SEO and Google News Update - September 2020

Top Internet and Google News Update - March 2020

Top Internet and Google News Update - February 2020

Google News Update - January 2020

Keywords in URL for Anchor Text

That’s interesting that Mueller said there is no context in a naked link. What makes it interesting is that there is a school of thought that in the absence of an anchor text that the keywords in the URL might provide Google some information and function like an anchor text.

Mueller’s answer seemed to contradict that idea or at least to not affirm it. Might make a good follow up question.

Can Surrounding Text and Topic Influence Links?

At this point someone else asked a follow up question about the text that surrounds the naked link and if that might play a role.

“Can Google kind of get context for like the text around that link, maybe if it doesn’t have any?”

John Mueller nodded his head in affirmation and said,

“Sure. But that’s more kind of secondary. Like that really strong piece of context from the anchor text that’s missing in that case.

And then like small things around the side, that does help us a little bit… but really the kind of the primary aspect of that link is kind of gone.

And I mean usually that doesn’t matter. It’s not that it counts against your website in any way.

It’s just… well for this particular link we don’t really know what the context is.”

The person asking the follow up question repeated his question, this time asking if the content around the link or topic of the article might play a role.

Mueller answered:

“Yeah, yeah… I mean that’s something we do definitely take into account but it’s very secondary.

…I mean there’s no kind of like value of strength for the context there but I’d say it’s like that anchor text is really obvious and we can collect that and we can look at that overall and… kind of the context of the linking pages is something well… it’s like we also need to think about at some point.

But the anchor text is really kind of the primary thing.”

What We Learned About Google and Naked Links

Mueller affirmed that there is no disadvantage to links coded without anchor text. He affirmed that anchor text is a strong signal.

But he also somewhat downplayed the use of surrounding text or page topic as a way to give more meaning to a naked link, saying that yes Google used it but that it was “very secondary.”

Previous news:

Top Internet and Google News Update - March 2020

Top Internet and Google News Update - February 2020

Google News Update - January 2020

Googlebot will soon speak HTTP/2

Quick summary: Starting November 2020, Googlebot will start crawling some sites over HTTP/2.

Ever since mainstream browsers started supporting the next major revision of HTTP, HTTP/2 or h2 for short, web professionals asked us whether Googlebot can crawl over the upgraded, more modern version of the protocol.

Starting mid November 2020, Googlebot will support crawling over HTTP/2 for select sites.

What is HTTP/2

It's the next major version of HTTP, the protocol the internet primarily uses for transferring data. HTTP/2 is much more robust, efficient, and faster than its predecessor, due to its architecture and the features it implements for clients (for example, your browser) and servers. If you want to read more about it, here is a long article on the HTTP/2 topic on developers.google.com.

Why this change

In general, we expect this change to make crawling more efficient in terms of server resource usage. With h2, Googlebot is able to open a single TCP connection to the server and efficiently transfer multiple files over it in parallel, instead of requiring multiple connections. The fewer connections open, the fewer resources the server and Googlebot have to spend on crawling.

How it works

In the first phase, Google will crawl a small number of sites over h2, and ramp up gradually to more sites that may benefit from the initially supported features, like request multiplexing.

Googlebot decides which site to crawl over h2 based on whether the site supports h2, and whether the site and Googlebot would benefit from crawling over HTTP/2. If your server supports h2 and Googlebot already crawls a lot from your site, you may be already eligible for the connection upgrade, and you don't have to do anything.

If your server still only talks HTTP/1.1, that's also fine. There's no explicit drawback for crawling over this protocol; crawling will remain the same, quality and quantity wise.

How to opt out

Preliminary tests showed no issues or negative impact on indexing, but we understand that, for various reasons, you may want to opt your site out from crawling over HTTP/2. You can do that by instructing the server to respond with a 421 HTTP status code when Googlebot attempts to crawl your site over h2. If that's not feasible at the moment, you can send a message to the Googlebot team (however, this solution is temporary).

If you have more questions about Googlebot and HTTP/2, check the questions we thought you might ask. If you can't find your question, write on Twitter and in the help forums.

Previous news:

Top Internet and Google News Update - March 2020

Top Internet and Google News Update - February 2020

Google News Update - January 2020

Questions that you might ask

Why are you upgrading Googlebot now?

The software used to enable Googlebot to crawl over h2 has matured enough that it can be used in production.

Do I need to upgrade my server ASAP?

It's really up to you. However, we will only switch to crawling over h2 sites that support it and will clearly benefit from it. If there's no clear benefit for crawling over h2, Googlebot will still continue to crawl over h1.

How do I upgrade my site to h2?

This really depends on your server. Google recommends talking to your server administrator or hosting provider.

How do I convince Googlebot to talk h2 with my site?

You can't. If the site supports h2, it is eligible for being crawled over h2, but only if that would be beneficial for the site and Googlebot. If crawling over h2 would not result in noticeable resource savings for example, Google would simply continue to crawl the site over HTTP/1.1.

How do I know if my site is crawled over h2?

When a site becomes eligible for crawling over h2, the owners of that site registered in Search Console will get a message saying that some of the crawling traffic may be over h2 going forward. You can also check in your server logs (for example, in the access.log file if your site runs on Apache).

Which h2 features are supported by Googlebot?

Googlebot supports most of the features introduced by h2. Some features like server push, which may be beneficial for rendering, are still being evaluated.

Does Googlebot support plaintext HTTP/2 (h2c)?

No. Your website must use HTTPS and support HTTP/2 in order to be eligible for crawling over HTTP/2. This is equivalent to how modern browsers handle it.

Is Googlebot going to use the ALPN extension to decide which protocol version to use for crawling?

Application-layer protocol negotiation (ALPN) will only be used for sites that are opted in to crawling over h2, and the only accepted protocol for responses will be h2. If the server responds during the TLS handshake with a protocol version other than h2, Googlebot will back off and come back later on HTTP/1.1.

How will different h2 features help with crawling?

Some of the many, but most prominent benefits of h2 include:

Multiplexing and concurrency: Fewer TCP connections open means fewer resources spent.
Header compression: Drastically reduced HTTP header sizes will save resources.
Server push: This feature is not yet enabled; it's still in the evaluation phase. It may be beneficial for rendering, but we don't have anything specific to say about it at this point.

If you want to know more about specific h2 features and their relation to crawling, ask us on Twitter.

Will Googlebot crawl more or faster over h2?

The primary benefit of h2 is resource savings, both on the server side, and on Googlebot side. Whether we crawl using h1 or h2 does not affect how your site is indexed, and hence it does not affect how much we plan to crawl from your site.

Is there any ranking benefit for a site in being crawled over h2?

No.

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