All right, welcome, everyone, to today's Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangouts. My name is John Mueller. I'm a Webmaster Trends Analyst here at Google in Switzerland. And part of what we do are these Office Hour Hangouts. And today, we're trying a fairly different setup because the YouTube Live Hangouts are going away soon. So we'll see how this works out.  I can run through some of those. But if any of you want to get started with the first question, feel free to jump on in. If not, it looks like you're all muted. So I don't know if you probably need to unmute to speak up. But otherwise, I'll just get started. And you can jump in whenever something pops up. All right, let's see the questions. So the first one is fairly long. My question contains a little bit of critique on Google's practices recently. And it essentially goes into the general theme of Google showing stuff in the search results. And then Webmaster is not seeing so many clicks through the website. And how far will this lead in the future? Where does Google draw the line? I think, first of all, thank you for this question. I think it's something that is really important for us. It's something that is really something on the top of our mind, essentially every day as we work in search. And we work with different search features. It's something that is critical for us for the long-term survival of the web ecosystem and the search ecosystem in that we need to make sure that when you're providing something for a search that you also get enough back that there is really this kind of almost like a deal between Google and the publishers in the sense that if you work hard to create some good content and we can show that in search and send traffic your way, that the traffic that you get from that is worthwhile your effort. And that's something that comes into play essentially for every search feature that we have, regardless of how much we show in search or how little we show in search. It's something that is always kind of there. And on the other hand, I think this is also something from a publisher side that you can also keep an eye on, where you can think about what do you want to provide in search and which kind of content would you prefer to only provide on your website? There are different mechanisms that you can use to do that. And through those, you can kind of adjust that over time as well. And finally, I think there is one aspect that's also really important in that for most businesses when they're online with a website, the actual important metric for them is not how many clicks they get from search, but more like how many customers they get. How do they convert those customers? So for example, if you're a small business that is active in a local community and someone is searching for your opening hours, they don't need to go to your website to see those opening hours. That's not really the way that you kind of get value back out of search, but rather, if they see those opening hours directly in the search results, they'll be able to come by and visit your business in person when it's open. So a lot of these things are aspects where people don't necessarily need to go to a website directly to bring value back to that business. But anyway, this is something that, from my point of view, I don't think there is an absolute answer. And I suspect there'll be some shifts back and forth over time as things settle down, as new aspects in search become available, as new types of user behavior becomes more prominent, as new types of websites show up and move along. So that's something where I expect this to kind of shift a little bit over time. But in general, it is something that we care about deeply. And it is something that we don't take lightly. It's not that we just go out there and say, well, we can do this in the search results. Therefore, we will do that. But rather, where we think about what does it actually mean? What does this provide? How does this provide value for the user? And how does this provide value for the publishers as well? All right. Presumably, John, Google doesn't make any money if no one ever leaves the search results anyway. So you need people to keep clicking on things. I think that's probably the case. I mean, yeah. There's no one's going to advertise if the answers are always front and center. It will get to the point where people will say, well, that's the end of my budget, which is the end of Google. I think that's kind of the long-term look as well. Anyway, as long as there's kind of this notion of search is useful to give you more detailed information, then I think that's something that keeps people coming back to search. Whereas if they just get all of the answers directly, then they don't even need to look into more details. And then why do we even index more content? But it's always tricky because you're balancing kind of short-term interests and long-term interests. And with any business, it's like you kind of struggle with that as well. My client is a federal medical center, and all content goes through the doctors first before it is published on the website. I think it's a good idea to let our users and Google know that the information on the website is trustworthy. I understand that I might just add, for instance, some info about the doctor who checked the information and some words like the content was checked before publication by Dr. John Mueller and also put a link to their personal web page. But what's the best way to tell Google about this? And should I do it at all? So I think, first of all, should I do it at all? I think that's something that you probably have answered already in that if you're providing information on your web page and it is kind of checked or written created by someone who has a lot of knowledge on that topic, then that's something I would definitely highlight. So there are lots of ways that you can highlight that on your web pages. You can link to those profiles. You can put text on the pages. Anything to really show users when they come to your pages that there's actually something valuable here, that they can trust this information, that this is something that's reliable, that they can forward on to their friends without having to worry that maybe it's not correct or so. So in that regard, anything that you can do to make that clear that probably makes sense for users, that's something you can also check with normal A-B testing. And that probably also makes sense for search engines in that regard as well. My question is regarding duplicacy in content. Many students who are studying for a certain degree recognizable worldwide, and they're getting the same questions for their assignments. I am associated with some people who are providing information and solutions to students who are looking for an answer on the internet. My question is that if I publish their assignment questions, which are quite lengthy and the same worldwide and the solutions, which might be different on my website and other competitors do the same, does Google consider all of this content duplicate content? Wow, I wish I had this kind of service as a kid. It would have made my homework so much easier. I don't know if I would have learned as much, but fine. So in general, what happens here is we would probably recognize that certain blocks of text on this page are the same across multiple pages. The whole page themselves are different, of course. So we would index all of these pages because they're unique pages. But there are certain blocks of text that are the same. And in practice, what would happen here is if someone is searching just for one of those blocks of text, we would probably pick one or two, maybe a handful of sites that have this text on them and show those in the search results. Because the other sites where the same text is on there would essentially show the same thing. So for example, if you have a really long question and someone searches for the first sentence in that question, then we would assume that these pages are essentially about the same topic. And we would pick maybe a couple of those that we know and show those in the search results. And it's not that the others would be shown less visibly in search or would be ranked lower, but rather that we would filter them out because we think that essentially this is the same thing, the snippet that we would show in the search results is the same thing across all of those users. So that's essentially what would happen there. With regards to duplicate content, we would consider that block to be duplicate content. But again, the whole page itself, because you have a different answer, that would be something that we would consider to be unique. We would index those separately. So from that point of view, I think it's fine to go down this route. I think from a practical point of view, if you're just starting down this direction and there are already a lot of sites out there that are covering the same questions, especially if you say that the assignment questions are the same worldwide, then there's probably going to be a lot of competition. And I don't know if with a new website, it would be that easy to get in to this bigger group of sites that are providing content essentially on the same thing. The page has FAQ contents, which are written on images in their alt text, but not on the body text. Is that OK with the rich result guidelines to mark that up? I think theoretically, we might be able to pick that up. But practically, I would recommend making sure that the text is actually visible on the page. So what kind of happens with the alt attribute for images is we do pull that into the page. So it's kind of on the page. We can kind of see that. It's obviously not as good as if we have normal real HTML text that we can pull in. So that's one aspect. And on the other hand, for the rich results types, we do check to see if this text that you've marked up, for example, if you're using JSON-LD markup where it's not marking up the HTML itself, we do check to see if that is actually visible on the page. So that's something which is kind of colliding in a weird gray zone area where I would say it's possible that it would work, but it's definitely not guaranteed. And it's probably not something that I would try to rely on. So if you really need to have the FAQ rich results visible for your pages, or if there's some other type of rich result type that you really want to target, then I'd recommend making sure that you're really using text on the page and not putting the text in images. I see that Google does web hosting with a specific web domain. I'm learning every day, and I was wondering if you can use WordPress on a domain hosted by Google. At this time, I'm using WordPress with another company hosting the domain and using Google products like YouTube for my business. Is there any advantage or disadvantage to group everything under Google? So first of all, I don't know exactly how the hosting side at Google works, so that's something kind of on the side. My understanding is you can run normal servers on Google Cloud, for example, and