What does Google say about SEO?

Does Google Really Limit How Much Traffic It Sends to Your Site?

John Mueller Jan 02, 2017 ★★★

John Mueller indicated on a forum that Google does not limit the traffic sent to a website. In other words, it doesn't stop displaying a link in its search results if it believes the traffic generated to that site from the SERPs is sufficient. One wo...

Content Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Should You Use Google's URL Removal Tool During a Site Migration?

John Mueller Jan 02, 2017 ★★★

The end of the year was, it seems, prolific in somewhat bizarre questions from webmasters, as one user asked on a forum whether the URL removal option in Search Console could help during a site migration with URL changes. John Mueller logically answe...

Content AI & SEO Domain Name Redirects Search Console

Should You Really Optimize Your Mobile and Desktop Sites Differently in 2017?

John Mueller Jan 02, 2017 ★★★

John Mueller indicated that it was important in 2017 to ensure that mobile site optimization was as good as desktop site optimization. This was in the context of the Mobile First index launch, logically expected during the second quarter of that year...

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Mobile SEO

Does Wikipedia Really Get Special Treatment in Google Rankings?

Gary Illyes Dec 26, 2016 ★★

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that Wikipedia does not benefit from any "preferential treatment" and that it is ranked by Google's algorithms like any other website...

Algorithms AI & SEO Social Media

Can You Really Rank on Google by Copying Your Competitors' SEO Strategies?

John Mueller Dec 26, 2016 ★★★

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that there is no universal recipe for ranking well on Google, due to the hundreds of criteria taken into account by the algorithm. Copying what a competitor site does may therefore very well not work at all! We total...

Algorithms Content AI & SEO Social Media

How Much Longer Until Search Console Offers a Full Year of Historical Data?

John Mueller Dec 26, 2016 ★★★

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that the engineering team working on Search Console features has been working for a long time on providing a full year of data history instead of the current 90 days, but that this involves many changes, particular...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Search Console

Do You Really Need Outbound Links to Avoid a Google Penalty?

John Mueller Dec 26, 2016 ★★

John Mueller indicated on a webmaster help forum that Google does not give a "penalty" or negative score to a site that has no external links to other sites. This would therefore be a myth...

Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Does the Order of H1, H2, H3 Tags Really Impact Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller Dec 19, 2016 ★★★

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that the placement of H1, H2... H6 tags in the source code doesn't matter. The H2 can come before the H1, for example, it doesn't matter. This will have no impact on the page's ranking. Just like having two H1s (wh...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO

Does the Google Sandbox Really Exist or Is It Just an SEO Myth?

Gary Illyes Dec 19, 2016 ★★★

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that the notion of "Sandbox" (a penalty affecting a recent site, particularly for gaining links too quickly at its inception) does not exist. It would therefore appear to be a myth. At least nowadays. We are quite inc...

Domain Age & History AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Links & Backlinks Social Media

How Can You Actually Know for Sure If Your Site Is Penalized by Google?

John Mueller Dec 19, 2016 ★★★

Let's continue with penalties with an obvious point reminded by John Mueller in a hangout: only the owner of a site can know if it is penalized as part of a manual action (through Search Console in particular). Certain tools - not belonging to Google...

Algorithms Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Penalties & Spam Search Console

Is Google Really Going to Block Scraping and How Will This Impact Your SEO Tools?

John Mueller Dec 19, 2016 ★★

John Mueller and Gary Illyes recently reminded us on Twitter that "scraping" (copying/pasting) Google's search results using automated tools, sending queries to the search engine via software, was against the guidelines. Could action be coming soon? ...

Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Social Media

Can Rich Snippets Actually Trigger a Google Penalty on Your Site?

Google Dec 19, 2016 ★★

Google indicated in a hangout that certain sites were penalized for actions that didn't comply with rich snippet guidelines. And that all spam reports on this topic were being read. If clear manipulations were detected, the site was penalized...

Structured Data AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Penalties & Spam

Should You Really Worry About Crawl Budget for Your Site's SEO?

John Mueller Dec 12, 2016 ★★

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that the notion of "crawl budget" (time allocated to Googlebot to crawl a site) was very often misunderstood or misanalyzed by webmasters and SEOs. Overall, according to him, there's no need to worry about this poi...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Should You Change Your URLs During an HTTPS Migration or Prioritize Fast Indexing?

John Mueller Dec 12, 2016 ★★★

John Mueller himself explained that it's not necessarily a good idea to take advantage of an HTTP to HTTPS migration to change URL slugs (to insert more keywords, for example), because the switch to HTTPS is processed very quickly by Google if the UR...

Domain Age & History Content HTTPS & Security AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Redirects

Can You Really Trust Google's Official SEO Statements?

John Mueller Dec 12, 2016 ★★

Gary Illyes recently indicated that he wasn't lying. John Mueller, for his part, reiterated that the notion of Google not telling the truth to webmasters was a myth and that they could definitely trust them. For our part, we quite agree with that: Go...

Content AI & SEO

Are EMDs Still a Risk for Your SEO in 2024?

Gary Illyes Dec 05, 2016 ★

Gary Illyes indicated last week that he was on the hunt for "spammy" Exact Match Domain (EMD) names. He also explained that EMDs themselves are not problematic, but rather their combination with other spammy techniques that could penalize a site. In ...

Content AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Domain Name Penalties & Spam

What's the Ideal Page Load Time for Google SEO Rankings?

John Mueller Dec 05, 2016 ★★

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that an interesting metric for average page display time on a website was to keep this figure below 2 to 3 seconds, using the WebPageTest tool. For our part, we most often work from the following basis: "as fast as p...

Domain Age & History Content AI & SEO Images & Videos JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance Social Media

Does the Noindex Tag Really Save Google Crawl Budget?

John Mueller Dec 05, 2016 ★★★

An obvious point but reminded by John Mueller on Twitter: implementing a meta robots "noindex" tag will not save "crawl budget" (time allocated to Googlebot to crawl your site) since, to read this tag, the robot must crawl the source code. It is gene...

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Social Media

How Can You Prepare for Google's Mobile First Index Rollout?

Gary Illyes Nov 28, 2016 ★★★

Regarding the "Mobile First" index, about which very little is currently known, Gary Illyes confirmed that more information for webmasters will be made available in due course (certainly when the project is more advanced, or even close to being launc...

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Mobile SEO

Is the Google Cache Date Really Reliable for Measuring Your Pages' Crawl Frequency?

John Mueller Nov 28, 2016 ★

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the date displayed when viewing a page's cached version (for example, using the "cache:" syntax) is not necessarily representative of either the page's crawl frequency by Googlebot or the date of its last crawl....

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Web Performance Social Media