What does Google say about SEO?

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

Can social media really coexist with your website in Google Images results?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★

Web pages from a website and those from social networks containing the same image are very different in their context, so they can coexist in web search results. In image search, Google might recognize duplicates and group them, but this doesn't prev...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos

Should you really create a dedicated page for every image on your website?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★★

If you want your images to be individually discoverable, create unique landing pages for each image with unique descriptive text. This helps Google understand that it's the main image of the page with supplementary information, rather than a gallery ...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos

Are URL fragments (#) killing your image visibility in Google search results?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★★

Using URL fragments (#) to display individual images is problematic because it doesn't create distinct, indexable landing pages. It's better to have unique URLs for each image if you want them to be discoverable individually.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Images & Videos Domain Name Local Search

Are responsive images really enough to boost your Google rankings?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★

Using responsive images (different versions for different devices) is a good practice, but it won't get your site to rank in the top position. These are best practices to follow, but you need to do more to rank well on generic terms.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Images & Videos Mobile SEO PDF & Files

JPEG, WebP, AVIF: Which image format should you choose for SEO in 2025?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★

Google supports multiple image formats including JPEG, AVIF, WEBP and BMP. JPEGs work everywhere and are acceptable, but other modern formats are also supported. The complete documentation lists all supported formats.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Images & Videos Pagination & Structure PDF & Files

Why aren't your videos showing up in Google's video search results?

John Mueller Aug 07, 2025 ★★★

For a video to appear in video search results, it must be the primary element on the page. When users click on a video thumbnail, they expect to see a video, not a large photo gallery with a random video attached.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Images & Videos

Do custom URLs on third-party platforms really hurt your SEO rankings?

John Mueller Aug 06, 2025 ★★★

A custom URL created on a third-party communication platform (such as a community forum) has no negative impact on the main website's search engine optimization. This configuration is perfectly acceptable to Google.

AI & SEO Domain Name Pagination & Structure

Subdomain vs separate domain: Does Google really make a difference for your SEO?

John Mueller Aug 06, 2025 ★★★

Google attempts to index both the main site and the support site, whether they're on different subdomains (support.example.com vs www.example.com) or on completely different domains. Both versions are treated independently.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Mobile SEO Domain Name