with that, you could run WordPress as well. But my understanding there is you basically have to configure those servers yourself, and you have to get all of that set up and maintain yourself. So probably there's a lot of technical effort involved in running WordPress on Google Cloud. And if you're just getting started, maybe that's kind of too much to really make sense for a smaller website when you're just getting started. I don't know. It's possible there are easier ways to do that on Google Cloud nowadays, but that's kind of how I remember it. There are other setups that you can use that run on Google Cloud as well, which are a lot easier to use. For example, Blogger or Google Sites. However, they're set up completely separately. So if you're currently using WordPress, you'd have to essentially recreate your whole website on those other services. My recommendation in general for this would be to try to find a good, good hoster. If you want to continue using WordPress, maybe you already have a good hoster that's taking care of things like updates and making sure that all of the security patches are installed, all of those things, those are really important. If you're hosting your website with a service like WordPress, so that's kind of what I would aim for there. With regards to hosting everything under Google or not, that's something from a search point of view is totally up to you. You can use everything on one hoster. You can use multiple hosters to host your content. You can even do things like hosting your textual content with one provider and your images with another provider. That's something that some sites like to do. There's no advantage or disadvantage from a search engine optimization point of view of hosting everything together. There are sometimes speed effects that play a role, where depending on how you set up your hosting, how you configure it, your website might be faster or be a little bit slower. But those are kind of technical details that apply to any kinds of hosting. So it doesn't matter from our point of view, for search, if you host everything with Google or if you host everything with different providers, that's totally up to you. And from a practical point of view, I would aim for something that is secure, that works well in the long run, and that makes it easy for you to maintain. So you essentially decide what level of effort you want to put in for maintenance. And if you're OK with doing a lot of hands-on work to keep your server running, then maybe you host it yourself. If you prefer to have someone else take care of this and make sure that nothing breaks while you're on vacation, then I would work to find a good hoster that does all of this for you. Wow, all of the people trying to join in kind of keeps pinging up here. And I have to admit them all in individually. So that's kind of weird. I hope you don't hear the ping noise every time. We'll see if I can find a way to avoid that. I'm having a toughest time getting the mobile index to recognize my site's new code. The desktop bot sees an index as the update. But on mobile, Google still sees and displays the old site's code, meta tags, et cetera. I would probably need to know a URL from your website. So it sounds like you've posted this before. If you have a thread in the Webmaster Help Forum that I could take a look at, that might be useful. In general, it's not that we have a separate index for mobile indexing. Essentially, we have one main index. And in that index, we keep either the mobile version or the desktop version, depending on whether or not a site has switched to mobile-first indexing. And that's essentially the version that we use in search. The one aspect that's a little bit, I don't know, different is if you have a separate mobile site, then we will index, again, the same version. So either the mobile or the desktop version. But we'll show the separate mobile site in the search results for users on mobile devices. So that might be something that you're seeing that we're showing the separate mobile URL for users on mobile. Another thing that you might be seeing is that in the mobile search results, the UI is a little bit more limited in the sense that the page isn't as big as on our desktop.  And that might also be something that you're seeing, that on desktop, we're able to show your full title, for example. And on mobile, we have to shorten it to match what would fit on the screen. And by shortening it, we essentially process it algorithmically to figure out what would be a good title for this search result. And sometimes that can result in our algorithms picking something that's not really what you would want to pick. So it's not so much that we're indexing the wrong version of your pages, but more that we're indexing a version of your page. And the one that we're showing in the search results, that might not be the one that you'd prefer to have shown. But I'm kind of guessing here at this point, because I don't really know what your site is and what that looks like. So if you have a thread in the Webmaster Help Forum where you could point to and where you have some details on what the search will be really useful. Yeah, hi, John. Hi. So regarding this m.n.w.w., I just wanted to know one thing. What happens just reverse wise, what happens if one person does not have content in desktop, but has content in mobile and a smartphone is redirected to m.n.w. In this case, in desktop, that content will be shown. Just reverse to older days. So how do you mean, again, if 1% of the website is desktop only? No, no, no, not like this. But some piece of the content is available in m.version, which is not available in www.version or desktop version. And because it is mobile, first of all, it is redirected to m.n.w. Finds that content. In this case, the truth is that in desktop, that is not available. How Google will assume that in desktop, whether it is available or not? With mobile-first indexing, we would only index the content on the mobile page. So if there's less content on the mobile page, we would be able to index less. And if there's more content on the mobile page, we would be able to index more. We would still show the desktop URL for users on desktop. But we would show those search results based on what we've indexed for the mobile version. So it means that the chances are that in desktop, the content is not available. Still, Google will show in desktop result. That's possible, yeah. I mean, it's probably pretty rare. But theoretically, it's possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously, thanks. Sure. All right. Is using display none for text images content bad for SEO? For example, I want to hide some keywords. As I suppose, it doesn't make any sense, but webmasters still do it. So you can hide text on a page. Essentially, from our webmaster guidelines, we do have a guideline that says you should not use hidden text on a page. So that's one thing to watch out for there. From a practical point of view, there's sometimes reasons why you would hide something, for example, on an initial load of the page, where maybe you have a tabbed interface, where if you click on one part of the page, then it switches to a different tab and suddenly makes that content visible. From our point of view, that's perfectly fine. So if someone from the web spam team were to look at a web page like that, then the initial kind of hidden content on the page is clear for the web spam team that actually this content can be made visible. So it's not problematic from that point of view. However, if you're using display none just to hide text to try to put more keywords on a page, then that's something where the web spam team might take action on that. That's also something where our algorithms in general might take action on that and say, well, that looks a lot like keyword stuffing. And in general, I would recommend if there is something important on your page that you want this page to rank for, make sure that it's visible on the page. Don't hide it somewhere, because it's something that search engines do watch out for this. They are able to recognize which parts of a page are visible and not. And it's something that users kind of watch out for as well, where if we show them something and search and they click on it and they go to that page and actually what they were looking for is not there at all, then they will feel misled. They'll go back to search and search for something else. They'll feel that Google did them a mis-service by sending them to a site like this. So from that point of view, if there's something you want to have shown in search and you want to have users find your pages for, then make sure that it's visible. Don't hide it. Don't be shy with that. And at the same time, don't think that you artificially need to stuff words into your page that users wouldn't have any use for. But rather, think about what kind of the long-term goals of your site are. And make sure that if you want to rank for something, that you actually have content for that so that when users come to your web page, that they kind of are all in the mood of, well, this is really fantastic content. I should recommend it to other people as well. I have a client with an online store. It's a custom website. Their products have many variations, like size, different diameters, and so on for a single product. They're listed as separate products, which means that one product is listed multiple times because somehow I got muted. OK. So it means that one product is listed multiple times for different sizes, which is something where the product description is the same on all variations. How much of an issue is that? So this is a fairly common setup and a fairly common question that people bring up every now and then. From our point of view, if you have a product with a lot of different variations, there are essentially two approaches that you can take. One is to make sure that the product and all variations are indexed separately so that you have, for example, I don't know, a piece of pipe and 85 millimeters diameter and a piece of pipe in 100 millimeters diameter and so on. That's one approach. The other approach would be to say that you just have the individual products on the website. And all of the variations are listed on that product page. So you would have one product being a piece of pipe and you have 85 millimeters, 100 millimeters, 150 millimeters, diameter, all of these variations as well. So those are kind of the two approaches that you can take there. And from a practical point of view, I usually recommend that you try to work on having fewer URLs rather than more URLs. So I would tend towards trying to go to having one product and all of those variations listed on that same product page just because it makes it a lot easier for us to kind of crawl the rest of your website because you don't have as many URLs. And because of you only having one main product page for this type of product, it's something where it's a lot easier for us to recognize that this is really the landing page that you want to have shown for queries about this