Algorithmic Brand Optimization: Interview with Google’s Gary Illyes Ep. 576

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, one of the owners of EWR. And my name is Matt Bertram, one of your SEO specialists. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. We are so excited. Like we mentioned last time, we are in the presence of sunshine making glory. We're so excited to have Gary, and I've seen him on interviews. He kind of requests to not even attempt his last name, so I'm not going to. We've got Gary from Google. We're really excited to have this interview going. So, Gary, thank you so much for joining us. Buna Zewa. Is that right? Buna Zewa. Yeah, that's correct. I'm impressed, actually. It doesn't happen often, but you've managed to surprise me. Fantastic. That was my goal. Well, good job. What a great way to start. So, we've got a list of questions. We're excited to be given some time with you, and let's just jump in. We wanted to start with, like, you recently, it looks like, have kind of a new position at Google. It may be relatively new. How do you like this new search relations team? When was that group team formed? And would you say it's fair to say that team is kind of a replacement for Matt Cutts? And are you just a glutton for punishment, you know? That's an interesting question. And something that's been brewing for, I mean, it's related to something that's been brewing for quite some time. We actually haven't changed teams. We just rebranded ourselves because originally, we were called, I think, Webmaster Trends Analysts or Web Trends Analysts. And that's a confusing title. Like, internally, when we were asked, like, what are you doing? It's like, well, we are Web Trends Analysts, so we communicate a lot with external people. And then sometimes we analyze the web. And then people were just, like, really confused about, like, what the heck are we doing? And search relations, that describes better what we are doing, essentially. And then

we just decided to go with that. Nothing really changed internally. Well, nothing at all, except now people can understand easier what are we up to, I guess. And as for the Matt Cutts connection, there also hasn't, there was no change there either. Basically, when Matt left, then we were brainstorming a lot whether we should have one person who replaces Matt or, well, or not. And we decided that there will not be one person. Basically, the person who's responsible for Web Spam position that Matt had initially, that was filled with, by one person. I will not name him because he wants to stay anonymous for reasons. But then the communication side, that was replaced by a whole team. And we, some folks are less visible. Basically, they don't like the communication side of it. But then there are a few of us, like John, Martin, Daniel, and myself, who don't mind. Okay, that's an overstatement that we don't mind. But are okay with communicating externally. But it also means that we cause Twitter wars and meltdowns and all the fun stuff. We also represent Google in court sometimes. So, yeah, it's basically what Matt used to do, except instead of one person being the lightning rod, now there are several. So, I've seen a couple of interviews with you guys, and you really seem to have a lot of fun. I think, you know, I'm wearing a shirt that says sarcasm on it because you're a very proud wielder of sarcasm. Seems like you guys have a lot of fun doing what you're doing. Like, what's it like working on that team? It's probably a nightmare. So, like, I mean, we've been doing internet stuff for a very long time. Like, if you combine us together, then probably we have over a century experience of internet stuff. So, we grew quite cynical of things. So, there's lots of cynicism going on when we interact with each other. That doesn't bleed through the public communication. Well, not often, at least. But then we still want to have

fun. So, if not cynicism, then what else can you have? And then there's sarcasm. And I believe that we are doing quite a good job being sarcastic. It's been pointed out quite often that people, like, well, people who never heard me do public speaking, for example, they would not understand what's happening. And they wouldn't understand why am I saying things and then mean different things. This is especially true in America. When I have public speaking opportunities in the States, then, well, sometimes I confuse people. And then they just quote literally what I said, even though it was just sarcasm on my side. So, Gary, when you were talking about, like, you know, Fred, right, the update Fred, where did that fall? On sarcasm or cynicism? And if you could talk a little bit about kind of, like, the experience surrounding that kind of exchange. So, that was cynicism at that point. That was Barry annoying the living heck out of me with, I don't know, we launched some update on search. And then he's been pestering me about why don't we give it a name, the specific update. And I was like, no, we are not naming these things. It's like, no, we should name them. And he's like, no, we are not naming it. And then he was pestering me for a while. And then at one point, I just snapped. And I was like, you know what? From going forward, every single freaking update will be just Fred. And that's it. Just Fred. Okay? Yeah, I mean, y'all are constantly doing updates. So, it's hard to, I guess, keep up with, you know, the naming of all of them. Right. Right. Right. Like, choosing specific names for every specific update would be kind of a nightmare. Yeah. So, it's, I think that what Danny did, Danny Sullivan, our public search liaison, to name these updates just core updates, and then people stick a name or a month next to it, next to the name. That kind of works. I don't think that it

