#these problems are complex and had a lot of time to fester below the surface

[stahl-tier]

Not to read too much into a joke but...

What about living in a country where there’s no public transport for you to complain about? Or maybe, on the whole opposite end: imagine living in a country where public transport is actually so pleasant and convenient to use that you really gladly contribute a little bit each year to keep it running? Or where tickets simply do not exist because all public transport is free?

(Long rant incoming...?)

I know that this is difficult to imagine, because what you guys see with many railways and public transit organizations in Europe is two decades or more into systematic decay... Even here in Austria which apparently has the best public railway service in Europe just after Switzerland according to the frequent riders, never buying a ticket and just paying the fee for being caught fare-doding once a year or so is the smarter and cheaper alternative to buying tickets. But the majority of regular commuters has all-year passes, not because they are afraid of being caught. It’s more about habitually being a part of society in a social country, and - at least until the past 15 years or so - a feeling of the federal railway being an important part of the country’s identity.

See, the truth is that fare-dodging doesn’t actually hurt the public transport infrastructure and everyone who claims it does has no ideas about the actual costs of running these services. Since its funding ideally comes from the government itself and passenger transit in particular never has been profitable nor ever will be (and that’s alright, it’s supposed to be a public service after all, and should not be measured in terms of profit/loss), I really beg people to reconsider how they view public transport. The only "public" transport that NEEDS you to pay for your tickets is the privatized companies that are in it for the profit because by their very definition, they need to charge people for using their service to fund their operation. Federal and truly public transportation does not need to charge passengers for using it, because its operation costs are covered by the government's budget.

I know that most countries have really poorly working public transport and public transport infrastructure in the present day, or privatized public transport that presents itself as federal, and that it’s the cool thing to hate on it, but you're hating on the wrong thing and you’ll hate a lot more when it’s gone entirely.

Please think fondly of the railway yard workers, of all the mechanics and station staff, technicians, of the train/tram/bus/metro drivers, cleaning personnel, and yes even the attendants checking the tickets, all the workers who are not getting paid nearly enough for the service they provide for you 24/7 all year round on weekends and holidays from your first ride in the morning to your last ride home. And how they continue to do it, many for all their adult working lives until they retire (or bite the dust), despite being faced with vandalism, media gossip, stressed out rude people, and even physical attacks against them, many of them daily. I’m not even going to get into the whole can of worms that is accidents/incidents involving deaths. No one asks for thanks or acknowledgement. Just please don't make their lives harder by making them the target of your anger. That's really all we ask for.

Very few are doing it for the money, at least not for long, cause despite what people like to think, there is really no paycheck high enough to compensate for the kind of responsibility and risk involved in mass transport of people and goods. (And have you ever met anyone as passionate about their jobs and the tools and its history as railway workers? Have you ever heard someone say, genuinely, in person, in the middle of nowhere at 3am, "Despite everything, this is still the best job I’ve ever done and I am proud to do it"?)

Railway workers have been going on strikes lately, and when the entire public transport stands still for a day, the country itself grinds to a halt. This isn’t done out of spite. Many couldn’t bring themselves to lay down their work even then, out of a sense of duty for people they don’t know and who will never thank them, this sense so strong it borders on blind loyalty. Many of the strikes and meetings leading up to the strikes were timed in a way to cause the least possible impairment/inconvenience on the commuters. Many railway workers ended up volunteering to keep up critical operations during the strikes or pooled together their private vehicles to help out locals with unpostponable trips.

The reason for these strikes is bad working conditions that lead to people working themselves into early graves while they struggle to pay their rent. Not greed. I mean, just look at me making a fool out of myself bursting into an emotional ranting breakdown on social media about it right now. And I’ve only been part of this circus for a very short time compared to many of my colleagues.

I don’t mean to tear-jerk here or lecture anyone, because I know first-hand how growing up in a place where public transport is trivial makes you frustrated with things like tickets being unreasonably expensive or missing an appointment because of a train being late/cancelled, or the seats being uncomfortable to sit on after 30 minutes. I don't expect anyone who hasn't seen "behind the scenes" to have the insights needed to know why things suck.

