Notes from the Google Webmaster Hangout on the 18th of April 2019.
Google Does Not Use Domain Authority in its Search Algorithms
Google does not use Domain Authority to rank pages in its search results, as it is a third-party metric.
Google Picks Link With Most Relevant Anchor Text to Understand Context With Multiple Internal Links to Same Page
When Google detects pages with multiple internal links to the same target page, it tries to pick the link which has the most relevant anchor text to understand the context.
Cross-link Pages to Help Ensure Google Can Discover Them to Decrease Reliance on Pagination
Focusing on improving internal linking across product and blog post pages is a good strategy for ensuring Google is able to find these pages on your site rather than relying on pagination.
Sites Should No Longer be Impacted by Google Deindexing Bug
Google’s deindexing issue was fully fixed on 16th April. If pages still aren’t being indexed, then this will have been caused by a different issue.
Structured Data Not Displayed in GSC Isn’t Detected by Google
If structured data isn’t being displayed in Search Console reports then Google is likely not picking it up.
Don’t Focus on tf-idf to Optimize Pages as Search Algorithms Are Much More Complex Now
John recommends not focusing on tf-idf because it is a very old metric and algorithms have evolved a lot since then. Using tf-idf to squeeze words into your pages is unlikely to be useful and is a short-sighted approach.
Google Doesn’t Place Fixed Weight on Backlinks in its Algorithms
Google doesn’t place a fixed weight on backlinks in its algorithms, it varies from case to case. For example, a new article may rank well for a trending topic but have few links because it is so fresh.
Indexing API Currently Limited to Jobs & Live Video Content in Limited Countries
The Indexing API is currently limited to jobs and live video content and has only been rolled out to a limited number of countries.
Google’s Cached Version of a Page Can be Out of Sync With Live Page
Google’s cached version of a page isn’t exactly what is used for indexing and can, sometimes, be a bit out of sync with the live page. Also, the cached date doesn’t reflect the last time that Googlebot crawled the page.
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