Web Governance

In this episode of the International Web Effectiveness Podcast, Hosts Bill Scully and Bill Hunt focuses on the importance of global web governance and the challenges associated with managing a global website.

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• Google’s AI-powered translation: Google is now translating search engine results into eight additional languages, potentially surfacing more relevant content from other markets.
• Global web governance: Having a governance framework in place to ensure consistency and alignment across your global web presence is crucial to avoiding mistakes and saving money/resourses.
• Benefits of a Governance/steering committee: Bringing together subject matter experts from different departments can help establish clear guidelines and help everyone work towards the same goals.
• Starting with analytics: A combined top level report showing the performance of different business units online can be a powerful tool for motivating and driving improvements.
• Enforcement of governance: Having executive support and a clear process for enforcing governance rules is essential for ensuring compliance and consistency.

Additional Notes:

• There are many challenges in managing domain structures and URL structures in a global context.
• It is recommended that different departments collaborate and communicate outside of the web. Examples include Legal, Press Relations, and Sales and Marketing.

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YouTube: https://youtu.be/n_7WX_0KiI0?si=qDDPePwBY4iVvl2p

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3pe744aqdFVWpHk6redV8j?si=5bfo-a-RSs2PEngvOL6PEQ

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-3-web-governance/id1755789311?i=1000662428560

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Bill Scully: Welcome back to Episode Three of the International Web Effectiveness Podcast! I’m Bill Scully, joined by Bill Hunt, and today we’re diving into global web governance—how to manage a web presence that effectively serves all stakeholders worldwide.

In our last episode, we discussed the oversimplification of domain structure recommendations. We explored the strategic and operational reasons for using ccTLDs over a gTLD—beyond just SEO. We also touched on the challenges of international SEO and Hreflang implementation.

But first, let’s discuss the news of the week.

Bill Scully: It’s interesting that we talked last week about Google using AI to add 110 new languages. Now, Google has announced they’re translating search results into eight additional languages, rewriting titles and descriptions.

What are your thoughts on this, Bill? Why would they go through the trouble?

Bill Hunt: Honestly, I’m not sure this is a good experience for users.

Bill Scully: I have to disagree with you on that one. I think, as English-speaking Americans, it’s easy to question why they would do this, but it ties back to Google’s MUM update. The goal of MUM is to surface the best content from anywhere in the world.

Here’s an example: If my wife and I were planning a trip to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and I searched for travel information, there might not be much English-language content. But let’s say a fantastic guide exists in Kazakh or Russian—Google can now surface that, translate it, and present it to me as a relevant result.

The example Google gave when they announced MUM was about a specific climbing route on Mount Fuji. Let’s say there’s no English or French content available, but there’s a detailed guide in Japanese. Google would translate that into English and show it in the search results. When the user clicks through, the original page is auto-translated for them.

In selective cases, this could provide a more relevant result than anything available in the user’s native language.

Bill Hunt: That makes sense. But doesn’t this also have huge implications for SEO?

Bill Scully: Exactly. I wrote about this when MUM launched. Now, even if you have a great English page, a better page in French, German, or Japanese could outrank you. Google can now determine content quality across languages.

With AI and translation capabilities expanding, I believe we’ll see more of this—especially in AI-generated answers, where Google can source high-quality content globally.

Bill Hunt: I haven’t seen this in action yet. I assumed Google was only using AI translations for search snippets. But you’re saying that when a user clicks on a search result, the entire page is translated into their preferred language?

Bill Scully: Exactly. Google provided an example in their MUM announcement, which we’ve linked in the show notes. In an English search results page, they showed a Japanese webpage with its title and description translated into English. When the user clicked the result, the full page was auto-translated.

We might not see this often in the U.S., but think about medical conditions—if a Japanese tourist here searches for information, Google could pull in authoritative content from a non-English source and present it in search results.

I’ve only encountered this twice in real-world searches—outside the U.S.—where Google ranked a non-local market page in the top results. When I clicked it, the translation option appeared because the original document wasn’t in English.

Bill Hunt:
I went down a rabbit hole recently. I saw the new report in Google Search Console that lets you monitor clicks and impressions for translated results. If you go to the Search Appearance filter tab in the Performance Report, you’ll see the data there. It’s pretty cool.

That said, I haven’t personally seen it working for my sites yet, but I think it’s a great addition. I’ll change my opinion on that.

We should put out a post soon about this report. In our various Hreflang courses, we’ve talked about tracking international traffic, and you built an amazing Looker Studio dashboard to show people when they’re getting traffic from other markets. This report is another way to see that. It explicitly tells you when Google translates your page into another language and serves it to users.

