Search Off the Record
57 episodes
Search Off the Record takes you behind the scenes of Google Search and its inner workings! In each episode, the folks from the Search Relations team will give you background info on the decision-making behind launches, feature prioritization in Search Console, and the projects Google Search teams are working on. They will share fun stories from the many conferences they attend as well as from their day-to-day working life at Google. They will also dive into the currently trending conversations in the SEO community at large. Have a listen!
Episodes page 1 of 2
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PDFs in Search: Indexing, AI & Pitfalls
Should you publish your content as a PDF or stick strictly to standard HTML? Does Google treat PDF files differently when it comes to indexing, ranking, and AI search features? In this episode of Search Off the…
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Do sitemaps still matter?
Sitemaps have been a core element of web development and search engine optimization for two decades, yet Search Console warnings like "Couldn't fetch" continue to generate concern among site owners. Are XML sitemaps…
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Should you block your Search result pages?
Is your website's internal search feature secretly acting as an open invitation for crawling lots and lots? In this episode of Search off the Record, Martin Splitt and John Mueller pull back the curtain on how internal…
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How to read the Indexing Report
Should you panic when your Search Console indexing report is showing pages that aren't indexed? Is a 404 error code always a sign of a broken website? In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin Splitt and John…
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Should I use markdown for my site?
Should you convert your website into Markdown to help Large Language Models (LLMs) understand your content better? Is "llms.txt" worth the effort for SEO? In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin Splitt and…
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Vibe Coding - yay or nay?
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin Splitt and John Mueller from Google's Search Relations team dive deep into the world of AI-assisted development. They explore the reality of "Vibe Coding", the process…
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How AI Is Changing Google Search and SEO
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin speaks with Nikola Todorovic (director of Software Engineering at Google Search) about how AI is changing Google Search. They discuss the evolution from traditional…
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Analysing Robots.txt at scale with HTTP Archive and BigQuery
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin and Gary turn a simple robots.txt question into a data‑driven deep dive using HTTP Archive, WebPageTest, custom JavaScript metrics, and BigQuery. They explore how…
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Are websites getting "fat"? Page weight, HTML size & Googlebot limits explained
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Gary and Martin dig into what "page size" and "page weight" actually mean for developers, users, and search engines. They discuss exploding web page sizes: median mobile…
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Google crawlers behind the scenes
Developers often talk about Googlebot as if it were a single program you could just run as "googlebot.exe", but that is not how Google's crawling actually works. In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin and…
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How Browsers Really Parse HTML (and What That Means for SEO)
Martin and Gary unpack how HTML parsing really works, why the HTML standard is so lenient, and how messy markup can silently break key SEO signals like hreflang and rel=canonical. They revisit validators and…
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Do You Still Need a Website in 2026?
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin and Gary from the Google Search Relations team tackle a deceptively simple question: do you still need a website in 2026? Starting from the recurring industry claim that…
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Crawling Challenges: What the 2025 Year-End Report Tells Us.
Join Martin and Gary as they dive into Search Off the Record's Episode 103, unpacking the 2025 Year-End report on crawling issues. Discover fascinating insights on faceted navigation, action parameters, irrelevant…
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SEO, AIO, GEO, your site, & third-party support to optimize for LLMs
In this episode, John Mueller and Danny Sullivan continue their conversation about the changing landscape of Search. They discuss the practicalities of hiring an SEO professional in the age of AI: Do you really need…
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Thoughts on SEO & SEO for AI, part 1
In this episode, John Mueller and Danny Sullivan talk about SEO and the new kids on the block: AIO, GEO and others. Danny shares how these things interact with each other and what he thinks website owners should look…
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How Search Off the Record tackles SEO and web development
Celebrate the 100th episode of Search Off the Record with Martin, Lizzi, Cherry, John and Gary as they revisit memorable moments, touching on a bunch of topics. This special episode touches on Google's mobile-first…
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Optimizing login-page content for Google Search
Explore critical aspects of search engine optimization for web content that lives behind a login or paywall. In this episode, Martin and John cover how Googlebot interacts with these pages, the role of paywall…
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Lazy loading demystified
Optimize your website's performance with lazy loading techniques. In this episode, John Mueller and Martin Splitt discuss lazy loading, and its SEO implications. Find out how lazy loading affects indexing, ranking, and…
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SEO for photographers: websites, social media, and Google Search
In this episode of Search Off The Record, John and Martin explore the intersection of SEO and photography. Is a website essential for photographers, or is social media enough? Martin, a technical SEO expert and…
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How does CSS affect SEO?
Martin and John dive into the world of CSS and explore its connection to SEO. Discover why CSS files matter for SEO, how modern CSS frameworks impact pages, and the SEO implications of CSS class names and pseudo…
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SEO for small businesses
Are you a developer or small business owner struggling with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? In this episode of Search Off the Record, Google Search Advocates John Mueller and Martin Splitt break down the essentials…
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Demystifying SEO for developers
Developers often have misconceptions about SEO. In this episode of Search Off the Record, John Mueller and Martin Splitt clarify what matters and what doesn't. They cover areas including: Optimizing themes for SEO, The…
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What SEOs should know about devs
In this candid episode of Search Off the Record, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt from the Google Search team peel back the curtain to reveal a more human side of their work and challenges. Instead of diving deep into…
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How Googlebot crawls the web
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Martin and Gary from the Google Search Relations team take a deep dive into how Googlebot and web crawling work—past, present, and future. Through their humorous and thoughtful…
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Debugging the Internet: HTTP, TCP, and You
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt from the Google Search team dive deep into the foundations of how the web works—specifically HTTP, TCP, UDP, and newer technologies like QUIC and…
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Launching Search Central Live Deep Dive
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Google's Martin Splitt, Cherry, and Gary Illyes discuss the exciting expansion of Search Central Live with the introduction of Search Central Live Deep Dive. They share the…
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How are web standards made?
