What does Google say about SEO?

Does noindex really help improve your site's perceived quality?

John Mueller Jun 19, 2021 ★★★

Using noindex on low-quality pages prevents Google from considering them in the overall site quality assessment. It's a good practice for affiliate sites with variable content not to index pages below a certain quality threshold.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

What happens when Core Web Vitals can't be used for certain sites?

John Mueller Jun 19, 2021 ★★

If Google does not have enough real user data for a site, Core Web Vitals cannot be used as a ranking factor. However, many sites lack data and this does not prevent their normal ranking.

Web Performance

Is it possible that even Google’s own sites struggle with JavaScript issues?

John Mueller Jun 17, 2021 ★★★

The official Google I/O site was not properly indexable by Google because most of the content was not rendered due to JavaScript issues. This indicates that even Google sites can encounter SEO problems related to JavaScript.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO

Why do so many landing pages contain incorrect links?

Martin Splitt Jun 17, 2021 ★★

According to data from the Web Almanac 2019-2020, 12% of the analyzed landing pages contained links that were not appropriate HTML links, indicating that even basic issues remain widespread.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Is it true that PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse aren’t essential for user experience?

Martin Splitt Jun 17, 2021 ★★★

Google confirms that PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse are not used to measure or evaluate pages as part of the Page Experience update. These tools are helpful but are not used in ranking.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Web Performance

How does Google's 'centerpiece' annotation impact your SEO?

Gary Illyes Jun 17, 2021 ★★★

Google uses an annotation called 'centerpiece' to identify and label the central part of the page that the user is actually reading or interacting with, also known as the main content or primary content.

Domain Age & History Content

Can Google really ignore its own sites when it comes to SEO?

Gary Illyes Jun 17, 2021 ★★

Google's Search Relations team cannot go in and fix the SEO of other internal Google sites. They must follow the same public processes and are directed to public forums and office hours.

Why do synonyms have a lesser impact on SEO rankings?

Gary Illyes Jun 17, 2021 ★★★

When a query is expanded with synonyms, the original search terms hold the most weight during ranking. Automatically added synonyms have a lower weight because they are not exactly what the user searched for.

Why does Google prioritize 'purchase' over 'sell' in its search results?

Gary Illyes Jun 17, 2021 ★★

Google views 'buy' and 'sell' as synonyms from an information retrieval perspective, but 'sell' receives much lower weight compared to 'purchase', for example, to avoid confusion and maintain relevance.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO

How Does Google Leverage Posting Lists for Search Retrieval?

Gary Illyes Jun 17, 2021 ★★

Google does not examine the entirety of the index during a search. The system utilizes posting lists, which are essentially maps associating terms with documents that contain those words, allowing for rapid retrieval.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO PDF & Files

How does Google choose the top 1000 results?

Gary Illyes Jun 17, 2021 ★★

After the initial retrieval of all relevant documents, the ranking system creates a sorted list and performs a cut to about 1000 documents which are then sent to the serving system for further ranking.

AI & SEO PDF & Files

Is it true that focusing on users, not keywords, is the key to SEO success?

Gary Illyes Jun 17, 2021 ★★★

Google recommends creating pages with relevant content for what the user can do on the page, rather than overloading the page with terms solely for SEO. User intent should guide the content.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO

How do SEO best practices simplify the complexities of information retrieval?

Gary Illyes Jun 17, 2021 ★★★

The best SEO practices communicated by Google are essentially an abstraction and translation of the principles of information retrieval made accessible to a broader audience. They convey the same ideas in different ways.

International SEO

Why does using real names on your 'About Me' pages matter for SEO?

John Mueller Jun 17, 2021 ★★

Instead of titling a page 'About Me', it’s better to use the person’s real name like 'About John Mueller' to enhance searchability and retrieval, since 'me' has no exploitable synonym in search.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Pagination & Structure

Are There Really No Secret SEO Tricks that Google Ignores?

Gary Illyes Jun 17, 2021 ★★★

Google asserts that there aren't really any tricks or secret hacks in how search works. The aim is to assist search users by explaining how Search operates and how to create beneficial and useful sites for users.

AI & SEO

Should You Really Try to Rank SEO Factors by Order of Importance?

John Mueller Jun 14, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller explained on Twitter that it was a bad idea to compare the different relevance criteria of the search engine's algorithm and try to rank them by order of importance. Everything depends on the context and many very diverse points. Google ...

Algorithms Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

How Does Google Actually Choose Which Link to Count When Multiple Links Point to the Same Page?

John Mueller Jun 14, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller explained during a hangout that when multiple links on a page point to the same destination, Google doesn't necessarily choose the first one in the source code or the one with the longest anchor text: "We essentially try to understand th...

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

Does Google Really Treat Nofollow, UGC, and Sponsored Attributes Differently?

John Mueller Jun 14, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller explained during a hangout that the different variants of nofollow ("nofollow", "ugc", "sponsored"), introduced in September 2019, were indeed intended to indicate that the link should not be taken into account by the search engine, but ...

Algorithms Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Why is AMP no longer needed for the Top Stories carousel?

Patrick Kettner Jun 14, 2021 ★★★

With this update, AMP is no longer a requirement to appear in Google’s Top Stories carousel. Any relevant page can now be featured, regardless of the framework used to create them.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Mobile SEO

How do Web Vitals truly impact our SEO rankings?

Patrick Kettner Jun 14, 2021 ★★★

Web Vitals and Page Experience metrics join the hundreds of other signals that Google evaluates in milliseconds with every search. These new metrics enable browsers to measure the actual experience of users.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO