English Google SEO office-hours from July 2023

This is an audio-only recording of the Google SEO office-hours from July 2023 - a transcript is available at These sessions cover topics submitted around anything search and website-owner related like crawling, indexing, sitemaps, Search Console, Canonical URLs, domain names, hreflang, multi-lingual/multi-regional sites, etc. The answers are compiled by the Google Search Relations team. Need site-specific help? Post your question in the Google Search Central Help Community, and get answers from our Product Experts and other experienced web professionals: Do you have a question about Google Search or SEO? It might be a good fit for the office hours. You can submit your question for Google SEO Office Hours here: Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction 0:36 - Issues with my website appearing on Google. Help! 1:09 - What is less harmful: millions of 404 error pages or millions of 301 redirects to the parent listing page? 1:35 - What URL format and declared canonical is the most optimal for an ecom site’s category pages to get indexed? 2:25 - Why does my search results only show prices in USD when my site has other currencies? I tested with a VPN. 3:13 - I purchased a domain name and tested it, and it comes up with a 404 error. Why? 3:56 - How do I avoid Google selecting incorrect canonical URLs from another country domain according to SC? 5:08 - I searched for my website on Google and found links which were written in Chinese. I want to delete them. 6:00 - How do I change my website address from an old domain to a new domain? 6:19 - How can the content in a product page be unique when different sellers offer the exact same product? 6:47 - How can we separate the report on Google Search Console based on the subdomain? 7:19 - Can a big amount of 404 pages in GSC lead to negative effects of rankings of status 200 pages? 7:32 - How can I get Google Discover to come back? 8:00 - What is the SCHEMA type for an affiliate site? 8:43 - How do I create a good ? 9:27 - Can you explain how Google uses quality raters to review and rate sites? 10:03 - GSC is showing 1 million “pages with redirects“ despite a site migration a year ago. Why? 10:47 - My website domain is not showing when you search on Google. Why? 11:10 - Our domain is used only for email accounts. How can I stop it appearing in Google search results? 11:57 - Search Console says my site’s crawled by Googlebot desktop. What is preventing the migration to mobile index? 12:44 - Could the query string in Hreflang give mixed signals to Google in any way? 13:12 - What is the effect of website form design and form position in SEO ranking? 13:41 - Would removing pages improve crawlability and indexability? 14:39 - Should a global company use .ai as their GTLD or is it considered by Google as a ccTLD? 15:03 - I want to clear all “Not Found (404)” errors in Search Console. How? 15:37 - We need your professional advice with our website ranking! 16:09 - How do I request indexing of my publication in Google Scholar? 17:00 - Are best practices for redirects on files like PDF, video, and image URLs the same as web page URLs? 17:18 - Will hreflang tags (used on a small section of a website) be used as an international targeting signal? Resources: Google Search Central website → How our Quality Raters make Search results better → Get support for your site from Google Search → Check out past office hours → Subscribe to the Google Search Central YouTube Channel → #SEO #Google