was necessary, but if people are happy with it, then whatever. I think they just want to kind of point to something of like, you know, what's changing in the Google dance and kind of what's going on, people are calling what's going on with the weather, that sort of thing. So, I think that that's helpful. So, you know, I wanted to kind of transition away from some of that stuff and kind of talk about more kind of broader views of stuff. Maybe you can speak a little more openly. But, like, you know, one of the big hot things, right? And, you know, SEO used to be a hot term. Now, it became kind of a negative term. And then, you know, it kind of constantly changes. But machine learning and AI is really kind of stepping to the spotlight. You know, we're seeing that a lot in, you know, the AdWords side of things and kind of the learning algorithms and neural networks kind of building better at a lot of these searches. I would be really interested to hear kind of your future of kind of where things are going, you know, and kind of what that kind of guiding star is. I know we can get into Eid and some other things later. But I really wanted to hear kind of your broader view of kind of where search is going, where, you know, technology is going as far as search goes. Right. So, honestly, I don't think that machine learning changes. No, us using machine learning in search changes all that much externally. Basically, the same rules apply. It's just we are combining signals in ways that we haven't thought of before, for example. And I do think it's making search better in a way that we haven't seen before or we couldn't think of before. So I do think that from our perspective, this whole machine learning voodoo, it's actually a good thing. I know that SEOs and those, well, web professionals in general, they focus a lot on the machine learning

aspect of it. I honestly think that they shouldn't because we don't change the rules or the guidances just because we started using machine learning. We figure out new connections between different things, thanks to machine learning. But otherwise, everything just stays the same. So the experience that you want to provide to the Google user is still the same. This might be a good place to check. We always say on our podcast, you can go back, you know, we started in 2009. We always say that if you're providing a good experience to the Google user, Google will look favorably upon you. What's your take of that kind of statement? I mean, it has to be the same, right? But yeah, I completely agree with that. And I was a big advocate of that even before I joined Google, like 10 or 11 or whatever years ago, because ultimately that's what users want, a good user experience. Right. And that can mean a lot of things, but like ultimately, like we're always thinking, okay, how do you provide that good experience to the Google user? And then like keep doing that and do that more and multiply it. Right. Also, one thing that's funny about this phrase user experience is that most people I talk to, they refer to user experience. When it comes to the layout, for example, of the page and how fast it loads. But the experience of the user doesn't stop there. For example, if I'm reading Wikipedia, let's say that I'm bored and I start reading something about, I don't know, Emily Bronte. And there's this 3000 word article and I keep scrolling and I get a good experience because it's in sections. I can jump up and down based on what I'm reading, reread some parts and then follow links to other Wikipedia articles or even external links. That was a user experience. The thing that I read and how that was written and how I perceived what was written on the page. That's also user experience. Because I literally, I'm literally

experiencing the content. It's not just the layout and how fast the page loads and where you placed ads or whatever. It's also the content itself. And when people think about user experience in relation to Google users, then I would rather they think about the whole package instead of just taking things apart. And just like, okay, but user experience is just like how I place the ads here and there. And like, no, it's the whole package. I like that. Yeah. So we're in the middle, obviously, of a pandemic. We've got COVID. What? I didn't get that memo. I mean, if you Googled it, you could find out about it. So what are you guys seeing any trends that are changing from a search perspective related to COVID? And if you are, are you guys saying, hey, this is something that we need to incorporate long term? I mean, in the beginning of this whole COVID crap, we had to rethink some of the features that we have. Like, for example, the, I don't know what the public name is for it. The, the, the PSAs, the public service announcements or like, for example, when you search for anything COVID nowadays, you get very specific experience on the, on the search result page. Um, and that we had to build out, uh, very fast from a product that was not meant to be used at that scale. Um, like when, when, for example, there's an earthquake in California or in Indonesia or whatever, um, then you normal, like if you search for the earthquake from that location, um, then you would get like a small box. Um, which says that the magnitude was, um, um, which says that the magnitude was this, um, the epicentrum was here and whatever. Um, but for COVID, we had to develop a complete experience where people could get, uh, relevant information from authoritative sources. Um, and, um, yeah, that, that, that was new. Um, that was triggered by, well, it was both our, um, forward thinking leaders. Uh, search leads, uh,

but also the trends that we saw in logs that more and more people, uh, search for, uh, COVID related crap, um, COVID symptoms, COVID, the treatment, COVID vaccine, COVID, um, I don't know, South Carolina or whatever. Um, and, uh, based on that, um, our, uh, path was influenced basically. Um, so Gary, if you apply that to kind of like a consumer behavior, I know, like, and I know you were on the, um, you know, the, the, the, the local team, or I don't know what the right name was for, but like the Google, my business team, as far as, you know, there was a lot of changes, um, on how people are, are searching, how people are buying things. Um, you know, and, and, and it looks like that, that's going to be, um, prolonged, uh, with what's going on. Well, maybe no, maybe not. There's some announcement today that Pfizer has some, you know, cure or whatever, but, um, or vaccination. But, you know, like, are you seeing like permanent, uh, changes in, in search behavior and, and I, I mean, I, I guess, I guess in every update, you kind of take that into consideration as things evolve. Um, can, can, can you speak to kind of anything that, that you're seeing or, um, anything that on, on a broad level, um, that you might be doing or, uh, SEOs or local small businesses, uh, maybe would be good advice to take into consideration of kind of what's happening and, and them needing to change kind of their online presence in, in, in a, in a way. Uh, that's a great question. Uh, I can only speak for search, uh, web search itself. Um, well, also video and, uh, and images, but not for Google, my business. Um, so I don't actually know what they are doing. Um, I, I, I see the features that, um, pop up and I'm amazed that that appeared just like you would be. Um, I'm, I, I'm not getting communications about that. Um, but in search itself,

