So longer content is better. It’s always better. I mean, this is like common sense stuff, right? So yeah, I guess just a highlight of that, or a recap, is really that the AI-generated overviews, when they do appear, they’re going to be more detailed. And Google is reducing it, so you’re not going to see them as often.
The biggest takeaway here is, as AI snippets become longer, companies may need to create more comprehensive content beyond what the overview covers. So when you are creating content, find ways to create more comprehensive content.
Yeah, and interlinking. Like we always say, go back to your old content, link it to your new content, so Google gets the idea of what’s related while it’s ingesting the content.
All right, so that’s it for this one. Just a recent article we wanted to…
Yeah, sure, it did scale back on the search results, because we can’t even find one. But the main topic, which is also the title of this stream, is the sign. So what, there’s so many… I hate these ads pop up here. What is this bad sign that this is talking about? There’s two Google articles here. Why is Google crawling your site or pinging it? A sign that something is on this. Well, there’s two reasons.
So it’s about endless content, which is something that I’ve dealt with on a site recently. It’s about content that is endless, it’s infinite. So say there’s like a calendar on your site and each page has a calendar day. So it’ll be like yoursite.com/calendar/thedate and that has a page. And under that, maybe there’s pagination which is like page one, page two, page three. Google will go in there not knowing anything about the content. It’ll index these pages, it’ll say what’s the calendar month, what’s the day, what’s underneath there. Also, there’s sometimes hours or lists within these calendars. So this endless or infinite Google ping will index all of these pages and it really lowers the content worth of your actual site because it’s indexing hundreds or hundreds of thousands or even millions of pages that don’t really exist but within the plugin that you’re using. Mainly in this case would be like the event calendar.
Or similar ones, pages are being created and it’s still being indexed. So one way to prevent that would be to block those bots from accessing certain parts of your site. And that’s done in a file called robots.txt. Or you can do it in other programs like Google Tag Manager. But in robots.txt, you can pretty much say, allow certain Google bots to access A, B, and C on my site and disallow them to access, what are the letters, D, E, F.
So you would pretty much say, “You can look at this on Google, but don’t look at these things.” And don’t look at anything underneath these things, so like event calendar and certain dates. There’s other ways to do it too. You can manage these indexing rules inside of hosting if you have something like WordPress, WP Engine, or Kinsta. Or you can map them in a plugin. So like Yoast SEO has some settings. I think Rank Math probably, because they’re a little more advanced than Yoast.
But these are ways that you can prevent this endless type of sign. And the sign would be if you go on to Google and you look into your search console or your analytics, and there’s way more pages on your site than you actually have and utilize, that’s a sign that you should be preventing access to those pages because they’re just low quality, low content, and they ain’t helping you.
Yeah, and I would also say the Search Console would be where you would go and notice all of these unfamiliar URLs being pinged or indexed. There’s been situations where we’ve seen sites that have thousands of these very unfamiliar URLs being pinged, and it’s a sign that something’s going on with your website that you might not see visually, but it’s happening in the background and it’s negatively impacting your site.
A lot of the times the signs may not be super visible, but if you do have Search Console and you look at the data closely, it will show you. It won’t be as visible as like front end looking at it, but it will show what’s happening within the back end and what’s currently something that you can’t see but is impacting Google.
Yeah, and a lot of these, where you just said about there’s pages that are being indexed, it doesn’t just happen on event calendars. It happens on all sorts of things. Pagination is one of them but also canonical URLs, which have to do with translations on a site. There can be… If you think about it, one page can have a multitude of pages. Really, it’s exponential in terms of if there’s an error in that code, there can be an exponential addition of pages, or at least telling Google there’s more pages and there’s more pages and there’s more pages.
There’s eight translations of this page. And then on that page, it says that there’s eight translations of this page. And you can see how it can grow. And all these things get indexed. And at the end of it, you have a multitude of pages that shouldn’t be indexed that are competing with your pages that should be indexed. So you’re competing against yourself, which is never a good game to play.
Yeah, so there are some tips that Google put in the article. So if you’re seeing any of these odd URL structures and things like that being constantly indexed on your site, you want to first, you have to identify the vulnerability. So you have to see where it’s coming from and usually a web developer can help get to the point of identifying where the issue is if it’s hidden somewhere within a plugin of a plugin where the malware is.
And even before that, before we get into these solutions, the other part of this is that hacking part, the malware. So we only went over the infinite content but hacking too, obviously like this article is based on hacking. So really these two can be related, whereas I can get hacked and then generate infinite pages.
