What does Google say about SEO?

Why does Search Console show indexed URLs that are missing from the sitemap?

John Mueller Aug 11, 2020 ★

Google does not always immediately process all the content of all sitemap files. Therefore, Search Console can indicate that an URL is indexed but not submitted via sitemap if Google has not yet had time to process this sitemap entry and establish th...

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Domain Name Pagination & Structure PDF & Files Search Console

Should you modify the lastmod date in the sitemap after simply correcting a meta title or description?

John Mueller Aug 11, 2020 ★★★

Updating the lastmod date in the sitemap after correcting missing titles and meta descriptions is exactly what you should do. Adding a title or description constitutes a page modification, just like adding structured data. This is not seen as manipul...

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

Is it true that your validated FAQ markup might be invisible in Search Console?

John Mueller Aug 11, 2020 ★★

When FAQ markup is present in the source code, validated by testing tools (Rich Results Test, live URL test in Search Console) but missing from the Search Console report, it is often a reporting update delay. Some Search Console reports can take abou...

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

Why does the mobile-friendly test produce conflicting results on the same page?

John Mueller Aug 11, 2020 ★★

The mobile-friendly test can yield varying results (partially loaded, not mobile-friendly, mobile-friendly with missing resources) for the same page tested at different times. This happens because Google balances fast results with limited server capa...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Mobile SEO

Why should WebPageTest be your go-to tool for web performance diagnostics?

John Mueller Aug 11, 2020 ★

The webpagetest.org tool provides a neutral waterfall chart (independent of your computer or connection) that analyzes loading times and the loading order of resources. It allows testing on different types of devices and shows progressive screenshots...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Images & Videos Web Performance Search Console

Can Google really tell the difference between your multilingual pages, or is it at risk of mistakenly canonicalizing them?

John Mueller Aug 11, 2020 ★★★

Google typically does not confuse pages in different languages (Japanese vs Portuguese, for example) and does not consider them duplicates to be canonicalized together. Translated content is considered by Google to be different content by definition....

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

Is Google really tolerant of hreflang errors that mismatch language and content?

John Mueller Aug 11, 2020 ★★

If a Japanese page (e.g., /jp) declares in its hreflang x-default or hreflang that it is in English while the content is in Japanese, this creates an inconsistency. Although this needs to be corrected, it shouldn't cause a major indexing problem in i...

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

Can Negative Reviews Actually Tank Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller Aug 10, 2020 ★★

John Mueller seemed to indicate during a hangout that if a site (the example of Decor My Eyes from 10 years ago was cited) received a very large number of negative reviews, this could influence its ranking on the search engine downward, but the gener...

Content AI & SEO Local Search

Does the Order of Hn Tags Really Impact Google Rankings?

John Mueller Aug 10, 2020 ★★★

John Mueller has repeated for the 7,854th time that the order of Hn tags has no impact on Google's algorithm: you can put H5 before H1 or whatever you want in any order, it will work...

Algorithms Content AI & SEO

Should You Really Balance Your Follow/Nofollow Link Ratio to Look Natural to Google?

John Mueller Aug 10, 2020 ★★★

When a user told him that it was good practice for a website to have a well-balanced "link profile" between Follow and Nofollow links to "look natural," John Mueller was explicit: "That's wrong"...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Can styled divs really harm mobile SEO?

Martin Splitt Aug 06, 2020 ★★★

You must use semantic title tags (h1, h2, etc.) on your mobile pages. Divs with styled classes are not recognized as titles by Googlebot, which treats them as regular text, affecting the page's comprehensibility.

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

Are background images in CSS truly invisible to Google?

Martin Splitt Aug 06, 2020 ★★★

Images must use semantic tags with relevant and descriptive alt text. Googlebot cannot index CSS images (background-image). An empty or meaningless alt text harms user experience and indexing.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing Images & Videos Mobile SEO

Does mobile-first indexing really ONLY index the mobile version of your site?

Martin Splitt Aug 06, 2020 ★★★

With mobile-first indexing, Google's indexing system examines the mobile page instead of the desktop page to gather information. The page will appear in search results if the information is relevant enough for user queries.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing Mobile SEO

Do robots.txt and noindex tags really block mobile indexing on Google?

Martin Splitt Aug 06, 2020 ★★★

Do not block mobile pages with robots.txt or noindex tags. Do not use nofollow on mobile pages as it prevents Googlebot from crawling or indexing those pages. If you allow Googlebot to crawl your desktop page resources, you should also permit them fo...

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

Is it really necessary to display exactly the same content on mobile and desktop to rank well?

Martin Splitt Aug 06, 2020 ★★★

Google recommends ensuring that the main content is the same on both desktop and mobile versions. Googlebot will not click on buttons to load additional content. If you intentionally have less content on mobile, Google will not be able to serve your ...

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Mobile SEO

Should you really place your videos at the top of the page to rank on mobile?

Martin Splitt Aug 06, 2020 ★★

Do not place videos or important content too low on the mobile page, requiring the user to scroll excessively. If users are specifically searching for a video, a poor position creates a negative user experience.

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Mobile SEO

Is it necessary to duplicate structured data and meta descriptions between desktop and mobile?

Martin Splitt Aug 06, 2020 ★★★

It is recommended to maintain identical structured data on both desktop and mobile pages. Don’t forget to add meta descriptions to your mobile pages; they are very important for Googlebot.

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

Can negative reviews really penalize your Google ranking?

John Mueller Aug 04, 2020 ★★★

Google may take into account a very bad online reputation if all signals point overwhelmingly in that direction. A few negative reviews among many positive ones will not affect ranking. The algorithm requires a truly strong signal to apply any impact...

Algorithms AI & SEO Local Search

Should you really separate sitemaps for pages and images?

John Mueller Aug 04, 2020 ★★

A single sitemap file can contain both page URLs and images. There are limits on the number of URLs and file size, but how you divide sitemaps generally has no impact on crawling and indexing, except in extreme cases like one million separate sitemap...

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name PDF & Files Search Console

Could a 304 Not Modified code actually prevent your pages from being indexed?

John Mueller Aug 04, 2020 ★★

The 304 Not Modified code should only be returned for conditional requests (with If-Modified-Since). For normal requests, returning a 304 means that no content is available, which prevents indexing. For an empty sitemap, it is better to return an emp...

Content Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security AI & SEO PDF & Files Search Console