This talk was first delivered at #MozCon 2019 by Cindy Krum (@Suzzicks). It reveals a theory about Google's Mobile-First Indexing that posits the idea that the change was more about organizing the world's information around the Knowledge Graph. It also suggests that Google may now be indexing units that are smaller than pages or URLs that we are calling #Fraggles (a Fragment + a Handle).
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So lets start with a story. Back in the ’80s, way before smart phones, there was a TV show called Fraggle Rock. It was a puppet show created by Jim Hensen, who also created the well known shows like the Muppet Show and Sesame Street, but un-like Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, was less about learning and mostly about fun! Sometimes they were lessons, but they were mostly about being a good friend and a good member of a community; and then there was lots of singing and dancing to help it all come together.
The characters were puppets named Mokey, Gobo, Red, Wembly and Boober…..and they looked like this…
Or maybe more wild and crazy like this
These were the main characters: Mocky, Gobo, Red, Wembly and …. Boober
They Lived, Sang & Had Adventures
And they lived in a rock cave under a house, occupied by these two - Doc on the right, and his cute dog Sprocket. Most of the time Doc couldn’t hear or see the Fraggles, but Sprocket could, and this was a big deal, because they lived under their house.
There were a few other main characters that showed up in most of the episodes, but the ones that showed up the most were the Doozers. The Doozers lived in a different section of the cave, and they loved building stuff. They would build, and build, which was good because the stuff the Fraggles did often destroyed the stuff that the Doozers built – But the Doozers would never get tired or complain – they would just keep on building.
And in many ways, I think this is a good analogy for how Google works with SEOs – they just keep making updates, and machine learning to build out a search engine, and we randomly break things, and they just keep building, doing their thing.
So Google has switched to Mobile-First Indexing, and so they are crawling and indexing the web as a mobile phone. And as SEOs our job is to hone and plan and optimize how google crawls and indexes our content.
Sooo then – why is this true? SEO’s and SEO tools are still focusing on Desktop SEO at least 50%, 20% focus on desktop first and mobile second, and 12% focus on only desktop.
SEOs are still doing basically the same thing they were before MFI launched, and are not focusing their time and energy or tracking on Mobile - which means we have a lot of people looking things that may or not really matter. That is a problem.
Google is Changing and So Should You!
This graph from Dr. Pete at Moz does a great job of illustrating the increasing temperature changes that represent changes in the Algorithm perceived by the MozCast. Notice that things started heating up at the end of 20167, when MFI was first announced. It got super hot for 2/3ds of 2017 and slowed down a bit in 2018. So if you feel like things in the algorithm have changed a lot recently, you are right. But does it feel like the strategies that you are using or the way you are looking at SEO have changed a lot in this time? Probably some, but not this much.
61.5% of searches are not represented in your analytics. So you are making decisions based on only 38.5% of the data.
Google says MFI is about a switch to a different bot for indexing – one that they will now keep updated to match the live browser, within a couple weeks of updates or so – not years old like the Chrome 41 crawler was.
But I happen to believe that Mobile-First Indexing was a much bigger deal people are talking about. Even though it is true that the indexing is now happening from the Mobile bot, that does not seem as big a deal as what I suspect is going on in the background – that the entire organization of Google;s index has changed.
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-Relationships of seasons and episodes to each other.
-Narative relatioships for ‘last episode’
-Next episode/previous episodes
-Main characters for episodes
Is graph shows data reported by Moz, on the number of queries that return a Featured Snippet. It covers about 10,000 queries that tend a bit towards head terms, but in general, you can see that the increase started in 2016, plateaued in the beginning of 2017 and then spiked again recently, in March of this year.
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And sometimes Google just can’t decide – so they show 2 FS
We believe that FS might be facts looking for a home in the KG, or being vetted for accuracy.
-Google does not maintain a burden of consistency in FS – so one could say that the most popular Fraggle is Red and if you ask the question another way, Google could say that the most popular Fraggle was Boober
-Google also sometimes changes FS from place to place, especially when they have a lot of good candidates or when the query might an answer that is location sensitive.
PAA’s which also seem to leverage FS, but with action arrows, all clustered around a list of questions, and their FS answers
They were low from 2016 to September of 2018, then
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-Where did fraggle rock air
-Sometimes answers don’t match the question or are wrong
-Often FS and KG come from 3rd party sites that appear objective and more likely to be factual
-Google loves to use summaries and tables for this kind of thing.
-We think FS are facts that Google has identified and linked to the Knowledge Graph, but that Google might be vetting for full inclusion in a KG result.
-But FS seem to have topical clustering in Google;s indexing, that is also used for….