But a lot of the times what they’re talking about here, let me just scroll up a little bit, is, let’s see, Google crawling your site a lot. So it could happen with these… Okay, why are they, why is it, why is it not hacking? Why is Google hacking me? Why does Google keep pinging? Well, it could be because of those millions or thousands of pages that don’t really, they shouldn’t belong or the site has been hacked and there’s other stuff that’s going on that Google is like, what’s going on here? Things are changing, things are changing.
And I was talking about this last night and we’re saying that the best hacks, because people think of hacks and you’re like, well, my site doesn’t have whatever. It’s not upside down. It’s not broken. But the best hack is the ones you don’t notice. And there’s tons of sites out there that are hacked and don’t know it. It means they’re using your email server, pinging out emails. They’re using their coming in between your contact forms, using your contact form to send out emails. We see it all the time.
Yeah, I’ve seen it within blog posts and then hidden to the visible eye, but even so clever to adjust the style. So if you just highlight under a paragraph, you don’t see anything. If you highlight within the editor, there’s some code there that’s hidden.
Yeah, there’s a word. Word in general. I think it’s obfuscated code or something that’s like obfuscated, hidden.
Oh, that’s a different type. But like obfuscated code is inside of a file and you don’t know what it says, but it really does something like intercepts the page and redirects it or something. But you’re right. Hidden content can be generated that stuff that’s on the visual end, but again, I think the best hacks are going to be ones that are invisible, you’ll never see them.
Yeah, you need FTP access to get in there and look for it because it’s not able to do it just with admin access.
Yeah, it depends on the type of site. A WordPress site you can use WordFence and stuff but when it’s other sites sometimes you do have to bring down the file structure and do a scan on what’s in there, otherwise you don’t know. And props to the people that make the right hacks like these, you know. We’re not hackers. If anything, we’re white hat. But you got to recognize talent when talents do. And the point of hacking is again to know, like the person should never know that they’re hacked. Why would they know? And then if they clean it then you’re all for naught, they would say.
All right, so Google crawling it is a bad sign that something’s going on. It could be one of these things, content, too many pages that are related to things like event calendars. Trying to think of other stuff that has that. Mostly event calendars will generate these thousands of pages, or there’s some issue going on.
So anyways, back to that, the tips is identifying it, fixing it. And you can’t try that yourself. Plugins out there, depending on the software, like WordFence is for WordPress, but other ones I would suggest hiring a developer or someone that’s experienced with finding.
Yeah, going back to number two. So using WordFence, it will give you the scan, and you can scan it. And it will pop up an alert and say, hey, are you sure you want us to remove this malware?
I would say probably 50/50 chance that it will do it, maybe even less than that. But you got to be careful because it could break down the site. And I’ve done it where, of course, I had a backup and everything, but I’ve tried to use WordFence in certain cases and it didn’t work and it required further more in-depth cleaning and things like that. But then on the other instance, depending on the severity of
Depending on the severity of the malware and how it is on the site, sometimes WordFence can take it out. It’s a feature that WordFence has, but you must make sure you have a backup for your site before you go down that road.
Yeah, always take a backup before you do major things. WordFence is a great plugin. It’ll scan and say, are these files exactly what’s supposed to be here? If not, it’ll ask, do you want to delete them? Do you want to replace them? Delete them if they’re not necessary. Replace them with the actual files that belong there if they are necessary. But again, the level of the hack could actually delineate if the site’s going to work in the end because there could be things that were so far gone or taken over that it’s impossible to get back. So back up your site.
Yeah, and we’ve kind of already talked about the third point: clean the hacked content. If it requires more cleaning, then there are additional processes that have to be taken and looked through within the database. It needs to be cleaned.
You want to make sure to take a look at your security. We mentioned this on a previous slide, but you can do things like replacing salts, looking at your users, seeing if everybody who has access should have access, checking if you have too many admins. Really taking a look at all of these things and making sure that all your plugins are updated so you don’t leave your website vulnerable. That’s really important in making sure you have things like firewalls in place.
Yeah, and limit login attempts. That’s a really good one. You should always have that on your website because they do a great job blocking people, especially from out of the country and things like that.
Yeah, you can block based on location or IP. Recently, just yesterday or the day before, remember, I got an email from a client. She said, is this you? Failed login 17 times on their admin site. I’m like, no, that’s not me. So they know my email, at least, or they’re trying to get in as admin. They don’t know my long password, which is actually just password123. But don’t tell.
