What does Google say about SEO?

Should You Really Choose Between Noindex and Canonical for SEO Optimization?

John Mueller Oct 08, 2024 ★★★

John Mueller has clarified the simultaneous use of noindex and canonical tags. While the noindex tag prevents a page from being indexed, the canonical tag indicates a preferred URL. The famous Google figure specified that it's better to choose just o...

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

Should You Really Avoid Maintenance Pages Before Launching Your New Site?

John Mueller Oct 08, 2024 ★★★

John Mueller recommends not using a generic maintenance page or activating DNS before your site is ready. This approach accelerates indexing, as a generic holding page often signals an inactive site, slowing down Google's recognition once the site go...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

How Can SEO Professionals Control AI Crawler Access to Maximize Their SEO Performance?

John Mueller Oct 08, 2024 ★★★

John Mueller states that technical SEO professionals can influence their clients' decisions regarding AI policies and decisions thanks to their knowledge of how crawlers work and their mastery of control mechanisms (such as the robots.txt file). They...

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

Why does Google deliberately choose not to aim for 100% reliability in Search?

Ben Walton Oct 03, 2024 ★★

Google doesn't aim for 100% reliability in Search. The SRE team defines a target reliability level (SLO) tailored to each product, because targeting 100% would be prohibitively expensive and would slow development. The chosen level depends on actual ...

E-commerce AI & SEO

Why does Google treat some search queries as less expensive than others?

David Yule Oct 03, 2024 ★★

Not all Google queries are equal in terms of CPU cost. A simple query that has already been processed can be served from cache at very low cost, while other queries consume far more computing resources. This cost difference impacts capacity planning ...

AI & SEO Web Performance

Is Google really checking user experience beyond HTTP status codes?

Ben Walton Oct 03, 2024 ★★★

Google has evolved beyond simple HTTP error monitoring. The SRE team now verifies with great precision whether the product experience is correct: not only whether a response is sent with a 200 code, but also whether what is delivered to the user func...

E-commerce HTTPS & Security AI & SEO

How is Google detecting incidents before you even know they exist?

David Yule Oct 03, 2024 ★★

Google's objective is to detect incidents internally before users report them on social media. The SRE team measures how many incidents were detected first by their systems versus reported by users. When a user reports a problem first, it reveals a s...

AI & SEO

Does Google really deprioritize certain traffic during extreme peaks without affecting your SEO?

David Yule Oct 03, 2024 ★★

During extreme traffic peaks (like the 2022 World Cup), Google uses a traffic prioritization system. Low-priority traffic (such as internal load testing) is abandoned first, followed by certain services where a few failures go unnoticed. This early-w...

AI & SEO Local Search

Does Google really steal indexing resources to stabilize its search engine during outages?

David Yule Oct 03, 2024 ★★

During major incidents, Google can shift resources between different Search components. If some systems are running normally while others are under stress, the SRE team can 'steal' resources from healthy systems to reinforce overloaded ones.

AI & SEO

How does Google anticipate and pre-provision server resources for major traffic spikes?

David Yule Oct 03, 2024 ★★

For major foreseeable events like the World Cup, Google plans 6 months in advance: forecasting expected traffic, load testing, CPU cost profiling, and provisioning additional server capacity. However, profiling actual costs before the real event rema...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO

Does Google really stabilize rankings with emergency mitigations before deploying permanent fixes?

David Yule Oct 03, 2024 ★★

Google distinguishes mitigations (short-term actions to restore a stable state, such as a rollback) from permanent fixes. Mitigations allow rapid incident resolution, after which the team works on the root cause to implement a permanent solution befo...

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Pagination & Structure

Why does Google suddenly shut down data centers when something goes wrong?

Ben Walton Oct 03, 2024 ★★

When a problem affects a single data center, Google's response can be to take that data center offline immediately so it stops serving users. It's a rapid mitigation that eliminates the impact on users while the root cause is identified and fixed.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO

Should You Ditch AI for Generating Your Image Alt Texts?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2024 ★★★

On Reddit, John Mueller explained that alt text, along with the text surrounding an image, helps contextualize the image for search engines. As for using AI to generate alt texts, John Mueller points out that it is limited because it rarely captures ...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos

Is the Google Product Experts Program Really at Risk for Your SEO Strategy?

John Mueller Oct 01, 2024 ★★★

Certain rumors could have led to the belief that the Google Product Experts program was disappearing. According to John Mueller, this is not about to happen. He has indeed assured that this program, partly based on volunteerism, is still active. Goog...

Content E-commerce AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO

Does Google really reduce SEO to just two main areas?

Daniel Waisberg Sep 25, 2024 ★★★

SEO focuses on two main areas: helping search engines understand your content, and helping users find your site by improving your presence in search results.

Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name

Are there really any secrets to ranking first on Google?

Daniel Waisberg Sep 25, 2024 ★★★

There are no particular secrets that will allow your site to rank in the first position on Google. However, there are several best practices that can facilitate the exploration, indexing, and understanding of your content by search engines.

Content Crawl & Indexing

Do you really need to chase every emerging trend to rank higher in Google?

Hadas Jacobi Sep 25, 2024 ★★

An important aspect of SEO is to remain continuously aware of emerging trends, knowing when a new subject or search term becomes popular in your industry, so you can prepare high-quality content for users.

Content AI & SEO

Is Google Trends really effective for identifying the right keywords?

Daniel Waisberg Sep 25, 2024 ★★★

Google Trends is valuable for keyword research, which involves identifying the words and phrases your audience uses to search for the information you provide. It allows you to identify terms with high search volume or rapid growth.

JavaScript & Technical SEO

Is geographic optimization the missing piece that's holding back your SEO results?

Hadas Jacobi Sep 25, 2024 ★★

When setting content priorities, make sure you're optimizing for the right geographic audience, because search trends vary by country and region.

Content Local Search International SEO

Can Google Trends really accelerate your YouTube video strategy?

Daniel Waisberg Sep 25, 2024 ★★

Google Trends can be an excellent source for planning your video strategy on YouTube. All the techniques mentioned for web SEO are also relevant for YouTube searches, particularly for optimizing video titles and descriptions.

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