It may not generate a huge amount of traffic. I saw someone post on LinkedIn today that they checked a ten-million-page website and found no translated impressions. It could just mean that the competition is too high in their target markets. But in one example I found, a site got 612 impressions and 17 clicks when a page was translated from English into Hindi.

So, I think this has potential. And again, we have to give Google credit for introducing tools that help us see these nuances in language-based search visibility.

Thanks for reminding me—we actually have a Looker Studio report that helps identify when pages are showing up in the wrong markets. I need to make that publicly available. We’ll offer it for free.

Also, for anyone listening, we have a Facebook group where we discuss topics like this. You can find the link in the show notes. It’s a great place to continue these conversations.

Bill Hunt:
In previous episodes, we’ve discussed the operational and technical challenges of managing a global website. These challenges often frustrate both the people who are accountable for performance and those who lack control over what’s implemented on their sites.

One of the biggest issues is domain and URL structures. There needs to be some form of governance to establish and enforce these rules. But governance is about more than just domains. What are your thoughts on that?

Bill Scully:
Yeah, I think when people hear “web governance” or “digital governance,” they panic. They think it means strict rules and a loss of flexibility. But as you mentioned in our previous discussion on domain structures, governance is really about establishing guidelines.

For example, some companies decide that every country will have its own top-level domain. Others might use a global domain with a structured URL format—something like /country/language/ or using dashes. The key is consistency.

Governance isn’t about micromanaging every detail. I’ve told this story at conferences—when I was at IBM, a colleague brought me five massive three-inch binders outlining every pixel placement on the website. At first, I thought it was excessive. But then I realized that this level of guidance was actually a form of corporate justice. If something was in the rulebook, I could use it to enforce best practices across teams.

That’s really the goal here. We’re not talking about creating bureaucratic red tape. It’s about developing a simple framework—policy standards, best practices, and guidelines that make it easier for teams to collaborate. Even something as straightforward as a PowerPoint deck outlining key rules can help.

Another critical factor is having a governance council. In many organizations, different teams operate in silos. By bringing together subject matter experts from across disciplines—SEO, development, content strategy, and leadership—we can create a governance structure that aligns business goals with execution.

Bill Hunt:
Do you think we need to soften the definition of governance, or would you extend it further?

Bill Scully:
I wouldn’t soften it—it’s exactly what organizations need. But there are different ways to implement it.

At one company I worked with, we created a steering committee that reported to an executive manager who controlled the web budget. The team consisted of the most vocal digital leaders, usually from the largest markets, and we kept it to about seven people.

We set the agenda and made sure our work addressed the organization’s biggest challenges. We also reached out to developers and other key stakeholders to get their input. It became a network of collaboration rather than a top-down enforcement model.

We started small—solving the most pressing issues first before scaling. You don’t want to “boil the ocean,” but you do want to tackle the biggest pain points in a way that gets buy-in from all teams.

Bill Hunt:
That’s a great approach. There’s so much to consider. At IBM, governance was documented in massive binders. Now, it’s likely in a company wiki.

What do you think are the most important aspects to focus on first? We’ve covered domains and URLs, but are there other areas that should have centralized rules or best practices?

Bill Hunt:

You want to make sure you’re working on the right things and that the right people know about your work. I would start with analytics. If you can put together a combined report—something high-level but also granular for those who need it—it makes a big difference.

Usually, competition is what motivates people to take action. If you include performance data in governance, with clear requirements for reporting, tools, and URL structure, it becomes a powerful tool. It reminds me of my time at IBM, where getting business units to follow governance was frustrating. Some teams didn’t want to do SEO at all.

So, I created a report showing each business unit’s performance. One unit had no green indicators at all, while another had just a little. That report made it to the CMO’s presentation, and he asked, “Where’s the green?” We called it the “Where’s the Green” report. That question alone motivated people—especially when senior VPs had to explain why their unit wasn’t following best practices.

You can use analytics as both a carrot and a stick. The carrot is showing progress in the right direction. The stick is when there’s no green at all.

Speaking of enforcement, let’s talk about governance. Market managers probably want less governance, while global teams usually push for more. I like how you structured your steering committee—assuming it had clear roles and market representation.

So, with that setup, everybody gets to collaborate and focus on outcomes. Beyond performance improvements, were there any other benefits you saw? You mentioned cost savings. What else do you think people could take away from this? Even something small, like hosting a Lunch and Learn session after a search conference or a podcast like this.

Bill Scully:

One of the most obvious benefits was ensuring that new websites were built on the current CMS. That alone saves an enormous amount of money. It integrates governance directly into the process of creating a page.