product. So that's kind of the one approach. On the other side, if you're saying that the individual variations of this product are so important that people explicitly search them out, then maybe it would make sense to have individual landing pages for that. For example, if you have different size pipes, maybe that's not so much of an issue. But if you have this one really unique size that is not a standard size that people need for, I don't know, some random purpose, and they explicitly search for that, then that's something where maybe it would make sense to essentially provide that on a separate page as well. So those are kind of the two approaches that I would take there with regards to how much of a problem is it to having all of the variations listed as individual products. That's not really that much of a problem. Like I said, it's really more a matter of, well, we have to crawl all of these different variations. We have to index them all individually. And we have to figure out which one of these pages to show prominently for your site, for queries for that product. So it's something where probably for different sizes, it would make sense to fold them together for things that are really unique variations. I would tend to separate them out into separate products. Good job. Hi. OK, so I have one similar question on that. So we have a hotel website there for our hotel rooms or for the specific hotels. So we do provide our landing pages. And that basically is our tag team, basically, a mentor structure where it's keep on changing, like with the parameter. So how are we going to tackle that part? I mean, we have already added canonical, but I mean, I have seen a lot of kind of the indexing or the crawling is starting happening for all those kind of conditions of the product. So is there kind of only way to comment on if we can handle just by the canonicals or comment? Somehow we can further fix it by comment. So that Google can able to see the way they have a lot of variation for this particular product. But ultimately, we want to rank for one page. I didn't quite understand the whole question. There's a lot of noise in the background. I think what you're saying is you have a lot of different URL variations for the same product page, essentially? Yes. Yeah. OK. So that feels like it's essentially a question of how to encourage Google to pick one canonical URL and focus the crawling and indexing on that one. Is that right? True. Yeah. So for that, there are different things that you could do. If this is something that is really on a large scale for your website, then I would recommend looking at the URL parameter handling tools, especially if these different URL variations are with different parameters attached to it. So everything behind the question mark where you have maybe, I don't know, the affiliate key equals this, or, I don't know, color variations equals this, then that's something with the URL parameter handling tool. You can give us a lot of information on which URL parameters are important and which ones we can skip. That's one thing. The URL parameter handling tool is a bit tricky in the sense that if you tell us parameters are meant to be ignored and actually they're important for your website, then probably we will still ignore them. So that's something where you have to make sure that you're not telling us to ignore too much. The other things that can help are essentially the normal things that you would do within a website. So trying to make sure that all of the internal linking goes directly to the URLs that you want to have kept. That's something that helps a lot that ideally you have redirect set up to the URLs that you want to have kept, that you use URL canonical to tell us about the URL that you prefer to have kept for those individual variations and that you put the version that you want to have kept in the sitemap files as well. So with all of those kind of hints that you can give us there, that's something where if we have noticed that there are multiple URLs that they lead to essentially the same product page or the same hotel or same location page, then we'll take all of those URLs and try to figure out which one of those we should focus on the most. And we use all of those different factors to figure out what the best canonical URL for this case would be. And when we pick a canonical URL, we tend to show that more in the search results. Not that it would rank more, but instead of the other variations of that same URL. And we would try to focus our crawling on that variation. So for example, if you have a URL with a parameter and a URL without a parameter, and we pick the one without a parameter as canonical, we'll probably crawl the one without a parameter a lot more frequently than the other ones. So that makes it a little bit so that it's less a technical issue with regards to crawling. But obviously, we still have to discover all of those URL variations first before we can pick a canonical. So if you're creating a lot of new content and at the same time, lots of separate URL variations are available for that new content, then that still means we have to spend a lot of time crawling all of those variations for one time at least and then figuring out, oh, we can pick a canonical and focus on the canonical URL. Thanks, Sean. So it's a lot of things. So basically, I can just tell you the scenario over here. So we have like, I mean, one, the one of parameters that will have a check-in, check-out sort of parameters. The other one with the rooms were ideal, maybe because of the category of the rooms. So usually, for internally as well as more internally, for first, we try to keep it as a without parameters. But for certain cases, let's say, from the JS links or something, it's somehow linked as well from the parameters you want. So that's my question, like, when if I look at the kind of my link profile internally, so the majority of the links are coming through the parameters. It's not with the, you can say, the without parameter. So in that particular case, I'm assuming the Google will give more weightage to the parameter you want, so basically, they are linked more as compared to my other one. I think in a case like that, if you can't kind of change the internal linking, then I would focus on all of the other aspects, especially the URL parameter handling tool, I think that would probably be really useful for you there. And for canonicalization, we don't just focus on one aspect. We look at the bigger picture and we kind of say, well, these factors align with this URL and these factors align with this other URL. And these are more important, so we'll pick that URL. So that's something, sometimes you can't fix the internal linking. Or sometimes you have issues where you can't place a canonical on the page. And it's not that we require all of that to be the same, but the more consistent you can make it, the more likely we'll follow what you prefer to have. Sure, thanks, John. John, can I just have one follow up on the same thing? Sure. So canonical and URL parameter, if we are using both, does it mean that we are telling Google not to crawl that particular page? Therefore, it will never see the canonical. So like in the URL parameter, I am adding no URL to be crawled after this parameter. But all the URLs are there and they are pointing to canonical. So canonical will not be seen by Google. If we can't crawl those URLs, then we don't see the rel canonical link there. That's correct. So with the help of URL parameter, I am telling Google not to crawl, not by robot txt. So with the URL parameter tool, there are different options that you can provide there, including, I think, telling Google to crawl one representative URL instead of these URLs. So I don't know exactly what the phrasing is in the tool of hand. But the specified URL probably. Yeah, yeah. It's something where with the robot's text, for example, you basically say, don't crawl this. But with the URL parameter tool, you can give it a little bit more nuance and say, well, these are sort orders, for example. And this is the default. And just use that one to crawl. But with parameter, then the canonical URL I cannot specify. No, I don't know how the tool works kind of directly. But it's something where, I believe, for some variations, you can say crawl this variation of the URL. And in cases like that, we should be able to. Let me just check. So yeah, John, over here, I mean, Google provides first two options, whether the content is being changed or not. If it is not changing, then it's something we have to pick an option, OK, let the Google decide. And so if the content is changing, then it gives you the option in what manner it is changing. So maybe it is sorting. Is it filter? Or maybe you have a different sort of combination. Or even though if you do not show, maybe you can leave it as blank. And then just select, I mean, whether you want that URL to be crawlable or not. Yeah, yeah. I just opened the help center page. And it has different variations. So it's something where you can tell us which one we should pick. So Ramesh, this is the case for duplicate URL after your query parameter. All the URLs are duplicate content. In this case, I want to tell Google not to crawl any URL after that parameter. So in this case, John, I cannot use canonical. Why? Because canonical is main page, not after any query parameter. I don't quite understand. I feel like it would be really useful to have explicit examples of what you're looking at there. And for that, it would probably be useful to have something like a help forum post where you have some exact URLs that we can look at. And kind of give some input based on that. So I think that would be useful, because I'm really confusing doing that just live in the Hangout. And I have to double check the settings in Search Console how that actually looks. Yeah, sure. Sure. All right. Yeah, hi, Joe. Hi. Yeah, John, even I have the same doubt in URL structure. So let's say I have an URL in a folder level. So after domain.com and after one folder is there, and after the end of the URL is there, last URL is there. So in case I didn't create anything in a folder level, let's say for cars, www.abc.com slash cars, slash best cars in India. But www.abc.com slash cars, I didn't create any page. If a user go to the page, it will go to 404. So is there any impact we'll create for the final URL? Because there is nothing in a folder level, but still the final URL is there. That's fine. That's perfectly fine. That doesn't matter at all. We see URLs as identifiers of the content. And we don't expect that if you have a directory based structure that all of the folders will work individually, that's essentially something that you can have, but you don't need to have. And it's not something that would change anything from our point of view. Also, if you, for example, remove a lot of content on your website. So will it break the priority of the page? No, no. It's perfectly fine. Cool. All right. Let me run through some of the other. So it is not good, actually. I couldn't be able to hear your voice