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FYI – some searches can have multiple People Also Searched For carousels – like this one, and when there is a FS and not a KG, PAA often are included directly below it. We also occasionally see PAA appear to be using KG carousels, so with all this in mind, we really think that FS are now somehow part of the KG.
These kinds of results can be great. The Problem for SEO – This is All Hard to Track & Attribute - So lets look at an example scenario
This is Fraggle Rock, so lets look at a case study about starting a band – specifically, Wikihow wanting to rank for queries related to starting a band. Wikihow is a publisher that focuses on DIY guides, which tend to be great for Featured Snippets
So lets go to SEMrush and look if there are any FS in striking distance
-some of the things that came up in the Instant search suggestions came out here – and so we might be able to win some of these – especially the grunge rock one, because we know it is just Reddit, so we can decide to go after this one first, and the others by search volume and how likely we believe we are to get it.
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So lets use MobileMoxie’s free SERPerator tool to check it out.
-Seattle – ouch! KG for a country song that I have never heard of!
-Change it to how to and you get FS instead of KG. That is progress – much easier to get a FS than inclusion in the KG
-Steps to – same FS
-grunge band / with friends
-redit answers – that might be easiest to get
-all kinds of carousels and expanders
-Carousels for things on the same page, expanders for related questions
THIS ISN’T IN YOUR ANALYTICS!!!!
So we uploaded a CSV of the top 50 cities in the world by population.
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China
Packastan - juna kalri, karachi
It is an exact match, so it is a pretty strong signal for the KG – When the phone language is set to English, it seems like it will always be there.
-India
-China
-Packastan
-Canada
-Australia
-Top of results are the same, but the blue links change by country
0:21
Musician on a Mission but we are only 2 positions below it.
In most cases, THIS ISN’T IN YOUR ANALYTICS – You only know about FS that you have – not the ones that you don’t have, that are pushing you down and
So we uploaded a CSV of the top 50 cities in the world by population.
And grab those FS.
These kinds of results can be great. The Problem for SEO – This is All Hard to Track & Attribute - So lets look at an example scenario
What are Entities? Stable understanding of relationships built around the KG Help with Machine Learning
& allow Google to Fill in the blanks with information from languages or places where they are strong, to help in languages or places where they are weak.
1:12
So we can see that at least the Knowledge Graph is different because it is translated to meet the default phone language.
Little Lake California
Change to Hebrew – Knowledge Graph is translated but Blue Link results are not
Even streaming integrations like Vudu and YouTube are translated.
Change to Israel – Same but missing Streaming integrations
Now I want you to think back – since I started, I have hardly talked about page rankings at all. Google is ranking information in the SERP much more than they are trying to drive traffic to pages – especially when the pages are not part of Google. The truth is, for Google, there are a lot of things that make pages inefficient now.
The old web is full of crap - Google was telling SEO’s to keep building everything in flat, crawlable HTML files, the best stuff on the web was being built in JavaScript and eventually full web apps.
JavaScript is Variable, Bloated, Repetitive & Generally Hard to Crawl
JavaScript is Like Building a Content Architecture without Building a Website
‘Content is King’ Had Consequences
Content Has Variable Levels of Quality
But How to Make Money In This New JavaScript World?
From Google’s Perspective
From Google’s Perspective
The Web Has Fragmented Beyond Individual Pages When you are ranking pages, lists of pages make sense. When you are ranking content and ideas within pages, more of a structure and framework is needed. Other Organizing Principles are More Useful
Fragments of Pages – AKA Featured Snippets - Are Better – and they are occurring now in the top, middle and bottom of the page – AND THIS ISN’T IN YOUR ANALYTICS.
And they can do this wherever they want – like in the address bar, or on any screen using Google Assistant, and eventually in voice.
Because what sounds worse than listening to a robot read an entire web page? Way better that they just read a Faggle. And think about all the new Schema – Speakable, How-To, FAQ, Q&A – They want us to help them find the Fraggles!
But maybe Wikihow is not a great analogy for your business. They are a publisher, but you sell stuff – so lets look at that. Another Case Study – this time about Guitars. Lets pretend we are Guitar Center and we want to sell Guitars.
Hypothetically, we are a company that is loosing traffic on and offline – all while paid has been increasing while organic has been mostly flat. You might think this is all you need to know but its not. We are relying too much on Paid, but it is common in our industry. How can they get more traffic without spending more moeney?
You know that your PPC is increasing, but that does not tell you what is happening with your compeditors in paid, that might be taking your traffic in organic. Paid is getting more compelling, especially on mobile – the CTR on mobile PPC is increasing, because Google is adding more graphical, interactive PPC results, with more links and more information.