At a company I worked with, they rebranded five times in five years. When you have a centralized system, making changes is simple—it’s just a single template update. Compare that to having 40 or 50 different websites where every change has to be done manually. That’s a major cost saver.

Bill Hunt:

I want to circle back to cost savings. One of my biggest realizations about managing enterprise SEO happened at IBM. We optimized templates, centralized them, and standardized everything.

I asked the dev team to pull a report tracking how much time was spent on template-related changes before and after we introduced common templates. When we looked at the data, we realized we had saved over $300,000 in labor costs.

Think about it—without a common template, any rebranding effort meant updating 95 different templates manually. That’s a huge waste of resources. The same goes for agencies—why pay for 25 different agencies to build 25 different templates when you can have one standard? It’s not great for agencies, but for the company, it’s a massive win.

And beyond the direct cost savings, standardization frees up developers to work on projects that actually drive revenue.

Bill Scully:

Exactly. There’s the money you spend, and there’s the money you save. The fact that governance can free up your dev team to focus on growth initiatives is one of its biggest benefits.

And that’s another advantage of having a steering committee. If you’re discussing sprints and projects regularly, you gain insight into how different teams operate. If you’re the search lead, for example, you can advocate for SEO initiatives or international strategies during those conversations.

In a future episode, we should dive deeper into how steering committees can be leveraged to push SEO, localization, and international projects forward.

Bill Hunt:

Good point. We’ve talked about the concept of governance and how deep it can go. It can be as structured or as informal as you want. The key is putting measurable metrics in place—tracking actual performance improvements as well as cost savings.

Some people are overwhelmed by governance because they think it requires massive documentation and rigid policies. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The committee can be informal while still being effective.

Bill Scully:

Right. The best approach is to focus on solving other teams’ problems first. If you do that, you become a valuable resource, and people will naturally come to you for advice.

And governance isn’t just about web structure. It extends to content quality, localization, legal compliance, and brand consistency. Instead of dealing with these issues in 30 different markets separately, why not create a unified approach?

Bill Hunt:

Exactly. Many large companies already have tools in place for governance, whether it’s diagnostic tools for logo compliance or ensuring the right privacy policy links are used. The key is tapping into those resources.

That reminds me—press releases. It’s shocking how many companies send out PR announcements about a brand-new, groundbreaking product—but then fail to include a link to the product page.

Bill Scully:

Yes! The only link they include is usually to the homepage. That’s just old-school PR thinking.

Bill Hunt:

Right. Breaking those outdated habits can make a huge difference.

Governance can also extend to campaign management. For example, are all campaigns stored in a central place? Can you run a report for all campaigns in a given month? Are the tracking parameters consistent across Google Ads, QR codes, and vanity URLs?

If you create governance around campaign tracking, you can generate meaningful reports and measure ROI properly.

Bill Scully:

That’s a great point. Today, I was onboarding a company into Hreflang Builder, and we had this exact conversation. Their biggest challenge was URL uniformity across international sites.

They realized that tagging consistency was critical. They used Google Tag Manager to insert tracking tags on every page, allowing them to generate reports showing how individual solutions were performing globally.

Bill Hunt:

That’s a perfect example. If a company standardizes these processes, they gain clear insights into performance, cost savings, and opportunities for improvement.

Governance isn’t about restricting teams—it’s about creating efficiency so businesses can scale smarter.

Bill Hunt:

And I’m like, “Dude, that’s awesome. We could extract that code dynamically.” So I said, “Just show me where it’s at—help me find it.”

We went to the first page in Italy, pulled it up, and he goes, “It’s right here.” I see a puzzled look on his face. Then we checked the same page in Spain, and it was in Spanish. You could see he wanted to strangle someone because the instructions were to use the name in French. But in Spain, someone used the Spanish version. In Italy, someone used the Italian version.

That’s when he said, “Look, I wrote the guidelines for this, but there was no enforcement.”

Yeah, and that’s exactly the point. So much could be resolved by simply following clear guidelines. They probably never explicitly stated that it must be a specific word. Someone just used the local equivalent. A simple requirement to enforce consistency would have resulted in a completely different outcome. That’s the value of governance—especially across different areas of the web.

Here’s another example: You create a great campaign that generates a ton of backlinks. Then, the campaign ends, and no one thinks to redirect the page. Duh. That’s just basic process management for sunsetting products or campaigns.

Why not have a dedicated campaign page? Take Jameson Whiskey, for example. Every year, they create a Saint Patrick’s Day page. And every year, after the holiday, they delete it—starting from scratch the following year. All the backlinks they earned? Gone.

