A few, rather more infrequent than they should be, thoughts on SEO, web performance and development.
Core Web Vitals can be affected by where your users are, and what language they speak. This article explores how a website's Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) can be impacted by the browser translating the page into another language, and offers potential solutions.
View the original, un-rewritten version of a wayback machine page, get the html they saved without the changes to links etc.
A time-series visualisation of where Google crawled tamethebots.com from.
Some of the best advice I've heard about HCU and EEAT is literally just "Don't Dream it, Be it"
23th Jan 24 // updated:
Using the new Soft Navigation features to gather accurate Core Web Vitals data on SPA sites, and seeing if the improvements for 2nd plus navigations are worth it.
Sometimes it's useful to look past the single 75th percentile figure to see where you're heading.
A quick round-up of tools that handle hreflang testing and checking
A quick test to find out how the new (ish) robots directive indexifembedded works with iframes containing html and pdfs.
25th Jul 22 // updated:
I was really happy to be a guest on Dan Sure's Expert on the Wire podcast, talking about JavaScript SEO and more!
23th Nov 21 // updated:
Priority Hints help lower LCP if used in the right way. They do what they say on the tin.
A quick experiment to find out if content produced by a web worker can be rendered and indexed by Google, and if there are any limitations.
A script using nodejs to access BigQuery and write a log file from logflare.app data to NGINX's default access log format, perfect if you have tools that work with that.
A quick write up of my experience facilitating a session at the Google Search Central Unconference, held on 21st June 2021
7th Mar 21 // updated:
What does 28 days mean? Is it rolling? Is it 28 days behind? A small test.
11th Feb 21 // updated:
My first time speaking at BrightonSEO! Come see me talk about JavaScript Crawling and Indexing on 25 March 2021, 2:10 pm (GMT)
26th Jan 21 // updated:
Potential cumulative layout shift metric changes, feeback wanted!
30th Oct 20 // updated:
A halloween themed talk on core web vitals I did for Dan Taylor, Video & Slides
31th May 20 // updated:
The new Web Vitals performance metrics bring the focus beyond that of speed.
A non-techy guide to what https status codes are, and what they mean for your website. Plus a teapot & missile bears (for real)
12th Aug 19 // updated:
Chrome's javascript bookmarklets can be a great additon to an SEO's toolbox, here's a few examples.
A quick study to find out if googlebot uses Etag response headers, and sends If-None-Matched request headers to get 304 responses.
10th Mar 19 // updated:
404, 301, it's still important for your JavaScript site, find out about your options!
16th Nov 18 // updated:
Does Google use third party review sites to rank yours?
7th Aug 18 // updated:
Using JavaScript to tell if someone has clicked on an iframe embedded in your page