What does Google say about SEO?

Does Google really analyze the audio and visual content of your videos for SEO?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

Google can understand videos by using structured data markup and retrieving the underlying video file to analyze its audio and visual content.

Domain Age & History Content Images & Videos PDF & Files

Is VideoObject markup really enough to get your videos indexed in Google?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

To help Google find your videos and understand their content, you can provide structured data using schema.org VideoObject markup. This markup can include the title, description, duration, URLs for the thumbnail and video file, and more.

Domain Age & History Content Structured Data AI & SEO Images & Videos Domain Name PDF & Files

How can you leverage structured data to enhance your video’s LIVE badge and key moments?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

You can use additional structured data to enable features like the LIVE video badge and key moments for video content.

AI & SEO

How can an inaccessible video thumbnail undermine your visibility in search results?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

You must provide a high-quality thumbnail at a URL accessible to Google. If a thumbnail is not accessible, your page may not appear in video features. For instance, if the thumbnail URL is blocked by robots.txt, Google will not be able to access it.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name

Are video sitemaps really effective for indexing your content?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

Video sitemaps are another way to help Google find videos associated with your site's pages, and they can also include metadata tags to help Google understand the content of the videos.

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

Is it really necessary to make video files accessible to Google for ranking in rich video searches?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

To further optimize your videos, ensure that Google can access your video content files. Google's developer documentation lists the supported video file formats and provides tips to ensure that Google can access these video content URLs.

Domain Age & History Content Domain Name PDF & Files

Do animated video previews in Google really replace static thumbnails?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

When Google can access the visual and audio content of your video files, it can choose a few seconds of your video to use as a preview, which may be more engaging than a static thumbnail. You can use the max-video-preview meta tag to control the dura...

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

Why does Google emphasize direct access to video files for SEO?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

When Google can access the content of your video files, it can understand the content of your videos so they appear for more relevant queries.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO PDF & Files

How does Google automatically detect key moments in your SEO videos?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

When Google can access the video content, it can automatically identify key moments in your video so that users can browse them like chapters in a book.

Content JavaScript & Technical SEO

Why does Google refuse to index your videos if they're not publicly accessible on the web?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

To be indexed by Google, videos must be publicly available on the web. If your videos are part of an app, make sure that each video also has a corresponding web page with a URL accessible by Google.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Domain Name

What role does immediate visibility of videos play in their indexing?

Danielle Marshak Mar 17, 2021 ★★★

The video must be easily visible on the page and should not require complex user actions to load.

Domain Age & History

Can Similar URL Patterns Trigger a Duplicate Content Penalty?

John Mueller Mar 15, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller explained in a webmaster hangout that when two pages have URLs that are too similar, it can generate a duplicate content phenomenon. Indeed, the search engine relies partly, at this level, on the detection of more or less similar pattern...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Domain Name

Should You Really Use Noindex Rather Than Robots.txt to Deindex a Page?

John Mueller Mar 15, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller explained on Twitter that when you want to deindex a page that has been previously indexed by the search engine, you need to use the "noindex" meta robots tag and not the robots.txt file.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing Featured Snippets & SERP PDF & Files Social Media Search Console

Does Website Traffic Really Influence Core Web Vitals Scores?

John Mueller Mar 15, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller explained during a hangout that Core Web Vitals / Page Experience scores require a minimum amount of significant user traffic for the site in question to be calculated. But once this minimum threshold is reached, whether there is more or...

Algorithms Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Web Performance

Can hreflang really be used across multiple distinct domains?

John Mueller Mar 12, 2021 ★★★

Hreflang does not necessarily have to be limited to a single domain. It is possible to use hreflang across different domains to indicate the relationships between the linguistic or regional versions of a site.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name International SEO

Should you really avoid duplicating your content across two distinct sites?

John Mueller Mar 12, 2021 ★★★

Creating two distinct sites for the same content leads to competing with yourself. Both versions will carry signals and value in Google's eyes, which can result in both ranking in the mid-range instead of having one strong site.

Content AI & SEO

Is it really necessary to index the internal search pages on your site?

John Mueller Mar 12, 2021 ★★★

Internal search pages can be indexed if they are relevant and useful to users, similar to category pages. It is recommended to only select certain important queries and block the rest to avoid an infinite space of pages.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO

Do Core Web Vitals Really Influence Google's Crawl Budget?

John Mueller Mar 12, 2021 ★★

If Google can access HTML pages faster due to improved Core Web Vitals, it may potentially crawl more. This also depends on the site's capacity and Google's demand.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance

Does the internal links report in Search Console truly reflect the state of your link structure?

John Mueller Mar 12, 2021 ★★

The internal links report in Search Console is based on a sample of pages from the site, not all indexed pages. It is not on the same level as the index coverage report.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Links & Backlinks Search Console

How does Google actually segment your Core Web Vitals by groups of pages?

John Mueller Mar 12, 2021 ★★★

For Core Web Vitals, Google uses data from the Chrome User Experience Report and segments the site into groups. For specific URLs, Google finds the most appropriate group. If AMP pages have a separate template, their metrics will be used for those pa...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Mobile SEO Domain Name Web Performance