What does Google say about SEO?

Should you really prioritize topics over keywords when analyzing search trends?

Daniel Waisberg Jul 31, 2024 ★★

To correctly analyze trends, it is recommended to use topics rather than simple terms in order to exclude meanings unrelated to search intent. For example, choosing the topic Alphabet Inc. rather than the term 'alphabet' to avoid including other mean...

Search Console

Does Google Trends really show you all search data, or just a fraction of the real picture?

Daniel Waisberg Jul 31, 2024 ★★

Google Trends provides a random sample of Google searches that are aggregated, anonymized, and categorized. The tool examines a representative portion of billions of daily searches rather than the entire dataset, which allows it to process and make d...

AI & SEO

Why is Google filtering Google Trends data and how does it impact your SEO monitoring strategy?

Daniel Waisberg Jul 31, 2024 ★★

Google excludes from Google Trends terms searched by very few people as well as searches repeated by the same person over a short period. This data cleaning removes noise and ensures user privacy.

Domain Age & History AI & SEO Web Performance

Does Google Trends really aggregate all keyword variants together, or does it treat them separately?

Daniel Waisberg Jul 31, 2024 ★★

Topics in Google Trends group together the exact term, misspellings, acronyms, and all languages related to an entity. This provides a complete view of interest in a concept without being restricted to a single spelling or language.

AI & SEO International SEO

Should You Avoid Noindex on Pages That Contain Important Links?

John Mueller Jul 30, 2024 ★★★

In the July 2024 SEO Office Hours episode, John Mueller explained that blocking a page from crawling suggests that internal or external links present on the page are not relevant. "You can block the indexing of pages you don't want to appear, that's ...

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

Can rapid content growth make Google treat your site as brand new?

John Mueller Jul 30, 2024 ★★★

John Mueller warned that exponential content growth can trigger a site reassessment by Google, treating it as a new site. A significant increase, such as going from 10,000 to 100,000 products, can prompt Google to reevaluate how it displays the site.

Content E-commerce AI & SEO Local Search

Why Is Reddit Blocking Bing and Other Search Engines Except Google?

Google Jul 30, 2024 ★★

Microsoft confirmed that Reddit blocked Bing and other search engines by updating its robots.txt file on July 1, 2024. Microsoft respects this directive and no longer crawls the site. Reddit specified that this blocking is not related to its partners...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO PDF & Files Local Search

Should You Really Trust AI for Your SEO Strategy?

John Mueller Jul 30, 2024 ★★★

Google's John Mueller advises against using language models (LLMs) for SEO advice, as they learn from potentially erroneous information. This remark was made in response to a contradictory suggestion from Google Gemini regarding the use of Google's d...

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

Should You Really Block the GoogleOther Crawler in Your Robots.txt?

Gary Illyes Jul 30, 2024 ★★★

Gary Illyes warned that blocking the GoogleOther bot could affect various Google products and services, although it does not directly impact search results indexed by Googlebot. GoogleOther is used for internal research and development, and includes ...

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

Does your URL structure really affect how hreflang works on Google?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★★★

From an SEO perspective, the URL structure you choose (subdirectories, subdomains, or separate domains) makes no difference to hreflang. All configurations work equivalently for Google Search.

AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Pagination & Structure International SEO

Are ccTLDs really losing their SEO weight for geographic targeting?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★★★

Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) like .de and .ai are losing their reliability as geographic targeting signals. Google previously applied a slight boost for ccTLDs matching the user's country, but this signal is becoming obsolete because these...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Domain Name International SEO

Can Google really target geography at the individual page level?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★★

Google can determine geographic targeting at the level of each individual page, not just at the entire site level. A specific section or page can be identified as targeting a particular country even if the rest of the site is global.

Domain Age & History

Should you really ignore the HTML lang attribute for multilingual SEO?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★★★

Google does not use the lang attribute of HTML tags to determine a page's language because this signal has proven historically unreliable. Many CMS platforms — such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla — have long set this attribute statically, often har...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO International SEO

Will Google finally automate hreflang tag detection?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★★

Google wants to reduce manual annotations and automatically learn hreflang relationships between pages. Systems capable of automatically identifying linguistic versions of the same content have existed for nearly 10 years and could replace manual ann...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO International SEO

Should you really worry about hreflang if only 9% of websites actually use it?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★

According to the 2022 Web Almanac, only 9% of crawled homepage pages use hreflang. This figure shows that relatively few sites actually require this annotation compared to the entire web.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing Search Console International SEO

Should you abandon hreflang in sitemaps and switch to HTML or HTTP headers instead?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★★

Hreflang implemented in HTTP headers or in HTML is processed faster than hreflang in an XML sitemap. Discovery via sitemap is not tied to a specific page and can take longer, whereas HTML/HTTP triggers immediate dependency verification.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO PDF & Files Search Console International SEO

Do you really need to include a self-referencing hreflang tag on every page?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★★

Although Google recommends including a self-referencing hreflang tag on each page, it is not strictly required technically. This recommendation exists for historical reasons related to rel=canonical and as an additional confirmation signal.

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

Why did Google discontinue its official hreflang validator tool?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★★

Google no longer provides an official hreflang validator. Previously offered validation tools were removed due to low utilization. Google now recommends third-party tools such as those from Aleyda Solis or Merkle.

AI & SEO International SEO

Why does Google trust hreflang more than the HTML lang attribute?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★★

Hreflang is considered more reliable than the HTML lang attribute because its implementation represents significant investment, particularly for large websites. This constraint incentivizes owners to guarantee the accuracy of their configuration.

AI & SEO International SEO

Does hreflang automatically trigger Google to crawl all your alternative URLs?

Gary Illyes Jul 25, 2024 ★★

When Google discovers an hreflang annotation, it triggers crawling of the alternative URLs mentioned to verify they belong to the same cluster of linguistic variations. This dependency verification is automatic.

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Images & Videos Domain Name International SEO