properly. Oh, OK. Sorry. No, it's perfectly fine to have this setup where you have folders and the individual folder URLs don't. Whoops. Again, it's completely fine to have folders and the folder URLs don't need to have content on their own. That's perfectly fine. All right. Let me see if I can. Sure. Let's run through some of the other questions that were submitted. Is using 302 redirects for affiliate links a bad practice? So you basically have slash vitamins, and it redirects to vitamin shop with your affiliate URL. Is that a problem or not? From our point of view, that's perfectly fine. There is nothing that we would consider bad there. From my point of view, because this is really nothing that provides any additional value for your website in the sense that it looks better by having redirects to your affiliate pages or not, personally, I would recommend using less complexity and not setting up these kind of redirects and just linking to that site directly. I think you just save yourself the effort of trying to maintain all of these things individually. Question about the site link search box? Not about how to implement it, but basically, how do I make it shown or not? So one of the things that I've seen with the site link search box is if you set up the markup for this on your site, then this is something that takes quite a long time to actually be in effect. So it's not like other types of content where we can see maybe crawl that page once or twice, and then we can show that rich result type. In the search results, the site link search box is something that we really need to see for the long run, and sometimes it takes a month, maybe even longer, to be visible in the search results. And also, the markup for the site link search box doesn't mean that we will show a site link search box for your site. But rather, if we show a site link search box for your site, then with that markup, we can pick the one that you prefer. If you have an internal site search, then we can show you and show that one instead. So those are kind of the tricky aspects there in that we don't always show this for most sites. And when you do provide this markup, we need to see it for a longer period of time before it's visible in the search results. Hey, John. So on this site link search box, so we have a main website, plus we have an international website as well. So if this site is so, it was appearing for my main domain, but it is not appearing for my other country website. But they are somehow in prison in support of structure. So how can I enable the same thing for my support of special websites? Yeah, again, we would see those as separate websites. And we don't always show the site link search box. So that's something where I think we might show it for one country version, but not the other country version. We might show it for one brand within a bigger company, but not for another brand. So that's something that, from our point of view, is just individual across different websites. So in that, basically, having a same brand, having a similar kind of practice, say, Google's saying this is one country's available, but not the other one. So what is the kind of idea behind it? Like I'm showing for the one country and not for the other? It's mostly something where we try to provide value for users when they search. And we try to provide it in a way that makes sense for the users. So in that sense, it's not something that we would always show for a website for queries, but rather when we can recognize that it makes sense to show it for users for specific queries, then we'll try to show that. So what you're probably seeing is that for some countries, we've noticed that it makes sense to show it to users. And for other countries, we're not sure yet. Or we see conflicting signals that tell us, well, maybe people just want to go to your home page or want to go to your main page for that brand, or maybe they interact with that website differently, all of those things. So that's something where it can be normal that for one country you see it, for another country you don't. All right. Thanks. Now, I wish there were an easier way to kind of force some of these things, but it is something that we've noticed that sometimes it makes more sense to show it, and sometimes it doesn't make as much sense. Let's see if I can run through some of the remaining questions. Using hreflang on all pages of a multilingual sitemap is that a wait, on all pages or on a multilingual sitemap, which is best. Both of those work. Sitemap or the on-page markup is retrieving images through JSON or jQuery SEO friendly.  So I would double check those. You can also kind of simply check the page with the mobile-friendly test to see if those images load or not. That's a good way to get a first glance. Let's see. We have a page like this one. There are a lot of areas that you can click on, and you have a pop-up with text. I don't like this design, but the designers do. And I would prefer that all text was visible to the user all the time without any pop-up. So my question is, how will Googlebot read this page? Will Googlebot kind of be able to click on the page or see the content itself? So I didn't have time to double check this particular page. But in general, there are two setups that can be done for this kind of behavior, where you have elements on the page that you can click on or that you hover over to see text. One is that the text itself is actually loaded when the page is loaded. And is just not visible by default. That's usually something that works fine for indexing. The other approach is that when you click on an element or you hover over an element, there's actually JavaScript that goes to the server and pulls that content and then shows that page. That's something that we would miss because we don't know where to click or where to hover with Googlebot's mouse. So those are kind of the two approaches there. One simple way to double check if it works or not is to take a piece of text that is shown in one of those pop-ups and just search for that. And if you can see that your page is being shown for that piece of text, then we can obviously index that content and show it in the search results. A question about paywall markup for subscription websites. There is an example for news article markup in the developer documentation. But how would you mark up a BBS or user reviews? I believe the flexible sampling markup is specific to news article and similar structured data types. So it would probably be stretching it to use that to mark up a BBS or kind of a forum-based setup, so I don't know if that would really be suitable there. I would double check how the type of markup would fit for your particular pages in the sense that I believe this wraps up to creative work in schema.org. And it might be that there is a subtype that fits the type of content that you have. If articles don't have images and the image element is required, is it fine to use a website logo for images in the paywall markup? That feels a bit wrong in the sense that the image would not be specific to that article. So that's something that I would personally try to avoid in a case like that. I also don't know if the image is actually a required property for the article markup. If it is, then that's something that obviously it would make sense to show an image that matches your actual content. You can think of it this way in that we show the image, for example, in the Discover feed together with the article. And if it were just your logo, then that would be kind of weird for users to see there. And it probably wouldn't encourage people to go to your pages if they just see kind of a generic logo instead of the actual content or an image that actually matches the content. I have a say, merge problem. I merged two large sites together six months ago. Tens of thousands of URLs involved. 301 redirects were made for everything. However, I noticed Google is still showing the old merge domain for many product queries that don't include the old site's name. What it is showing in the SERPs is only the old URLs. But with the new title tags, meta descriptions, clicking on the results for the old domain redirects you to the new one, these queries are mostly commonly used model numbers or product names by manufacturers. Why is Google showing my old domain? So I think on the one hand, site mergers always take a little bit longer. So that's something where I would expect it to take a couple of months. You said six months ago. So it seems like it has been up a couple of months. The other aspect there is that if you're seeing the content of the new page in the search results with the URL of the old page, then what is likely happening there is we're able to crawl those different variations of the URLs, like the old URL and the new URL. And we find the content there. So we find the new content. However, it's a matter for us now to figure out which URL we should show in the search results, which is kind of the canonicalization aspect there. So we see the new URL. We see the old URL. We see there's a redirect from the old URL to the new URL. So that's a pretty strong sign for us. However, there might be other signs that point at the old URL for us. So maybe some of the internal links have not been updated. Maybe the site map file has not been updated. Maybe there are other things that you can do to update like the canonical tags on these pages. Maybe you have hreflang annotations on these pages. All of those things essentially add up. And that's something where we will try to pick the appropriate URL to show in the search results. And it sounds like we're picking the old URL at the moment. One thing that might happen here is that this will just settle down over time. Another thing might be that you can kind of go through all of those different aspects and double check to make sure that they're all really pointing out the new URL. On the positive side, switching between the URLs does not change anything from the ranking. So just because we're showing your old URLs in the search results doesn't mean that the ranking lower or the ranking higher or any differently. We're essentially saying, for the slot in the rankings, we have multiple URLs that we can show with the same content. And we're going to show this URL, or we're going to show that URL. So from that point of view, it's not a critical thing that you need to resolve right away, but rather take your time, double check all of the details to make sure that all of the internal linking is correct. You can use some third-party crawler tools to double check the crawling of your website. There's some really good ones out there nowadays. Double check all of the annotations on your site, all of the things that are not visible by default, like the canonical link, any hreflang annotations that you have on there, all of those things, and make sure that they align with the new version. And then, over time, that should settle down again. Hi, John. What do you think about the practice of some big publishers tagging all outgoing links with rel nofollow? From what I know, the reasoning