So, please, take it from me: someone who somehow manages to still have so much love for a system of which I have seen the ugliest cracks. Maybe because I also see the importance of this system in whatever better future we hope to build.

I implore people to see the fault for these shortcomings in their government’s absolute neglect and short-sightedness (or in the many cases where public transit has been partly or fully privatized, profit-focused mismanagement). It is not an inherent fault of the concept of public transit, or the people doing their best every single minute of every single day to keep beating those decomposing horse corpses they’re given to work with. It's the parasites in charge you should be angry at, who reap only the benefits for as long as they can until it’s time to move on to a new host.

All I’m trying to say is, if you’re going to be radical about anything, be radical about things getting better.

The attendant isn’t happy to kick you out for not having a valid ticket either - many of them will look the other way or just not do any checking at all if they can get away with it (but then passengers will just complain about them “hiding instead of doing their jobs”) - they’re just doing what they were hired to do. Checking tickets is also actually just a small part of the many tasks that make up their job. (Did you know that attendants have to help with coupling cars, for example? And with preparing the coaches for operation, doing maintenance and checks together with the driver? That they will be blamed and put in front of a court if someone gets hurt during boarding/unboarding, even if that passenger got injured by falling out of the train as they forced open a closed door outside of a station while looking at their phone? Or that their typical shift is at least 12 hours long, but usually adds up to around 14 hours, with multiple shifts back to back and no guarantee they'll be dropped off after the shift where they started it, or that they'll get to sleep at home at all between shifts?) Countless times I’ve heard train drivers lament how the passengers were giving them grief and taking apart the vehicle to the point of breaking down while it was transporting them. And if you ask them “so why do you transport them anyway?”, they will firmly respond “it is our duty to the passenger”. Again: We don't ask for pity or gratitude. We're just people doing our job and hoping to make the world a slightly better place to live in for ourselves and our fellow citizens. Don't abuse us for doing that. We already get enough shit from our employers and the media.

Public transport, by its nature, is for all of the public. Whether you like that particular part of the public or not, whether it’s grateful or not. Public means you, it means me, it means the kids and teens and adults and elderly, it means the pupils and students and workers and unemployed and retired, the wealthy and poor, the strangers and the friends and enemies, the sober and intoxicated, the healthy and the ill, and we all gotta somehow arrange ourselves with each other and make it as pleasant as possible for everyone involved.

That’s also why ideally, all public transport should be completely free to use and convenient to access for everyone, and the vehicles and stations should be clean and intact and warm. It’s possible. But as a public service, it depends on the public as much as the public depends on it.

Please treat the vehicles and buildings with care; they belong to you, just the same as they belong to everyone else. Treat them like you would treat a possession that you hope to keep for your entire life. These places and machines can continue to serve you and your country for longer than you live, if they are maintained and cared for. I've operated locomotives that are older than I am, that have been operated by generations of train drivers before me, that are in daily regular operation even today and hopefully will continue to be - just because they are old does not mean they are bad. It just means we are familiar with all their quirks and how to fix them when they break down or how to operate them without damaging them, and most old equipment can be retrofitted with improved safety mechanisms or more comfortable interior, and even repaired with modern parts/tools.

But that's just what the operators can do to keep it all intact. We have to send our vehicles out every day and what happens between the time they leave the shed in the morning and return to it at night is entirely up to you. Everytime you put your boots on a train seat, someone who comes after you will have to sit on it for the rest of the day. Everytime you break or “decorate” something, someone else will be denied a seat (even if they’re elderly or impaired) or the entire ride (even if it was important for them to do this trip), and someone will have to fix or clean it in the middle of the night (and they’re not going to be paid enough for it). That next someone is inevitably going to be you, every now and then. No one likes sitting in dirty, smelly, barely working vehicles, but who do you think puts trash inside them and damages the interior? There’s only so much daily maintenance and repairing you can do on a vehicle that transports thousands of people per day, over thousands of kilometers. Leave these places and vehicles in the same condition you yourself wish to find them. Make the time spent in and around them peaceful and quiet, because one day it will be you who’s in need of that peace and quiet.

