Google Office Hours with John Mueller January 28th, 2022 Recap

Today I’ll be recapping the Google Office Hours with Google’s John Mueller from January 28th, 2022. As always, I’ll provide a synopsis of the question and answer, my opinion, and a link to the question in the video. The video ran an hour, I’ll try to summarize this for you in about ten minutes.

Full blog post, show notes, and transcript @ https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e19

How does Google recognize paid links?

They have a lot of factors that they look into, not just did someone report this as a paid link.

Does Google care where the internal link is located in the site, header / content / footer?

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=36

Running a blog type site without any actual products, but more information about products, they want to know if Google will treat it as a classic product review site?

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=265

Local Directories:

Does Google really care if you are listed on local directories and the information is correct?

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=451

Links:

Are there any issues with linking to a site that is also linking to you?

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=685

Myths:

Are there any myths or inaccuracies that you see out there that you can just debunk right now?

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=785

Malware:

Malware is still being shown in the search results.

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=1449

A tool to help index sites faster:

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=1718

Emojis in titles and descriptions:

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=1971

Search Console API Data Accuracy:

Is the data from the API more accurate than the web interface? 

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2054

FAQ Schema:

Our schema looks good from a technical perspective, but isn’t showing on Google.

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2176

Seasonal content:

What should we do with content that’s seasonal like Black Friday?

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2257

CWV Impact?

Of the 3 metrics, my CLS isn’t passing, how much of an impact will that have?

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2418

Will CWV impact crawling?

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2555

Migrating from a subdomain:

The subdomain is old, like 20 years, and we’re looking to migrate to the main domain.

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2677

New Local Site Starting out:

What signals should we look out for or pay attention to.

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=3015

Geo redirects on site:

Should you geo-redirect on a new site?

https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=3195

The last question had to do with branded search - I don’t think it was relevant as it seemed they may have other issues, but feel free to watch that part if you are having any issues with your branded search being visible.