Over a year ago, I decided to dissect how Googlebot works. I got distracted, and it was never published. Time to publish my theories about Googlebot. bigcommerce.websiteadvantage.com.au/tonys-theory...

Tony's Theory of Googlebot Relativity -

This epic quest was started years ago when I was trying to understand why a JavaScript widget was not being picked up by Google. After many experiments and rabbit holes, I came up with some theories.

bigcommerce.websiteadvantage.com.au

Google SEO Test Shows What Happens In 5-Second Rendering Window

Google SEO Test Shows What Happens In 5-Second Rendering Window

A new SEO test shows what happens inside Google's Web Rendering Service after five seconds: Google pauses a virtual clock in the renderer.

buff.ly

I was one of the people talking about the 5-second limit. It's more complex than that.

Dave Smart@tamethebots.com · 2w ago

I heard again the other day about the 5 second render timeout limit in Google's web rendering service. It's not real, but because of how the WRS works, it's understandable where that figure comes from. I did a test case and wrote it up here: tamethebots.com/blog-n-bits/...

Lighthouse 13.1.0 is out, and brings a new audit, checking the baseline status of features used on the page. Release notes here: github.com/GoogleChrome... Or give it a spin in my fetch and render tool: tamethebots.com/tools/fetch-...

Folks, you’re not going to believe this, but

The 2025 Web Almanac by HTTP Archive has been officially released! 🚀 We would like to thank all of our contributors from around the globe who made this extensive report possible! Check out the full report here: almanac.httparchive.org

If we migrated the googlebot.json file to a new location with a 301 redirect, would that break your fetches? Or the fetcher would just follow the redirect developers.google.com/static/searc...

LCP and INP are now Baseline newly available /since they are now available in all major browsers! 🎉🥳🍾 Really, really, really curious to see what sort of new performance insights we’ll see as sites start to collect and look at the data! #CoreWebVitals

Jen Simmons@jensimmons.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Safari 26.2 is here with 65 features + 165 bug fixes — including field-sizing, Navigation API, Largest Contentful Paint, command & commandfor, CHIPS opt-in partitioned cookies, scrollend event, random(), WebGPU in WebXR, scrollbar-color, hidden=until-found and much more! webkit.org/blog/17640/w...

Was a good listen youtu.be/lhlS-Wds02M?...

Rory Sutherland - Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

YouTube video by The Welcome Conference

youtu.be

New in Search Console Insights: Query Groups. Makes it easier to track how things are changing (or not) for a group of similar queries from traditional search, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. #SEO #AEO developers.google.com/search/blog/...

Introducing Query groups in Search Console Insights  |  Google Search Central Blog  |  Google for Developers

developers.google.com

I mentioned before that we’re switching Lighthouse Performance audits to the new and improved Insights. The same Insights that you can see in DevTools Performance panel traces. That’s happening in Lighthouse 13 due to be released very soon. Maybe even this week!

Barry Pollard@tunetheweb.com · last yr.

We're updating Lighthouse to be based on the same Insights we recently launched in the Performance panel of Chrome DevTools. developer.chrome.com/blog/moving-... This will help align the tools but will be a breaking change. So we'll make that change in Lighthouse 13 in 6 months. 1/3 🧵

Core Web Vitals mystery for ya: Why does Google Search Console same my LCP is bad, but every example URL has good LCP? I see developers asking: How can this happen? Is GSC wrong? (I'm willing to bet it is not!) What can you do about it? This is admittedly confusing so let's dive in... 🧵 1/12

We can never be given nice things.

Gary Illyes@methode.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Subtwee... subblue: using something as an API doesn't make it an official API. developers.google.com/search/blog/...

Cats, like humans they eat every day (hopefully), and they get ill. The difference is that they can really help themselves. #seocharity This is a real kitten; the shelter needs money to save her. Donate today! donate.stripe.com/6oE15C1Srfzn... Maybe it will be your $10 that will save her

-What is the best day to donate? - Tuesday! #seocharity If you love (and can) help buy food and medicine for cat and dog shelters in Ukraine, please donate! single donation (any amount) donate.stripe.com/6oE15C1Srfzn... regular $10 a month buy.stripe.com/9AQ9C87cL4UJ...

