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Search Off the Record

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

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All Episodes

Do sitemaps still matter? - Transcript

Search Off the Record ·

2026/10/01

26:26

Do sitemaps still matter?

Search Off the Record ·

2026/10/01

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 still necessary with modern search crawlers, or can search engines and AI bots figure out site structure on their own? In this episode of Search off the Record, Google Search Relations team members Martin Splitt and John Mueller break down the history, technical specifications, and some

Should you block your Search result pages? - transcript

Search Off the Record ·

2026/07/30

How to read the Indexing Report - Transcript

Search Off the Record ·

2026/07/16

31:40

How to read the Indexing Report

Search Off the Record ·

2026/07/16

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 Mueller from the Google Search Relations team dive deep into the Page Indexing report in Google Search Console. They unpack why treating this report as a static inventory checklist to "fix" things is the wrong response, how to spot massive SEO-ruining hosting or CDN traps, and why a

Should I use markdown for my site? - Transcript

Search Off the Record ·

2026/06/15

Vibe Coding - yay or nay? - Transcript

Search Off the Record ·

2026/05/07

How AI Is Changing Google Search and SEO - transcript

Search Off the Record ·

2026/05/01

33:10

How AI Is Changing Google Search and SEO

Search Off the Record ·

2026/05/01

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 search to AI Overviews and AI Mode, how Google tests and launches search changes, and why query behaviour is becoming more conversational and complex. Nikola also explains the role of machine learning in Search, how features are evaluated before launch, and what site owners and SEOs should

Analysing Robots.txt at scale with HTTP Archive and...

Search Off the Record ·

2026/04/23

27:40

Analysing Robots.txt at scale with HTTP Archive and...

Search Off the Record ·

2026/04/23

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 millions of real robots.txt files are actually written in 2025–2026, which directives and user‑agents are most common, and what that means for modern crawling and AI bots. Perfect for beginner to mid‑level developers and SEOs, you'll learn how large‑scale web measurement works (HTTP Archive,

Are websites getting "fat"? Page weight, HTML size &...

Search Off the Record ·

2026/03/30

32:12

Are websites getting "fat"? Page weight, HTML size &...

Search Off the Record ·

2026/03/30

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 homepages hit 2.3 MB in 2025 Web Almanac (up 3x from 2015), key insights for developers on page weight definitions, Googlebot's crawl limits, HTML bloat from structured data/images, and why size still hurts UX on slow connections despite faster networks. If you build or maintain websites,

Crawling Challenges: What the 2025 Year-End Report...

Search Off the Record ·

2026/02/03