um, we, we, we, we have a good question. did have to make some changes the thing that I talked about the PSA system or feature experience I don't know what would I call it that that spread that was brand-new basically almost it was built up what was from scratch and as for businesses on the internet I would invest in in in a shopping cart somehow I was I was amazed how quickly certain companies or actually platforms created for example shopping carts for for those who were hosting with them and enable them to continue to remain online even though they had to close their physical stores but I know for certain that many businesses are not on these platforms basically they can't get a wholesale solution from from the platforms that they are using because for example they are on WordPress or they are using Joomla or they are using blogger basically platforms that are not specifically created for for such things like selling things and yeah and they are not well they are not platforms like Etsy for example or wordpress.com where you can piggyback on whatever it was developed for other users or well yeah users so I would definitely like regardless of what platform are you on I would try to find a way to sell your thing online it doesn't have to be a physical thing obviously like you can sell I don't know web stamps or get good guest book entries or whatever but find a way to to sell online because now we know that people are willing to buy online they are willing to get to give out their credit card information to random stores but you have to provide that experience you have to let them give you your money and if you don't have a shop an online shop then how will you do that so I would do some research I don't know WordPress shopping cart or something like that on your favorite search engine yeah and just and just make it happen because you do

have users and they are willing to buy from you most likely you just have to provide them the ability to buy from you the ability to buy from you to actually purchase from you it's I think you're right the the speed at which a lot of restaurants made it available to order online when in the past they didn't was like an appropriate response to the situation but still impressive nonetheless all right so I mean Chris like even like service-based businesses right like I mean I think they need to start thinking about changing how they do business when things are typically like a in-person interaction right having and Gary I like I know you kind of mentioned before and we have it kind of down the list of questions but image and video like we're really seeing the incorporation of different kinds of content really reflective positively in the search engine to enhance that experience but like I'm thinking like you know service-based businesses that are you know SMBs like they need to provide or this is what I've been saying I want to get your kind of input on to see kind of how that matches up but I think they need to provide you know a virtual showroom right and and kind of walk them through um what would happen if someone came into their showroom to buy that experience so they can they can see maybe what they're going to get or hear some testimonials see kind of the different products if they're selling say windows or doors or something like that um and try to find a way to incorporate um virtually as much as possible because people want to limit interaction and then you know having that shopping cart at the end but you know some of the data points that I remember Chris I can't remember where it was but 85% of people are through the purchasing decision before they pick up the phone and call you I would think COVID you know it's even further than that right and

like you want to be able to maybe provide that whole experience no matter what your business is online yeah um and I would also add that sometimes you will have to think about how to uh transform the experience because very often you cannot map the same experience the same in-store experience to online um we see this with conferences for example and I I don't mean to offend anyone but I yet to see an online conference that can give me the the same satisfaction the same experience that an offline conference can do or can give me or can give me um because what because what people are doing um is trying to map the offline experience to online and it just doesn't work because like why would it work like you don't have um that person in front of you to read their small gestures the the small mimics on their faces for example um so you can't actually adjust your um um um um your presentation narrative I guess presentation um like for example I don't see that Chris is yawning there because I just don't see him um if I saw him that he's yawning again um yeah stop doing that yeah you would probably get sarcastic yeah exactly um and I would try to wake them up uh I would modify my presentation uh on the stage uh just to to engage with the with the audience but I don't see them so you get sucky presentation from Gary yeah well suckier than usual but anyway um but yeah um try to think about like how could you map well whether you map the offline experience to uh in-store experience uh to online and if you can cannot then just brainstorm with your uh partner about like how how to um offer something similar or even more immersive um yeah no that's that's that's really really quite interesting you can't map everything right and yeah you know really like when you're talking to people or even like you know that goes back to

like text messaging or something like that it can be misinterpreted because you're not reading uh uh the the the full body language of what's going on like that brings up something in my head I'm just kind of going off on a tangent here you know I know that you know a lot of things are being recorded through video now um I mean is there any plans of Google to start mapping uh like eye movement or um kind of like what whatever these you know um wearables are doing for how the experience is uh in search of like how people respond because that that's something that's extremely lacking I know that you know if you go back to why kind of Gmail and uh Chrome was was going on as people were spending very few few few moments on the search when kind of Facebook was launching and and they wanted to understand what the user is doing not just kind of in the search standpoint at least from what I've kind of read that was kind of one of the initial emphasis of of of why it was being launched like now with COVID everybody's more online you can grab more data I'm wondering um is there other kind of dimensions of what Google might be looking at when we're talking about the customer experience I know that's way off on tangent and I don't know if you've ever thought anything really long question very short answer basically I don't know um um I I know for certain that uh we are always on the lookout for for new signals that we can use um but uh I know that uh we do user studies in person user well in person as in we used to do in person user studies uh where we were doing eye tracking but that was in a in a lab uh environment um on otherwise I don't know I don't even know how you would do eye tracking um also it freaks me out that yeah it totally freaks