Farewell faithful G510, you did me proud, but I do need the letters n and f. Time to learn a new setup.

There's a video I took of @methode.bsky.social from the past month's Search Central Live in Bankok. It captures him at his best. The addition of the squealing chicken as the bell was a very nice and fun touch #scldd25

I feel that many of the support responses I get now are LLM enhanced. Accurate and helpful responses, but a bit too grovely. Like chatgpt, when you tell it that it is lying. I miss the lack of response, misdirection, not answering the question, blaming others or irrelevant responses.

New Soft Navigations origin trial https://developer.chrome.com/blog/new-soft-navigations-origin-trial?hl=en

New Soft Navigations origin trial  |  Blog  |  Chrome for Developers

New Soft Navigations origin trial launching to help measure Core Web Vitals for Single Page Applications (SPAs)

developer.chrome.com

Wanna measure Core Web Vitals for for SPAs? Well we've been working on the Soft Navigations API for that and we're launching a new origin trail from Chrome 139. More details here: developer.chrome.com/blog/new-sof... And the docs have also been updated: developer.chrome.com/docs/web-pla...

New Soft Navigations origin trial  |  Blog  |  Chrome for Developers

New Soft Navigations origin trial launching to help measure Core Web Vitals for Single Page Applications (SPAs)

developer.chrome.com

Why is "hay google" (Google Assistant) still so dumb. It's AI based but seems to be forgotten in the LLM world.

Oooh, new origin trial coming for soft navigation Core Web Vitals 👀 developer.chrome.com/docs/web-pla...

Experimenting with measuring soft navigations  |  Web Platform  |  Chrome for Developers

The Chrome team is working on better measuring so-called soft navigations used by Single Page Applications and a new API is now available behind a flag to allow sites to experiment with this too.

developer.chrome.com

Well said. I hate having to sift through a div jungle trying to find a way to reliably identify elements I need to track.

Jono Alderson@jono.id · last yr.

Modern HTML is a disaster. It’s bloated, semantically meaningless, and hostile to browsers, bots, and users. We’ve traded structure for utility, and performance is paying the price. Semantic HTML still matters - and here’s why. www.jonoalderson.com/conjecture/w...

I like this article on Baseline and how to check the level of JavaScript features available to your clients users. ‪@rachelandrew.bsky.social‬ It would be cool if we could check on individual features. web.dev/articles/how...

Argh, my dad broke his phone. I had an old phone and tried to set it up. Phone wants 2 step verification and the only viable option is email. I try logging into his email, and it wants 2 step verification from the broken phone!!! His only device is/was the broken mobile.

Today's entertaining comment spam

We've just published v5.0.0 of the web-vitals JavaScript library for measuring Core Web Vitals. github.com/GoogleChrome... As a major release, this includes a number of breaking changes as detailed in the upgrading doc: github.com/GoogleChrome... Please read carefully before upgrading. 1/5 🧵

GitHub - GoogleChrome/web-vitals: Essential metrics for a healthy site.

Essential metrics for a healthy site. Contribute to GoogleChrome/web-vitals development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

I'm starting to see the move for US ecommerce sites to deal with passing on tariffs in different ways. Some are adding them like shipping, at the checkout, as an extra cost. How will search engines deal with this? Because of this, the prices they show in search results may be deceptive.

The @httparchive.org 's Web Almanac is looking for contributors for this year's edition. github.com/HTTPArchive/...

Contribute to the 2025 Web Almanac · HTTPArchive almanac.httparchive.org · Discussion #4062

Dear all, We are excited to announce the Call for Contributions for the 2025 Web Almanac (6th Edition)! The Web Almanac is an annual report that provides an overview of the state of the web, based ...

github.com

Come see me, with @divingfor.fun @schachin.bsky.social @rstingu.bsky.social @fajela.bsky.social & more! TODAY at the online SEOPaws Conference! Starts 10 am PT / 1 pm ET It's for SEOPaws by @antonshulke.bsky.social raising funds for cats & dogs in Ukraine! www.seocharity.com/upcoming-con...