What does Google say about SEO?

Is it true that Google is massively ignoring product aggregation sites?

John Mueller Oct 06, 2026 ★★★

A large product aggregator website is facing an indexing anomaly. Googlebot has crawled the site 1.17 million times in just a few weeks. Only 4 pages are indexed out of a total of 180,000, and even the homepage itself is not indexed. Screenshots from...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing E-commerce AI & SEO Domain Name Search Console

Is a XML sitemap really necessary for small websites?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2026 ★★★

Google recommends keeping a sitemap file activated, even for small sites, as most content management systems generate it automatically. There is no negative impact, even if the site remains small.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO PDF & Files Search Console

Why does Google often overlook the lastmod field in your sitemaps?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2026 ★★★

The lastmod field in sitemaps is used to indicate the last significant modification date of a page. However, many sites get the dates wrong, which can lead Google to disregard them.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Mobile SEO Search Console

Are XML News Sitemaps Really Essential for News Websites?

Martin Splitt Oct 01, 2026 ★★★

News websites benefit from specific sitemaps that list the last 1,000 modified pages. This facilitates the tracking of significant updates by Google's systems.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Discover & News AI & SEO Search Console

Why does Google fail to crawl your sitemaps and how can you fix it?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2026 ★★★

The 'Couldn't Fetch' errors can be due to the host load, where Google did not have time to extract the sitemap file, or to an insufficient crawl request, often based on the perceived quality of the site.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO PDF & Files Search Console

Is it really necessary to stick to 50,000 URLs per sitemap?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2026 ★★★

Each sitemap file can contain up to 50,000 URLs and has a size limit of around megabytes. Files can be compressed, but the size limit concerns the uncompressed version.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name PDF & Files Search Console

HTML or XML Sitemap: Which Should You Prioritize for Google Crawling?

Martin Splitt Oct 01, 2026 ★★★

An HTML sitemap is designed for users to navigate the site and is not a replacement for an XML sitemap, which is structured specifically for search engines.

Crawl & Indexing JavaScript & Technical SEO PDF & Files Search Console

Do sitemaps really influence Google's choice of the canonical URL?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2026 ★★★

Google uses sitemaps to help choose the canonical version of a URL. If a URL is listed in a sitemap, it increases the chances that Google will select it as the canonical version.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name PDF & Files Search Console

Do modern CMS really handle sitemaps automatically?

Martin Splitt Oct 01, 2026 ★★

Most content management systems and static hosting services generate sitemap files by default, requiring little manual intervention for activation.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing PDF & Files Search Console

Should you hide your sitemaps in robots.txt instead of submitting them publicly?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2026 ★★

Sitemap files can be submitted via Search Console or indicated in the robots.txt file. Google can discover sitemaps through these methods, which is useful for sites that do not want their sitemap to be publicly known.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO PDF & Files Search Console

Can a site's perceived quality really limit its crawling by Google?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2026 ★★★

A site's perceived quality influences the frequency and extent of Google's crawling and indexing. A perception of low quality can limit the amount of crawled content.

Content Crawl & Indexing

Why does Google deindex your pages due to errors served with HTTP 200?

John Mueller Sep 29, 2026 ★★

A business and supplier site has seen its pages deindexed by Google. The search engine has chosen a third-party online betting site as the canonical URL, with no apparent content relation. Live testing on Google Search Console (GSC) validates the pag...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Domain Name Search Console

Should we abandon traditional position tracking in SEO?

John Mueller Sep 16, 2026 ★★★

John Mueller responded on Reddit to questions about how impressions are counted for generative AI results in Search Console. Google already has a help document on the subject, but John Mueller admits that it's quite a dense document. His main message...

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Is it true that programmatic SEO is incompatible with quality content?

John Mueller Sep 08, 2026 ★★★

In a response published on Bluesky, John Mueller warns against programmatic SEO. According to him, this practice can lead the site to be perceived as spam or nearly so, or of low quality. To recall, programmatic SEO involves automatically generating ...

Algorithms Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Penalties & Spam International SEO

Should you really clean up outdated links on your site?

John Mueller Sep 01, 2026 ★★★

On Reddit, John Mueller responded to a question about old outgoing links pointing to a site that has changed ownership and now hosts dubious content. His answer: Google does not penalize this type of links ("the web is full of turbulence"), although ...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Does Google really launch its SEO updates before officially announcing them?

John Mueller Aug 25, 2026 ★★

John Mueller reiterated a position that has been stated numerous times in the past: Google never announces an update late. The announcement comes almost simultaneously with the actual deployment. Why do some people doubt this? Because volatility ofte...

Algorithms Domain Age & History Content Discover & News AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Penalties & Spam

Why does Google show hreflang URLs marked as ‘not indexed’ in search results?

Gary Illyes Aug 18, 2026 ★★★

Gary Illyes (Google) clarified how alternative hreflang URLs work during canonicalization, following a question posed on LinkedIn by Faiez Javaid. The initial question was: If Google selects a single /lang/ URL as canonical and shows the others as "n...

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Does Googlebot send other HTTP requests besides GET and POST on your site?

Gary Illyes Aug 11, 2026 ★★★

Gary Illyes confirmed on LinkedIn that Google's crawlers do not only send HTTP GET and POST requests, but also HEAD, OPTIONS, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE requests, in response to several questions received on this issue in recent weeks. Also read, Google ...

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

What should you do when your SEO metadata contradicts itself?

John Mueller Aug 04, 2026 ★★★

On Bluesky, John Mueller responded to a user who reported that a product page displayed 'out of stock' while the server HTML and structured data indicated 'available'. John Mueller advises against having contradictory metadata because it 'complicates...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing E-commerce AI & SEO Images & Videos Local Search Search Console

Are Internal Search Results Draining Your Crawl Budget?

John Mueller Jul 30, 2026 ★★★

Internal search results pages can lead Googlebot to crawl an infinite number of URLs, wasting the site's crawl budget and potentially overloading your server.

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