That is definitely not your password. Don’t ever do your password123. That’s like what you don’t do. Adam in one, two, three new paths. So after you clean your website and harden the security, you always want to make sure you request a review from Google. So after all the cleaning is done, security is tightened up, request it.
And how do you request it?
Yeah, I think it’s right in the Search Console.
This one, web.dev. There’s an actual security report where you click on it and then review the request. They’ll go through your website and do a review to make sure that it is safe. Because if it’s not, everyone’s probably seen it. It alerts you and says this website’s not safe.
Go over there. We’re on a live stream right now. We’ll talk about it after. Go. Go. Go.
We tell them.
It’s important to put your first grader in check at all times.
Yeah. Get out of here now. We’re on a live stream.
Get in the dad voice now.
The other day, I used my dad voice in the car. And then we all started laughing because Tony doesn’t really ever yell or anything.
Yeah, I’m usually the crazy one yelling or talking loudly. So when Tony does it, we all look at him like…
But in the middle of it, I was making weird faces. I was like, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, which didn’t help anything.
I get my point across without being loud.
Just use the belt. It’s the Puerto Rican side of me. I don’t know any other way to do it. My voice just carries when I’m making a point.
What was I going to say about requests?
Oh, yeah. So sometimes requesting a review, it can take—I’ve seen it be almost instant, a couple of hours. Not so much the results on the Google page. That’s going to take a while to get back if they’ve been taken away. But once you request a review, usually it’s in 24 hours that they’ll scan the site. They scan the site, look to see if the malware or whatever it is still exists, and give you an email back. It says it’s fixed or it’s not fixed. If it’s not fixed, you got to go through the process and still try to figure out what’s going on. So that’s the sign.
Always look for the signs. Some places you can go that will help find that are Search Console, Analytics. Look at where the users are going, what’s happening when it comes to the crawling information, and just pay attention to the URLs. If there’s something that’s unfamiliar, you might have to take a deep dive.
Yeah. Deep dives are fun. Signs are everywhere. The signs. Just open your eyes and see them.
Yep. Like right now, there’s a sign that it’s going to rain.
Yeah. We’re going to go to the pool.
Oops. At least it’ll be good for the garden.
Yeah. What other songs? Do you remember the other songs that Asa Bass had?
Something about a baby. She wants a baby. She wants another baby.
All she wants…
Oh, all that she wants is another baby. Right?
Oh.
And they had another one, too.
I didn’t take it as, like, a literal baby. Like, I thought it was, like, a relationship.
Oh, I think she actually wants a baby.
Oh, really? I guess, depending on what you’re thinking in your head, it’s all subjective, I guess.
I want a baby, too. I heard that somewhere in middle school, so maybe not. They had another one, too. Whatever. They’re gone. They just made their money and then, I think, just kind of left the earth.
Aren’t they from Australia? Is that what I’m thinking is correct?
I don’t know. For a while there, I thought Asus of Base was the same as Alanis Morissette. I feel like they’re the same people.
They’re from Sweden.
I thought they were from Australia. Clearly, my memory is shot.
Yeah. Alanis Morissette is back in the news. I won’t talk about what she’s in there…
Oh no, look her up.
Yeah, it’s not bad for her, but she has things to say about the industry.
Oh, yeah. Okay. Let’s see what else we’re talking about here. The AI snippets.
What’s big in website design trends?
Yeah, I wanted to talk about this. You know those articles that come out like, oh, what’s happening with web design? And there’s everybody’s opinions on where it’s going to be. I think it’s pretty obvious what everyone’s saying, all the experts are saying, that there’s going to be even more of an immersive and personalized experience now with the use of AI. So looking at that, really the biggest focus is going to be the user and giving the user what they want. Creating dynamic content that will be using AI as a way to kind of create this content and make it so specific to what they’re searching for and what they want. It’s pretty interesting.
In 2024, you should see—well, we’ve already seen it—AI-generated images and having that incorporated throughout the site. What’s your take on that, Tony, the whole AI-generated design?
I mean, for layouts and stuff? I’ve seen AI generate really cool layouts, but they all look like AI-generated layouts. I’m not into the AI-generated imagery and stuff like that.
Yeah.
