Google Trying To Make Search Help Documentation Clearer

Google’s John Mueller said that the search company has been working towards providing more “clear guidance” with its help document. This is as opposed to more “handwavy” types of documentation.

John said on Twitter “We’ve been trying to move away from handwavy “it would be nice if you did X” docs and more towards clear guidance (“If you want A, then do X” (even if X is just a great practice and technically not a requirement)).”

Google has been actively updating its search related help documentation, a lot, often, and in greater detail over the past couple of years. I’ve been loving the updates and clarity.

The way John put it makes a lot of sense. Instead of writing it in the style of “it would be nice,” Google is telling you if you do X, it would result in Y. That is great and if the docs are wrong, you can submit feedback or give John a hard time on Twitter about it.

Here are those tweets:

We’ve been trying to move away from handwavy “it would be nice if you did X” docs and more towards clear guidance (“If you want A, then do X” (even if X is just a great practice and technically not a requirement)). I suspect that’s what happened there.

— ???? John ???? (@JohnMu) September 13, 2021

Form discussion at Twitter.

Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Yom Kippur.