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JOHN MUELLER: All right.
Welcome, everyone, to today's special episode
of "Ask Google Webmasters."
Here today with a special guest--
Martin.
MARTIN SPLITT: Hi, everyone, and thanks for hosting us, John.
JOHN MUELLER: Oh, it's great to have you here.
So in the "Ask Google Webmaster," series
we take questions that were submitted
on Twitter using the hashtag #AskGoogleWebmasters.
Today's questions are on the topic of Search Console.
So let's get started.
Gev asks, "Googlebot seems to be rendering
only a part of our pages according to the search
console screenshots, even after the recent evergreen
Googlebot update.
Question-- is it just the screenshot,
or is there something faulty that I need to worry about?"
MARTIN SPLITT: That's a good question,
and in order to not just answer with it depends,
let me go a little bit into more details.
So if it's content that you care for, that
is really important to you, you should make sure
that it's actually rendered.
But you should also check the rendered HTML source code
if it's not in the HTML because maybe sometimes it's
in the HTML.
It's not showing up on the screenshot
because it's below the fold or something.
So make sure that it's in the DOM in the source code
that we show as rendered source code.
And, also, sometimes things just go wrong, so try, try again,
I guess.
JOHN MUELLER: So if it's below the fold,
would it just not be shown but still be used for indexing?
MARTIN SPLITT: Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just we have to cut the screenshot somewhere,
so we're going to cut it where normally--
especially if it's a mobile crawler,
where the screen for a mobile phone would end.
JOHN MUELLER: Cool.
Thanks.
MARTIN SPLITT: All right.
Our next question comes from Twitter user Twitter
Inofficial, and they ask, "Why does Google Search Console
always tell me that there's a JavaScript error when
I use arrow functions?
Why does it not support them?"
JOHN MUELLER: Well, that's an easy one,
so thanks for asking me that question, Martin.
The short answer is we support them now.
MARTIN SPLITT: Ta-da.
JOHN MUELLER: So if you try again, it'll probably work.
For our last question, @merlinox on Twitter
asks, "Why does the URL Inspection tool
report a status code 200 for a page that absolutely
returns a 301 redirect?
Nowhere in Search Console does there
appear any indication that the URL tested gives a 301."
MARTIN SPLITT: That's correct, yes.
The reason behind that is that the URL Inspection
tool is designed to show you what
happens when we index pages, right?
And what happens when we get a 301?
We make a new request to the URL that you redirected us to.
So we are not ending up with a 301.
We are ending up with whatever happens on the page
that you redirected us to-- in that case, a 200.
And that's by design basically because the URL Inspection
tool, as I said, is meant to show
you what actually happens when Googlebot processes
your website.
JOHN MUELLER: So I can see how that might confuse someone
who has double-checked the result code,
but that definitely makes sense.
So all of these are about the URL Inspection
tool, which is a cool part of Search Console.
I heard you even made some code changes there.
Is that correct?
MARTIN SPLITT: I did.
Yes, that is correct.
I made a tiny little change in the code.
JOHN MUELLER: Wow.
So what's involved there?
Can I just go in there and add a bunch of images of cheese,
or is someone actually watching out for--
MARTIN SPLITT: There are people watching out.
So I work with a team.
We agreed on building a certain feature,
and then they guided me through the process of making
that feature actually happen.
I wrote the code.
They made sure that it's tested properly,
and we are now running what's called an experiment.
So, basically, new features are undergoing the testing phase
first, and only if I pass that testing phase
my code will actually run for your inspections
in Google Search Console.
So you can't just add new stuff to it or break existing things.
JOHN MUELLER: Wow.
On the one hand, I'm kind of sad I just
can't add pictures of cheese, but on the other hand,
it's good to know that we're sending tools that actually
work to our users.
[LAUGHTER]
MARTIN SPLITT: Yes.
JOHN MUELLER: I hope you found these answers useful.
Thank you for submitting them all.
If there are more questions on the topic of Search Console
or anything else, feel free to submit them
on Twitter using the hashtag--
MARTIN SPLITT: #AskGoogleWebmasters.
JOHN MUELLER: All right.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you, Martin.
And goodbye.
MARTIN SPLITT: Thank you.
Bye.
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