Because it’s so obvious, and it really looks like the site is AI and fake and spam or whatever. I’m not into it. But when you were saying that, I was thinking, imagine—or I don’t think it does happen right now—but if ChatGPT itself had a cookie that follows you around. So on sites, you could personalize it just based off of whatever ChatGPT has in their open AI environment. Cookie, meaning like I go to a site, it queries almost like it queries like Google and it says, who is this person? It’d be cool. And wave privacy, evasive if invasive, if it knew who you are to be like, Hey, welcome to the site.
Yeah, that would be super, super personalized. And I could get there. In certain cases, it is there. Creating dynamic content based on location and things like that. But I think the biggest takeaway for website design is something that has carried over from previous years, but having a super hyper focus on that first part of your website, the navigation bar, the hero image, headlines, creating animations or videos, and text that is structured where a visitor at any point in time in the first few seconds will know exactly what your website is all about. That is the goal for any site, to be able to give it straight as soon as they hit the web page.
Give it straight.
Immediately convey it to the best with visuals and layouts and things like that. But it’ll be interesting to see where design goes. I remember we were watching that YouTube video. It was a little too wild for me, but it was about website design. And it was saying that the graphics being used, like very bubbly…
Remember we were watching?
Yeah, those old stuff. 3D.
Lightweight of type animation. Round, textured things. And I really think it’s based on industry. Obviously, that’s not everything. But they were showing examples of certain sites that were doing this new type of imagery where as soon as you look at it, it invokes a feeling. So very textured-looking things, things that are moving and things like that to kind of bring people into a brand. A little too far out for us, but…
Yeah, I mean, I like some of it. It is dependent on the industry, of course. And usually, we get industries that are not about this type of flashiness. You really want to keep it simple. They want to convey a message and convey to their customers and their products, their services, not craziness, things spinning around. Utilize it when you can and when you should, but not all the time. It’s like, welcome to our insurance company. Things spinning. That was my, like, rave thing going on.
Should I wear my glasses from now on? I feel like I can see better, which is the point of glasses. So I’ve been kind of this whole time. Yeah, you should have a glass this day. I’ll wear my glasses too, and we’ll see. Yeah. It is better for your eyes. Yeah, I got to start. You want to hear a funny story? I went to the eye doctor, and he said… what did he say? Oh, you’re gonna mess it up. He said, I want my glasses. Do you want me to say… No, no, I think I got it.
And I was like, oh, well, you prescribe these glasses, but I have to have them close to me, like the laptop has to be close for the phone, according to me at least, in order for it to actually work. And what can you do, you know? So I’m sitting there and he said, how far is your laptop? And to me, I thought that he was trying to see like how I’m using the laptop so he can identify the problem. Like, I mean, I can go back home. It’s about, I think I could be back at about 20 minutes. I didn’t know he was talking about how far is it on my lap or something like that. He was just busting up laughing. And I was like, what? He’s like, why would I want you to go get your laptop?
He’s really funny. He’s just like a funny… what is it? Optometrician? Optician? Something like that. He’s hysterical. He should be a comedian. I can’t imagine. Everybody else must be laughing too. Does he make you laugh? Yeah, he’s just a funny guy. David Wheeler. Is that his name? All right, maybe. Shout out to David. Anyways, he was laughing. He said, I want you to go get your laptop. I’m talking about how far it is on your lap. I was like, oh my God. Can you let everyone picture this? Me getting in my car and driving all the way back to get my laptop to show. It must have been early in the morning that you were thinking that. You didn’t get your coffee yet or something. Yeah. It was probably caffeinated.
You bring it back to the eye doctor and they’re like, yeah, thank you. Now I can see how far it is. I know, just to show them an example. It’s so weird. It’s so funny. But then he said that he tells that story to other people. Yeah. But the funniest part about this is I went in for my eye exam, and I brought up the same exact story, and he didn’t remember it. I was like, I know you see a lot of patients, and this is like really funny. It was funny to me. So I guess things aren’t that serious. So that’s… it might be really funny at the moment, but obviously other people have other things going on, and your story might be pushed in the back. Whatever. I’ll remind him every time I go in there, I’m going to be like, remember me? Whatever. That was funny.
What was that about? Oh, the glasses. Yeah. So now I can see better with glasses reading. That’s what they’re for. They feel fine on my face. It’s just remembering to do it, you know? Now we know how you feel about your glasses. That’s good. Everyone can go on about their day now. Oh, you can talk about your pie. Oh, okay. I guess.
So we grew some rhubarb in the garden, which has so many great health benefits. You know, I didn’t… this is new to me. I’ve never really eaten it, but it’s known for making rhubarb pie. So my brother sent me this recipe, rhubarb cobbler pie. And I was like, all right, I’m going to try this. So we were making it. And, you know, if you know what rhubarb is, it’s like a really thick stalk, and it’s green, and you cut it up. It’s said to put it in the pot and boil it with a little water and sugar and things like that.