behind this is that with follow links, you would leak link juice and then rank worse. So that's definitely wrong. It's definitely not the case that if you use normal links on your website, that you would rank any worse than if you put nofollow links on all outgoing links. I suspect it's even on the contrary that if you have normal linking on your web page, then you would probably rank a little bit better over time, essentially, because we can see that you're part of the normal web ecosystem. So it's definitely not the case that you have any kind of ranking advantage by marking all outgoing links as nofollow. The one reason that I've seen from talking with a lot of publishers is that they're often just not sure which of these outgoing links are kind of paid links or placed there because of some arrangement with the author, or maybe they have paid articles as well in between, and they just don't know how to deal with that. And it's more a matter of they're kind of like trying to stay on a safe side of like, we will put nofollow on these links because we don't know which ones we can trust. And from my point of view, that is also problematic in the sense that I understand not knowing which links you can trust. But essentially, if you're a news publisher, you should trust what you're writing about, or you should be able to understand which part of the content that you write about is actual content that you want to have indexed like that that you want to stand for. And if these are things that you want to stand for, then make sure that you have normal links on there. Make sure that you're kind of referring to that content as something that, yes, I can stand behind this link because I researched this topic and this is the kind of the source. This is maybe some other resources that lead to more information on this topic. This is what I researched from. This is an authority that I'm quoting. All of these things are kind of reasons to place normal links on a page. So from that point of view, I would certainly find a way to make sure that you don't necessarily have to no follow every outbound link. Yeah, so, John? Yes. So you meant to say even we are putting no follow links or no follow links, whatever it is, it will never affect our rankings, right? I think I can never say never, but it definitely is not the case that if you no follow all of the links on your site, you will rank any better. Yeah, even if you put some no follow links on a website also, it doesn't mean that we will rank. Our rank will drop or our link just will pass because we are worrying about our link just only. Like let's say if you are just putting 10 no follow links of other sites and of course, of course as per the theory in deadlines, maybe we just want to know that our link just is getting fast and because of that our authority will get down. So is that true? I don't think you would see any change on your site's page rank with regards to kind of no follow links or normal links. Yeah, because you have tools like HRF, even when we just read about the blogs, even they are saying that if the site's having 70 plus authority sites, then you can just give the link over there, but they didn't mention that whether it's a do follow or no follow. But here we are talking over the same, if you are putting no follow and do follow, it will never affect the rankings. So that's what, of course we know that if you put do follow, the link just will pass, but again some controversial things are happening. I don't quite follow your question, but again it's something where having normal links on a web page for content that you want to stand for, that's perfectly fine, that's totally expected from our point of view. Of course in the U.S. we are seeing some U.S. sites, of course they are just getting links and they are just putting links of other sites also, of course they are ranking on top, but here only we are worrying about putting do follow links or no follow links. So I think first of all I wouldn't focus too much on what other sites are doing and I wouldn't assume that other sites are always just ranking because of the links that they got, but rather I'd really just focus on your own sites and make sure that what you're providing there and what you're linking to matches what you want to stand for with those pages. And it's also not something where you can say, well I will no follow all of these links, but I will link to CNN and Google and Wikipedia because that looks good. That's not something from our point of view that would make your pages look any more important than they are, but rather link to the sources that you want to have linked to, link to the places that you think make sense for your users and if there are things that you're doing where maybe you have an ad on a page or maybe you're working together with a friend who also has a webpage, then of course, those are the kind of things you would like to no follow because it's clear that this is a link that is there kind of for other reasons, but everything else where you're linking between from your site to some other site because you're providing kind of saying this is a reference or this is a source or this is more information that you can look at and definitely just link normally. There's no reason to put a no follow there just kind of because you're afraid that if you like to link out too much that's somehow problematic. Yeah, sure, thanks. Sure. All right, we're a bit over time and wow we still have so many questions left so I don't think I can manage to get through those. I think we'll stop here. What I'll do now is pause the recording and upload that to YouTube and hopefully that just works. As always, thank you all for joining in. Thanks for the many questions. It's cool to see that more people can join here now and I'll set up the dates for the next couple versions as well and we can see if this setup continues to work. Unfortunately, we don't have a live stream for these anymore, at least not at the moment but we do have the recording so that's good. All right, then I wish you all a great weekend and hope to see you all again in one of the future episodes. Bye everyone. Bye. Bye Joe. Bye John. Now if I can figure out how to stop the recording.


Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this session My name is Jim snubber and I am what I call a concerned optimist I'm an optimist because I fundamentally believe that through many of the technological advancements We have an opportunity to Reinvent society the way we do business in ways that are significantly more sustainable And I am concerned because I do see that we live in a crisis of confidence in many ways Where some of the fundamental systems even maybe? Capitalism is being challenged and this session is about exactly that. How do we regain trust in business? How do we regain a compact between business and society in Many ways the theme today is a core to the whole theme of Davos this year the responsible Responsive and responsible leadership and we'll talk about what business leaders can do We won't blame it on the politicians will talk about what business leaders can do in restoring that compact We will talk about one of the key challenges in business how to balance the short and the long term and Of course, we'll talk about the role of business not just in business, but in society Most of all we'll talk about the role of leadership and for that I have a very Strong panel of strong leaders who all have demonstrated not just a commitment to the leadership around the long term But also are acting that way in the way they run their businesses We have in our panel miss Lubna from Olyan financing company We have mr. Naka Nishisan from Itachi, Japan We have France from Houghton from Phillips and we have Dominic Barton from Mackinsey And of course we have the many leaders in this room I hope that this session can inspire us all to take on a Significant longer term and responsible leadership even if we feel that's already what we are doing to frame the problem Winston Churchill once said that the price of greatness is responsibility and In many ways business has improved conditions in society over many many years We've doubled the life expectancy over 200 years We have lifted millions of people out of poverty and yet we have this crisis of confidence right now We have a climate change Phenoma that is to some extent caused by business and we saw a breakdown on the business side on the financial systems in 2008 We came to this Davos with an intent to revitalize the Relationship between business leadership and society and we did that by Suggesting participants to sign a compact a compact for responsive and responsible Leadership and one of the driving forces behind this initiative Was actually France from Houghton from Phillips and I'd love to maybe start with a brief conversation about what led to that And and why was that such an important topic in your mind as a global leader today? Thanks, Jim Indeed the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum had a deep discussion back in August around Responsive and responsible leadership, and if you take a wider context Society at large is still grappling with a lot of challenges I on the one hand has made tremendous progress hundreds of millions of people have come out of poverty over the last years But you know climate change. There's still disease issues we have this fast changing age of the internet and People feel that maybe they may lose their job because of all the changes that are going on So they are worried so it's a bit of a conundrum where you can say the world is Actually richer than before you could even argue that on many measures better off than before at the same time You see a lot of anxiety in the world because there are unresolved problems where answers may not be available yet and where People also then lose trust in their leaders. We see the populism coming up short-term ism about That is not just applying to companies. You could say it applies to politicians as well but in the end the Discussion we had in August said that's not going to solve the problems I mean to hatch an egg it needs to incubate all right to have real breakthrough solutions We need to have a consistent north star that we pursue and that we work on and in order to get to real innovations innovations in technology, but also innovations in society and So we said we we really need to rally around A multi-stakeholder approach in how to do business We as leaders need to take our accountability of what we can do to contribute to a better place and in that context We realize that we have a lot to offer Many companies can actually contribute to some of the challenges and we recognize the challenges are Fantastically worded in the sustainable development goals as formulated by the United Nations the 17 we don't need to reinvent what the challenges of the world are and companies are Important and influential actors in society and we can all contribute to that But it is sometimes at odds with what we call short-term ism where we feel pressured to deliver Shareholder return in the short term as opposed