Notes from the Google Webmaster Hangout on the 10th of January 2020.
Google May Introduce Rich Results Types to One Country First Before Rolling Them Out
With some rich results types Google may introduce them first to one country in order to understand the right approach and how it should be handled, before rolling them out globally.
Automatically Created Links on a Webpage Will Not be Seen as Spam by Google
Automatically created links within the text of a page, for example links to tag pages, will not be seen as spam by Google. John doesn’t see any problems occurring from this as it’s a set up of internal linking that many sites implement.
Google Still Respects the Meta Robots Unavailable After Directive
Google still respects the meta robots unavailable_after directive, this is used to specify a date when a page will no longer be available. John explained that it is likely their systems will recrawl the page around the date specified in order to make sure they are not just removing pages from the index that are still available.
Avoid Providing Google with Conflicting Canonical Tags When Working on JavaScript Sites
If you have a JavaScript site, John recommends making sure that the static HTML page you deliver doesn’t have a canonical tag on it. Instead use JavaScript to add it, in order to avoid providing Google with different information. Google is able to pick the canonical up after rendering the page in order to process and use it.
Sitelinks Will Be Displayed if Google Deems There Are Other Useful Pages Relevant to a Search Query
Sitelinks within search results are deemed as normal search results from Google’s point of view, where it is able to understand that if a user is looking at one specific page, there may be other related pages relevant to the query. Something that helps Google to understand this is having a clear site structure, with clear page titles and headings.
Product Structured Markup Needs Price or Reviews Included in Order to be Displayed
In order for Google to display product structured markup, you need to include either reviews or a price. If you do not have reviews or prices on your page, the rich results type will not be shown. This will not impact the rankings of the page, just how it is displayed.
Ensure Structured Data Types Used Across Different Page Versions is Consistent
If a site has different structured markup on their desktop and mobile sites, Google would use the schema that is on the version they are currently crawling and indexing. It’s a little different with AMP as certain structured data types are required for some AMP features, so Google also takes this into account. John recommends ensuring the structured data types used across the different versions of a page are consistent.
Google is Able to Display Structured Data Results as Soon as the Page Has Been Re-crawled
After configuring pages to send structured data to Google, it will be able to display the structured data results the next time it crawls and indexes that page.
Jump Links Are Used to Further Understand Page Structure Not Pass PageRank
Jump links, where you link from one part of a page to another part of that same page, are not something that Google will use to pass signals such as PageRank. Instead, they are used to further understand the structure of the page and can be shown in search results to link to a particularly relevant part of the page for a user’s query.
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