What does Google say about SEO?

Can Ads Really Appear in Multiple Spots Within Google's AI Overviews?

Google Jun 03, 2025 ★★★

Google has clarified that ads cannot appear simultaneously in multiple placements within AI Overviews. According to Ginny Marvin from Google's Ads Liaison, an ad can display either above/below or inside AI Overviews, but never in both locations at th...

AI & SEO Local Search

Should You Stop Using Google's Indexing API to Speed Up Your Pages' Ranking?

John Mueller Jun 03, 2025 ★★★

On Bluesky, John Mueller once again explained that the Indexing API should only be used for two types of content: job postings and live streams. John Mueller emphasized that many SEOs, often spammers, are misusing this API for other unsupported purpo...

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

How Can You Protect Your Site from AI Agent Saturation?

Gary Illyes Jun 03, 2025 ★★★

Gary Illyes warns about the massive influx of AI-powered bots, which threatens to saturate the web. According to him, it's not the crawling that consumes the most resources, but the processing and storage of data. He recommends that site owners stren...

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO PDF & Files

Has Googlebot Really Evolved Technically Without Changing Its Core Crawling Principles?

Gary Illyes Jun 03, 2025 ★★★

Gary Illyes discussed the evolution of Googlebot in the Search Off the Record podcast. While the basic principles of crawling have changed little, notable technical improvements have taken place, such as the transition to HTTP/2 protocols (and soon H...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security AI & SEO Pagination & Structure

Has Google really been respecting robots.txt since day one?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★★

Since Google's very beginning, robots.txt has been supported. Regardless of the crawling technology used, Google has always allowed site owners to opt-out of crawling via the robots exclusion protocol.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Why do all Google crawlers rely on the same unified crawl infrastructure?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★★

Google uses a unified crawl infrastructure for all its products. All Google crawlers share the same codebase and apply identical policies regarding robots.txt, server load management, and bandwidth usage.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing E-commerce Pagination & Structure Social Media

Does Google really slow down its crawl to protect your servers?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★★

Google has a system that monitors server health and automatically slows down the crawl if the server becomes overloaded. The goal is to adjust the crawl rate so as not to harm sites.

Crawl & Indexing

Why has Google multiplied its crawlers since the arrival of Mediapartners-Google?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★

In 2006, Google AdSense introduced its own distinct user agent separate from Googlebot. From this period onwards, Google began to have increasingly more separate crawlers with their own identifiers.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Does Google really ignore robots.txt when users take action?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★

When an action is initiated directly by a user (such as manually submitting a URL for inspection), it may be appropriate to ignore robots.txt because it's not truly a robot but a specific user action.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name Search Console

Does Google's Live Test Tool Actually Crawl Your Site in Real Time?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★

The Live Test tool in Search Console uses a high-priority real crawler, while property verification of the site is user-triggered and works almost instantly without any crawl delay.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Search Console

Does Googlebot really support HTTP/3 for crawling your website?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★

Googlebot currently supports HTTP/2 for more efficient crawling using streamed connections. HTTP/3 is not yet supported but could be in the future.

Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security AI & SEO

Is Google Really Crawling Less of the Web, and Should You Worry About It?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★

Last year, Google actively worked to reduce its footprint on the internet by optimizing its crawling requests to save resources.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Does Google's crawling really consume the most server resources?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★★

Contrary to popular belief, it's not crawling that consumes the most resources at Google, but indexation and processing of the data retrieved that are truly resource-intensive.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Should you really worry about crawl budget before hitting 1 million pages?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★★

For an individual website, a threshold of around 1 million pages is the point where site owners should start concerning themselves with crawl budget. Below that, it's generally not a problem.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Why does Googlebot's server load impact vary so dramatically based on your technical architecture?

Gary Illyes May 29, 2025 ★★

The load that crawling places on a server depends heavily on how the site is built. Expensive operations such as complex database queries generate significantly more load than a simple HTML site.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing

Why Is Google Ignoring Your JavaScript-Generated Meta Tags?

John Mueller May 27, 2025 ★★★

On Reddit, John Mueller responded to a user wondering why Google wasn't using meta tags dynamically implemented with JavaScript. The Google representative suggested that the meta description of the page used as an example is the same across all pages...

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

Is Technical SEO Still Essential in the Age of Artificial Intelligence?

John Mueller May 27, 2025 ★★

After distinguishing between "programmatic SEO" and "technical SEO," John Mueller explained that technical SEO (namely making sites crawlable, indexable, and understandable) will continue to make sense in the future: "there is no artificial intellige...

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Why Doesn't Google Search Console Show Any Traffic for Certain Versions of Your Domain?

John Mueller May 27, 2025 ★★★

On Reddit, John Mueller explained to a user that they wouldn't be able to see a drop in traffic on Google Search Console for certain versions of their domain (without "http", without "www") since these versions are not indexed (and are redirected). I...

Content Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Domain Name PDF & Files Search Console

Why Does Using Multiple URLs for the Same Image Hurt Your SEO?

Google May 20, 2025 ★★

Google recently clarified its SEO recommendations for images: it is advised against using multiple different URLs or file names for the same image on a website, even if it is embedded on multiple pages. The goal is to facilitate the crawling of large...

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

Do Hreflang Tags Really Guarantee Indexing of All Your International Pages?

John Mueller May 20, 2025 ★★★

On Bluesky, John Mueller reminded us that using hreflang tags guarantees neither the indexing nor the ranking of pages in Google search. He clarifies that some hreflang variants may not be indexed, especially when they are very similar (such as fr-FR...

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