So as I’m cooking it, I’m like, this is gonna be the grossest pie ever. It’s just like, what am I making, the girls’ vegetable pie? And I was like, this is… I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I’m looking at it. Starting off, I’m looking at it, and I’m like, I’m gonna throw in the towel. This is gonna be gross, you know? So then I was like, no, let me stick to the recipe. The recipe seems a little bland. So I was nervous about it, and I saw other recipes, and they had more things in it, like strawberries, to really spice it up. But I was like, let me just continue on. At least I can say I tried the recipe. If it’s a bust, then I won’t do it again.
So anyways, long story short, we went through the process, and I think I have a picture of the pie. You should pull it up. Yeah, I’m going to send it. The pie came out amazing. Yeah, it was really good. And it was very surprising how good it tastes. And I just thought, at the end of it, like me reflecting on it, and I’m like, I was… you know, how many times… like, I think other people can relate. You are in the creating process, and you’re starting, and you’re looking at it, and it’s not done yet, but you’re just like second-guessing. And you’re just like, oh, this is not going to work. So the lesson really is to be able to trust the process. And even though you can’t see it at the moment, it will have a good result most of the time. For this case, it did.
So this is the pie. So it was like apple pie, but better. Yeah, it was really… let me turn the sound down. That was me screaming. Yeah, so that’s the cobbler pie. The girls, everyone liked it. It started looking like this. This is when I was doubting the process. So I was like, what is this going to taste like? It looks weird. It’s really flavorful, almost like an apple pie, but it has a little tang to it. Yeah, and then this was the top of it, and I was like, ugh. Yeah, that looks like a potato salad inside of a potato. Yeah, I did modify a little bit of the recipe. If anyone’s interested in making it, just send us a note. I’ll send it to you. I was happy with it. Everyone loved it, and it’s a nice little recipe that we’re going to carry along.
We should put a recipe section, three-tone digital slash recipe. I know. If it is something that we like to try new recipes, then… yeah, I’m not good at recipes. I feel like I do cook pretty good stuff, but following a recipe, forget it. I don’t trust the process. I go about 25% and then I have my own process. Yeah, and sometimes it’s okay to make minor updates to things. Like the girls were like, add more cinnamon, add some brown sugar toppings. I’m like, okay, that can only help. Add some hot sauce. No, that would not help. Try it. You should try it out. I put hot sauce in my coffee a couple months ago. It was actually better than one would think. That sounds insane, but it’s actually pretty good. Tabasco.
Why did I do that that day? I think it was hot sauce day or something. Probably. We were like, live it up. Let’s start out early. One thing, not to talk about spicy, but I’m out of hot sauce completely now. Besides that, generic hot sauce, maybe it’s a sign. No, it’s not a sign. We have to go get more hot sauce. But I ran out of also the spicy ketchup. I didn’t even know we had that. Yeah, but I’ve been hiding it. It’s so good. Oh my God. I put it on rice the other day, which sounds like a crazy meal. It was cold. Doesn’t matter. Oh, it was so good. But now we’re out. And the Pepper Palace, it was at the mall down in Albany, closed down. So, got to find a new Pepper Palace. I heard there’s another one and get my garlic. It’s called Angry Garlic Hot Sauce. I’m going to get multiple bottles.
I need a sign. I think this is a sign to wrap it up before more hot sauce stories. Yeah. So let’s play us out. Thanks for joining us. And if you have malware or you need us to check to see if things are going on on your site that look weird, you get pinged a lot, or the traffic is down, whatever it is, we have experience with so many little facets of web design. Even IT and web development. So feel free to contact us, and we will get the ball rolling. Yeah, we’re natural troubleshooters. That’s what most of our roles consist of, being a web developer, figuring out what the issue is and fixing it. So yeah, it’s like a puzzle. Jump in, detective.
And even if you want to tackle it yourself but need just to bounce some ideas off, you can reach out to us too. Exactly. And if you know where the garlic hot sauce is, contact us. Or more rhubarb pie. Or other things you can make with it because all I really know is pie. Yeah. Yeah. Didn’t we do something like that? Like the first time? Yeah, I just created my own little recipe. I put in like some salad. Yeah, which was pretty good. Sour. Alright, everybody. Enjoy your Friday.
