Notes from the Google Webmaster Hangout on the 27th of January, 2017.
Increase Crawl Budget by Increasing Server Capacity
You can help to increase your crawl budget by making sure it doesn’t return server errors when Google crawls.
Google Learns URL Parameters to Ignore From Canonicalised Pages
Google learns which parameters are returning irrelevant pages partly based on canonicalised URLs.
The ‘Parameter Doesn’t Change Content’ Setting is Similar to Canonical
The ‘Parameter Doesn’t Change Content’ setting is similar to canonical as it will aggregate signals to the cleaned URL.
‘Secondary Content’ Won’t be Used for Snippets
Content not instantly visible is treated as secondary content and wouldn’t be used for snippets until Google shifts to mobile first indexing.
‘Primary Content’ Should be the Same on Mobile and Desktop Pages
Google expects the visible Primary content to be the same on mobile and desktop pages, including AMP pages, but hidden content and the navigation can be different.
Iframes can be added to AMP to add Rating Functionality
If you have AMP pages that show ratings, you can use an iframe to add the rating functionality.
‘Hamburger’ Menus Don’t Affect Crawling
From a crawling perspective, ‘Hambuger’ style menus where the links are not visible on the page are OK.
Automatic Geographic Redirects Should be Avoided
Googlebot should see the same redirects the same as normal users, so automatic redirects to a different geographic site should be avoided. Google only recommends a redirect from a generic page to a specific geographic site, or a pop-up to suggest a different geographic site to the one being used.
Googlebot Doesn’t See Content Changes Based on Session Information
Googlebot loads every page without any session information, so if you show content such as titles based on session information like an HTML 5 history, it won’t be seen.
Manual Penalties from Migrated Domains will be Visible in Search Console
Any manual penalties from migrated domains which are affecting your new domain will be visible in the Manual Actions report in search console.
AMP Sites can Also be the Mobile Version
You can reference an AMP site with both mobile rel alternate and rel AMP HTML, however the AMP page will become the primary version when Google moves to mobile-first indexing.
Structured Data and Hreflang Need to be Added to Mobile Pages
When Google moves to mobile first, the rel alternate and canonical tags won’t need to be changed, but the mobile pages will require dedicated structured data and hreflang tags.
