Google Search Central Unconference 2022: Quick Recap

Mihai Aperghis (@mihaiaperghis), an SEO we reference here from time to time, is also a Google Product Expert and attended the Google Search Central Unconference the other week. He has written this blog post and I am posting it here as a super rare guest post on this site. Why? (1) Mihai rocks and (2) this site is about community and Product Experts are the essence of the Google community. I (Barry) personally was unable to attend due to a conflict. Note: Mihai did not ask for a link or a mention, but I added this so it is clear that he wrote this.

Google hosted the 2022 edition of the Search Central Virtual Unconference on April 27, making it the third global Google Unconference and fourth such event so far (counting the Japanese one that took place a few weeks earlier).

Quick Overview

For those unfamiliar with it, the Google Unconferences aim to provide discussion-focused sessions where participants (SEOs, developers, business owners, etc.) join online and share their experiences under a slightly more ‘informal’ structure, as opposed to traditional speaker events or even to Google office hours. The “facilitators” for each session (typically two people) have the sole responsibility of guiding discussions within the topic bounds, making sure all participants get heard and, since the sessions are not recorded, taking notes of the conversations that take place.

This year, the event was once again run by Martin Splitt, the Googler behind the Unconference idea, together with Cherry Sireetorn Prommawin from Google APAC.

Just as with editions from previous years (2021 and 2020), Product Experts such as myself were invited ahead of the event to propose session topics that they would then facilitate, should Martin and Cherry accept their proposals.

I won’t get into more details regarding the Unconference format, since I would probably just repeat what I covered in last year’s recap, so feel free to check that out if you’re curious.

One key difference for this year’s edition, however, was that the facilitator role was now open to everyone, thus allowing Product Experts to send the session proposal form to anyone they might see fit to moderate.

Sessions

Since this year’s proposal form was opened to more people, the number of proposed sessions was likely much higher than in previous years. Martin and Cherry ultimately selected 25 of them, which were then voted by people who wanted to attend based on their topic of interest.

Also different from last year was the number of participants, which this time was limited to a maximum of about 14 people (as opposed to 20-25 people). This made it easier for more people to speak up during the 45 minute session, as well have an ice breaker or have everyone introduce themselves without taking too much time.

All 25 sessions were ultimately kept, given that there were at least 5-6 people interested in each one. As usual, the sessions were split into two 45-minute blocks, which meant people could only attend one session in each slot:

Session slot A:

1. Tech SEO Q&A, all your questions answered.
2. E-commerce SEO Challenges
3. Making the best use of Search Intent Optimization (SIO)
4. International SEO
5. Schema: JSON Successes and Challenges
6. Organic and Paid Growth Collaborations
7. How can SEOs and Web developers work better together?
8. Exploring Google Search Console APIs
9. Video SEO – Best practices for optimizing videos on Google
10. Let’s discuss spam and low quality results
11. Let’s talk about Product review sites
12. Webmaster & Podcaster
13. Where do you find help?

Sessions slot B:

1. SEO A/B split testing ideas
2. Content: It’s All About Trust, Transparency and (Human) Typing
3. Can Google See This? Rendering Q&A
4. Core Web Vitals and how to approach it
5. Project Management for Digital and SEO
6. User Journey R&D Discussion
7. Is Search Console working for you?
8. Site Troubleshooting
9. Google Business Profile: Myths and Guidance.
10. Localization and its Peculiarities
11. Working with Images on the Web
12. A positive thing in 2022.. Unconference in Spanish!

There were also two conclusion blocks, one after each slot, in which facilitators presented the main conclusions for each session (thus being a good idea for one of the facilitators in each session to be taking notes). Everything was padded by a 15 minutes intro and a quick wrap-up at the end.

If you’re curious about the full description for each session, you can find everything on the official event page.

The E-commerce SEO Challenges Session

Since people outside Google or the Product Experts program were able to join as facilitators, I decided to ask the wonderful Aleyda Solis to co-facilitate one of the sessions with me. Together we landed on a list of three potential topics, out of which the E-commerce SEO Challenges one was ultimately chosen and included in slot A.

Being such a popular topic, we managed to have a full room of outstanding people from highly diverse backgrounds. There were in-house SEOs, agency owners, webmasters and marketers, from highly experienced technical people to folks who only recently started learning the ropes.

With her vast experience running conversations on SEO topics, such as with the weekly #SEOFOMO Twitter chat, Aleyda skillfully guided the discussion around some of the popular E-commerce SEO issues, such as product variations and structured data, facets and navigation indexing, but also dealing with SEO implementation costs and getting buy-in from management or leadership people. I took the note-taking job this time, focusing on getting everyone’s opinion down in order to draft a few takeaways.

Since there will likely be an official Google blog post that will provide more details on each session’s conclusions, I won’t really delve into more details here.

What I can say though is that it was an excellent session. Almost everyone that joined had a story, a perspective or an opinion they wanted to share, which made for a really pleasant conversation.

After the session timer ran out, everybody was moved back to the main room to listen to all of the slot A session conclusions, where I was happy to present our own.

Slot B and Wrap Up

Since I had no session to facilitate in slot B, I happily chose to attend the Working with Images on the Web one, which was masterfully moderated by Roxana Stingu and Olesia Korobka.

The topics discussed ranged from image indexing and meta data, to AI, MUM and other cutting-edge info that I was completely unaware of up until then (seems it’s harder to keep up with everything in SEO nowadays!).

After the session ended, facilitators from all slot B sessions presented their takeaways, after which we bidded farewell to everyone and called it an evening (or morning, or night, depending on where everyone was joining from).

All in all, I’m really happy for how the event turned out and very grateful to Martin and the Google team for giving SEO enthusiasts the opportunity to facilitate sessions. If you haven’t joined any of the Unconference events so far, I highly recommend you keep an eye out for the next one. Something tells me there will be (hopefully many) more editions coming soon.

I am so happy that everyone at the #scunconf seems to have had a great time. Now I shall catch up on a lot of sleep 🤣

— Martin Splitt (@g33konaut) April 27, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.