Search Off the Record

Iva Barisic Hafner, a user experience researcher on the Google Shopping team, shares her expertise on understanding the 'why' behind user behaviors. She highlights accessible UXR methods like cognitive walkthroughs and heuristic evaluations that can transform user insights into improved website designs. The discussion also emphasizes the blend of qualitative and quantitative research to identify user pain points effectively. Iva champions the significance of proper survey practices for reliable data and encourages ongoing learning in user experience research.

Jessica Yu, the Lead for Google Doodles and Delight on Google Search, shares her creative journey in designing engaging experiences. She reveals the whimsical origins of Google Doodles, including the inspiration from Momo the Magic Cat. Jessica discusses the balance of creativity and technical challenges in crafting interactive features. Highlighting user engagement, she shares how community interaction fuels new ideas, making every Doodle not just a graphic, but a delightful adventure for users.

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Ben Walton and David Yule from the Google Search Site Reliability Team (SRE) walk us through their day to day work, which surprisingly is not just about putting out fires! Learn what Search SREs really do, how they handle incidents that occasionally occur, and what it takes to be an SRE for Google Search.    Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr083 SRE handbook → https://goo.gle/3XSbVUF David on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3XQKavR Ben on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/4ewAkEX   Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe to Google Search Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral   Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

Erika Varangouli, head of Branded Content at Riverside.fm, shares her expertise on evaluating SEO performance. She discusses the importance of setting realistic expectations and the need for clear communication between clients and SEO professionals. Drawing on real-world examples, including insights from a small pizzeria, Erika emphasizes collaborative strategies for prioritizing SEO tasks. The conversation also highlights the necessity of regular reporting and actionable insights to ensure both parties are aligned on goals.

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Irina Tuduce from the shopping team joins John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman to chat all things shopping data, from schema.org to feeds spec. Listen along as we chat about how shopping infrastructure gets its data, why pricing data can be tricky, and what the Shopping team has been working on this year. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr081-transcript Irina Tuduce on LinkedIn → https://goo.gle/3Xuiywf Product structured data → https://goo.gle/4eaPJus Feed spec in Merchant Center → https://goo.gle/3Tdl2MU How to set up Merchant Center account → https://goo.gle/4gcSPjq Merchant-level organization markup → https://goo.gle/47fvmd2 Schema.org community on GitHub → https://goo.gle/4e7A6E3 Variants in Google Search → https://goo.gle/4dU4BOc  Merchant Listings report in Search Console → https://goo.gle/47hlNuu    Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe to Google Search Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral   Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.

Mihai Aperghis, a Romanian SEO expert and entrepreneur, shares his journey from building websites to founding his own SEO agency. He discusses the tools he created for automating data extraction from Search Console into Google Sheets. Mihai emphasizes the importance of community support for navigating SEO challenges and how user feedback can shape Google’s products. They also explore the potential future enhancements of the Search Console API and the exciting possibility of AI integration for better data analysis.

Join John Mueller, a search engine optimization expert, Lizzi Sassman, a web crawling specialist, and Gary Illyes, a leader in search technology, as they delve into the myths of crawl frequency and the hurdles of modern web crawling. They discuss the balance between site quality and crawl rates, emphasize optimizing website efficiency with smart sitemaps, and explore innovative crawling methods that focus on changes rather than entire pages. Tune in for insights on enhancing your site's crawlability and navigating the complexities of search technology!

Explore the complexities of managing international websites with multiple languages and countries. Learn about challenges in implementing hreflang, strategies for URL synchronization, and debates on manual vs automatic annotations in SEO. Discover the importance of language attributes vs hreflang attributes for website localization and the use of testing tools and x-default fallback mechanisms. Dive into internationalization strategies with hreflang tags, canonical tags, and x-default tags for targeted pages.

Zoe Clifford from Google Search joins the podcast to discuss rendering JavaScript for Google Search. They talk about how Google deals with JavaScript sites, the importance of DOM, challenges in rendering, hidden JavaScript keywords, managing errors in web development, and testing website rendering for Googlebot.

In this episode of SOTR, Lizzi and John sit down with Elizabeth Tucker to go behind the scenes of Search Quality product management. Listen along as they discuss using data science to measure quality and make improvements, how search behavior is changing over time, and how to think about E-E-A-T and the Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr076-transcript BERT paper → https://goo.gle/3XroKpe E-E-A-T for site owners → https://goo.gle/4c5E0fQ Search Quality Rater Guidelines → https://goo.gle/3z07OvN Improving Search with Rigorous Testing → https://goo.gle/45x7OQ0 Day in a life of a Search Quality Product Manager → https://goo.gle/3z087GX Meet Data Scientists at Google → https://goo.gle/3xzZ67c Listen to more Search Off the Record → https://goo.gle/sotr-yt Subscribe to Google Search Channel → https://goo.gle/SearchCentral Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast