What does Google say about SEO?

Is your franchise network losing visibility because of duplicate content across multiple domains?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★★

For franchise websites with identical content except for address and phone number, Google may consider them as duplicates. Recommended solutions: consolidate all locations under a single strong domain, or make the content significantly unique for eac...

Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name

CCTLD, subdomain or subdirectory: which structure for international geotargeting?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★★

For international geotargeting, CCTLDs are very clear, but subdomains and subdirectories also work effectively. Avoid URL parameters for geographical targeting as Google cannot apply geotargeting to them.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name International SEO

Does the 503 status code really protect your pages from deindexing during an outage?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★★

During a technical outage, serving a 503 code for one or two days protects indexation. Google considers this a temporary problem and does not remove pages. A 404 or error page would result in their removal from the index.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Will accidental dofollow links in your PR coverage actually hurt your rankings?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★

If the majority of PR article links correctly use nofollow, a few accidental dofollow links aren't a problem. Google won't penalize you if the essentials are correct and algorithms can identify and manage inappropriate links.

Algorithms Discover & News AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Pagination & Structure Local Search

Why are your structured data disappearing on your localized pages?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★

Google does not automatically transfer structured data from one page version to another localized version. Each page must have its own structured data if you want specific features in search results.

Domain Age & History Structured Data AI & SEO Pagination & Structure Local Search

Will Google ever display Core Web Vitals badges directly in search results?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★

Although tested over a year ago, a Page Experience or Core Web Vitals badge in search results has not been launched and likely never will be, even though Google continues to work on these metrics.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Web Performance

Why Does Google Cause Position Fluctuations for Two Months After URL Restructuring?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★★

Any significant change in URL structure causes fluctuations in search results while Google recrawls and understands the new structure. These fluctuations can last one to two months before stabilization occurs.

Crawl & Indexing Domain Name Pagination & Structure

Does internal linking really outperform URL structure for SEO?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★★

Internal linking is more important than URL structure for understanding a site's architecture. A clear link structure helps Google identify the most important pages according to the website owner.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Domain Name Pagination & Structure

Should you really spend time calculating internal PageRank to optimize your website?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★

Calculating internal PageRank can be technically interesting but isn't super critical from a practical standpoint. Google uses PageRank but also many other factors, so this calculation doesn't exactly reflect how Google actually works.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks

Is the 'Crawled, Currently Not Indexed' status really just a sign of poor website quality?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★★

When a page is crawled but not indexed, it generally indicates that Google is not convinced of the site's quality. Significantly improving the overall quality of the entire site is the main recommendation.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Can invalid structured data penalize your SEO performance?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★★

Invalid structured data on a page does not lead to its removal from the index. It affects neither crawling, nor indexing, nor ranking. Google simply reports the error if you wish to use these structured data.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Structured Data AI & SEO Pagination & Structure

Crawled vs Discovered: Are these two non-indexed statuses really the same thing?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★

The statuses 'Crawled, not indexed' and 'Discovered, not indexed' are essentially equivalent. In both cases, Google knows the URL but has decided not to index it.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name

Can you really use the address change tool to merge or split websites?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★★

The address change tool in Search Console only works for one-to-one migrations from one domain to another. It should not be used to merge or split sites, as this requires URL-by-URL handling.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Redirects Search Console

Do structured data really improve rankings, or just how results are displayed?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★★

Structured data is primarily useful if it produces a visible effect in search results. They do not change a page's ranking. If they are not displayed, adding them is not critical.

Domain Age & History Structured Data Pagination & Structure

Can Google Really Identify the Main Language of a Multilingual Page Without Hurting Your SEO?

John Mueller Jan 21, 2022 ★★

Google attempts to identify the main language of a page even if it contains terms in multiple languages. If no main language can be determined, multiple languages can be assigned without losing weight in the main language.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO International SEO

Does crawl frequency really affect your SEO rankings?

Gary Illyes Jan 20, 2022 ★★★

The fact that a page is crawled more often does not improve its ranking in search results. This is a common misconception: increasing the crawl frequency of a page that doesn't change provides no SEO benefit whatsoever.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Why Does Google Actually Ignore the lastmod Tag in Your Sitemaps?

Gary Illyes Jan 20, 2022 ★★★

Google typically doesn't use the lastmod tag in sitemaps because it's unreliable: webmasters often don't understand what constitutes a real modification or manipulate this date thinking they can force faster recrawling, which doesn't actually work.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Search Console

Is IndexNow Really Worth Implementing for Google Indexation, or Is It Just Another Overhyped Protocol?

Gary Illyes Jan 20, 2022 ★★

Google is conducting experiments with the IndexNow API to optimize crawling, but probably not in the form expected by the market. Google's system will prevent repetitive abusive submissions of the same URL.

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

Should you really ping your sitemap every time you publish new content?

Gary Illyes Jan 20, 2022 ★★

Pinging Google's sitemap endpoint with every publication (for example every second for a news site) is pointless. A ping every 10 seconds or even once per minute is more than sufficient.

Crawl & Indexing Mobile SEO Search Console

Is Google really experiencing more downtime than before?

Gary Illyes Jan 20, 2022 ★★

The impression of an increase in Google outages stems from the fact that Google now communicates more about incidents, including those affecting only a small portion of the web or a specific geographic region.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO