What does Google say about SEO?

Why does Google ignore your title and meta description tags?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★★

Google does not always show exactly the title and description defined in the meta tags. Google's systems attempt to automatically determine which title and description are most suitable for each search, even if the page has been crawled with the new ...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing Local Search

How does the position of a link in the structure really affect crawl frequency?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★

Google crawls pages it considers important for a site more frequently. Links from the homepage help Google understand that a page is important and deserves to be crawled more often. Pages like legal notices change rarely, so Google crawls them less f...

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

Does the switch to HTTP/2 by Googlebot impact your Core Web Vitals?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★

The switch to HTTP/2 crawling by Googlebot has no impact on the user-visible speed metrics (Core Web Vitals). These performance reports remain unchanged as they measure the real user experiences, not what Googlebot sees.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security Web Performance Search Console

Does HTTP/2 really boost crawl budget or does it just overload your servers?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★

With HTTP/2, Google can crawl more pages because requests are managed differently. However, some servers may be under the same strain as before. Google adjusts the crawl volume based on the reactions and server load observed.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security AI & SEO

Does the URL removal tool really prevent Google from crawling your pages?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★★

Using the URL removal tool in Search Console simply hides pages from search results for about 6 months, but does not stop crawling or indexing. Pages remain in Google's systems and continue to be processed normally.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name Web Performance Search Console

Why doesn’t Google's URL removal tool actually take your pages out of its index?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★★

To truly remove content from Google's index, you need to return a 404, 410 code, or use the noindex tag. The URL removal tool merely temporarily hides pages from the results without taking them out of Google's systems.

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

Should you really delete your old low-quality content to boost your SEO?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★★

Removing or improving low-quality content does not negatively impact rankings. Google only accounts for indexed pages to evaluate overall quality. It is better to improve existing content, but if that is not feasible, deletion is a good option.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Do hyphens really disrupt the exact match of your keywords?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★

Google recognizes hyphenated words as separate terms. Over time, Google's statistical systems automatically learn to treat certain variants as synonyms, especially for frequently searched terms, but this is not guaranteed for all terms.

AI & SEO

Does Google's Natural Language API truly reflect how search operates?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★

Google's Natural Language API can be useful for testing entity recognition, but it does not exactly match what Google uses in search. Search takes into account much more context and surrounding text to identify entities.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO International SEO

Should you really include HTML pages in an image sitemap instead of just JPG files?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★★

Image sitemaps must reference the URLs of HTML pages that contain the images, with the image extension to indicate which images are present. Submitting only image files in a sitemap is ineffective, as Google can only index images if they are embedded...

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Images & Videos Domain Name PDF & Files Search Console

Does technical duplicate content really penalize your site?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★★

When Google detects technical duplicate content (multiple URLs pointing to the same content), it chooses a canonical URL and only indexes that one. Only the indexed version counts for the site's quality assessment, not the hundreds of detected varian...

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name

Should you detail each URL in a reconsideration request after a manual penalty?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★

For a reconsideration request after a manual action, it is sufficient to clearly indicate what problem was identified and what measures were taken to correct it. There is no need to provide all technical details or a complete list of affected URLs.

Content AI & SEO Domain Name Penalties & Spam

Why does Google rewrite your titles and meta descriptions even with your optimizations?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★

Google does not always display 100% of the title and description of all pages in the search results. The systems attempt to automatically determine which titles and descriptions are optimal, and can therefore show different versions from those define...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing Local Search

Does the URL removal tool really take your pages out of Google's index?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★★

The URL removal tool does not remove pages from Google's systems but only hides their visibility in search results. The pages remain indexed and count towards the site. To truly remove content, you must use noindex, 404, or 410, which allows Google t...

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

How can you effectively manage content migration between multiple sites using Canonical or 301 Redirects?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★★

To move content between multiple sites, you can either use the canonical (if the content remains on both sites but one is prioritized) or the 301 redirect (if the content no longer exists except on the new site). The canonical allows content to remai...

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Redirects

Does the technical duplicate content issue really harm your site's SEO?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★★

Google handles technical duplicate content (multiple URLs generating the same content) by automatically selecting a canonical version to index. Only this canonical version counts for indexing and quality. The many visible variants are not considered ...

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name

Is x-default really essential for a homepage with language redirection?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★★

For a multilingual site where the homepage redirects based on the user's browser language, it is crucial to add x-default to the homepage. Without x-default, Google assumes that the homepage is not part of the hreflang group and may index it separate...

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

Is it really necessary to add nofollow to every link on a noindex page?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★

If an entire page is marked as noindex, Google already sees that no signals should be transmitted. Adding the sponsored or nofollow attribute to individual links may help machine learning systems but is not mandatory and does not impact the site itse...

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

Do hyphens in URLs and content really harm your SEO?

John Mueller Jan 15, 2021 ★★

Google treats words with or without hyphens as separate words and employs statistical methods to recognize that they are synonyms, not a specific linguistic model. For frequently searched terms, Google can effectively recognize synonyms, but for less...

AI & SEO

Should you really ignore position fluctuations in Google?

Aurora Morales Jan 13, 2021 ★★

One should not focus too much on the absolute position of the site or on small fluctuations. However, in case of a dramatic or persistent decline, it is necessary to consult the performance reports from Search Console.

AI & SEO Web Performance Search Console