me out so I understand makes us a little nervous yeah I wanted to kind of go back to AI and and so it's you said it's and you may not be able to share this but you said it's coming up it's kind of pointing out signals that um are very useful that you hadn't kind of come up without AI can you share any of those is there anything that's standing and like wow I wouldn't have expected that to have such an impact is there anything that you can share because that that's like really geeky and cool I mean I know of several of them um but I don't think I should share them um so so so here's one thing um uh people tend to overthink search um and uh think of search like we are using all these obscure signals and whatever but very often those signals are not that obscure and they are like right in your face um and the problem with those signals is that very often it's very hard to um build protections against abuse um when it comes to those signals um so it's it's kind of like security through obscurity yeah um basically if we don't say then maybe people will not figure it out and then we don't have to um build a massive protection or more robust protections against um spam when it comes to those signals um but yeah basically any anything that's on on a on an html page is is a fair game um for for us to use as a signal and then you can combine them um of course and then whether or or how you combine them um that might uh give you um new perspectives about uh where something should rank for example okay so so one of the things I think you could uh talk about um maybe and it's a good time to transition into that is you know eat right like so that that from what I understand is like a simplification of kind of all

the different uh algos that um you know you're kind of looking at of kind of that guiding stars we were talking about before maybe you can uh speak a little bit more openly on just kind of uh eats in general and and what what people should be doing for for guidance maybe um good question um I would point out that eat itself basically I would start off with this eat itself is not a ranking signal um so let's take that off the table for for the uh audience um what it what it is is um an explanation for humans basically our raters about what our algorithms are looking for um when it comes to x quality or whatever and with that um the best place to learn about eat um is actually the um raters guidelines uh that we published and keep um updated um if you search for it on your favorite search engine I'm sure you will find it I I don't have the url handy um it's a over 150 page long document it's perfect when you want to fall fall asleep because um it's utterly boring um I I know that I I tried to read it several times I couldn't um it's just it's amazing how boring it is um it's only in English and that's on purpose um basically the the raters actually have to speak English um so or read and understand English so that's why we publish only in English um I don't know if that's new information um but anyway um so if you want to learn more about eat then raters guidelines that's that's your um your go-to document um if you want to read interpretations of of of eat then there are several people on the uh interwebs um who are kind of uh on the right track or are on the right track um one these people would be for example uh Marie Haynes um Glenn Gabe um Jennifer Slagg um they are all pretty diverse when it comes to uh eat and

generally their interpretation um is is um is quite sane um the problem with eat is that uh many people try to interpret it and uh most of the stuff is batshit stupid um uh and is that how you really feel I just I just want to check there um I mean I could try to sugarcoat it if you want oh I thought that was sugarcoat no that was me um no that that's fantastic um you know shifting gears a little bit uh you know like something that I think it's uh undervalued a lot is uh image and video search uh but based on like the search volume I see you like huge huge opportunities and I was curious if you could kind of talk about that on a broad level but maybe apply it uh to small businesses um how how they might be able to leverage it or or maybe some you know examples of people that are doing it right that small businesses could look to because I just think it's a huge opportunity that's that that uh in the marketplace because how many times can you write a blog about you know um you know roofing services in a particular city that that's not going to be um adding to the the knowledge base or relevancy to what's already been written but on the image or video side um there's a lot of kind of how to explainer and things that you could do to um enhance the user yeah um fantastic question um I love both video and images um image search um mostly because you can uh discover stuff in a different way um I mean we've been using web search for over 20 years and it's been working for us um as humans uh quite well um but then um sometimes you need a different um kind of um way to discover things um like I'm moving apartments um right now basically um I actually have to have something that is livable if I'm uh staying put in in