to Creating sustainable value in the longer term and value that is perceived to be value in the eyes of all stakeholders so we we said we need to Rally around a compact for responsive and responsible leadership anchored around the sustainable development goals anchored around the notion that we as companies Can play our part and contribute and that is what we we wrote up and and that became a simple statement That by now a lot of companies have have signed up to and I sense a lot of enthusiasm around it And I hope that this conversation We can deepen that and also I would like Society to hold companies accountable to that statement I mean if we declare that we will contribute to long-term Progress in the world and that we take a multi-stakeholder approach Then we also need to become more transparent and how we do that and We should be held accountable and maybe that can all be part of restoring trust In leaders pitch because we know that that is an issue, but let me pause there Well, thank you very much. I think I would love to spend maybe the first half of this to explore it Why are we in this situation in spite of all the progress and you talked about the fears and so on well? I read the newspaper. It seems like you know the big big bad guy is globalization Dominique, what do you think yeah, so I'm shaking my head because I think I don't think it's globalization I think globalization did have an effect when China was rising. I think extra China joined the WTO and There were jobs that were certainly taken up by China, but overall as Fran said we've had the hundreds of millions taken out of poverty But in what I where I think the biggest issue is actually with technology and You know having fruit, you know stopping trade is actually going to be worse than doing anything else It's technology that we is the big issue. We need to think about I'm optimistic about Technology, but if you think now about what automation can actually do today, you know in 60% of jobs 30% of the activities could be automated today And what that means is that there these changes are happening at a much more rapid rate than we've ever experienced before and so the notion is how do we re-skill people and And and we can't be luddites But we this is where I think business can play a big role because I actually don't think we can rely on government to do it It's it's business that will have to play the key role in retraining people and Andrew Livris was talking this morning about You know when the Model T came out there wasn't a University on how to build cars in Ford Motor Company had to figure out how we're going to train people to do that So I think that I think one of the biggest Issues we're gonna have to deal with is how do we deal? with rapid technology change and and job re-skilling and and ensuring that people do Have jobs that are not not not left behind So if we can't blame the politicians because we're gonna take responsibility. We can't blame blame Globalization some would argue and I've been a CEO that you're driven by these Quarterly results the the average holding time of an investment in the US for example went down from seven years to now 20 days and some of the Machine trading is you know seconds. Is it a pressure from the investors? We have a great Long-term investor on stage look at what is your perspective on this and why do we need a company do we need a compact? Well, I would argue we don't need a compact if we have responsible leadership I We were discussing it before I think what we what we do need I was saying we really don't need a compact if we have responsible leadership What we do need is a compass and I think every leader If he is responsible for his company and if he cares and takes care Of his company and puts the interest of his company before his personal interest I think the leadership will be in a good place and If he is not performing the way He should be then it is the responsibility of the board to take action against that so I'm not Too much in the camp of that we need a compact But if it helps the society at large by all means to go to your question of Long-term yes, we are a family business and the nature of a family business as you are a long-term investor You mentioned it used to be seven years and now it's 20 days We we tend to be quite a long-term investor that some of our investments is 20 years And we stick with the with the company and the management as long as there is transparency as long as dialogue as long as Everything is is open and and you believe in what the company is is doing so the issue I think of short-term as is really an issue here that is diverting and taking away from the leadership to focus on The long-term strategy and growth of the company Dominique yesterday was in a session and he was heading it Fclt focusing capital on long-term growth And I think Dominique will speak well about it, but it was it was quite an eye-opener to see that Actually, there are statistics done and maybe if you can go ahead and say some of the yeah We're trying to it's very difficult, you know to estimate we found that what's the impact of short-term is in the point You made and we did some work McKinsey with with Fclt global And we we looked at the United States over the last 15 years and basically If you if you then sort of sum it up in terms of what's the impact on jobs? What's the impact on growth and asset value? It's considerable that it short-term is in the United States over the last decade has cost us five million jobs at least It has cost us a trillion dollars in asset value And it's cost us a percentage point of GDP growth and where we don't so it's a it has a The consequences of being short-term has a very significant impact on all of us in that sample of 600 and it's 15 companies there were about 20 percent that are long-term and you do see them creating You know 12,000 more jobs on average in their peer group than others They're invest 50 percent more in R&D Than than others so there is a serious cost to short-termism as you see and I think we do need to have Investors like Lubna and others who think long-term to ensure that leaders can and can do the R&D and build But let's let's let's look at that problem around the Unemployment seems to me like every time we get technological advancements The first thing we think of is how do we replace labor with this new technology and the consequence of that is rapid Destruction of jobs now more than creation of jobs potentially Japan has always had a tradition of lifelong employment and you're also facing. I think a unique challenge around an aging population What's the perspective from from from Japan on the issues and the reason for this? Crisis of confidence we have Thank you that team that I'm responsible for the other Hitachi That is a manufacturing industry and also that the Japan's major Businesses industry the manufacturing industry there, but now there used to be the Manufacturing of the some products of technology Simply contribute to that of the how to make it that high quality high performance of those kinds things but already that Friends and Dominic you pointed out that all of the are you know that the issues to be so more complicated and how to make it a more product not the product base is a more Solution-oriented approach that require the Japan you already mentioned James is a very complicated Social issues we have so the other from the viewpoint of the business itself We have to change of the mindset not the technology of product driven to more solution oriented How to make it possible to do that? That's a very big challenge Also globalization affected of the other complexity is more So those kind of they are new type of the other manufacturing industry That's our target and so the other we in the case of the Hitachi We give up the give up the some part of the commodity type of business How to train of the people's to making the mindset from the technology driven to more The the social issues to be sold how to do that? That's a big challenge, but still the that's the way the bank can be Recovered from the at the long term of the research Thank you. Jim may I Contribute So so far we talk about long-term for the short term ism I would like to broaden the challenge a little bit if companies are perceived to take advantage of other stakeholders you get you know people to be upset and If you look at pollution for example and the air pollution in China where companies let's say from a short-term perspective Optimize their results without regard for the impact on the planet All right, that is also an example of where With the compact we would like to say there is a responsibility as an entrepreneur in how you do business So taking employees along taking your suppliers along Doing business in a sustainable way so that actually for the generations to come The environment is still good. All right, so yes, it is about short-term versus long-term But it is also about doing business in a sustainable manner, which you could say equates to being long-term But I think the value system around how you do business is what we are discussing here and I like what you said, you know, it's about a compass it is about Being able to say this is how we do business and you can hold me accountable for being a responsible place And by the way that also means that towards my shareholders I can be clear about how I do business where I may prioritize a longer-term objective versus a you know short-term Opportunistic Advantage, I think it's a great point But I would you know just to try and and challenge ourselves is that have we been good enough at that? You look at the climate situation that we have look at the inequality in the world that we have it seems like the Opportunity that business is driving is is creating Value for few not for many and accepting externalities which are negative Have we been good enough is our business leaders part of the problem or the solution? Maybe I would all ask you all Dominic. What do you think? I I think it's a matter of we just have to be better I mean, I think there's a lot of factors that are there, but you know you look at the Edelman numbers We were talking about it before I mean everyone has dropped Everyone every category and CEOs have dropped but But I I think it's more about we have a responsibility to do better because it's the world's moving so fast week I think what's happened is we've assumed other people will deal with it the government or the educational system or But it's moving so quickly. It's not being dealt with and and that's where I think I actually think business not only You know needs to because it's a good thing to do It's the only way we're gonna be able to do it and by the way you can do it and make money at the same time This is not a just it isn't a social thing. This is about the system working So I think it's about us having to step up because of the of the speed and And other institutions not being able to to keep up or maybe be ready to deal with it So look now you you said we don't need a compact compact. Do we need one anyway? Are we good enough? No, I Think we as Dominic said