What does Google say about SEO?

Is it true that crawl budget is really unnecessary for small websites?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★★

If your site has less than a few thousand pages, you don't need to worry about crawl budget. This concept is mainly relevant for large websites.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing

How does Google determine which pages to crawl first on your site?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★

The crawl process starts with a list of web addresses from previous crawls and sitemaps provided by site owners. Google uses its crawlers to visit these addresses, read the information, and follow links on these pages.

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

What is crawl demand and how does Google really calculate it?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★★

Crawl demand represents how much Google desires the content. It is influenced by URLs that have not yet been crawled and by Google's estimation of the frequency of changes to known URLs.

Content Crawl & Indexing Domain Name

How does Google determine the crawl rate to keep your servers from crashing?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★★

Google calculates the crawl rate of your site to ensure it does not overload your servers. This rate represents the maximum number of simultaneous connections that a crawler can use to crawl your site.

Crawl & Indexing

Does your server speed really boost your crawl budget?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★★

The crawl rate is periodically calculated by Google based on your site's responsiveness, which is the amount of crawl traffic it can handle. If the site responds quickly and consistently, the rate increases if there is indexing demand.

Crawl & Indexing JavaScript & Technical SEO

Does a slow website really hurt your Google crawl rate?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★★

If the site slows down or responds with server errors, the crawl rate decreases and Google crawls fewer pages.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing

Can you really limit Google's crawl rate without jeopardizing your SEO?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★

In rare cases where Google's crawlers overload your servers, you can set a crawl rate limit using the crawl rate settings report in Search Console.

Crawl & Indexing Search Console

Is the crawl budget just a simple mix of rates and demand?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★★

The crawl budget is the number of URLs that Google can and wants to crawl. It combines the crawl rate (technical capacity) and crawl demand (indexing needs).

Content Crawl & Indexing Domain Name

Why does Google reserve the Crawl Stats report exclusively for domain properties?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★

The Crawl Stats report in Search Console is only available for domain-level properties. It is not available for properties that include a URL prefix.

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

Are external resources skewing your crawl statistics?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★

Resources hosted outside your site are not counted in crawl requests. For example, if your images are served from another domain like a CDN, they will not appear in the statistics.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name

Does response time really exclude page rendering in Search Console?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★

The average response time of a page does not account for the time taken to render the page. It measures only the time to retrieve the page content, excluding resources like scripts, images, or embedded content.

Domain Age & History Content Images & Videos

What causes a sudden drop in crawl requests that could indicate a robots.txt issue or response time problem?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★★

If you notice a significant drop in the total number of crawl requests, ensure that no one has added a new robots.txt file to your site, or that your site is not responding slowly to Googlebot.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO PDF & Files

Does Server Response Time Really Influence Googlebot's Crawl Rate?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★★

A consistent increase in average response time might not immediately affect your crawl rate, but it's a good indicator that your servers may not be handling the entire load. This can ultimately affect the user experience as well.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Why can a 503 code on robots.txt block your site's entire crawl?

Daniel Waisberg Mar 03, 2021 ★★★

Your site is not required to have a robots.txt file, but it must return a successful 200 or 404 response when requested. If Googlebot encounters a connection problem like a 503, it will stop crawling your site.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO PDF & Files

Should You Really Limit Your Title Tags to 70 Characters for SEO?

Gary Illyes Mar 01, 2021 ★★★

Gary Illyes indicated during the Search Central online event that having Title tags longer than the number of characters displayed in SERPs was a good practice, which brought a "plus" in SEO, because the Title was more precise and more relevant...

Content Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO

Will Core Web Vitals Really Revolutionize SERP Rankings?

Danny Sullivan Mar 01, 2021 ★★★

Danny Sullivan explained on Twitter that Core Web Vitals, which will be launched next May, should not fundamentally change the game in the SERPs. He indicated that their impact will likely be very minimal. Their importance may increase in the future,...

Discover & News Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO Web Performance Social Media

Does URL Structure Really Impact Google Rankings?

John Mueller Mar 01, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller provided two examples on Twitter of websites where URL page structure can be important: on one hand, international sites with a directory (example: /fr/, /de/, etc.) on a generic extension, and on the other hand, adult sites, which allow...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Domain Name Pagination & Structure Social Media

Do mailto: and tel: links actually affect your site's internal PageRank?

John Mueller Mar 01, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google does not read or follow links of type "mailto:" or "tel:" (email addresses and phone numbers).

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

Does font size really influence Google rankings?

John Mueller Feb 26, 2021 ★★

Font size (14px vs 12px) does not affect rankings. The important factor is mobile compatibility, which remains a ranking factor. The rest falls under user experience.

AI & SEO Mobile SEO

Is it true that content concealed behind a Read More button is actually indexed by Google?

John Mueller Feb 26, 2021 ★★★

If all the content is loaded when the page is rendered, Google can index it even if it is not immediately visible (e.g., Read More/Read Less buttons). For FAQ markup, the questions must be visible, while the answers can be hidden.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing Structured Data AI & SEO