What does Google say about SEO?

Why Doesn’t the Sitemap Influence Your SEO Ranking?

John Mueller May 28, 2021 ★★★

Changes in the sitemap file do not affect rankings. The sitemap helps to explore more efficiently but is not a ranking factor. Google does not penalize significant changes to the sitemap, nor does it favor long-standing stable content.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Pagination & Structure PDF & Files Search Console

Why does the ranking of new content fluctuate so much?

John Mueller May 28, 2021 ★★

When new content or a new site appears, Google makes assumptions about its ranking because it doesn't have many signals yet. These assumptions can be high or low, creating initial fluctuations before stabilization. It's neither a sandbox nor an inten...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Pagination & Structure

Why is a stable URL essential for updated content in terms of SEO?

John Mueller May 28, 2021 ★★★

For regularly updated content (financial reports, recurring events), it's advisable to have a primary stable URL that accumulates signals over time, and to move old versions to an archive section with dated URLs.

Domain Age & History Content Domain Name Pagination & Structure Search Console

Is hidden content on mobile overlooked by Google?

John Mueller May 28, 2021 ★★★

If a site is on mobile-first indexing, content that is only accessible in desktop HTML but hidden on mobile (display:none) will not be indexed or used for ranking. This can be verified using the Inspect URL tool in mobile view.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Mobile SEO Domain Name Search Console

Do third-party scripts really slow down your SEO performance?

John Mueller May 28, 2021 ★★★

Third-party JavaScript scripts that slow down a page (such as reCAPTCHA or Google Ads) are included in the speed assessment. Google does not make exceptions for its own scripts. If a script disrupts the user experience, it negatively influences perce...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance

Do Google reviews really affect your website's SEO?

John Mueller May 28, 2021 ★★

The number of Google reviews or responses to reviews do not affect organic SEO rankings. While they may influence rankings in Google My Business or Maps, they do not impact web search results.

AI & SEO Local Search

Does Google Analytics Really Impact Your Site's SEO?

Daniel Waisberg May 27, 2021 ★★★

Google officially confirms that it does not use data from Google Analytics for ranking in search results. This clarification is important to dispel myths about the influence of Analytics metrics on SEO.

How does Google handle meta refresh redirects?

Gary Illyes May 27, 2021 ★★★

Google can understand meta refresh redirects without the need to execute JavaScript. This method is preferable to JavaScript redirects for static sites as it is detected earlier in the crawling process.

Crawl & Indexing JavaScript & Technical SEO Redirects

How does Google really interpret JavaScript generated content?

Martin Splitt May 27, 2021 ★★★

Google treats JavaScript generated content in the same manner as static HTML content. The content is first extracted from the crawled HTML, and then populated after the page has been rendered. There is no fundamental difference in the processing of t...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO

How does Google enhance link discovery through dual extraction?

Martin Splitt May 27, 2021 ★★

Google extracts links in two phases: immediately during the HTML crawl, and then again after the page has rendered. This approach allows for link discovery as early as possible in the indexing process.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

How are user queries truly transformed by Google?

Gary Illyes May 27, 2021 ★★

Before querying the index, Google transforms the user's query into a massive buffer protocol containing many words. This expansion process allows for relevant results to be returned not only for the exact query but also for very close queries.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

How does Google segment languages without spaces for SEO?

Gary Illyes May 27, 2021 ★★

For languages like Thai or Chinese that do not use spaces, Google utilizes a system called a segmenter that divides character strings into searchable words in the index.

Crawl & Indexing JavaScript & Technical SEO International SEO

Why doesn't Google use synonyms in its index?

Gary Illyes May 27, 2021 ★★★

Google does not record synonyms in the index along with page content. Synonyms are added during the parsing of the user's search query, allowing for a match with pages containing synonymous terms.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing

Why does Google sometimes keep stop words?

Gary Illyes May 27, 2021 ★★

Google generally removes stop words like 'of', 'the', 'a' during query parsing because they are not relevant. Exception: when they are part of a detected entity such as 'The Rock', the stop word is retained to preserve meaning.

How does Google automate stemming and spelling correction?

Gary Illyes May 27, 2021 ★★

Google doesn't use teams of linguists with word lists. Stemming, spelling correction, and word variations are automatically learned from the existing web content corpus.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO

How does Google's diacritic expansion affect your SEO?

Gary Illyes May 27, 2021 ★★

Google employs diacritic expansion to process the different ways of writing accented characters. For example, 'ü' becomes synonymous with 'u' and 'ue'. These variants are added as synonyms in the parsed query.

AI & SEO

Why do synonyms carry less weight than the original text in SEO?

Gary Illyes May 27, 2021 ★★★

In the parsed query, the original words from the user carry a weight of 1 (100%). All synonyms automatically added by Google receive a lower weight. The less confident Google is in a synonym, the lower the weight is.

AI & SEO

How does a user's location influence Google's understanding of queries?

Gary Illyes May 27, 2021 ★★

Google adds the user's location as context during query parsing. This allows for the understanding that the same term can have different meanings depending on the country or culture, and to accurately interpret intent.

Content Local Search International SEO

How is Google’s AI revolutionizing spam detection?

Google May 27, 2021 ★★★

Google heavily relies on artificial intelligence for automatic spam detection, combined with manual actions. The results of manual actions are then fed back into the algorithms to improve large-scale detection.

Algorithms AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Penalties & Spam

Is it true that indexing XML sitemaps doesn't really matter?

Google May 27, 2021 ★★★

If XML sitemap files show as 'crawled but not indexed', it's not an issue. XML sitemap files don't need to be indexed. The important thing is to check the status of the URLs listed in the sitemap via dedicated reports.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name PDF & Files Search Console