What does Google say about SEO?

What if your LCP is a text block loaded in JavaScript—how does Google actually measure it?

Martin Splitt Aug 21, 2025 ★★

Largest Contentful Paint isn't necessarily an image. A substantial text block loaded late via an API can also constitute the LCP and be impacted by inefficient loading.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance

Is native HTML lazy loading really enough to optimize your page crawl?

Martin Splitt Aug 21, 2025 ★★

Native HTML lazy loading only works for image and iframe elements. To lazy load other content (videos, widgets, comments, API content), custom JavaScript remains necessary.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance

Is lazy loading destroying your image indexation in Google?

Martin Splitt Aug 21, 2025 ★★

If your images aren't being indexed at scale, this may indicate a lazy loading implementation problem. Verify that images appear correctly in the Google Images index to confirm their detection.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Images & Videos Web Performance

Are CSS background images really invisible to Google's search algorithm?

Martin Splitt Aug 21, 2025 ★★

Decorative images loaded via CSS are generally not indexed by Google. Only images that are semantically important to the content (via HTML img tags) are taken into account for indexing.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Images & Videos

Why does Google really insist that infinite scroll and lazy loading are fundamentally different?

Martin Splitt Aug 21, 2025 ★

Infinite scroll and lazy loading are philosophically different: lazy loading loads non-critical resources of an already-defined page, while infinite scroll loads additional content to create an infinite page experience.

Domain Age & History Content Images & Videos Web Performance

Does AI-generated content really need human review to rank on Google?

Gary Illyes Aug 19, 2025 ★★★

Google, through Gary Illyes, has clarified that AI-generated content is accepted by the search engine as long as it meets strict criteria for quality, originality, and factual accuracy. Illyes emphasizes that the term "human-created" is not the most ...

Domain Age & History Content E-commerce AI & SEO

Do AI-Generated Images Hurt Your SEO Rankings?

Gary Illyes Aug 19, 2025 ★★★

Gary Illyes also clarified that using images generated by artificial intelligence does not result in any penalty or direct negative impact on natural search rankings. According to him, integrating this type of image on a page, as long as the rest of ...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos

Are Your AI Search Clicks Actually Converting Into Real Customers?

Google Aug 19, 2025 ★★★

Fabrice Canel, from the Bing team at Microsoft, emphasizes that search engines have limited visibility into what happens after a click from an AI search: they don't know whether the visitor converts. According to him, while improving the quality of r...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Pagination & Structure

Why Does Google Ignore Social Signals and Other External Metrics in Its Rankings?

Gary Illyes Aug 19, 2025 ★★★

Gary Illyes explains that the search engine excludes external signals such as shares or views on social media from its ranking criteria, as it has no control over their reliability or validity. According to him, Google must be able to master its own ...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Social Media

Can Core Web Vitals Sabotage Actually Hurt Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller Aug 19, 2025 ★★

The attack known as "Core Web Vitals poisoning" aims to artificially sabotage a website's web performance indicators (LCP, FID, CLS) in order to alter the scores measured by tools like webvitals-js. John Mueller believes that such sabotage has no dir...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance Search Console

Why Is Your Google Crawl Suddenly Dropping and How Can You Fix It?

John Mueller Aug 19, 2025 ★★★

John Mueller explained that a sudden drop in Googlebot crawl is rarely caused by 404 errors; according to him, it is much more often a sign of server-side issues (429, 500, 503 errors) or timeouts. He recommends checking server logs and Search Consol...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Search Console

Should You Really Be Worried About GEO, AIO, and AEO for Your SEO?

John Mueller Aug 19, 2025 ★★★

John Mueller from Google warns against the proliferation of new AI-related SEO acronyms such as GEO, AIO, or AEO, emphasizing that the more insistent and urgent their promotion, the more likely it is to conceal spam or scam practices. He considers th...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Penalties & Spam Web Performance International SEO

Should You Adapt Your SEO Strategy to Google's MUVERA Algorithm?

Gary Illyes Aug 12, 2025 ★★★

Google has not confirmed using MUVERA (Multi-Vector Retrieval via Fixed Dimensional Encodings), despite certain rumors circulating in the SEO community. Gary Illyes clarified on LinkedIn that he never confirmed the use of MUVERA in search: he simply ...

Algorithms Domain Age & History Content E-commerce AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

Should You Really Ditch Keyword-Based Domain Names for Your SEO?

John Mueller Aug 12, 2025 ★★★

Google advises small businesses against opting for domain names composed solely of generic keywords. John Mueller emphasizes that this choice can harm online visibility, as it makes it difficult to stand out in search results where numerous competito...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Domain Name Local Search

Why should photographers invest in their own website instead of relying solely on Instagram?

Martin Splitt Aug 07, 2025 ★★★

Photographers should maintain both a website and an active presence on social media. A website allows you to fully control the presentation and context of your photos, unlike social networks where your content gets mixed with other posts. This is ess...

Content AI & SEO Images & Videos International SEO

Is it really a mistake to use generic keywords as your business name for SEO?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★★

Small businesses and photographers often make the mistake of using a generic term as their brand name. It is more effective to use your own name as a brand because people can then easily find you by searching for your name, as opposed to generic term...

AI & SEO Images & Videos

Is Google Search Console really essential for your photography website?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★

It is important to set up Google Search Console for a photography website. This allows you to see what people are actually searching for and how your site performs, even though it won't directly propel your site to the top ranking positions.

Images & Videos Search Console

Why does Google index photo galleries with descriptive text better than isolated images?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★★

For photo gallery pages, adding text with titles mentioning specific locations, moments, or types of photos helps users find these galleries. Google is more likely to index and display a well-described gallery page than an isolated photo.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Images & Videos Local Search

Does publishing your images first guarantee canonicalization on Google?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★

Publishing an image first on your website and then waiting for indexation before publishing it on social media does not guarantee that your site will be considered the canonical version. Publication order is not the determining factor for canonicaliz...

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Images & Videos

Should you really stop watermarking your images for SEO?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★★

Google does not penalize and has no negative preference toward images containing a watermark or watermark overlay. This is an acceptable practice with no negative SEO impact.

Domain Age & History Images & Videos Pagination & Structure