we can always do better and we should do better It is our duty. It is our responsibility and we have in our organizing We have responsibility to all our stakeholders our employees their families and you owe it to them each country has its own challenges and and things to deal with but within the DNA of the company within the core values of the company is is what comes with you know from that you get to the mission statement of the company and I think if you take up from that and your Contribution or obligation to society I think in our parts my part of the world We used to realize so much on the government that the government will provide and all of that And it is now the private sector is realizing they are on an equal footing with the government and that they have to Contribute so we have to contribute on education on employment where we have all these Challenges and I think the private sector is getting together and Similar to this compass or compact and seeing what more can we do? We should learn from each other where others have been successful So I think such dialogue is really important for all of us to see how we can improve very good very good any other The basic you know that the issue for the top management is also that most make it the organization The principles simple. That's a very important point. And so at that point Digitization is a really that the very powerful to to make it visible and also that How to analyze it that those kind of things is a digitization sometimes a negative positive or both view May exist but the from the viewpoint of the other you know top leaders How can make it the simple how can make it visible those kind of things is a very important approach Not simply of the accompany management, but also that the how to analyze of the social issues are more complicated The issue to be solved in more simple way But that's a kind of the you know that the new era of the management view and so those kind of the how to Use of the utilize of such technology potential the more the beneficial way So you're saying we get more transparency and more opportunities actually But I think it's a good conclusion of the first round here that you know obviously there are some issues it's clear that businesses operate in society and they are responsible for more than their shareholders and That we can do much more I'd like to reverse then to the second part of this because you know we can do more is is rather abstract and Maybe use the opportunity because I know you've all been arguing for more responsive and responsible leadership for a long time to extract some of your experiences, you know, what have you done and What as make it as concrete as possible? What have you done? Why was that significant and and I would suggest we do a full circle on what have you done? That changed the way you run your business and and why was that important Dominic? Would you start sure? I think one as Lubna said I think it's part of what you should believe and do in the work You do in the communities you live in you're playing a role So there's a mindset of people contributing that way But to be get more specific to your point one and topic that particularly Concerned us as youth unemployment and there's been a lot of talk about how to deal with it And we and we are part of that talk too. So we said let's get into action So we basically made a commitment Philanthropic commitment to basically invest 75 million dollars to help develop an approach to get Unemployed youth into jobs and we started this a year ago We now and we're doing it in five countries. We're doing it in the United States reading in Pittsburgh We're doing it in Mexico City. We're doing it in Nairobi in Kenya. We're doing it in India and we're doing it in Spain and what we're doing is taking heist these people are typically have a high school Education and we're giving them training from three weeks to 14 weeks to get jobs and in the first phase of this 10,000 of those people now have jobs now That's a drop not even a drop in a drop of the bucket of the 75 million and we're going to expand it But the point is we now have a methodology that works very quickly very cheaply and effectively and now Corporations are partnering with us to do it to be able to drive it forward and our aim is to take that to a million Over the next three years and we're moving it and that's not a it's not going to change the world But I think it what it is going to do I hope is develop a methodology that we can then scale to other people in in doing it and it's become an important part of Leadership development at McKinsey if you want to learn how to be a leader over time Most people leave McKinsey you better experience that because when you do it's quite a Mindset change because you're not talking about it. You're working a working with thank you Are you promoting the program to get more sponsors as well? Is that an opportunity? It's called generation And it's and it's again not we want to make it very much not to do with us But it's called generation It's a website for it. We hired a CEO of care to come in and help us Run it and drive it properly. But yeah, if anyone's interested in getting involved, please So that's very concrete France Yeah, I think we should not confuse philanthropy with what we are talking about here This is for me about how you do business on a day-to-day basis, right? Phillips is an innovation company a technology company and we have repurposed our company to focus on health technology Basically trying to help meet unmet needs Innovation company we need to have a longer-term horizon to really innovate and get to breakthroughs And we have set a portion of our innovation money. We will also use to develop Messages and solutions for developing markets not just for the developed market So we take a balanced view that we said we need to reach a lot of people to improve their lives In fact, one of our long-term goals is to improve the lives of three billion people by the year 2025 I said to take a long enough horizon to say how can our technology improve that Another point that I like to make is coming back on how you do business, right? So not only what what do you deliver? We have embraced Sustainability and the circular economy Thinking within the way we do business. So we actively pursue Having the return path of our products back to Phillips. We actively pursue Experimenting with business model where we sell a product as a service and where we retain The ownership of the the assets so that we can optimize the life and also take back the materials As a company we have signed the COP 21 Paris agreement to become carbon neutral by 2020 and we encourage all our employees to be part of society and In initiatives to to complete contribute. Let's say the knowledge that we have I believe that Because of this we attract better talent. So it's good for us. All right our customers recognize us for This attitude and stance And I believe that if you explain as well to shareholders, they're perfectly all right with it. All right, so We actually say, you know, if you want to invest in Phillips, then we are a company that takes a long-term perspective That is also what we expect from our shareholders and we resist. Let's say short-termism in trying to optimize the near-term Thank you. Noob now.  Sure. Well, our company our founder has always Raised the company to be a company that's privately owned but very very transparent We are extremely transparent for all our employees. And so they're always engaged and they're encouraged to think outside the box Because that is the only way for us to make our investments. So we encourage dialogue financial information is always Available and that is precisely what was said earlier is what helps us to become to stay sustainable and to have people come in with Ideas and and intriguing ideas. The other thing is given where we are I think one of the packs and with the great shareholder support We felt that what is good is to explore and give the opportunity for Female population in Saudi Arabia to become engaged. We did it because we felt we're responsible This is the right thing to do And so we were one of the first private sector company the first privately owned companies that employed females in In Saudi Arabia 15 years ago. This has really paid back big times for us We are very proud of our females, but it really had added Productivity to our company and all this. So I think if you think long-term and If you if your compass is a long-term and you have the direction where you want to go The leader will only work towards that and that's the only way for you to grow is to stay sustainable And think of the wider society the other part of it is I'm gonna touch a little bit on the philanthropic But education for us given also our part of the world is one of our main pillars and Education is so we have to focus on this philanthropic activity because it will pay back to society And and that is sort of so for me is Social responsibility and philanthropy is totally part an integral part of the business and they are all together Because that's what makes your business sustainable Thank you, and Naga Nishishan, I know what Hitachi has done a lot as well in society in general Well, what is your best example of taking a long-term societal? Yeah, that I already talk about the sub of the mindset change entirely But simultaneously you mentioned about the the digitization requires some openness transparent So the other this to you know that the target is sometimes not so simple way How can get the other very much in a collaborative work? Collaborative creations among the stakeholders not simply of the others the stockholders Employees or customer, but also that all of the social issues is a fully related to the society And so the others kind of the other new approach the really the necessary to make it happen so such kind of the solution-based Business especially that targeted for the the very deep social issues like Climate change the environmental issues energy or health care you other friends already mentioned Those kind of the other more complicated this task how to make it a more such a Collaborations is to be a possible. That's a big challenge on also some part We did it so that right now that we are getting the some of the Very deep trust from the customer side Thank you I'd like to prepare the audience maybe for for a few comments either challenging the panel here I'll just take one question. So you prepare yourself France you mentioned the SDGs and I think for the first time in history We have a common language of what are the issues and and how do you potentially measure? Whether we are progressing or not many countries have made plans are they well enough integrated in strategy in Corporate world where where are we and and could we do much more and Then please prepare yourself for some questions. There are 17 SDGs I'm wearing the SDG badge here 17 colors representing those goals I don't think any individual company can contribute to all of them I mean in fact Phillips contributes to three, but you know it's three I know it's really