Topic: Time to forget the GOOGLE recommendations

[weather34]

there is a growing trend amongst many web design communities of how GOOGLE is actually destroying the design capabilities of the web.
I read an article last night "Kill Google AMP before it KILLS the web" https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/open_source_insider_google_amp_bad_bad_bad/?ref=webdesignernews.com

but it is not only GOOGLE AMP that is raising some concerns it is right across the spectrum of web design .

here is my real life scenario with a client last week , this client is SEO GOOGLE obsessed !

client: "brian GOOGLE sez my website is not mobile friendly can you fix it"
me: "if we design everything according to GOOGLE suggestions and opinions you wont have much of a website" has Im sitting there viewing website in question on my
mobile devices , iPhone4,iPhone 6, iPad and a windows mobile phone PERFECTLY FINE.
client:"but GOOGLE sez its not mobile friendly"
me:"ok give me 30-45 minutes i prepare your site to be mobile according to GOOGLE suggestions"

45 minutes later having done everything GOOGLE suggested , what we have is a header, few words and one picture with no jquery . GOOGLE sez your site is mobile friendly..

client: oh where is all the content gone and the changing areas , what about the photos/images/icons ? "

me: "if we design everything according to GOOGLE suggestions and opinions you wont have much of a website"  smirking

client: OK i see your point ..

SO moral of this is don't buy into everything google suggests you may end with not much but do observe the security gains of HTTPS that is valid but the rest of this
ever growing opinionated GOOGLE stuff is take it with a pinch of salt , if your site works and does what it is supposed the thats whats it is all about.

brian

[Jáchym]

Hi Brian,
200% agreed and I mentioned this in my Blog sometime ago as well, it is not just mobile friendliness, Google often suggests things that are either not possible at all to implement or would severly degrade the functionality of the web. I remember it for example recommended I remove the external links and use Javascript loaded from my server to make it faster - which is absurd because I was using the external links because of CDNs to make it load faster... and I could continue

[openvista]

Google has a set of public pronouncements very much at odds with what they display on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

For instance, Google says they prefer local content and yet all the top slots in search results are occupied by global corporations or national government websites regardless of whether their content is truly local. In the case of the NWS, the forecast and temperature for the page they list for "weather forecast 49855" (on page 1 of their results) is for the airport which is 20 minutes away (not to mention has a different climate). Google can read the geotags (GPS coordinates optimized for search engines) in my source code and know that for a resident of Marquette, MI, I am, by far, the most local result. But, in fact, they ignore it and prioritize the worse result.

Google also claims they prioritize speed. My site is significantly faster and more responsive than my competition and yet they return first.

Google also states that they love fresh content. My site is updated every 2.5 seconds. The NWS forecast page once per hour.

On and on it goes.

In fact, Google competes with their own search results by inserting a weather forecast and conditions from weather.com at the top of search result pages. This gives little to no incentive for most users to venture further and even less incentive to site operators to optimize for Google.

In recent years, Google has de-prioritized link exchanges (wherein two sites agree to link to each other). Such arrangements are now seen as manipulating the search algorithm. Instead, Google now looks for one-way links. It's pretty hard to ask another site to link to you when you promise nothing in return. They're just supposed to do it out of the kindness of their hearts?

All of this taken together means only the largest, most well-known, well-funded sites will have sufficient inbound links (still the largest search "signal") to rank highest in search results.  If you have thousands of such links scattered across the internet pointing at your site, you can violate just about every "best practice" in the book and still rank #1 on page 1 for any search term you like.

In the end, as weather websites operators, we should do exactly what Google publicly requests: focus on making sites our users want to visit. Do not try to cater to the search engines. Why would we assist an entity that is not only undermining our efforts but our very platform, the world wide web?

Our true competition isn't against other websites anyways, it's against apps and other walled gardens (like AMP is attempting to create).

There are attempts underway to push back using open source technology. See: https://blockstack.org/blog/introducing-the-blockstack-browser-a-gateway-to-a-new-decentralized-internet. We'll see where this goes.

[Jáchym]

Problem is not in Google, problem is in the way people interpret this.

For example, Google always said that these suggestions are only suggestions - not something you have to do - something that you should check and see if this really is what you wanted. In some cases, Google offered me some recommendations which were useful, things I forgot to do. In other cases it suggested something where I just said, no, this is ok, thats how I wanted it.

Problem is when people take it as a must that they have to "fix" everything Google recommends them.

