What does Google say about SEO?

Should we abandon traditional position tracking in SEO?

John Mueller Sep 16, 2026 ★★★

John Mueller responded on Reddit to questions about how impressions are counted for generative AI results in Search Console. Google already has a help document on the subject, but John Mueller admits that it's quite a dense document. His main message...

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Is it true that programmatic SEO is incompatible with quality content?

John Mueller Sep 08, 2026 ★★★

In a response published on Bluesky, John Mueller warns against programmatic SEO. According to him, this practice can lead the site to be perceived as spam or nearly so, or of low quality. To recall, programmatic SEO involves automatically generating ...

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Should you really clean up outdated links on your site?

John Mueller Sep 01, 2026 ★★★

On Reddit, John Mueller responded to a question about old outgoing links pointing to a site that has changed ownership and now hosts dubious content. His answer: Google does not penalize this type of links ("the web is full of turbulence"), although ...

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Does Google really launch its SEO updates before officially announcing them?

John Mueller Aug 25, 2026 ★★

John Mueller reiterated a position that has been stated numerous times in the past: Google never announces an update late. The announcement comes almost simultaneously with the actual deployment. Why do some people doubt this? Because volatility ofte...

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Why does Google show hreflang URLs marked as ‘not indexed’ in search results?

Gary Illyes Aug 18, 2026 ★★★

Gary Illyes (Google) clarified how alternative hreflang URLs work during canonicalization, following a question posed on LinkedIn by Faiez Javaid. The initial question was: If Google selects a single /lang/ URL as canonical and shows the others as "n...

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Does Googlebot send other HTTP requests besides GET and POST on your site?

Gary Illyes Aug 11, 2026 ★★★

Gary Illyes confirmed on LinkedIn that Google's crawlers do not only send HTTP GET and POST requests, but also HEAD, OPTIONS, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE requests, in response to several questions received on this issue in recent weeks. Also read, Google ...

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What should you do when your SEO metadata contradicts itself?

John Mueller Aug 04, 2026 ★★★

On Bluesky, John Mueller responded to a user who reported that a product page displayed 'out of stock' while the server HTML and structured data indicated 'available'. John Mueller advises against having contradictory metadata because it 'complicates...

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Are Internal Search Results Draining Your Crawl Budget?

John Mueller Jul 30, 2026 ★★★

Internal search results pages can lead Googlebot to crawl an infinite number of URLs, wasting the site's crawl budget and potentially overloading your server.

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Should you really block internal search result pages with robots.txt?

John Mueller Jul 30, 2026 ★★★

It is advised to block internal search result pages with a robots.txt file to prevent an infinite number of crawlable URLs by Google.

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Is it really necessary to replace robots.txt with noindex to block internal search results pages?

John Mueller Jul 30, 2026 ★★★

Another option is to use the noindex tag to prevent the indexing of search results pages while allowing Google to explore them.

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Does the Search Console removal tool really block Google from crawling your pages?

John Mueller Jul 30, 2026 ★★★

The Search Console removal tool does not prevent pages from being crawled; it only removes them from search results. It is not a solution for managing search result pages.

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Are internal search result pages still considered spam by Google?

John Mueller Jul 30, 2026 ★★★

Internal search result pages were previously considered automatically generated content and should be blocked, although this is no longer stated in current policies.

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Can internal search results truly harm your Google ranking?

John Mueller Jul 30, 2026 ★★★

If search result pages contain irrelevant terms, they could be perceived as an attempt to manipulate Google’s ranking system, which could affect the overall quality of the site.

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Why does Google ignore your robots.txt rules even when they explicitly disallow access?

John Mueller Jul 28, 2026 ★★★

A Reddit user was managing a Shopify client whose internal search bar was being exploited by spam: spammer requests were generating search result URLs pointing to third-party sites. The client had blocked /search via disallow in the robots.txt, but G...

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Should you hide an HTML link to optimize the anchor text that Google considers?

John Mueller Jul 21, 2026 ★★★

On Reddit, a user explained that he had a homepage containing two links to the same services page: a prominently visible 'Services' button at the top, and a second link in a FAQ section lower down, whose anchor is better formulated for SEO. To make t...

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Should you stop using the indexing report as a checklist?

Martin Splitt Jul 16, 2026 ★★★

The indexing report should be used to spot trends or unexpected changes, rather than as an inventory check. This helps to quickly identify potential technical or configuration issues.

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Should you really be worried about 404 errors in Search Console?

John Mueller Jul 16, 2026 ★★★

The 404 errors reported in Google Search Console are often expected when pages are deleted. It is not always a red flag and should not be viewed as detrimental to a site's ranking.

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Should you really click 'Marked as Fixed' in the Search Console?

John Mueller Jul 16, 2026 ★★★

The 'Marked as Fixed' button should be used when significant corrections have been made to errors such as 404s due to incorrect server configurations. This indicates to Google that these pages need re-evaluation.

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Do you really need to index all your pages to rank effectively?

Martin Splitt Jul 16, 2026 ★★★

There is no optimal ratio between indexed and non-indexed pages. A site can function well even if many pages are not indexed, as long as the core content is well-represented in the index.

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Should you really fix every issue reported in the index coverage report?

John Mueller Jul 16, 2026 ★★★

It is incorrect to treat the index coverage report as a simple list of things to "fix." This report should be used to detect unexpected patterns and not as a static inventory of pages to correct.

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