What does Google say about SEO?

Does a new section inherit its crawl budget from your main site's quality?

Martin Splitt Aug 25, 2022 ★★★

When you launch a new section (like /blog), Google infers initial crawl signals from the main site. If the main site has strong quality signals (backlinks, popularity), the new section will benefit from more favorable crawl budget allocation from the...

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

What does your "discovered but not crawled" URL status really reveal about your site?

Gary Illyes Aug 25, 2022 ★★★

If a large proportion of URLs appears as "discovered but not crawled" in Search Console, this indicates either a content quality issue (Google doesn't think users are searching for this content), or a technical issue (insufficient server capacity). I...

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name Search Console

Are 404s and robots.txt Really Wasting Your Crawl Budget?

Gary Illyes Aug 25, 2022 ★★★

HTTP status codes 404 and 410, as well as URLs blocked by robots.txt, do not consume crawl budget because Google only receives the status code without content. Conversely, soft 404s (pages that return 200 but lack content) waste crawl budget.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name

Should you block your decorative JavaScript files to optimize your crawl budget?

Gary Illyes Aug 25, 2022 ★★

If JavaScript files are purely decorative and add neither content nor value to the page rendering, they can be blocked via robots.txt or X-Robots-Tag. Rendering will fail for these resources but this won't affect the page content, allowing you to opt...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO PDF & Files

Can structured data really boost your qualified SEO traffic?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★★

When you tell Google what's on your webpage in a structured way, it allows Google to interpret your content more precisely and create visual treatments like product review stars or search filters. This can bring more qualified traffic because your si...

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

What's the point of perfect structured data if Google can't actually crawl your pages?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★★

The most important thing as a website owner is to first make sure Google can crawl your content. If Google cannot crawl your content, then it cannot find the structured data on your page.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Why does Google rely on Schema.org as its primary language for understanding your content?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★★

Google primarily uses Schema.org to describe the content of your page. Schema.org is a public collaboration between several different organizations to create a shared vocabulary describing data.

Domain Age & History Content Structured Data AI & SEO

Should you really multiply structured data on your pages to please Google?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★★

Google never penalizes you for having more precise structured data on your pages. However, it is more effective to focus on the types that Google actively uses, documented in Google's Search Gallery.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO PDF & Files

Why does Google recommend JSON-LD over Microdata or RDFa for structured data implementation?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★★

Google's recommended approach is to use JSON-LD because it's the simplest syntax. JSON-LD is a separate block of JSON syntax placed on the web page within a script tag alongside the visible content.

Domain Age & History Content Structured Data Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO

Should you really rely on CMS plugins to handle your structured data automatically?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★

If you use a content management system like WordPress or Squarespace, the best approach is to find a plugin that automatically exposes structured data for content already present on your web pages.

Domain Age & History Content JavaScript & Technical SEO

Is the Rich Results Test really enough to validate your structured data?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★★

The recommended approach is to add structured data manually across multiple pages and test it with the Rich Results Test in Search Console to see if Google correctly interprets the structured data. The tool lists the structured data elements that Goo...

Domain Age & History Structured Data Featured Snippets & SERP Search Console

Does Google Search Console really alert you to every structured data problem?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★★

Once structured data is implemented on your site, you will begin to receive Search Console reports on the validity of this structured data for use in Google features over time. Google will also notify you if there are any issues with the markup.

Domain Age & History Search Console

Can structured data errors actually hurt your search rankings?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★★

Structured data problems affect only how that data is used in Google features. Having problems will not negatively affect other aspects of your page in the search index, and the data may still be valid for other search engines.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing

Can off-topic structured data really penalize your website?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★★

Using structured data that has nothing to do with the page's content is considered abuse and can result in penalties. You need to focus on describing the primary meaning of the page.

Domain Age & History Content

Why are unique identifiers crucial for disambiguation in Google's algorithm?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★

Using unique identifiers helps Google disambiguate the names of things in your data so they appear for the right queries. For example, providing the complete address of an event rather than just the city, or using an ISBN to describe a book.

AI & SEO

Can conflicting structured data really kill your rich snippets?

Ryan Levering Aug 23, 2022 ★★★

A very common problem is that multiple CMS plugins or separate JSON-LD blocks generate the same data with slightly different information. This can appear as multiple different things on the page, which can potentially exclude the page from having an ...

Domain Age & History Structured Data Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO

Is HTTPS Really Mandatory to Rank Well on Google in 2024?

John Mueller Aug 22, 2022 ★★★

John Mueller reminded on Twitter that having a website in HTTPS is absolutely not a requirement to be (well) ranked in Google's search results. Many HTTP sites are well indexed and rank in the top results.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security AI & SEO Social Media

Why Does Google Refuse to Index Some SEO Content Even When It's Optimized?

John Mueller Aug 22, 2022 ★★★

John Mueller explained on Twitter that "a lot of SEOs and websites produce very low-quality content that isn't worth indexing (...) Just because it exists doesn't mean it's useful to users."

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Social Media

Is your JavaScript being downloaded for nothing?

Google Aug 19, 2022 ★★

PageSpeed Insights can identify JavaScript code that is downloaded by the browser but never executed, representing wasted resources that unnecessarily slow down your site.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance

Should you really rely on PageSpeed Insights to optimize your JavaScript performance?

Google Aug 19, 2022 ★★

Google recommends website owners use PageSpeed Insights by entering a page URL to analyze and resolve JavaScript-related performance issues.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Web Performance Search Console