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So lets have a look – we will search for ‘best electric guitar
-there is a lot going on here
-Google doesn’t seem clear if I am looking for a person or a thing, so they show carousels of both – sponsored below the KG carousel, which is new!!
0:56
So lets have a look – we will search for ‘best electric guitar
-there is a lot going on here
-Google doesn’t seem clear if I am looking for a person or a thing, so they show carousels of both – sponsored below the KG carousel, which is new!!
0:56
So lets have a look – we will search for ‘best electric guitar
-there is a lot going on here
-Google doesn’t seem clear if I am looking for a person or a thing, so they show carousels of both – sponsored below the KG carousel, which is new!!
Ok – Guitar Center has one store in Seattle – lets see how and where it is ranking. How far do you have to get from the store for the map pack to drop out or for us to drop out of the map pack?
Ok – Guitar Center has one store in Seattle – lets see how and where it is ranking. How far do you have to get from the store for the map pack to drop out or for us to drop out of the map pack?
And what about the website – lets see if the website actually shows up?
-Map ranking is consistent but website ranking is not
-It seems like the Free Merchant Center product listings are our best opportunity for traffic
This could be a representation of a very simple database.
This could also be a simplified visualization of a couple nodes on the knowledge graph.
JavaScript Apps, Native Apps and Databases talk in terms of end-points.
So lets say we are the Sunset Tavern in Seattle, and we are promoting a big event.
We take a quick look in Moz and feel pretty good about some brand related terms, but less good about others, like ‘Live Music Tonight’ (Position 50+)…unless you add the brand name or the word ‘seattle.’
So we switch to GMB for some better News – This tells us that we are getting way more visibility in the SERP from Maps than Search – So maybe those #1 rankings were not that useful for us
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Run some test searches – we are there in the map, and the GMB result looks good!
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Run some test searches – we are there in the map, and the GMB result looks good!
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So we can set up a quick radius test.
And we generated a color coded spreadsheet, to help illustrate what was going on.
Streaming video, live video, games, Multi-player games, News & Weather
Voice search decreases friction for cross device media consumption - So that you can search for something to watch on your TV – like this:
And Fraggles can be lifted and presented off your site, like this.
Instant Info/Jobs/Live Videos/Tweets/Events
Instant Info/Jobs/Live Videos/Tweets/Events
Instant Info/Jobs/Live Videos/Tweets/Events
Fraggles make Monetization Easier. Some of you may have read that I believed MFI was not apps moving into web results, but it was web results moving into an app-store model. I still believe that. Google Channel & Topic Specific Venues that are already not reliant on URLs and driven by APIs. AND they are building out with more and more topic-specific PWA’s (like the Sports PWA) which are just built-out Knowledge Graph.
Here is the next scenario – lets say we are someone like HBO & we are marketing a movie that we just purchased US rights to – A Star is Born.
Then you start sending Google your Media Action XML file – all of a sudden you have Media Actions ranking (the purple solid line) and this improves clicks for both Media Actions and the Rich Results to the website – both of the blue lines. You verify it on your phone and everything looks right – You are the only subscription service that has the movie free for subscribers – everyone else is charging for people to get it. That is what the contract said, so it looks good.
But then you dig in and notice something weird in Germany – The media actions launched, and all clicks for both rich results and Media Actions.
You use the MM tool to check and it looks like this – but this is wrong – The movie is not supposed to be available in Germany – that is a violation of our contract, and it is taking clicks from the Rich Results on the website, which we should be able to get.
So we make a change to the feed, and now it looks like this – phew!
Blind Bot/Time to Index – Knowledge Graph = Sometimes Bad Answers
Google Launched an Indexing API
PWA & AMP Function as APIs
I first spoke at MozCon about PWAs 2 years ago, and no one had heard of them. Since then they have grown in popularity, and are now being expanded to desktop
The problem is, lots of PWAs use heavy JS and some are even single-page apps with just a few URLs – Google now has deferred JS rendering, but still - Why would google push hard for something that takes so much of their resources to crawl? Maybe because it doesn’t.
To get a PWA indexed properly, you have to register your ServiceWorker with Google. Remember that the ServiceWorker is the thing that tells the PWA what text and images should be cached locally to the phone. The stuff in the ServiceWorker is the most important stuff, so when you register your ServiceWorker, Google just creates and API to it and crawls that.
So Google is pushing us hard towards PWAs because it gives them a quick and easy backdoor for API indexing, and also because they are a good experience for users. But what if the PWA is a Single Page App, and only has a few URLs? Google is probably using Fraggles to index the whole database created by the ServiceWorker as Fraggles.
Like this!!!
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