[openvista]

It gets especially problematic, Jachym, when "SEO" companies come in and pretend they can interpret Google to the masses. Even if you haven't hired one of these companies to misinform you, you are likely to stumble upon their advice when trying to "optimize" your website for search. As a web professional, I can't tell you how many clients I've watched go down the rabbit hole chasing these strategies with little to nothing to show for it. Google now explicitly warns that any perceived attempt to  produce a higher ranking (apart from their prescriptive, albeit ineffective, "best practices") can relegate you to the dreaded "supplemental index" (invisibility).

[Jáchym]

I know.

It is absurd, Google's algorithm is probably much more complicated than anyone of you can even imagine. The whole algorithm takes into account thousands of things, there is also no way you can really mislead it. No-one knows how exactly it works - and even if you figured it out, even if the code leaked... on average there are 4 changes made to it every single day!

Gone are the times when it was very important to include keywords in meta tags (completely ignored by search engines these days...). This used to be the only way a search-engine could understand what your web is about. Today it is all done by complete analysis of your content, technologies etc.

And it's actually quite accurate

Example from real life:
I have NEVER invested a single cent into any sort of marketing, no ads, nothing. But there is more and more people using my template, link to it is in the footer of each website using it (hopefully and Google also analyzes the relevance, content, how often it is updated etc etc. If you currently search for for example "weather website template" (and several other phrases) it comes as number one on page one... so it really is not impossible to get high up. Obviously this is a highly specific topic, but that's the point. You want Google to always find the most relevant result.

SEO these days is becoming less and less important. Google uses highly sophisticated AI to analyze your web just as if it was a real human. It doesnt need keywords, it doesnt need any special things. It looks at the links, looks at the content, looks as it just like you look on a website and decide whether you like it or not and what it is about.

Trying to trick it can in the best case lead to probably absolutely minimal improvement. In the more likely case it will sooner or later be penalized and for some mean a catastrophe.

[openvista]

It is absurd, Google's algorithm is probably much more complicated than anyone of you can even imagine. The whole algorithm takes into account thousands of things, there is also no way you can really mislead it. No-one knows how exactly it works - and even if you figured it out, even if the code leaked... on average there are 4 changes made to it every single day!

Google's search algorithm is, in fact, the world's most highly valuable trade secret. It's completely laughable that some consultancy can assure its customers it will increase their business via search placement. The customer is made to believe that only the SEO agency can approach the throne of God and enter into the holy of holies. Pure superstition.

If you think calibrating a weather station is difficult, try performing A/B tests where you control for all other variables after making an "optimization". As you say, most often, the effect doesn't rise above the noise floor. That's assuming that basic scientific research methodology is practiced and that Google hasn't moved the goalposts during the measurement (which you rightly pointed out). On the contrary, almost inevitably the consultants conflate multiple factors and sufficiently narrow the scope until success can be declared.

By the way, I would assume your success on Google is largely due, as you say, to all those inbound links from your customers' sites to yours. That's still a primary signal (according to Google) for search placement: one-way links. That's also why I believe Wunderground is usually #1 or #2 in results. All those 3rd party sites using their API or stickers are required to link back to them, in effect, ensuring that they place above their users in search engine results. Ditto NWS, YrNo, Dark Sky, WeatherBug, etc. We bury ourselves when we use their content, but without it our sites aren't very compelling. Classic catch-22.

[Jáchym]

Yes and I also think it is because Google tends to look a lot at the trend. And given I add on average 2 new users a day and post 2-3 posts in the blog, it tracks this.

There are pages that Google prioritizes - mostly their own products (which is logical and IMHO absolutely ok), but also for example Wikipedia.

[arrowspace90]

google sees all, knows all.

[weather34]

hello

i was more concerned and focusing on design suggestions and practices however we seemed too have gone off to SEO so here is my experience and over many years i have come to a very solid conclusion age of domain and reliability (uptime).

here is the challenge Jachym note my humour without humour you will never succeed !

1. SEO example search for weather template thats easy as you state its a small relative field .
2. now the big challenge I've now downloaded meteotemplate having found it via google awesome I have my weather station online now I want the world to find it and use and now I want my weather station website to appear highly in google .
3. lets say common search is phrase "weather in Brno" this is the real challenge for weather enthusiasts .
4. now go out and buy yourself 3 months of filtered coffee , 3 months of microwave food ,bolt your door and put a do not disturb sign up, turn your phone off , go to the doctors get signed off work for 4 months and forget about sleeping .
5. look forward to your findings and if your successful then you have found the niche to make a living !!