Not to mention that everytime you speak disparagingly about your public transit, you’ll internalize it a little more, and even if you don’t mean it that way and you’re just venting your frustrations to the heavens, someone is going to hear it and take it seriously - and eventually it’s going to be someone who will use you and people like you as ammunition in their campaign for cutting budget and cutting costs and cutting jobs.

You are allowed to complain and make jokes, of course, and all your frustrations are valid and true. But if you take it out on the staff or your fellow passengers or the equipment and stations, you are shooting the messenger. Invest this energy in productive, positive change, instead. Blind rage has never helped anyone. Criticize the symptoms but point out the roots, make it impossible for anyone to ignore the source of the problems and to push the blame onto the staff working hard to keep these tired wheels turning.

Every corner the higher ups can cut, they will cut, and it will contribute towards the slow downwards spiral of the service being worse and less people using it and more corners being cut to “justify” keeping it going with worse and worse service and worse and worse ridership.

If they can get away with letting it rot, they will. And if the public sees this happening and says “good riddance!” rather than crying out in rage and most importantly in support for their transit, I hope all of you have enough money saved up for a car.

It’s never happening all of a sudden in a single day or week. It’s a slow process taking many years, the temperature in the train car with the broken ventilation slowly rising degree by degree each year and never being fixed because it’s still evaluated as “bearable” until one day you board it on a hot summer day and think “well, now it’s unbearable. I want this decrepit tincan scrapped immediately”. At that point, you’re just saying out loud the words they were waiting to hear. And they’ll scrap it, but there’s no shiny new modern train car hiding somewhere in the back of the shed just waiting to go. It was commissioned from the cheapest bidder and constructed in a rush by poorly trained underpaid laborers, and broke down the moment it left the factory grounds already.

english is a terrible language, you guys don't even have a word for "using public transport without a valid ticket or pass"

[boop-le-snoot]

PARTY FAVOURS | CHAPTER 19

First time reader click here

Summary+TWs: We're talking serious feelings here, okay? Reader, you're literally emotionally illiterate. You also have PTSD, which is finally addressed - kinda. Bruce does his best. And he also knows how to kiss... But y'all know that if you read my ramblings about lucid dreaming/shifting/whatever... Chile-, anyways...

My phone kept buzzing and I ignored it until Bruce declared it was time to take a break and review the results. Whilst the man was typing up the data on a nearby StarkPad, I fought the sudden influx of messages that I received from haters and supporters alike after Tony decided on tweeting a reply that could be interpreted in an alarming variety of ways. It was a smart move, I'll admit, but a fucking bother for me nonetheless.

Disabling my DMs and dealing with a follower increase in the thousands wasn't hard; I didn't consider myself a problematic asshole and didn't need to be afraid of "exposure". The parties I went to - I doubted there was any blackmail material in there and the few nudes I'd sent over the years were always face-less. As a gen Z, I knew my internet safety.

The trolls didn't bother me either. It was more sad than annoying, people shitting on others for clout. Iron Man stans were witty, at least, if jealous. I must admit I've never considered the influx of popularity I would experience should I publicly out myself as a friend of Tony's. Girlfriend? Intern? Science child? Whatever cover story he was going to feed the press worked for me, as long as I still got the hugs, the kisses, the dick and the attention.

"Tony..." Bruce groaned, evidently done with the data processing, had to have opened his social media to see his own skyrocketing popularity.

"Yeah, our Tony is being a Tony again," I chuckled, having reset my social media settings so my phone wouldn't constantly beep, vibrate and bother me. School was going to be fun.

Bruce shook his head, fond, coming over to my side of the lab after removing his own hazmat suit. His eyes shiny with newfound knowledge and hair turned adorably fluffy in the confines of the head covering. He was smiling softly. "Food?"

"Sure."

We chewed our sandwiches in silence for a moment, each of us lost in our thoughts.

"I still can't believe Tony told everyone on Twitter you're his girlfriend, usually he keeps this stuff private or schedules a fancy press conference," Bruce's tone was thoughtful.

