What does Google say about SEO?

Will the Merchant Listing report in Search Console replace Merchant Center?

Irina Tuduce Sep 05, 2024 ★★★

Google has integrated Merchant Center into Search Console with a new 'Merchant Listing' report that performs shopping-specific checks on schema.org markup and indicates to users which issues need to be corrected to appear in shopping results.

Domain Age & History Structured Data E-commerce Search Console

Do you really need both schema.org AND Merchant Center to rank in Google Shopping?

Irina Tuduce Sep 05, 2024 ★★★

Google recommends using both schema.org markup on your pages AND Merchant Center. This dual approach ensures your inventory appears in shopping results and allows you to control how often your data is refreshed.

Domain Age & History Structured Data E-commerce AI & SEO

How do price and availability updates impact your product eligibility in Google Shopping results?

Irina Tuduce Sep 05, 2024 ★★★

For shopping infrastructure, price and availability are very important signals because Google wants to display the most current data. This information must be kept up to date for your products to be eligible for display.

Domain Age & History E-commerce AI & SEO Pagination & Structure Local Search

Should you use schema.org or feed specification for Google Shopping? Here's why you actually need both

Irina Tuduce Sep 05, 2024 ★★

Google uses two different data formats for shopping: schema.org (open source hierarchical markup) and feed specification (Google's proprietary flat key-value structure format). These formats have largely overlapping attributes but are not yet at comp...

Domain Age & History Structured Data E-commerce AI & SEO Pagination & Structure

Can Schema.org really manage product variants better than flat feeds?

Irina Tuduce Sep 05, 2024 ★★

The schema.org format, being hierarchical, allows you to specify relationships between different pages (for example between size/color variants and the main product group), which is more difficult with the flat feed specification format.

Domain Age & History Structured Data E-commerce AI & SEO

Is Google really hiding your products because prices don't match between your feed and website?

Irina Tuduce Sep 05, 2024 ★★★

If the price specified in your feed doesn't match the one on your website, Google may decide not to display your product in shopping results. Data consistency across different sources is essential.

Domain Age & History E-commerce Local Search

Does Google really apply the same policy filters to Shopping as it does to organic search?

Irina Tuduce Sep 05, 2024 ★★

The Shopping infrastructure applies similar policy checks to web search (counterfeit products, prescription medications, etc.). These policies are publicly documented and vary by country and region.

E-commerce AI & SEO Pagination & Structure PDF & Files

Why is Google launching a dedicated impressions and clicks report for products in Merchant Center?

Irina Tuduce Sep 05, 2024 ★★

Google has developed a reporting system showing impressions and clicks generated by your products on google.com and Google Images. This overlay report in Merchant Center allows you to correlate the resolution of markup errors with increases in impres...

Domain Age & History E-commerce Images & Videos Search Console

Can You Publish YouTube Video Transcriptions Without Risking Duplicate Content Penalties?

Martin Splitt Sep 03, 2024 ★★★

Martin Splitt stated that publishing the text transcription of a YouTube video on a web page does not constitute duplicate content, as video and text formats are considered distinct. It is therefore possible to transform video content into text witho...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos

Have SEO Best Practices Become Insufficient to Rank on Google?

John Mueller Sep 03, 2024 ★★

John Mueller stated that following SEO best practices can have a minimal effect if the content does not meet user needs. As he points out, focusing on creating relevant, quality content is essential, as Google's algorithms prioritize what is truly us...

Algorithms Content AI & SEO

Should You Stop Counting Words and Links to Optimize Your SEO?

John Mueller Sep 03, 2024 ★★

On LinkedIn, John Mueller clarified that the number of words or links present on a page is not a determining factor for ranking in search results: "No one at Google counts the links or words in your blog posts, and even if they did, I would still rec...

Domain Age & History Content Discover & News AI & SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

Why Does Google Refuse to Index Some of Your Pages Despite Submitting Them?

Martin Splitt Aug 27, 2024 ★★★

Martin Splitt recently explained why certain pages weren't being indexed (Status "Discovered – Currently Not Indexed"), mentioning several technical factors that can negatively affect the process: prioritization of other URLs, server responses that a...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing Discover & News HTTPS & Security AI & SEO Domain Name

Should You Worry That Search Console Only Shows 35% of Your Performance Data?

John Mueller Aug 27, 2024 ★★★

John Mueller responded to concerns that Search Console only displays 35% of performance data and that a bulk export is necessary to monitor all the data. Google's Senior Search Analyst provided nuance by indicating that this percentage actually depen...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance Local Search Search Console

Can Malicious Traffic Actually Penalize Your Site in Google?

Martin Splitt Aug 27, 2024 ★★★

Martin Splitt confirmed that an influx of malicious traffic (bad actor traffic) to a site, with the intent to discredit it in Google's eyes, does not directly harm its ranking in search results: "Simply sending traffic from dubious sources to a site ...

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Penalties & Spam

Do nofollow and noindex attributes hurt your Google rankings?

Martin Splitt Aug 27, 2024 ★★★

Martin Splitt stated that using the "nofollow" and "noindex" attributes does not necessarily indicate a quality issue on the site: "It just tells us that you have links you don't want to be associated with, or that you have pages you don't want to se...

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

Why is Google refusing to index some of your pages?

Martin Splitt Aug 22, 2024 ★★★

Google does not necessarily index every page on your website. Some pages will never be indexed, and this is normal behavior that does not always require corrective action.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Should you really fix every single 404 error detected in Search Console?

John Mueller Aug 22, 2024 ★★★

If Search Console reports thousands of 404 pages, this can be normal if these pages correspond to intentionally deleted products. It's not automatically a problem to solve.

Domain Age & History E-commerce Search Console

Can the URL Inspection API truly replace manual inspections at scale?

Martin Splitt Aug 22, 2024 ★★

The URL Inspection API allows you to perform thousands of URL inspections in minutes, whereas the user interface requires you to do them one at a time.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Search Console

Does the Search Console API really give you access to data that the interface hides?

Martin Splitt Aug 22, 2024 ★★★

The Search Console API offers far more data than the user interface, particularly for large projects. The data is also better structured in the API, facilitating the extraction of insights at scale.

JavaScript & Technical SEO Search Console

Why does Google Search Console cap your indexing reports at 1000 rows?

Martin Splitt Aug 22, 2024 ★★

Each indexing report in the Search Console interface is limited to 1000 lines of data, whereas the API could potentially provide significantly more data.

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