I know from experience working with a website of 500 pages or more and having worked with a client in a highly competitive field that getting the main page ranked highly and on the 1st page of search results is not so challenging but where it becomes highly challenging is all those other pages that carry information that you just cant squeeze on to your main page for reasons of design,functionality,user experience and so on.

trying to understand google force the results to return a positive result will send you round the bend because in this day an age we expect to the impact and results in a timely manner , and thats just it you make all these suggested changes , in some cases re-write and re-code and yet you have no idea if it is working better or worse.

another I had experience gladly it was NOT one my clients but it was relative to what I work with and I ended up doing some freelance for them, they were highly successful due to their google performance and basically it became there source of revenue and means of advertising without any additional costs in terms advertising, then they changed there domain and simplified the url structure according to google suggestions but the name of the website was the same !!! now to what they thought was far more attractive and appealing , so 2000 or more pages on a new domain and url structure and page titles  product | brand(the same) , in three months they dropped of the 1st page and only started to appear around the 10th page of the results , loss of business , awareness .

so days of coding with redirecting old domain and old individual urls by a 301 redirects  , biggest problem was also age of new domain ! 6 months on it is slowly climbing but using 301 redirect method saved them from financial ruin ! . there is a lot to google to understand but until you find yourself in a position of having to try and really understand certain scenarios you will never know about it .

anyway personally SEO drive me nuts and gladly later this year I will not have have to deal with anything SEO google anymore i can just hopefully just enjoy the web and what I do.

brian

[Jáchym]

Hi Brian,
thanks for sharing your experiences

Yes you are right, although "Weather in Brno" is not really what my site is about so I see it as positive it finds it under weather template rather than weather in Brno. It is obviously also quite different when you live in a city like Brno, which has a population of half a million, several professional stations etc etc. I get your point.

I recently also added XML sitemap in v14, but I still believe it was unnecessary, people asked for it, but my experience is that google is smart enough to scan your webpage on its own.

I agree with you that SEO can be a nightmare, especially if you are working for a client, who knows very little about this and takes everything Google ever recommends as an absolute essential thing to do without realizing it can be different in different situation and context.

Hopefully we are slowly getting to the point where really the search engines will be just as smart as humans, there wont have to be any SEO optimizations at all and it will correctly identify the most relevant results - which however obviously still will be subjective. Because if you think about it.,.. Ask 10 people to find you the 10 pages they think should appear on Page 1 when searching for "Weather in Brno" - and Im almost 100% sure you will not find even just two people with the same list of pages.

[weather34]

Ha forget about template page , info etc now look at it from the perspective of it's purpose when it is in use after it's been installed in some location .

Common search phrases "weather in Brno"  "weather in Istanbul"  etc that's the challenge in regards to your users in a large competitive area . Reference to what the guy above is talking about.

That's the real challenge..

[weatherc]

The OP post are actually NOT true so don't post bullshit. Ex. my nordicweather.net are mobile-friendy by Google. And yes, it have jQuery, realtime Ajax etc. And yes, its responsive, one can visit the SAME URL with both huge-size PC and 320 px narrow phone.

[weather34]

The OP post are actually NOT true so don't post bullshit. Ex. my nordicweather.net are mobile-friendy by Google. And yes, it have jQuery, realtime Ajax etc. And yes, its responsive, one can visit the SAME URL with both huge-size PC and 320 px narrow phone.

Wow what a response, but we are not talking about your website are we or are we now?
 I'm happy for you shame you have to lower the tone it's become nigh on impossible to have any constructive form of discussion on this forum.

Take care and enjoy the hobby ..

Bria

[Jáchym]

The OP post are actually NOT true so don't post bullshit. Ex. my nordicweather.net are mobile-friendy by Google. And yes, it have jQuery, realtime Ajax etc. And yes, its responsive, one can visit the SAME URL with both huge-size PC and 320 px narrow phone.

I think you slightly missed the point of this thread...

Btw... your site shows as "Poor" on google.... 60/100
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnordicweather.net%2F

Even mine is better, but that´s the point... as you mentioned, your website works just fine, yet in Google´s eyes it is "poor".

That was the point, dont take everything Google says for granted.

[weather34]

The OP post are actually NOT true so don't post bullshit. Ex. my nordicweather.net are mobile-friendy by Google. And yes, it have jQuery, realtime Ajax etc. And yes, its responsive, one can visit the SAME URL with both huge-size PC and 320 px narrow phone.

hmmm hope you take this positively and fix these but here is your website viewed on iphone/ipad tablet . i don't get any satisfaction so take this as someone saying something constructive , attempting to have your websites completely 100% compatible on all devices can drive you mad especially if you are unaware. think before you shout next time..

brian

[weatherc]

Wow what a response, but we are not talking about your website are we or are we now?

My point was that one can have jQuery etc and still have a mobile-friendly site, what you in the first post actually said its not possible.

Btw... your site shows as "Poor" on google.... 60/100

Thats true. And its impossible to get that to 100 as even Google's own stuffs are picked up by it.
I think we talk about 2 different things, that number whats actually the pagespeed-number, not mobile-friedliness, and that Google's mobilefriendly-test, whats actually show with green text "It's mobile-friendly" for my frontpage.