I raised an eyebrow. "Is that what it was? Seemed ambiguous to me..." I trailed off, confused.

"He worded it like that on purpose, I mean, you're still in high school," The scientist was confident in his words. "But I know Tony. I'm a hundred percent sure that he meant exactly that. Aren't you?"

Shock flooded me. Suddenly, I understood I completely misread the situation. "Um, no? I thought we were, y'know, just fucking. We never defined our relationship and we're definitely not exclusive." I said, chewing on my lip. "You make a valid argument, I'm a high school student and he's a grown ass man that does grown man stuff. Putting aside the fact that he could have anybody in the world so why would he choose me?" I was rambling, thinking out loud. Discussing my feelings has never my strong forte. "It would be stupid to impose monogamy on such a complex man like Tony. Downright idiotic to expect a genius to confine to social norms just because it suits others." I finished with a wave of my hand. Another bubble of thought that had festered within me for the longest time. I felt relieved, finally voicing it out loud. A weight had been lifted off my shoulders, a weight I wasn't previously consciously aware of.

Bruce was watching me intently, with an unreadable expression that held the tiniest bit of awe, admiration perhaps. The silence that followed was unnerving. I fidgeted with my hands, not really knowing where to put them or where to look.

"You know," He took off his glasses, fiddling them in his hands. "I'm not going to sugar coat it. For the longest time, I thought you were going to inadvertently hurt him when you get bored with whatever you've got going on. I respect you, don't misunderstand me, but you are young. Now, I've changed my mind. You've changed my mind," He punctuated his statement with his hand on mine, grasping it. "I think you managed to understand him in a way most people can't. Or don't want to. Understand and accept him in a way that some of us can't even after years of working and living side by side with him." Bruce's gentle fingers skimmed along the top of my palm.

"I don't always understand Tony but I do accept him," I agreed. "Because Tony is a great man."

"I think you're in love with him," Bruce said, absolutely having ignored my previous statement. Just like that, point blank, he pushed to the surface the very feelings I got so good at ignoring. There was no rest for me in this place.

My heart fluttered, picking up the pace. I kept my mouth shut, not trusting it whatsoever. My thoughts became akin to panicked hares, jumping and zigzagging aimlessly in my skull. I didn't see the point in defending myself because the scientist had pointed out the obvious.

Bruce looked at me, softly, warmly. "And don't think we haven't noticed the rise in team morale. The improvement not only in communication, but on the battlefield, too. It's easier to entrust your back to someone with whom you've shared a laugh and a drink the previous night. You're the glue that keeps us together."

Something warm and wet was on my cheeks. I stared at our clasped hands, his words echoing in my head over and over and over. The moment I realized I was crying, I willed myself to stop and failed spectacularly - only more salty fluid streamed down, some of it getting in my nose, on my lips. The sleepless nights were making me unstable.

It took a single sniffle for Bruce to pick me up and wrap up in his kind embrace. I didn't resist, tucking my face into the crook of his neck, holding onto the back of his lab coat, inhaling the smell of his skin and chemicals. It was familiar, calming. Minutes ticked by with me slowly leaking the tension out of my body.

"He loves you, too, maybe he just doesn't realize it yet." Bruce whispered into my hair. "I've never seen Tony so happy, even with Pepper. You are special and you are loved."

There was something unsaid, I felt it. It hung in the ear, it burned the tips of my ears, stood sharp on the tip of my tongue. "I love you too, Bwucie-bear," I whispered into the space between his ear and his jaw. His arms tightened around me.

The man placed several chaste kisses in my hair, running a palm over my back. In moments like these, the crush for him, the very crush that got out of control, blossomed fully into a deep sense of respect and admiration. He made me feel safe. He said all the right words at the right time.

Drowsiness overtook me. As usual, any worries and anxieties I had evaporated, once Banner had his arms around me, shielding me from the world. I didn't forbid myself this time: delicately, my hand slipped through the man's soft messy curls, eliciting a contented sigh.

"You haven't been sleeping well," He more stated than asked.