Ever wondered how web standards are made? Martin and Gary from Google Search take you behind the scenes of the internet's governing bodies. From the IETF to the W3C, learn about the consensus-driven processes that…
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Wrapping up 2024
As 2024 comes to a close, we're reflecting on what SEO things happened this year. Listen along as we chat about what we learned from going to events, the importance of understanding how AI works, and whether everything…
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Handling Dupes - Same Same or Different?
In this episode of Search Off the Record, John and Martin talk to Allan Scott from the Google Search team that handles duplicate content. They explore how Google Search deals with duplicated content, clustering, and…
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A discussion of UX for SEO
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Lizzi and John are joined by Rio Ichikawa, a product manager working on UX, CRO, and SEO, to discuss the intersection of SEO and UX. They explore how user experience impacts…
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Understanding how users experience your website
Sometimes talking to your users is the best way to figure out why that pesky bounce rate is high. But how do you actually do that, especially if you're on a budget? In this episode of Search Off the Record, we're…
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Designing Google Doodles and delightful experiences
What does recursion, Weather Frog, and Momo the Magic Cat have in common? In this episode of SOTR, Lizzi and John go behind the scenes of a Google Doodle with Jessica Yu, the lead for Doodles and delight on Google…
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Google Search Reliability
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!…
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How do I know if my SEO is doing a good job?
It's been a few months since you hired an SEO; how can you tell if things are headed in the right direction? In this episode of Search Off the Record, Lizzi and John interview Erika Varangouli, head of Branded Content…
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Let's talk shopping markup
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…
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Working With Search Console API
We sat down with Mihai Aperghis, a Google Product Expert (PE) for Search, when he visited the Zurich office for the PE Summit this year. In this episode we talk about how he started his SEO agency, the tools he built,…
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Crawling smarter, not harder
In this episode of SOTR, John Mueller, Lizzi Sassman, and Gary Illyes talk about misconceptions around crawl frequency and site quality, what's challenging about crawling the web nowadays, and how search engines could…
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Internationalization & hreflang
Managing websites that use different languages and serve different countries is no easy task. That's why Lizzi, Gary and Martin sat down to talk about all things internationalization, hreflang and what's making…
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Rendering JavaScript for Google Search
In this episode, Zoe Clifford from the rendering team joins Martin and John from Search Relations to talk about how Google Search deals with JavaScript sites, how rendering works and what the mysterious "iteratorect"…
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Inside Search Quality: Using metrics and data science to improve Search
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…
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Cosmic Rays & Crawlers: When Google Search is under the weather
How does Google address incidents that affect Search results, like indexing problems or crawling issues? Join John, Lizzi, and Gary in this episode of Search off the Record as the team discusses internal processes…
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Building SEO community with office hours
In this episode of Search off the Record, John and Lizzi invite Michael Chidzey and "Jo" Juliana Turnbull to talk all things SEO Office Hours. Listen along as they discuss why they picked this format, whether community…
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Let's talk Content Decay
What's the best way to handle outdated content? Does old content affect SEO? In this episode of Search Off the Record, Lizzi Sassman and John Mueller discuss the importance of addressing old content and updating it to…
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Gemini for Social Posts: Game Edition
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Gary Illyes, Lizzi Sassman, and John Mueller put Large Language Models (LLMs) to the test and compete to create the best social post using generative AI. Listen along as they…
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Deciphering INP and Core Web Vitals
In this episode of Search Off the Record, John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman are joined by Rick Viscomi from the Chrome Web Performance team to discuss the importance of understanding what users seek to accomplish and…
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What is a web crawler, really?
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Gary Illyes and Lizzi Sassman take a deep dive into crawling the web: what is a web crawler, and how does it really work? Listen along as the Search team is joined by an expert…
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Search Central Product Experts
In this episode of Search Off the Record, John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman sit down with Aaseesh Marina, Product Support Manager, to discuss the Search Central community forums. Did you know there is a group of Product…
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Rewriting the SEO Starter Guide
The SEO Starter Guide is getting a refresh! Have you ever wondered how the Search team plans and writes such a document? In this episode of Search Off the Record, John Mueller, Gary Illyes, and Lizzi Sassman discuss…
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2023: Year in review
In this episode of Search, Martin, John, and Gary look back at 2023 and reminisce on some of this year's Search announcements. From updates to Core Web Vitals to going back to basics of website titling, the team covers…
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Which aspect of my site should I focus on?
In this episode of Search, Martin, Gary, and John discuss aspects of SEO that website owners often overlook. From overall quality to more technical aspects, The Search team talks about where they focus on their SEO…
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