Why not keep that page live? Throw some tweets on there, add a countdown clock—just something to maintain its value. Keep it in the sitemap. That way, you keep all that link equity for 25 years of Saint Patrick’s Day promotions.

So, maybe companies should start by asking:

• How do we handle campaign pages?
• How do we manage sunsetting product and article pages?
• What guidelines do we need for this?

It’s funny when people say, “Legal won’t let us keep anything about the product up anymore.” But if people are still searching for it, they’re going to find information somewhere. If you don’t provide it, someone else will.

If you push back against legal, you can frame it differently. Say, “We’re not keeping the product page active—we’re just redirecting it.” You could have a simple message like, “This product is no longer available, but here’s the replacement.” Just get them to your site.

We need to do an entire episode on this—what to do with end-of-life pages and sunset content. Because people in the SEO and content communities have very different opinions. Some say, “Just leave it up forever.” Others argue, “If it’s no longer adding value, get rid of it.”

We should explore how to meet in the middle and create practical guidelines. Start small, get buy-in, and share the guidelines with the people who need to see them. And hey, if you’ve done this before, let us know in our Facebook group. Share your successes, challenges, and any resistance you encountered. The community can help with solutions.

Bill Scully:

I want to switch gears for a second. I probably spend about eight hours a week keeping up with search trends—whether it’s on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook groups, or major industry publications.

I don’t post much. I don’t engage in the arguments. But when people ask questions, I’ll give my take. More and more, though, I find myself fact-checking and verifying information.

We’ve talked about this before—the problem of taking things out of context, the lack of nuance in SEO discussions. I know this frustrates you. Why don’t you go on a rant about it?

Bill Hunt:

Oh, absolutely. This is one of the biggest issues in our industry. I don’t think we’re going to solve it, but we can talk about it.

There’s so much misinformation out there—often because people cherry-pick statements or take half-truths as gospel.

One of the worst offenders is when Google gives vague responses on Twitter (or X now). They answer questions in half-sentences, leaving out key details. Then, people run with it as if it’s an absolute rule.

For example, in our Hreflang errors course, we talk about this issue. Someone once asked Google whether they should use dashes or underscores in URLs. The guideline says to use dashes. But then, someone found a different Google document saying underscores could be used in certain cases.

So, they asked, “What’s the real answer?”

Google’s response? “Use dashes.”

But people still argued about it. They combine different sources, take things out of context, and create confusion.

One that really drove me insane was a headline that said, ‘You don’t have to put robots.txt in the root domain anymore.’

What?! That’s completely misleading. The actual statement was that if you’re using a CDN, then you can centralize your robots.txt file. But people misinterpreted it, thinking they could put robots.txt anywhere.

Sure enough, I had someone ask me, “We don’t want to put it in the root—it’s hard. Can we just put it in the UK folder?”

No! That’s not how it works. But this happens all the time—people take part B of an A/B scenario and ignore the full context.

Bill Scully:

Right. And this kind of misinformation causes real problems. Developers end up implementing things based on third-party blog posts instead of actual guidelines.

Bill Hunt:

Exactly! I’ve seen SEOs trust five-year-old blog posts over Google’s own documentation.

Sure, Google’s responses can be ambiguous at times, but if they give a clear answer, trust that over a random blog.

Take Hreflang, for instance. Some people claim the EU can be used as a country code. It’s not a country—it’s an economic and legal zone. But someone said, “It worked for me,” and now others believe it’s valid.

Did it work because of Hreflang? Or was there another factor? Maybe a site relaunch? Maybe better content? Context matters.

So, if something sounds off—fact-check it. Look at the actual specs. And be nice about it. No need to attack people, just provide accurate information.

Bill Scully:

Yeah, and if you want to discuss these topics, join our Facebook group. Share your experiences—successes, failures, pushback you’ve faced.

But most importantly, take the time to fact-check. It’s far more efficient to verify something upfront than to fix an SEO mistake later—especially when you have to convince developers to undo bad implementations.

Bill Hunt:

Absolutely. And the more facts, examples, and case studies you can provide, the better.

I think that’s a solid wrap-up. Any final words?

Bill Scully:

Nope. Just go out there and put some governance in place—whether it’s a steering committee, a set of guidelines, or even just a small starting point. Test it, see what resistance you get, and refine from there.

Bill Hunt:

Sounds good. I’ll also take another look at that committee document we created and maybe share it in the Facebook group so others can use it.

And as always, if there’s something you’d like us to cover in a future episode, let us know.

Bill Scully:

Great. Good seeing you.

Bill Hunt:

Same here.

Bill Scully:

Goodbye, everyone!