I had no choice but to nod. "Clint keeps dying in my dreams. Or even worse, he doesn't, he just suffers, endlessly, painfully." I admitted.

Bruce flinched under me, tensing. My face was in between his hands in a second, the scientist sternly looking into my eyes. "Why didn't you say anything? All of us assumed you were okay after what happened." He looked - angry. Not Hulk-out pissed but Bruce-pissed, which equalled a kicked-puppy look seasoned with a great pinch of disappointment.

"I am okay." I lied, shamelessly. "It's getting better. That's why I want to have a party - relax a little, dance, socialize. I don't think Tony would let me go on my own so I figured I can convince him to throw one here." I looked away. It was better for everyone if I dealt with my own problems - they were superheroes, not babysitters.

Bruce frowned. "Why wouldn't Tony let you go?"

"Because of that one time I snorted coke," I rolled my eyes at Bruce's naiveté, leaving the less obvious parts unsaid. Tony knew exactly what I was going to do once I got free reign, he considered it destructive and told me so himself. Admittedly, he had a point but still... I wished I'd been given a choice.

"I'll talk to him," Bruce nodded firmly. "That's not acceptable. He can't forbid you from making mistakes and learning from them."

He was met with my shrug. No excitement came from me regarding this particular turn of conversation. I was drained, limbs like jello, thoughts sluggish. My face was drooping.

"Let's get you to bed," Banner stood up with me wrapped around him. "You need a nap."

"No," I protested. If I went to sleep now, only Satan knew at what ungodly hour I would wake up.

"Yes, Princess," Bruce smirked. I wiggled uncomfortably - when he went all caretaker like, my ovaries wreaked havoc on my body and brain. My thoughts weren't appropriate if Bruce wanted me to see him as a father figure. The signals he was sending were mixed. People around me did that a lot and I wasn't sure how to act so I usually just went with the flow. I decided to do the very same thing in that particular moment.

Curiosity sparked within me, tightly interwoven with the deep longing that settled below my collarbones whenever Tony or one of the others wasn't sitting next to me or talking my ear off. I've almost forgotten how it was to be alone with my thoughts. The maze of my very own self was becoming unfamiliar territory. Alarming.

I allowed Bruce to help me shed my shoes and outer layer of clothing, shivering in the coolness of my room. Despite being a frequent visitor, I still had a 'guest' room in the tower - I mostly stayed at Tony's or Wanda's anyways. During our sleepovers neither me nor the witch minded sharing her enormous bed, to be fair, we could have fit at least two more people in it besides us. Tony took care of his own - all the tower's residents had their apartments furnished with the best stuff.

"Sleep now, Princess," Bruce chastised, tucking a blanket around me, having noticed an earbud in my ear and my smartphone in my hand. I had hoped to kill some time online, damn well knowing sleep wouldn't come easy.

"I don't think I can fall asleep, Bruce," I admitted, looking away. There was just so much going on. My brain wouldn't shut up and if I couldn't drown out the cacophony by being productive, I'd troll the internet, as usual.

Banner sighed, coming to sit next to me, leaning against the headboard. Gently running his fingers through my hair, brushing the outside of his palm against my cheek. "How do you usually deal with this?"

Involuntarily, my eyelashes fluttered. "Tony does most of the work," I admitted coyly. The engineer had a whole arsenal of tricks up his sleeve - sexy and exhausting tricks.

"I see," Bruce muttered, thoughtfully.

I opened my eyes to see him looking down at me with a look I haven't seen before. The usual mildly absent, slightly anxious face he wore was replaced by something I could only describe as hurt envy, like a kid looking at their schoolmate who had all the newest, coolest toys. I used to be on the receiving end of that look far too often and I hated it.

I hid my face against his leg, rubbing my cheek on the raspy corduroy fabric of his pants. "Got any good ideas of your own?" I wondered lowly, thinking about what in the world possessed Bruce to wear corduroy trousers on a semi-casual day, in the twenty-first century.

"Only bad ideas," He replied in a matching low tone. His soft fingertips relocated to my nape, goosebumps rising down my back.

