What does Google say about SEO?

Why do Search Console and Analytics data never really match up?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★

Search Console measures what is shown in search results, while Analytics uses JavaScript to track what happens on your site. These tracking methods are different and have different deduplication methods, so they will never align completely.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Search Console

Is Google Search Console really collecting all the data from your massive e-commerce site?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★

On a very large e-commerce site, there are limits in Search Console on the amount of data collected per day. If you drill down to the URL or individual query level, you could see significant differences.

E-commerce AI & SEO Domain Name Search Console

Should you really prefer noindex over disallow to control indexation in Google?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

If these are pages you don't want indexed, using noindex would be better than disallow in robots.txt. Noindex is a meta robots tag on the page, and you must allow crawling for it to work.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Can out-of-stock product pages really trigger soft 404 errors in Google's eyes?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★

Soft 404s can be products that are out of stock or no longer available. This can also be an empty page or an error in the DOM if something with JavaScript loads an error message like 'no information found'.

Domain Age & History E-commerce JavaScript & Technical SEO

Do Google's testing tools really crawl in real-time or do they rely on cached data?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

The mobile-friendly test and URL inspection tool do not use any cached data to display information. They really retrieve this information live directly from your server.

AI & SEO Mobile SEO Domain Name Web Performance Local Search Search Console

Does Google really use different ranking algorithms depending on your industry?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

Google has nothing specific regarding different algorithms for different niches. A bike shop doesn't have completely different algorithms from a shoe shop. They're essentially both e-commerce stores.

Algorithms E-commerce

Why does Google deprioritize crawling low-effort aggregator sites?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

Google's algorithms are not invested in crawling and indexing all content from low-effort aggregator sites that merely take content feeds and publish them, because it's the same content already seen elsewhere.

Algorithms Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Does Google really count clicks on rich results the same way as organic clicks?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

For rich results, we count a click only if there's actually a link to your site and someone clicked on it. It's not the case that we'd say there's a rich result and therefore count a click even if no one clicked on it.

Structured Data Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Does the order of links in your HTML code really affect Google's crawl priority?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★

If we look at an HTML page, the order of the links is not related to the order of our overall crawl of these pages on the site. As long as these links are on the HTML page and we can follow them, we can retrieve them.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Links & Backlinks

Should you really avoid URLs with parameters for SEO?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★

There's a general assumption that URLs with parameters are bad for a site, and that's simply not the case. It's not something I would consider critical; it's more about polishing the site to make it a bit better.

AI & SEO Domain Name

Why does robots.txt prevent Google from crawling your pages but still allow them to be indexed?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

With robots.txt, you prevent crawling of these URLs but not their indexation. If you run a site: search for these specific URLs, you'll very likely still find them in the index, even without the content being indexed.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name

Are out-of-stock products hurting your e-commerce site's overall search rankings?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★

When something is out of stock, we'll treat it more like a soft 404 error and remove that URL from search results. However, if only a single product reference is out of stock, the ranking of the rest of your site is not affected.

E-commerce Domain Name

Does partial duplicate content really hurt your search rankings?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★

If part of a page is considered duplicate content, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's perfectly acceptable to have shared elements on a page discussing the same topic, like identical code snippets.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Pagination & Structure

Does Google really use just one signal to choose which URL to canonicalize among your duplicate content?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

Regarding canonicalization, several factors play a role: the rel canonical tag, internal and external links, what is listed in the sitemap, redirects, and sometimes which URL appears cleaner or clearer.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Domain Name Redirects Search Console

Do brand mentions without backlinks actually help your SEO rankings?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

If there's no link to your pages, then it's not really a link. It's not something we would see as a half-value link or anything like that. We don't treat these mentions as links.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Why does a link without an indexed URL essentially do nothing for your SEO?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

For a link to exist in our systems, we always need a source and a destination, and both sides must be canonical URLs that are indexed. If we don't have any source in our systems, the link disappears because we don't know what to do with it.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Domain Name

Why doesn't Google Search Console's average position reflect a theoretical ranking but actual display results instead?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

The average position in Search Console is based on what was actually shown to users, not on a theoretical ranking. It's really what we displayed to users and how it was ranked at that moment.

AI & SEO Search Console

Does Google really ignore your canonical tags when it decides pages are too similar?

John Mueller Mar 28, 2022 ★★★

If we think these pages are essentially the same, we try to do you a favor by choosing just one URL to index. The best way to avoid this is to make sure these pages are significantly unique.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Domain Name

Is text content really still the cornerstone of Google rankings?

Gary Illyes Mar 24, 2022 ★★★

Search engines operate primarily based on textual content. They analyze the tokens and keywords present in the content to rank pages. The 'content is king' principle exists because content is the fundamental element on which search engines operate.

Domain Age & History Content

Should you really prioritize qualified traffic over raw visitor volume?

Lizzi Sassman Mar 24, 2022 ★★★

It's better to have qualified traffic than maximum volume. Visitors who genuinely match your target audience are far more likely to convert. Optimizing to attract as much traffic as possible can backfire if those visitors aren't your right audience.

E-commerce