Reddit moderators of the SEO channel continue to delete answers posted by Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan to SEO and Google Search related questions. It's somewhat funny to see this, since it seems like any forum would want official Google representatives to answer users' questions.
For example, there's a thread on Reddit called “How many bloggers will delete their TOC plugins?” Specifically, I'm referring to Danny's comment on X about SEO removing the table of contents, or table of contents, from her web page.
Danny Sullivan posted a long reply. I captured it before it was removed, but now it has been removed. He then replied his four more times and they were deleted.
Here is his reply, which has been deleted:
I covered this in multiple replies on X. It seems worth repeating here. The main points of this post (it was all here) are:
“Whenever I have questions about creating content for Google, I come back to this principle: ‘Is this content going to satisfy my visitors?’ If the answer is yes, do it, because that’s what Google wants. Because it means being there.”
that's it. As part of making this broader point, I've listed a few things I've seen people do. Because when they qualify for the things I listed, they seem to do so because they somehow believe that having them will increase their rank. . Regarding the table of contents, it says:
There's a weird table of contents shoved to the top because somewhere along the way it somehow became a problem.I think people assume you're better.
There is no inherent “SEO value” for us whether we have a table of contents or not. Readers may appreciate it. If so, please do so. But if you think, “Here's what I heard by word of mouth, what I heard from someone else, whatever will help me rank better on Google,'' and you do that or any other content. If so, you are completely missing the point. What our ranking system is trying to reward is content that is designed around people's tastes.
This also shows that it is difficult to provide the guidance that SEO professionals want. They say statements like “we create pages for users, not search engines” can seem too broad or too simplistic, as we've been doing for his 20 years. It is natural to complain. But citing examples that involve qualifications can override qualifications and broader goals in favor of those seeking specific ranking improvements (as discussed here, see also here) .
As I mentioned in the post, I don't work directly with creators. I make suggestions for all sorts of things based on feedback to people working on different parts of Google Search. Documents are created by Search Central personnel. I've made some suggestions in the hopes that there will be more documentation and more clarity to help people move away from the “checklist” approach that sometimes occurs. Maybe we can get there.
Honestly, I don't know why Reddit moderators keep deleting his replies in that thread.
Below are screenshots of some of these deletions and Danny's comments about them.
he wrote:
I left a comment to clarify some of this, which I thought might be helpful. I think that comment was probably deleted by the moderator (I also messaged the moderator about this, but got no response). I left a comment asking about deletion, but it has now been deleted.
The original poster of that thread responded:
I'm really sorry, Danny, but this is just too sarcastic!
While Google floods Reddit with search results, Reddit doesn't allow comments.
I have not yet seen a reply from the moderator as to why the comment was deleted.
Reddit forum discussion.