"Humour me," I grinned against his leg.

Bruce was quiet for a moment, the sound of his thinking screaming louder than any words could have done. Knowing the scientist so closely, I found out he was full of surprises - bolder than he appeared outwardly and competitive to a boot. He thought he had a lot to prove to himself and by extension, to others. The unknown, the mystery dangling in front of my nose was exhilarating, trepidation addictive. It took me away from the chaos in my mind.

A gentle grasp on my chin had me turning to look upwards, Bruce's face flushed and focused on my own, open and trusting. He needed to see the obvious, that I trusted him to take care of me. He pulled and I followed, sitting up on my elbows, coming up to his shoulder level, our faces inches apart, enveloped in the unique, intense scent of his herbal tea. It was a tart, strong smell and it suited his quiet but passionate character.

Once, twice, I caught my eyes sliding to his plump lips. They looked far too appealing in this position. I usually strategically stayed away from positions so compromising, fearing the very thing that I'd already let happen, however this time the atmosphere was different. We stood on ambiguous grounds, waiting for Bruce to make a decision.

The man wasn't stupid, he saw the way I looked at him. The nightmares and inability to take a break from life put a significant dent in my resolve to keep a distance between us, romantically - I could have settled even for a pity kiss, a pity fuck. Anything to put my brain on pause.

His lips were softer than I had imagined. Skilled, too, he easily steered the kiss into the shallow waters of our combined longing.

With Tony, it was like an avalanche. Tony ran hot like Peterbilt engines, hard and fast, almost angry in his race for satisfaction. Tony was a man that was used to getting whatever he wanted and it became plainly obvious when we fucked.

Bruce was the opposite. He savoured the kiss, losing himself in a way that could almost be described as delicate. Bruce was humming, softly, as we tasted each other, holding the left side of my face with careful fingertips. Almost as if he was afraid to break me. The feel of his skin on mine was soothing in a way that made me sigh and relax even further.

"Wanna make you feel good." His voice had dropped, gone husky, but his breathing held even. He must know all about self-control.

"Yeah," I was ready to agree with whatever the fuck he was offering. My eyelids remained shut.

THE TAG LIST IS NOW OPEN! @another-stark-sub ​ @mostly-marvel-musings  @vozit ​ @littlegasps ​ @pilloclock ​ @shereadsinquiet @downeyreads ​ @hermione-grangers-wife ​ @individualistfem ​ @sleep-i-ness @capbrie @lillsxd @agustdowney @dee-vn @justanotherblonde23 @fanngirl19 @persephonehemingway @softie-socks @schemefrenzy @letsby @cutenessloading @romeo-the-cactus @jelly-fishy-babie

PS. Letsby, please don't combust. The underwear is coming off in the next chapter. 😶

[blackhatseoguy]

The final recrawl analysis: A powerful and important last step after implementing large-scale SEO changes

this tool is not for amateurs newbies don't click this

When helping companies deal with performance drops from major algorithm updates, website redesigns, CMS migrations and other disturbances in the SEO force, I find myself crawling a lot of URLs. And that typically includes a number of crawls during a client engagement. For larger-scale sites, it’s not uncommon for me to surface many problems when analyzing crawl data, from technical SEO issues to content quality problems to user engagement barriers.

After surfacing those problems, it’s extremely important to form a remediation plan that tackles those issues, rectifies the problems and improves the quality of the website overall. If not, a site might not recover from an algorithm update hit, it could sit in the gray area of quality, technical problems could sit festering, and more.

As Google’s John Mueller has explained a number of times about recovering from quality updates, Google wants to see significant improvement in quality, and over the long term. So basically, fix all of your problems — and then you might see positive movement down the line.

Crawling: Enterprise versus surgical

When digging into a site, you typically want to get a feel for the site overall first, which would include an enterprise crawl (a larger crawl that covers enough of a site for you to gain a good amount of SEO intelligence). That does not mean crawling an entire site. For example, if a site has 1 million pages indexed, you might start with a crawl of 200-300K pages.

Here are several initial enterprise crawls I have performed, ranging from 250K to 440K URLs.