Switzerland because normally I would travel because that's my job but now we have this freaking COVID crap and I cannot travel anyway so now I'm moving apartments and um I needed ideas about how to um furnish the place um like my old apartment is a is a small studio so I didn't really have anything in there um but um now the apartment is bigger um it's a little bigger but anyway um but I do need new stuff in the in the apartment and uh I started as most people would I imagine I started with web search um but um it was just not doing it for me um and then as soon as I switched to the images tab um suddenly the idea started flowing um I'm a visual type myself um so I can imagine things much easier um if I see uh stuff like for example if I see um uh Cecil uh what's that in English uh wow reading chair okay I could I could remember in German and not in English wow that sucks um um if if I see a reading chair for example uh on image search then I can kind of envision that in the room and how it would look like in the room um but if I'm just doing the four blue links plus the ads plus the whatever um it's it's it's rather hard um and I think that's where um small businesses can can um jump in quite aggressively into um uh into search results um because I'm fairly certain there are many people like me uh who are more uh visual and then um they would prefer to see images of things that people are selling um I was actually following um uh a small business a local small business uh their transition to COVID uh era um and um they are a bakery um they do have a one um online presence um but um it was kind of plain um there was nothing special about it and honestly I wouldn't have

gone there um by myself I guess uh like unless I see an ad or something and yeah it just looked weird um and then overnight they redesigned the whole experience when um our first lockdown happened um and they put up lots of images um of everything and soon after that those images started to show up in me search as well and then when I was searching for example uh for uh uh what's uh keep fairly uh croissant for example um then I I would get on the on the uh second position uh whatever that means in image search um uh their uh croissant I recognized it because they have a logo on it so I I was also like a branding thing for them yeah I guess um but I clicked through and I bought a bunch of uh croissant for the next two days from them because I've I saw them on image search interesting unless if I if I would have seen them in web search I probably wouldn't have clicked through so Gary I mean on the image search and video search kind of um again in broad broad terms uh like localization right I mean I I'm assuming Google's taking that into consideration with your story of uh because I think a lot of people have shied away from it because you know you say you push a video out on YouTube or you put up an image like if you're if you can't sell um like geographically across the U.S. or North America or across the world and you're you're a local business you know you don't know who's going to see those images but it sounds like to me based on just your story um Google's taking localization into consideration yeah yeah yeah we do um I mean I was working on the team for uh I don't remember up to two years I don't actually remember for how long uh where we have this um uh signal uh called um uh ldcp language language demotion country promotion um

where we take into account the users the searchers location and then based on that um we boost uh results that are uh geographically relevant to them and demote um results that are uh in a language that they might not be interested in um so if you are um for example targeting um I don't know um French uh speaking Canadians then you can definitely do that just by creating French pages for them um that's that's really not new and it's been working like that for for the longest time um yeah but but yeah we do take into account uh geographic location both for both of the result and the uh the user so I want to ask a question so can you talk a little bit about Google's decision to include link signals surrounding no followed links and and how does this impact maybe other countries outside the U.S. more interesting um so that was one of my uh uh most exciting announcements um in um well last year um we don't actually have anything to announce there but I I can certainly talk about like how I envision using that uh to our advantage it's worth pointing out that most search engines uh are treating no follow as a hint um and they've been doing that for the longest time um like for example um if I remember correctly being never agreed to use it as a directive the no follow um signal or whatever annotation um they always said that they would just use it as a hint and basically that's what we picked up to um we for reasons I I don't know why um we back then in 2006 maybe um we decided that uh we are just going to use it as a directive but it also blinded us um in um many aspects so for example if you put up a no or if you put up um no follow link leading to malware for example then we wouldn't have been able to see that because you put out no

follow because you put a no follow on the on the link um same goes for spam uh same goes for pretty much anything um and for us treating and for other search engines as well treating no follow as a hint um basically allows us to discover uh these things that might be uh harmful for for the users um I don't think that we've ever said that we would uh want to um use no follow links in rankings specifically um definitely not um in the announcement blog post uh but that's also a possibility um we know first like our algorithm is um uh like ranking algorithms um still uh use links quite uh extensively uh for ranking purposes um which means that if there are no links then it's harder for us to um it's not impossible but but certainly harder to rank um certain results um and there are areas of the of the internet um language areas um where there are just not enough links and that blind that basically makes our results be less optimal um like for example if I'm in uh Indonesia um I used to go to Indonesia a lot because diving um and uh I do speak some Indonesian um so I was searching in Indonesian um and I was amazed how bad the results were um and even for common terms um like where to buy bread or where where to buy uh ww or this weird um um not sauce but salad sort of thing um and the results were quite awful in uh quite yeah quite awful many times um and when I got back from vacation and I started debugging these queries um then it was evident that the reason for that is that it is not that we have uh data void essentially where there are just no results for or no good results um for those uh uh queries it was that we were not we weren't able to rank those uh results because for example we didn't have enough links and we