studied it and we said, how do we take this into our way of doing business? And it you know it it helps us also to focus and to get to breakthroughs To be purposeful, and I think we we should also be held accountable. Maybe on that word accountable Let's say as we promote and advocate for this compact for for many of us to sign and I hope you will There should also come a mechanism to make it transparent. I mean have you signed are you committed to this? but also what are you doing right and So transparency in progress and for example Phillips, we will Put this on our website also an assessment as to do we live up to this compact, and I've already heard from Reuters Thompson that they they they plan to develop a measurement mechanism to kind of you measure you up to say okay You say you say that you want to live up to this compact, but are you doing it? And I think then we are building Really something that that again is sustainable, so I'm very excited about that We're good. I'd love to get some thoughts and reflections from the audience. You may challenge us I see one in the first row here actually to so if we could get the microphones, please Identify yourself and then ask your question or comment. Thank you. Yes, my name is I'm Chairman of time recruit from Saudi Arabia. I couldn't agree with the panel a lot Lugna, I just wanted to mention that we need to I believe we need to reinforce more Purpose versus reward in doing business and going through our transformation today Using digitization in order to optimize and be efficient. We're losing our values And I believe reinstating values and engaging employees Genuinely it's key to having sustained the business on the comment of long-term versus short-term I don't believe in a dichotomy. I think you need to achieve Your daily short-term goals to achieve your long-term goals And if your short-term goals contradict with your long-term goals, then they are not sustainable So I couldn't agree more with you. My question is we need in this compact to reinforce more and more values So basically you bring us back to the importance of purpose the values in the companies to be the driver of the compact and reflections from the panel Please anyone in particular or people don't work for What you pay them they work for the purpose and the belief in the company's purpose So I really couldn't agree more about reason so we are violent agreement I mean we had a deep soul searching a few years ago, you know, what is Phillips here for now 125 year-old company Why would we be here again in the years in the future? How will you sustain in fact the average lifespan of a company on the standard and poor's index has has Diminished now to less than 18 years. So it is not obvious to stay relevant in society All right, and short-termism will certainly not keep you relevant So we had this soul searching to say okay in our genes We are an innovation company and what should innovation companies do they should solve problems All right, so we said what is our purpose? Well, our purpose is to make the world healthier. So as a technology company we will you know focus on improving patient lives and people's lives and You know it it attracts people because the millennials of this time in age They want to work for companies that have purpose And I think if we want to restore trust between leaders and the people in the society we need to talk about Purpose more over our deeds our actions should demonstrate that we do that because the Edelman Trust barometer that was presented yesterday actually say words don't count right Communication will become upside down. It is going to be people judging you on what you do, right? So our actions need to speak volumes, but thank you for endorsing the compact, and I hope you will sign it So second question from the front, and then we have one just behind there on the third row. Yes mark for noi partner and think school of creative leadership my question for the panel is as Leaders and as responsive and responsible leaders what skills and mindsets and capabilities Do you try and install in the leaders inside your organizations to build them as those responsive and responsible leaders for the future? Great question without that is hot right anyone with that experience how many yeah first of all I think it's this notion at the outset it comes back to the purpose point that we're You know we're here for a purpose every organization is different, and I actually go back. I've said this many times So forgive me if I'm boring at Adam Smith's The statement in the his first book the theory of moral sentiments It's the duty of the entrepreneur to take care of the society in which they operate and he talks about purpose Right and so there's a first notion of we're here to try and work on some of the most important problems in the world That's kind of a note so there's an isn't right when you come in there's a mission of what we're trying to do And you can pick any which way you want the second element is that you actually see the world because it's very Easy for us to be in an ivory tower to be removed to be doing analysis and seeing it And that's why I think it's absolutely critical that people get Exposure to working where the different the conditions are are different and not talking amongst ourselves But talking with factory workers or people that are Unemployed or and so forth so giving people those experiences to be able to do it working in different countries in different environments So it very much has to be part of the a broader sense of what leadership is and that broader senses is a is again thinking about your role in society Not just about yourself Thank you a question there Frank Hi, my name is Otto lump. I used to be in charge of coordinating the German global compact network Which was founded in 99 and also subscribes and one of its principles to the principle of corporate responsibility So I would just like to know since it wasn't mentioned to which extent are there synergies to which extent do you Intend to cooperate with the global compact network. Thank you. Thank you very much Was that a common or a question I could not completely hear the question, but I if I try to understand it you said how do we Collaborate with other organizations that have may have similar about the compact with the global compact That was on it by Kofi nine in nineteen nine here devils. Yeah. Yeah, no actually last time a Klaus Schwab asked People to sign a compact was exactly that compact. It was a compact around workers conditions climate change And and human rights as far as I remember and we're basically building on top of that What we'll do as a forum is we'll bring a website where we can not just debate this and discuss this but also bring Best practices and try to integrate other compacts that out there So we don't have this mess of compacts party a an acceleration We become a catalyst for the change that we have in mind So that's what we'll do and as as the forum is is not trying to define But be a platform for will be very open in that process and and France will continue his lead with us We'll discuss the compact today with the roughly a hundred CEOs as well and hopefully get their full support as well I think this Leads to warts and then time is ticking. I am confident that in the world of scarce resources time is probably the most scarce that we have I Don't want us to leave just with a great conversation It would be great if we all could do two things consider signing the compact But also get maybe one advice from each of the panelists on what could you do differently? That could maybe inspire you as you leave this room and take on the the lead for a more sustainable future Dominique would you start sure? I'd say this because everyone has their own business I think what Lubna said and Fran said is you have to do something that's in I think context of your Business or location rather than a broad thing. So I'm coming at it from that angle and I think that there I would look at the education system skilling system, what could you do to fundamentally? Change that improve it to enable more people to participate in a rapidly changing place education and re-skilling Thank you, France. Well, first of all, I'd like to call on everybody to To download the compact read it and hopefully sign it But I think behind such a signatory Would be a process where you engage with your stakeholders with with your own board with your management teams with your employees and actually Have a reflection on The role of the company of your organization In this fast changing world because that is what we need Responsive and responsible leadership means that we all take our share So my wish for for that for today is that we we all commit to that Thank you very much. I think if I am this session made me as I said earlier reflect on the definition of responsible leader and For me a responsible leader is the one who puts The entity he's serving with a head of his own personal interest and in the long term. I Think everyone will become a winner in that including that individual And now and I think a responsible leader is one that leads by example So that's what I'd like to leave. That's a good advice. Can you see some? Yes the all of today's discussions Sustainability is the the total goal for us, but now they are it diversified the issues included But now the I would like to recommend of the all our leaders even in internal leaders The sustainability is one of the focusing on the very important to go Well, thank you very much. Thank you The Chinese leader yesterday said that the right thing is to see every opportunity and face Every challenge. I think it starts with the commitment We are urging everyone to look at the compact as France said and sign it We have copies in at in Davos and if you don't want to send it You can go to the chairman's office and hand it in I'm pure class will be excited about that That is to create visibility around the Commitment from business leaders to take responsibility and not leave all of the issues to policy or point fingers I think that is a very important thing. Of course visibility is not not enough. It's about the the action is about the leadership and Even if we are arguing that the long-term this is what we have in mind I believe we need to act swiftly With short-term actions and the one thing that stuck out if I should summarize from today is that the urgency around upskilling and Reskilling for a digital future is probably the one most urgent that we all should care about It takes probably 10 to 20 years to redirect an education system. So I think actions on all levels Policy as well as business to solve that we made a report in the world economic form that we have five years To solve the skill gap problem. Otherwise, we'll have less opportunities. So with that in mind a wise Man actually a one of my mentors said when you make decisions Always think of Your children and your grandchildren with that in mind. Thank you very much for joining us and for your commitment Ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated for the upcoming session