Based on the initial crawl, you might then launch several surgical crawls focused on specific areas of the site. For example, notice a lot of thin content in X section of a site? Then focus the next crawl just on that section. You might crawl 25-50K URLs or more in that area alone to get a better feel for what’s going on there.

When it’s all said and done, you might launch a number of surgical crawls during an engagement to focus your attention on problems in those specific areas. For example, here’s a smaller, surgical crawl of just 10K URLs (focused on a specific area of a website).

All of the crawls help you identify as many problems on the site as possible. Then it’s up to you and your client’s team (a combination of marketers, project managers, designers, and developers) to implement the changes that need to be completed.

Next up: Auditing staging — awesome, but not the last mile

When helping clients, I typically receive access to a staging environment so I can check changes before they hit the production site. That’s a great approach in order to nip problems in the bud. Unfortunately, there are times that changes which are incorrectly implemented could lead to more problems. For example, if a developer misunderstood a topic and implemented the wrong change, you could end up with more problems than when you started.

You absolutely want to make sure all changes being implemented are correct, or you could end up in worse shape than before the audit. One way to crawl staging when it’s not publicly available is to have VPN access. I covered that in a previous post about how to crawl a staging server before changes get pushed to production.

But here’s the rub. We’re now talking about the staging environment and not production. There are times changes get pushed to production from staging and something goes wrong. Maybe directives get botched, a code glitch breaks meta data, site design gets impacted which also impacts usability, mobile URLs are negatively impacted, and so on and so forth.

Therefore, you definitely want to check changes in staging, but you absolutely want to double check those changes once they go live in production. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve checked the production site after changes get pushed live and found problems. Sometimes they are small, but sometimes they aren’t so small. But if you catch them when they first roll out, you can nuke those problems before they can cause long-term damage.

The reason I bring all of this up is because it’s critically important to check changes all along the path to production, and then obviously once changes hit production. And that includes recrawling the site (or sections) where the changes have gone live. Let’s talk more about the recrawl.

The recrawl analysis and comparing changes

Now, you might be saying that Glenn is talking about a lot of work here… well, yes and no. Luckily, some of the top crawling tools enable you to compare crawls. And that can help you save a lot of time with the recrawl analysis.

I’ve mentioned two of my favorite crawling tools many times before, which are DeepCrawl and Screaming Frog. (Disclaimer: I’m on the customer advisory board for DeepCrawl and have been for a number of years.) Both are excellent crawling tools that provide a boatload of functionality and reporting. I often say that when using both DeepCrawl and Screaming Frog for auditing sites, 1+1=3. DeepCrawl is powerful for enterprise crawls, while Screaming Frog is outstanding for surgical crawls.

Credit: GIPHY

DeepCrawl and Screaming Frog are awesome, but there’s a new kid on the block, and his name is Sitebulb. I’ve just started using Sitebulb, and I’m digging it. I would definitely take a look at Sitebulb and give it a try. It’s just another tool that can complement DeepCrawl and Screaming Frog.

Comparing changes in each tool

When you recrawl a site via DeepCrawl, it automatically tracks changes between the last crawl and the current crawl (while providing trending across all crawls). That’s a big help for comparing problems that were surfaced in previous crawls. You’ll also see trending of each problem over time (if you perform more than just two crawls).

Screaming Frog doesn’t provide compare functionality natively, but you can export problems from the tool to Excel. Then you can compare reporting to check the changes. For example, did 404s drop from 15K to 3K? Did excessively long titles drop from 45K to 10K? Did pages noindexed accurately increase to 125K from 0? (And so on and so forth.) You can create your own charts in Excel pretty easily.

And now comes the young punk named Sitebulb. You’ll be happy to know that Sitebulb provides the ability to compare crawls natively. You can click any of the reports and check changes over time. Sitebulb keeps track of all crawls for your project and reports changes over time per category. Awesome.

As you can see, the right tools can increase your efficiency while crawling and recrawling sites. After problems have been surfaced, a remediation plan created, changes implemented, changes checked in staging, and then the updates pushed to production, a final recrawl is critically important.