didn't understand we didn't have context we didn't have um link juice i'm air quoting here um um um that we could use for ranking um and that's not to say that you now absolutely have to go out and buy links like a crazy person um because we especially in in the english-speaking um or on the in the english-speaking internet we have countless examples for sites um sites ranking without links at all like without incoming external links um because here the internet is more mature um we understand the web much better uh because well we've been operating on the english internet for longer for much longer um so you can absolutely rank without links um but in certain certain areas it's it's just much harder well and that's probably related to like if there aren't that many sites that have the content that fulfills the query then you know great you can rank without without the links but if you are in a competitive environment the links start to become significantly important like that just makes sense i mean um even in competitive uh or for quite competitive queries um it's it's certainly possible uh one of my favorite examples um comes from a conference where um this person external person um was saying exactly the same thing uh that you don't necessarily need links to to rank well and the thing uh that um uh he brought up was uh car brand uh purchase or something like that some what some some uh commercial query for a car brand um and uh the first result uh was from the brand uh itself um it was it's a smaller brand so it's i guess it's fairer more fair um and uh then he was doing uh link analysis live link analysis on that specific result um and it was just it just had no links no external links whatsoever was it a big site did it have a lot of no internal links no it's a small site yeah it it was a small site um

the brand was clear um but then if you are online and you want to stay online then you probably eventually will have to build out your brand um anyway um and um it just worked for them and then he showed i don't remember three four or five more examples where the it was uh he was showing head queries where uh these uh tools like uh oh i wanted to sound smart and now i don't know these tools um i don't know screaming frog that's a link analysis tool yeah okay uh wow high five oh it's internal oh wow that's great anyway so these link analysis tools uh couldn't find any uh external links pointing to the to those uh pages that showed up in the one in the poll position so it's definitely possible to do it um you just have to have good experience if you if we want to loop back to the uh beginning of the podcast yeah let me ask you this like you kind of brought up something um you're talking about maybe more fair like based on kind of difficulty of search terms you know we deal with a lot of uh small businesses that we we will work with and it seems to be completely difficult uh to compete with the bigger brands and i've read some things um about how y'all try to kind of make it more fair can can you speak to maybe any of those things or any kind of guidance uh to small business owners of how they can still continue to compete with these bigger brands uh with not the budget and internal team right and and and things like that to to still keep a level playing field in uh in search right so uh i will go back to my bakery example here uh because um it's a small bakery it's it's it's one of the more obscure bakeries um and we have several chains here that would happily ship me uh croissants um at a better price um and

this bakery managed to this small bakery managed to beat those chains um one thing that they did really well is to recognize that there are visual types and they optimize their images so they have more surfaces where they can come up in search results that's one thing the other thing is that they do something special um they are specializing in croissants they are not trying to sell me all the kinds of breads and pretzels and uh croissants and bear claws and uh danish whatever they are just specializing in croissants but their croissants are epic they are absolutely epic i don't know how they make them like i i can make croissants i bake a lot um i can make croissants but i have no idea how they make it but it's just they are just epic um so there are there were two things that happened one was that people talked about their croissants in relation to the brand name that they have um they were sharing um the the brand on social media um they were writing about them on facebook and twitter and whatever they didn't link but that's not necessary uh many in many cases um um and then uh they provided a painless experience uh for the users to actually get the croissants um they were the the first ones i i believe um the first bakery to offer um close to instant delivery within the city city of zurich um meaning that they were uh hiring people to deliver by bikes uh or using bikes uh the croissants basically they took out the oven the croissants and delivered it to your doorstep within 10-15 minutes wow um and that basically that was what made them amazing and why people talked about them um so you have to think like when when when you are online um there are many sites like yours most likely it doesn't matter what you do it's very likely that there's already a site like yours um what you have to do is sit down with

whoever you are working with with your partner with your friends with your uh relatives probably not with your dog and um uh start talking to them uh start brainstorming about how could you stand out because let's be honest like it's it's hard to be special on the internet um and it's very likely that you are not going to become special alone uh you will need help um but the help that you need is um more people who can give you ideas um so talk to people how would you uh make this uh this business more special it might be that you send uh uh i don't know a red rose with a bottle of wine that people are buying from you it might be that um you deliver you do instant deliveries um it might be that i don't know you just include a personalized handwritten note with every purchase um but you have to come up with something special that will make people remember you because if they remember you then your then their friends will remember you as well by extension because they will talk about you yeah yeah that's awesome so really you're talking about the overall brand experience something that we talk about at ewr on a regular basis and and really this kind of goes back to i mean we're we're talking with a search expert and his recommendation was deliver a red rose with your wine like that's that goes back to the business and the brand that you're trying to project to your customers that's pretty pretty phenomenal um we're we're about out of time i don't know if you have a time limit right now or because we've got a couple more questions or we can end it here go for it excellent matt did you have something that you wanted to jump in or yeah no i i definitely uh have a few more questions um i want to just make sure to leave enough time for if there's anything gary wants to kind of communicate

