What does Google say about SEO?

Should you isolate your blog or news section on a separate domain?

John Mueller Oct 16, 2020 ★★

For a news section on a product site, it is recommended to keep it on the existing domain rather than creating a new domain. This allows you to immediately benefit from the authority of the existing site. A clear URL structure enables Google to disti...

Content Discover & News E-commerce AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Pagination & Structure

Can lazy hydration really harm your crawl budget?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★★

Lazy hydration can be beneficial for user experience and interactivity time. However, if it causes issues or if the content does not appear in the rendered HTML during testing, then lazy hydration does not work well with Googlebot. It is essential to...

Content Crawl & Indexing Images & Videos

Does Google really over-cache your site's resources?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★★

Google's caching is very aggressive and tends to over-cache rather than under-cache. If a resource is momentarily broken, it usually isn't a problem because Google does not fetch resources at every rendering. Additionally, Google retries renderings i...

AI & SEO Web Performance

Does Google's JavaScript cache really work based on origin instead of domain?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★

Google's caching system for JavaScript and other resources is based on origin, not on a shared domain among multiple sites. Each origin has its own resource cache.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Web Performance

Do Links Without Anchor Text Really Hold Value for SEO?

John Mueller Oct 15, 2020 ★★★

There is definitely value in a link without anchor text (naked URL), but Google loses a bit of context. Links without anchors still allow for crawling and determining the importance of pages, but with less contextual information than links with ancho...

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

Can you really host your XML sitemap on an external domain?

John Mueller Oct 15, 2020 ★★

The sitemap file can be hosted on a different domain and specified in robots.txt. This allows different departments within a company to manage sitemaps dynamically even if the main content takes time to update.

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

Does structured breadcrumb really enhance your SEO ranking?

John Mueller Oct 15, 2020 ★★★

The structured data for breadcrumbs does not change anything for SEO or ranking. It merely allows search results to display differently as a rich result. The homepage and final page in the schema are optional because Google already understands these ...

Domain Age & History Structured Data Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO Pagination & Structure Local Search

Are backlinks really less important than we think for ranking on Google?

John Mueller Oct 15, 2020 ★★

Google uses links as a factor in certain algorithms but also many other elements. Links are probably not the most critical element. Having more backlinks does not guarantee a better ranking if other aspects are weaker.

Algorithms AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Are URLs with # really invisible for Google SEO?

John Mueller Oct 15, 2020 ★★★

Fragment identifiers (URLs with #) are completely ignored for indexing. Google treats them as links to the same page. They do not affect rankings or featured snippets. Google may sometimes use them to create cleaner snippets pointing to a specific se...

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

Do words in the URL really still have a true impact on Google rankings?

John Mueller Oct 15, 2020 ★★

Google uses some signals from the words in the URL, but it's very, very weak. If Google can analyze the page content, it can essentially ignore the words in the URL. Having a word in a different language from the content in the domain name poses no i...

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

Is Google’s rendering service blocking your cross-origin resources due to CORS?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★

Google's web rendering service is bound by CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) principles, APIs, and headers. If you have cross-origin requests to another subdomain or origin, you must ensure they are permitted according to the CORS specification.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name

Do duplicate data in your script tags really harm your SEO?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★

From an SEO perspective, it is perfectly acceptable to store duplicate data in a script tag. This does not pose any issue for natural search engine optimization.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Pagination & Structure

Why can't Google share JavaScript cache across your domains?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★★

Google cannot cache a popular JavaScript resource (like jQuery) in one place for use across different domains. If a resource is broken on your site, Google won't fetch it from another site, as this would allow cache poisoning, a very risky vulnerabil...

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Web Performance

Why do Google test tools never reflect what Googlebot truly sees?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★★

Testing tools (URL Inspection Tool, Rich Results Test, Mobile-Friendly Test, AMP Test) always perform a fresh fetch and bypass the cache to test the latest version. This differs from actual crawls and indexation which utilize aggressive caching.

Crawl & Indexing Structured Data Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO Mobile SEO Domain Name Web Performance Search Console

Should you really ignore the live test in Search Console to diagnose your indexing issues?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★★

To verify how Googlebot really sees your page, examine the 'crawled page' version in the URL Inspection Tool instead of the 'live test'. The crawled version better reflects actual indexing because it uses cache, unlike the live test.

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

Why does Google ignore your images during rendering for indexing?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★

Google often skips loading images during rendering because they are not necessary for most of the indexing process. The image index is a separate entity. This is why some images may appear as unavailable in testing tools without it being an issue.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Images & Videos

Why does Google emphasize media queries instead of user-agent for responsive design?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★★

To adapt your site to different screen sizes (mobile vs desktop), rely on CSS media queries and screen size, not on user-agent. This also applies to Core Web Vitals tests that only change the screen size between mobile and desktop.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Mobile SEO Web Performance

Do Google’s testing tools really give the same results?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★

All single URL testing tools (Single URL Inspection Tools or SUIT) use the same pipeline and infrastructure: Rich Results Test, Mobile-Friendly Test, AMP Test, and URL Inspection Tool. Differences in results stem from different parameters (mobile/des...

Structured Data Featured Snippets & SERP Mobile SEO Domain Name Pagination & Structure Search Console

Do intermittent server errors really affect your Google indexing?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★★

Temporarily unavailable resource issues are extremely rare in production due to Google's aggressive caching. Even if your server only serves a script once and then fails for a month, you shouldn't see intermittent resource issues. These problems most...

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing E-commerce AI & SEO Web Performance

Can Google really detect JavaScript rendering errors on my site?

Martin Splitt Oct 15, 2020 ★★

JavaScript rendering is an integral and transparent part of the indexing process. Google does not report very specific errors related to rendering because the system automatically retries in case of failure. There is no clear error category in Search...

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