What does Google say about SEO?

Why Doesn't the Author Info Location Affect SEO Rankings?

Google Mar 28, 2024 ★★

When it comes to indicating the author of a piece of content, it's not about a technical element or the precise positioning of components on the page. What matters is the content itself and the unique expertise, not the exact location of the link to ...

Domain Age & History Content Links & Backlinks

How does Google decide if a video is the main content of a page?

Google Mar 28, 2024 ★★★

Google only indexes in video mode pages where the video is the main content. Videos are not considered main if they are found in blog articles that complement the text, additional videos on product pages, or pages listing multiple category videos.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing Discover & News E-commerce AI & SEO

Can You Actually Publish Content at Scale Without Risking a Google Penalty?

John Mueller Mar 26, 2024 ★★★

On X, John Mueller clarified that publishing content at scale is not considered spam by Google, as long as the content in question meets quality standards. In the past, Google had already indicated that there was no problem with publishing thousands ...

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Should You Worry About SEO Impact When Switching from www to non-www URLs?

John Mueller Mar 26, 2024 ★★

On Reddit, John Mueller explained that changing a site's canonical URLs from www to its non-www version doesn't have a major impact on the site's ranking in search results. However, he specified that such a change could cause a slight temporary fluct...

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Should You Still Worry About Toxic Backlinks in 2024?

John Mueller Mar 26, 2024 ★★★

On Reddit, John Mueller responded to a question about the impact of unwanted backlinks on a site's ranking. He advised his interlocutor not to worry excessively, as Google's systems are designed to ignore this type of links, and do so with considerab...

Content AI & SEO Links & Backlinks

Should you use the noindex directive in your robots.txt file?

John Mueller Mar 26, 2024 ★★★

On LinkedIn, John Mueller revealed that there had been internal discussions at Google about the possibility of supporting the noindex: directive in the robots.txt file. This option had been considered to allow site owners to block both crawling and i...

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Should You Show Google the Same Content in Every Country to Get Properly Indexed?

John Mueller Mar 26, 2024 ★★★

On Reddit, John Mueller explained that presenting different content, in this case sidebars, depending on the user's country had no negative effect in terms of SEO: "Google most often crawls from a single location – and that's the content that will be...

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

What exactly is a web crawler and why does Google insist on this definition?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★

A crawler is software that retrieves information and resources from websites. For a search engine to index and rank content, it must first retrieve it using a crawler.

Content Crawl & Indexing

Is Googlebot really just crawling without making any indexing decisions?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★★

Googlebot is solely responsible for retrieving pages. It makes no decisions regarding indexation. Its only function is to fetch the content.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing

How does Googlebot actually crawl your web pages?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★★

Googlebot is composed of three distinct systems: the fetcher that retrieves pages, a controller that merges links discovered in HTML with those from sitemaps, and a scheduler that orchestrates when and what to crawl.

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Does your crawl budget really depend on Search demand?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★★

The crawl limit is not controlled solely by Search, but also by other Google services. If Search demand decreases, the crawl limit decreases as well. To increase crawl, you must convince Search that your content is worth fetching.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Does crawl budget really exist at Google?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★

Internally at Google, they don't think in terms of crawl budget. This concept was created in the documentation to explain to people that there are finite resources and limits to what can be crawled.

Crawl & Indexing PDF & Files

Should you block certain pages from Google crawl to optimize your crawl budget?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★★

Google should not crawl all pages of a website. Certain pages such as shopping carts or hyper-filtered product pages are not useful as entry points from search results, even if they are useful for users already on the site.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing E-commerce AI & SEO

Is Google really running out of storage space to index your content?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★★

Google must manage what gets put into the index and what gets excluded from it. Often, exclusion isn't due to low content quality, but simply because there's no more available storage space.

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Does linking from your homepage really accelerate the crawl of your new pages?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★★

The homepage is almost always the most important page of a site for Google. Creating links from the homepage to new important pages tells Google that it should crawl these pages earlier.

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

Why does Google restrict the Indexing API to specific use cases instead of making it universally available?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★

The Indexing API is not designed to be used at large scale for all types of content. It is limited to certain use cases because it is not scalable and remains proprietary, unlike open protocols.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO

Does improving content quality really trigger Google to crawl your site more frequently?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★★

Scheduling is highly dynamic. As soon as signals indicate that content quality has improved across multiple URLs, Google begins increasing crawl demand. This happens quickly, but not instantaneously.

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Does removing your low-quality pages really boost your crawl budget and rankings?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★★

There are numerous case studies where sites removed low-quality sections and saw their crawl improve. If it's a relatively large section of the site that consists of low-quality content, improving it will likely help significantly.

Content Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Can the URL inspection tool really speed up the indexing of your improvements?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★

If you've improved the quality of a few pages and aren't seeing any effect on crawling, you can use the inspection tool in Search Console to submit these URLs to the index and see what happens.

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Are natural links really more important than sitemaps for URL discovery?

Gary Illyes Mar 14, 2024 ★★★

For discovery purposes, natural links are more important than a sitemap. A natural link not only indicates that a URL exists, but also signals that it's important to crawl it faster by providing context about what can be found.

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