um you know i want to oh i'm good yeah i i don't have anything on my mind right now other than so so you know i guess schema schema kind of here changed recently and i don't know if you can kind of speak to kind of you know what why y'all change kind of you know what you're looking for or like we we've started to kind of restructure kind of the the schema that we've been doing on a few sites um based on some of the stuff we've seen i did i don't know if you can speak anything to kind of uh schema in general or kind of what what you're looking at there uh are you talking about the tool change yeah okay um so i i think there's uh there's a slight misunderstanding there um in general because we haven't actually changed anything about schema um what uh we changed is um what and how the tool interprets um because historically that tool um was validating any kind of schema that you threw at um and for from our perspective that was not necessarily optimal because then people were like okay here's this obscure schema why are you not using it in search and then we were like well because we don't want to it's like yeah but then the tool is validating it so what up with that and it's like just it was just it was just these really weird conversations um so what we did was um switching the tool to only validate schema um that we are using in search for uh visual features okay um i pointed out visual features because there are two ways we use uh schema in general in in uh in search result well in search um one is for visual things like for example recipe carousel or uh software software carousel uh and i forgot what else um but we are also using it in general for understanding the entities on the page and that's not visual that happens in the background it

will potentially make search results better um but it's not like people will have a direct benefit from from from them from those schema um those schema are actually much simpler to validate and basically any validation tool could do it um that is following the schema.org um uh i don't know what they are recipes or whatever um yeah um so technically from our side we don't like if you are following a schema.org um um well schema um then um uh you are already on on in the good um you can use some other tool to validate those um and if you are targeting a specific search feature uh visual search feature then for that you have the um rich whatever testing tool okay yeah um i i also have a question chris and i uh have had some interesting conversations on the podcast about amp uh and uh kind of the future of amp and then oh no how can you have interesting conversations go ahead man and and then you know um something that we're starting to see and we we haven't implemented it yet but you know like amp carousels kind of the little preview pages um you know i you know load time i know is is just one of the signals but but it's a pretty dang important one i believe to user experience because if you're on mobile and the page doesn't load you know you're going to click out pretty quick um but can you speak to the future of amp and any of your thoughts on kind of the amp carousels that are starting to kind of pop up wow uh the short answer is no um the longer answer is that um as a user uh very often i prefer amp um and very often i'm actively looking for the little amp icon um or badge or whatever it is um and even before we announced it and we already talked about it internally um i was actually super excited about it because i i felt that it

can provide an experience which can be better than whatever you can provide on on your site um using traditional coding um very often people overload their site with uh many many many many uh kinds of frameworks for example javascript frameworks um out of which they will use only one or two functions or instructions which is like the heck are you doing but anyway um um so amp could definitely help with that um and also the caching that's phenomenal for um for for users um for uh webmasters or seos or web professionals in general it can generate some overhead because well you have to all implement it but then if you are on a platform like um or cms like wordpress for example then you basically install a plugin and you already have it um so it's it's not that bad um i definitely think that um in many cases it can still provide a much better user experience than whatever people can do on their website but it's not necessarily true all the time um you can definitely nowadays create an experience that is very close to amp um basically create a snappy experience just by doing some prefetching for example uh or optimizing what you are loading uh into the web page and basically not overloading with crappy frameworks your poor site um so it's we we are we are getting there um already even without amp um and i think that um that was one important role of amp basically making web professionals realize that people are actually looking for snappier things um where things is pages web pages um and uh they started optimizing those pages um there were many people who were uh just switching to amp um or implementing amp on top of um the htma that they already had and that already helped people but then there were people who were um or web professionals who were not quite amp friendly for example and then what they were doing is to is optimizing their pages to load faster because

well they needed to keep up with amp or whatever amp could offer for users for their users um so i kind of feel that it it's in some sense it started a revolution um and it moved um the needle uh of the loading times um to a much more more green um section of the little dial um and we are in a better place uh nowadays uh one of my um uh pet sites that i will not name but it's cnn um uh it used to load in over a minute basically it it was just loading something i i was not even looking at one point like what it was loading but their developers invested a lot uh into speeding up the site um and i believe that that was partially because because of amp because every other new site um was creating this snappy experience where you could just click on a result and under very often under a result uh uh under a minute under a second uh you would get a result basically a page um where you could consume um or experience the content but if you if you were loading for uh over a minute or you could have first paint um in uh only 15 seconds then it's very likely that um your um that that click goes to somewhere else right um i mean if you are into um cnn like sites then maybe you would go to washington post um if you are uh wsj then you would go to um i don't know fox news or whatever i don't actually know i'm making stuff up here um um so yeah i i feel that it kind of started a revolution and um the bat the web got in or it's it's in a much better shape than it was a few years ago uh speed wise um and um i think that the team uh wants to eventually build on that momentum and uh perhaps evolve amp maybe i don't know um i'm not on the

