Google On Crawling, Rendering and Handling AI Content
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Martin Splitt from Google was questioned on how Googlebot was adjusting its crawling and rendering to the rise in AI-generated content.
Martin’s response shed light on Google’s handling of AI-generated content and the function of quality control.
Rendering is known as the process of building a webpage in a browser by downloading the HTML, pictures, CSS, and JavaScript, then assembling them into a webpage.
In order to render the webpage, Google’s crawler Googlebot also downloads the HTML, pictures, CSS, and JavaScript files.
In the webinar, Exploring the Art of Rendering, one attendee asked about whether the large amount of AI content affects Google’s ability to render pages when it comes to crawling.
Martin gave an explanation, but he also provided details on how Google determines whether a webpage is of low quality at the moment it is being crawled and what it does afterwards.
What the particular member of the audience really wanted to know is if there are any special procedures regarding the AI content for dealing with the extra crawling and rendering load.
The bottom line of Splitt’s answer is that there are no special procedures, as “AI might increase the scale, but doesn’t change that much. Rendering is not the culprit here.”
On top of that Splitt omitted any mention of Google using AI detection on the text. He claimed that Quality Detection was applied at several levels by Google.
To round up Splitt’s interpretation of AI content, we can say that there’s nothing new being applied for AI content and Google constantly uses just quality detectors for both human and AI content.
Google Updates Pagespeed Insights With New Lighthouse Features
Google has added a new version of Lighthouse, called Lighthouse 11, to PageSpeed Insights. The revised version includes updated audits, bug fixes, and score adjustments.
Lighthouse is an open source measuring tool that aids in troubleshooting website performance problems.
Additionally, it powers PageSpeed Insights and other applications that gauge essential web metrics.
On Monday, August 28th, Google published the most recent version, Lighthouse 11.
The following modifications and additions stand out on the new version of Lighthouse:
- New accessibility audits
- Alterations to the scoring system for best practices
- Fixed problem with Largest Contentful Paint score
LCP diagnostic feedback displays an error in scoring, a bug that was introduced in Lighthouse 10.2.0.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP) has been updated to indicate that it is no longer experimental.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is a form of a new metric that measures the interactivity of the entire website.
- Several different bug fixes
PageSpeed Insights has undergone several significant improvements with this version, and those changes pave the path for even more significant ones in 2024.
Google Introduces New Features to Help Users Find Cheaper Deals on Google Flights
With price insights, tracking notifications, and guarantees, Google refreshes flight searches to make it easier to locate cheaper airfares.
In order to assist users in finding more affordable flights using Google Flights, additional tools and insights have been added.
Google reveals in a blog post that search results now include more details about historical pricing patterns, price monitoring notifications, and a price guarantee badge.
The cheapest historical booking window for your destination and travel dates will now be shown in Google Flights’ insights.
This enables you to determine whether rates are normally lower when making reservations more or less close to the departure date.
When determining if a user is in the “sweet spot” for finding the best deal, the program analyzes historical price data. It is now easier to decide whether to make a reservation right away or to keep an eye on rates and wait for a better offer.
The price tracking option on Google Flights has been enhanced in addition to the historical data.
After setting up monitoring, you may activate alerts to get alerted if costs for your searched itinerary drop drastically.
The following three to six months’ worth of precise trip dates or more open-ended date ranges are compatible with price tracking.
You may use the option to automatically check fares rather than doing so manually.
On a small sample of its flight search results, Google is also testing price guarantee badges. Google is certain that the present fare won’t go down before departure, as seen by this.
Google Has Started Indexing CSV Files
Although it previously utilised CSV data via structured data for improved search appearances, Google is now indexing CSV files.
Google silently included a statement indicating that they are now indexing.csv files to their Google Search Central documentation.
As a result, there is a new way to be crawled; alternatively, if a publisher doesn’t want their.csv files to be crawled, it may be necessary to update robots.txt to exclude such files.
CSV (comma-separated value) files are text documents that store data in a tabular format that may be viewed as a spreadsheet.
CSV files only hold plain text data, thus they don’t include any other formatting elements like fonts, graphics, or clickable links.
They may be used to submit a list of URLs for crawling to programs like Screaming Frog, for example. They are helpful for arranging data in a spreadsheet, though.
Google’s ability to index CSV files is a new feature since a “filetype” search on Google for CSV files does not return CSV files.
Currently, searches like the following do not return CSV files:
- filetype:csv site:.gov
- filetype:csv site:.edu
- filetype:csv site:.com
The fact that the main algorithm upgrade and the indexing of CSV files occurred almost simultaneously may have been a coincidence.
However, it may be worth wondering if Google has enhanced its crawling engine to include indexing CSV or if that functionality was present already.
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