EDIT: The mobile-friendly test is here: https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

[Jáchym]

Of course you can have jQuery and have a mobile-friendly website, no-one ever said you cannot, there is even a dedicated jQuery variant for mobiles (jQuery Mobile)

[AWL]

it's become nigh on impossible to have any constructive form of discussion on this forum.

Couldn't agree more. Thought this was a 'G' rated forum. Really sad to see....and only getting worse.

[weatherc]

hmmm hope you take this positively and fix these but here is your website viewed on iphone/ipad tablet . i don't get any satisfaction so take this as someone saying something constructive , attempting to have your websites completely 100% compatible on all devices can drive you mad especially if you are unaware. think before you shout next time..

brian

I-stuffs and its expecially its junk Safari browser are not on my supported list (i don't have one so impossible to test).

[openvista]

i was more concerned and focusing on design suggestions and practices however we seemed too have gone off to SEO...

Sorry if I derailed the thread a bit. I intended to communicate that Google's recommendations regarding SEO are just as, er, beneficial as their other recommendations. I forgot to make the connection explicit.

You are right about mobile friendliness. They downgraded my site because I wouldn't, among other things, optimize & cache Weather Underground's images for them!

Same principle applies if you try their speed tool. They tell you to do all sorts of stuff to speed up your site that's either highly impractical or downright impossible. And for what? Even if you get a perfect score, your search ranking doesn't improve. Your site isn't tangibly faster. Users don't flock to your site. What's the payoff?

[Jáchym]

hmmm hope you take this positively and fix these but here is your website viewed on iphone/ipad tablet . i don't get any satisfaction so take this as someone saying something constructive , attempting to have your websites completely 100% compatible on all devices can drive you mad especially if you are unaware. think before you shout next time..

brian

I-stuffs and its expecially its junk Safari browser are not on my supported list (i don't have one so impossible to test).

That is of course absolutely up to you and nothing wrong with that, however in such case your website simply isn´t supported by all devices and screen/browser types.


Regarding Google´s recommendations... yes that is funny, it also recommends me not to use external link for the Google Analytics script - though using external link is the only way to implement it

[weather34]

hmmm hope you take this positively and fix these but here is your website viewed on iphone/ipad tablet . i don't get any satisfaction so take this as someone saying something constructive , attempting to have your websites completely 100% compatible on all devices can drive you mad especially if you are unaware. think before you shout next time..

brian

I-stuffs and its expecially its junk Safari browser are not on my supported list (i don't have one so impossible to test).

your choice of words is beyond me , so now lets me get under your skin shall we without using inappropriate phrases, see the screenshot attached take it in anyway you feel but deep down it will give you lots of answers on where you can improve and not using the browser as an excuse, if we all did that well none of us would have a reliable web site because whether like it or not there is a browser to suit everyones purpose or device specific, in my case I have no qualms about using safari.

here is my tip to you get you started because whatever your view is on browsers there are solutions , and taking the time to address the issue will give you a positive outcome.. if you need more info then a google search will return 100s of pages on the subject of css @media

@media only screen
and (min-device-width : 768px)
and (max-device-width : 1024px)
and (orientation : landscape) { all your css necessary styles can go in here at the foot of your css css}


@media only screen
and (min-device-width : 320px)
and (max-device-width : 480px) { all your css necessary styles can go in here at the foot of your css existing css}

hope it helps because sharing information we have learnt is productive for everyone whether we are experienced or inexperienced, we never stop learning .

brian

[weatherc]

That is of course absolutely up to you and nothing wrong with that, however in such case your website simply isn´t supported by all devices and screen/browser types.

I have never said that either. I have allways been semi-selective about wich browsers i have tryed to support. As one data-source for that have i used the visitor-statistics. I-stuffs have never been that high on those lists. But my site have a quite big mobile/tablet-share of 43% of all traffic, so the responsiviness (on important pages) are important.

Regarding Google´s recommendations... yes that is funny, it also recommends me not to use external link for the Google Analytics script - though using external link is the only way to implement it

Thats true. Thats why do not take any stress about those recommendations either as they are impossible to fulfill. I did once tryed to get that Pagespeed-rank high as possible but gived up quite fast when saw what it suggests like combinating js-files to one enourmous 1+ MB one and similar. Yes, i tryed it for fun but the site got lots slower after that LOL Sure there are some good stuffs in those recommendations too but one should be selective and use only those parts what works for the site in question.

[Jáchym]

Placing all code into one huge file is IMHO stupid because browser caches JS files and then if you make change in any part of your code you always change this huge file, which must be re-loaded.