 2G networks
in emerging markets that can actually really use this now.
MARTIN SPLITT: That's moving targets.
Then you're comparing apples to oranges.
DION ALMAER: Right.
So you've got all of these new customers.
And so the mean metric isn't the thing that matters there.
Now you've reached this new audience.
You get more revenue, and the like.
So, like, how do we know, like, with the search
side and discovery, like, what are the things--
the next things I should do?
Which shall I prioritize, and the like?
MARTIN SPLITT: Right, right.
I think a bunch of stuff that Search Console
gives you already is kind of handy for that.
You see how certain content works,
and how certain other content might not work so great.
And that can have technical difficulty-- sorry--
technical reasons.
Or it can be actually content reasons.
So what we are trying to do is we're
trying to also broaden the perspective a little bit.
I mean, you said that.
Like, oh, yes, we're in this metric right now.
We want to improve performance, but actually it has degraded.
And it's like, well, it has, but it's not a bad thing,
because what actually happened is we opened up to more people.
That happens with search as well if you
look at it from a more holistic perspective.
So if you're not just looking at technology but also
at your content strategy.
And what I would love to see happening
is that, if we bring this data to where people already are,
that people become more aware of it,
that maybe you should also look at your content and the way
you present it, and the way you make
sure that you're talking to the person on the other end who's
trying to solve a purpose.
You're looking for something specific rather than
necessarily a specific product.
It's like I need this task to be gone and done and dusted,
and how do I do this?
So I think bringing the data to other people will help.
And I think what developers should
look at is how their content is performing in search engines
as well.
So how often do I show up in search results?
Where in the search results do I rank?
How many clicks do I get from search results
if the content looks like this versus like that?
So that's something that I hope to bring to more people
as well.
DION ALMAER: Cool.
Yes, that makes sense.
So web components has been another big topic.
MARTIN SPLITT: Oh, right, yes.
DION ALMAER: And we released an early version of a new one
that I'm super excited about called virtual scroller.
And, basically, for years, web developers
have been saying, like, give me a UI table
view on the web that can perform,
and scales with the DOM.
And so we feel like we're going to be able to deliver that.
But then what's that going to mean in the SEO world?
Is search going to be able to understand this
if it's all virtual?
And, like, as we kind of push the bar here
for performance and user experience, well,
how do we make sure we don't leave it behind?
MARTIN SPLITT: I think what a lot of people
outside of our sphere don't realize
is that we are working hand in hand.
It's not like SEO--
or search versus the browser teams.
We are trying to figure out how we can work with a web platform
rather than against it.
We are using the web platform.
We are basically running a browser, if you wish.
So we are actually looking into things
like components and virtual scroller, specifically.
And I think it's a fantastic thing, because we
have literally just released documentation for lazy loading,
or infinite scroll, whatever you want to call it.
Basically-- you know the drill--
I can have a page with a bazillion images or product
listings.
You can't have them all on the page right away, right?
You want to make sure that, as the user goes
through the content, they come back.
Well, how often did it happen to you that someone sends you
a link, says like, have you seen this product?
And then you go to the link and you see a lot of things
but not that product.
And then they go, oh, yeah, you have to scroll down
for a few minutes.
That's not good, right?
Web components are another thing that we are, like,
really careful about.
And we have some guidance out there already,
and we expect to give more guidance as well.
Because if you build new web components from scratch,
they look like they're semantic, but they are not necessarily
semantic in the strong sense.
If it's a button that just happens to look like a button
but really is a diff underneath, you
lose a lot of the accessibility features,
and so does search also loses a bunch
of the semantics behind it.
So, right now, we are recommending
putting the content, the meaty bits of your content,
like the actual, well, what it is about,
put that into the light DOM, and then
to use the shadow DOM and your components for presentation.
Virtual scroller is a specific interesting case where
not only is presentation but also
the way of how the content gets loaded and the content behaves.
So we are working on figuring out
how to make that consistent with search
so that you don't have to worry about using
these new technologies, because we're really excited about them
as well.
DION ALMAER: Yes.
No, that's great.
How do you feel about--
I keep longing for a world in the future
where we add, with web components,
these different semantics, kind of high-level semantics
that search can understand but also assistants can understand,
so we can get further into transactions and the like,
with the notion of I really want to be
able to go onto a commerce experience
since I want to buy a T-shirt for Martin.
And everything is brokered in a way that it knows your T-shirt
size even if I don't.
You know what I mean?
MARTIN SPLITT: Yes.
DION ALMAER: And there's a person tag,
and all these different things.
And then you get a great UI from it
too, because it's standardized.
But then search could use that, and assistant could do
full transactions if we do it.
And it feels like that would be a way for assistants
to kind of reach the long tail, versus trying to go to everyone
who's building a website.
It's got a lot of work to do as it is,
and we're asking them to modernize this, and fix
your performance, and do this for discovery,
and also build this thing for the assistant.
MARTIN SPLITT: Yes, that is true.
DION ALMAER: Do you feel like we'll ever get there?
MARTIN SPLITT: I think we get there probably quicker
than we think, because, conveniently, we have already
pushed the idea of using structured data to expose,
like, a bunch of information on your pages in a way
that not only our crawlers can understand them,
but also anyone else who basically
parses this information.
And we are using schema.org for that.
So we use, like, a standardized format rather than
just a proprietary thing.
So I hope that gets more adoption
and we see it both picked up by developers
and by these assistant systems.
Because, then, you can use the web really powerfully
because you have all the semantic data that you can just
pull together, and then package in such an experience
as you explained, like the full end to end commerce,
for instance.
DION ALMAER: Cool.
Nice.
MARTIN SPLITT: Man, thank you so much.
DION ALMAER: Thank you, Martin.
MARTIN SPLITT: Thank you.
See?
Development and SEO don't have to be contradicting each other.
Also, the iced tea is pretty not good.
[LAUGHS] Pretty watery.
But it has the fantastic right color.
Like, you picked the exact, correct prop.
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