What does Google say about SEO?

Do crawl reports really help you diagnose your indexing issues?

Google Feb 25, 2021 ★★★

To diagnose indexing issues, it's recommended to review index coverage reports and especially crawl statistics to identify technical errors such as server issues.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Search Console

What does the 'empty content' alert in Search Console really hide about potential redirection issues?

Google Feb 25, 2021 ★★

The 'empty content' alert in Search Console often appears when redirects or server issues prevent Google from reading the content. It's important to check server configuration and redirects.

Content Redirects Search Console

Why does your sitemap marked as 'not submitted' not necessarily indicate a problem?

Google Feb 25, 2021 ★

If an indexed page appears as 'not submitted in the sitemap' even though it is, it may simply be a processing delay. If this persists, use the feedback in Search Console.

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

Should you really wait for Google to switch your site to mobile-first indexing?

Google Feb 25, 2021 ★★

A site that has not yet migrated to mobile-first indexing will naturally have more desktop crawl than mobile. This is not a problem in itself, but it is essential to check if the site is ready for migration.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Mobile SEO Redirects

Why might Google rank a third-party site above an official brand site?

Google Feb 25, 2021 ★★

An official site can be ranked lower than third-party sites if the algorithm judges the latter to be more helpful. Official sites must optimize their added value for users.

Algorithms

Is it really okay to duplicate your website content on your Google Business Profile without risking an SEO penalty?

Google Feb 25, 2021 ★★

Publishing the same content on Google My Business and your website does not pose a duplicate content problem. There are no SEO disadvantages to this practice.

Domain Age & History Content Pagination & Structure Local Search

Does Search Console really erase all your historical data before verification?

Google Feb 25, 2021 ★★★

Search Console starts collecting data only after the site is added as a property. Historical data prior to that is not available. Unverified periods are inaccessible to a single owner.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Search Console

Is it true that Google indexes the Shadow DOM?

Martin Splitt Feb 23, 2021 ★★★

Google's web rendering service is capable of seeing and indexing content located inside the Shadow DOM of web components. Google's rendering correctly handles these elements for indexing, unlike some tools like Rendertron that face difficulties.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Local Search

Why do Google search results change depending on when you ask the same query?

Gary Illyes Feb 23, 2021 ★★

Google's service index consists of thousands or tens of thousands of index shards distributed across more than 10 data centers. Each data center has a copy of the shards to serve similar results, although sometimes lags between data centers can cause...

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

How does Google truly identify relevant documents for a query?

Gary Illyes Feb 23, 2021 ★★

Google uses posting lists that identify documents containing certain keywords. For example, for a search 'oatmeal cookies', the posting list indicates which documents contain 'oatmeal' and which contain 'cookies', and then Google sends the intersecti...

AI & SEO PDF & Files

Can WordPress Site Kit really enhance your organic SEO?

Maria Feb 23, 2021 ★★

Site Kit is not designed as an SEO tool that guarantees better rankings. Its primary goal is to simplify access to Google tools (Analytics, Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, AdSense) directly from the WordPress dashboard, allowing site owners to ma...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Pagination & Structure Web Performance Search Console

Can Site Kit truly transform your Search Console data into a winning content strategy?

Maria Feb 23, 2021 ★★

Site Kit can assist with SEO by displaying the most popular queries and the most visited pages from Search Console, allowing site owners to see if these elements align and whether they should create content on other topics.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Search Console

Does Google really tokenize all your content or does it discard half of the HTML?

Gary Illyes Feb 23, 2021 ★★★

During indexing, Google breaks down documents into tokens and does not retain all of the raw HTML content. Certain HTML elements are kept for specific reasons, as well as the actual words appearing on the page and their positions, because the positio...

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

How does Google query billions of pages in less than a second?

Gary Illyes Feb 23, 2021 ★★

To deliver results in under a second, Google employs shard indexes that identify which index shards need to be queried for specific requests. Essentially, this is a map between keywords or tokens found on pages and the corresponding shard identifiers...

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

Does Google really overlook the scripts and extra content on your pages?

Gary Illyes Feb 23, 2021 ★★

When tokenizing documents, Google does not index all of the unnecessary elements of HTML, such as script text. Only relevant elements and actual words appearing on the page are retained in the index.

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

Can a Site Penalized by Google Ever Really Get Reindexed?

John Mueller Feb 22, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller indicated on Reddit that Google never permanently deindexes a site guilty of methods that don't follow its guidelines: "Sites are not permanently removed from Google - there is always a way to get them indexed again. Sometimes it takes a...

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Penalties & Spam

Does Adding an Audio Version to Your Article Actually Boost SEO?

John Mueller Feb 22, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller explained during a webmaster hangout that offering an audio version of an article initially displayed in text format does not provide any SEO bonus to the latter. He also added that the audio version is not considered duplicate content.

Content Discover & News AI & SEO

Does Google Really Consider the Total Number of Backlinks a Ranking Factor?

John Mueller Feb 22, 2021 ★★★

John Mueller explained during a webmaster hangout that the total number of backlinks a page receives is not a relevant criterion for measuring its popularity: "From my point of view, I would tend not to focus on the total number of links to your site...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Domain Name

Is Google's Yellow Highlighting Actually Connected to the Passages Algorithm?

Danny Sullivan Feb 22, 2021 ★★★

Danny Sullivan explained (once again) on Twitter that Google's feature of directing users directly to a specific part of a page, with the requested text highlighted in yellow (a function sometimes called "Scroll To Text/Snippet"), had no connection t...

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

Why doesn’t Search Console show all the data from your indexed sitemaps?

John Mueller Feb 19, 2021 ★★

In Search Console, you sometimes only see part of the table with sitemap files in a sitemap index. This is more of a reporting issue than an indexing issue. If you were to add the sitemap files individually, you could see the data for the others.

Crawl & Indexing Pagination & Structure PDF & Files Search Console