amp team so i don't actually know um what uh their plans are but um um on their websites they usually uh publish their uh uh uh their plans uh they are not as secretive as search chris i have two two more quick questions um i wanted to follow up on that so yeah just overall when you're gary when you're actually using the web what what's your biggest pet peeve right so we you hinted there a little bit about time and load times but what's like overall your your nightmare experience when you're experiencing the web freaking pop-ups yeah um so actually there are there are quite a few i think um so pop-ups that's one thing um i loathe pop-ups and i just don't see like why would people do that because at this point um i i don't think i i would be surprised if uh uh you could convert really well with with pop-ups um because i mean everything has a lifetime and i would think that people got used to pop-ups enough that they just closed them at this point uh so i know i know for certain that their conversion rate was amazing but i'm not sure that um that's still the case mainly because people went blind uh well pop up blind yeah as in um the second thing is that everyone thinks that they need 3 000 plus words on a page to rank and this is uh very obvious on on uh recipe sites where basically you start from adam and eve um and you go through how moses uh got the tablets and then you end up at um i don't know julius caesar yeah uh and then eventually you will end up at the bottom of the page in three lines basically how to make croissants uh and i think that's bad shit stupid um and i know why people do it but it is crazy you don't need to do that um especially for for your own recipes like for example if you come up like

of course if you're copying recipes then you probably need to compete somehow with the other side you copied the recipe from so you might need those uh um basically first chapter of uterink heights um but otherwise it's like it's it's just bad shit crazy like no one wants that um so yeah um those are the two things that i'm i'm absolutely nuts about um i unfortunately i i got a little used to slow loading websites um so that's not bothering me too much anymore unfortunately uh uh but there was long-winded articles about nothing and then three lines on the bottom about something that does bother me and pop-ups those that's that's just that's just no make them go away great great question um so yeah two more quick questions if we have time for it um i have five more minutes okay um one more question um yeah so so say a company is um changing their name changing their site structure changing their domain changing really everything about their brand but maybe that brand's been around say 20 years um right you know like i know in search console you can kind of switch it over and it'll carry over some of the the link history maybe um but you know what kind of recommendations uh would you give to companies that are maybe rebranding to keep up with the times or uh maybe they're uh maybe they purchased uh you know a brand or incorporating it into uh their initial brand of how how to carry some of that stuff through is there any kind of place to look for best practices or you know any kind of recommendations you would give there because really everything that i've read like there's kind of a threshold that if you change enough stuff google's going to consider it a brand new site no matter kind of what what you do and i just wanted to hear kind of from the that's that's that's that's only partially true because if you are using the site move

tool in search console um then um that will just move all the signals over to the new site unless you are doing something spammy in which case we will uh choose to ignore that um so i i would definitely use that uh the tool in in webmaster tools because that ha in search console because uh um that's the thing that will will will make the signals transfer um i think one thing that many people uh forget when they are rebranding for example is how actually people work or how their brain works um and i was tweeting about that and uh i caused a little meltdown on twitter um because um um the the story behind the tweet was that um i got an email about um um basically someone was phishing email addresses and somehow they found found mine um and it was a rant about how after um a week we are still showing the old name for the site uh even though they rebranded um in our results um and i i i just lost it a little because it's like like like i will never do that like here there's a company called um um or used to be a company called cablecom uh basically the cable company um and then at one point they were um uh purchased by uh upc um but people um my friends they are still calling that same company cablecom because that's what we called them for 10 years yeah we we are not calling them upc even though that would be the correct term we are calling them cablecom why well because cablecom never actually invest well upc never actually invested into teaching people the new reality that it's not cablecom anymore it's upc um they are still branding some of the bills that they are sending as um cablecom um member of upc or whatever uh i don't actually know how to translate it but they are still showing cablecom on their bills um sometimes it shows up in ads that uh and and

they and then they are amazed that people are still calling the company cablecom and not upc it's like duh like you're even telling people that it's still cablecom like why would people call you upc when you are not doing a good job calling yourself upc um so i would invest traditional marketing or in traditional marketing in just teaching people that you've changed um and that's a very psychological thing it's probably not going to happen overnight it definitely won't happen in one week but eventually you can teach people to call yours um to call you something else i mean our brain can still be taught it's quite a um quite easy to teach the brain new things especially simple things like this um and it can work but it takes time and it needs investment like you cannot expect people to call you something else unless you tell them repeatedly that you they should call you something else that makes that makes sense yeah well we're kind of at i think at your time limit so we want to thank you very much for taking the time spending it with us do you want to share with our audience like how they could connect with you or resources or things is there anything you'd like to share well that's your email address so actually my email address is public because we were we published something on uh ietf as a draft standard and um so people could find my email address i'm just not answering most of the uh emails that i get because uh well i don't have time um what do i want to share let's see well don't eat yellow snow that's one thing um second thing is that um if you have questions or comments uh about our work please find john muller on twitter and uh complain to him um i'm also on twitter but please don't uh yell at me because uh i'm a snowflake and i would just go in my corner and start crying and i don't like

crying so don't do that um but don't be surprised if i'm mean to you because well i'm just mean in general as the purveyor of sunshine i am i like that it will wrap up the podcast with i mean again gary thank you so much for for joining us on the podcast thank you have a wonderful rest of the year hopefully this covet crap will go away in some form or another right fingers crossed um thank you much so much for joining us thank you for having me multi mask did i say it right no finally thank you so much it's uh multi mask multi mask yeah thank you bye