Having the ability to compare changes between crawls can help you identify any changes that aren’t completed correctly or that need more refinement. And for Screaming Frog, you can export to Excel and compare manually.

Now let’s talk about what you can find during a recrawl analysis.

Pulled from production: Real examples of what you can find during a recrawl analysis

After changes get pushed to production, you’re fully exposed SEO-wise. Googlebot will undoubtedly start crawling those changes soon (for better or for worse).

To quote Forrest Gump, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” Well, thorough crawls are the same way. There are many potential problems that can be injected into a site when changes go live (especially on complex, large-scale sites). You might be surprised what you find.

Below, I’ve listed real problems I’ve surfaced during various recrawls of production while helping clients over the years. These bullets are not fictional. They actually happened and were pushed to production by accident (the CMS caused problems, the dev team pushed something by accident, there was a code glitch and so on).

Murphy’s Law — the idea that anything that can go wrong will go wrong — is real in SEO, which is why it’s critically important to check all changes after they go live.

Remember, the goal was to fix problems, not add new ones. Luckily, I picked up the problems quickly, sent them to each dev team, and removed them from the equation.

Canonicals were completely stripped from the site when the changes were pushed live (the site had 1.5M pages indexed).

The meta robots tag using noindex was incorrectly published in multiple sections of the site by the CMS. And those additional sections drove a significant amount of organic search traffic.

On the flip side, in an effort to improve the mobile URLs on the site, thousands of blank or nearly blank pages were published to the site (but only accessible by mobile devices). So, there was an injection of thin content, which was invisible to naked eye.

The wrong robots.txt file was published and thousands of URLs that shouldn’t be crawled, were being crawled.

Sitemaps were botched and were not updating correctly. And that included the Google News sitemap. And Google News drove a lot of traffic for the site.

Hreflang tags were stripped out by accident. And there were 65K URLs containing hreflang tags targeting multiple countries per cluster.

A code glitch pushed double the amount of ads above the fold. So where you had one annoying ad taking up a huge amount of space, the site now had two. Users had to scroll heavily to get to the main content (not good from an algorithmic standpoint, a usability standpoint, or from a Chrome actions standpoint).

Links that have been nofollowed for years were suddenly followed again.

Navigation changes were actually freezing menus on the site. Users couldn’t access any drop-down menu on the site until the problem was fixed.

The code handling pagination broke and rel next/prev and rel canonical weren’t set up correctly anymore. And the site contains thousands of pages of pagination across many categories and subcategories.

The AMP setup was broken, and each page with an AMP alternative didn’t contain the proper amphtml code. And rel canonical was removed from the AMP pages as part of the same bug.

Title tags were improved in key areas, but html code was added by accident to a chunk of those titles. The html code began breaking the title tags, resulting in titles that were 800+ characters long.

A code glitch added additional subdirectories to each link on a page, which all led to empty pages. And on those pages, more directories were added to each link in the navigation. This created the perfect storm of unlimited URLs being crawled with thin content (infinite spaces).

I think you get the picture. This is why checking staging alone is not good enough. You need to recrawl the production site as changes go live to ensure those changes are implemented correctly. Again, the problems listed above were surfaced and corrected quickly. But if the site wasn’t crawled again after the changes went live, then they could have caused big problems.

Overcoming Murphy’s Law for SEO

We don’t live in a perfect world. Nobody is trying sabotage the site when pushing changes live. It’s simply that working on large and complex sites leaves the door open to small bugs that can cause big problems. A recrawl of the changes you guided can nip those problems in the bud. And that can save the day SEO-wise.

For those of you already running a final recrawl analysis, that’s awesome. For those of you trusting that your recommended changes get pushed to production correctly, read the list of real problems I uncovered during a recrawl analysis again. Then make sure to include a recrawl analysis into your next project. That’s the “last mile.”

I’ve written about Murphy’s Law before. It’s real, and it’s scary as heck for SEOs. A recrawl can help keep Murphy at bay — and that’s always a good thing when Googlebot comes knocking.

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