What does Google say about SEO? /
This category compiles official Google statements regarding Google Discover and Google News, two critical content distribution platforms for publishers. Google Discover has emerged as a significant traffic source, operating on a personalized recommendation model without user queries. Official Google positions on these topics are vital for understanding content selection criteria, eligibility factors, and necessary technical optimizations. SEO professionals will find guidance on E-E-A-T quality requirements, technical specifications including structured data markup, AMP formats, and editorial policy compliance. Google News maintains strict inclusion standards, while Discover prioritizes engagement metrics and contextual relevance. Mastering these official guidelines enables publishers to optimize visibility within these feeds, maximize referral traffic, and align content strategies with recommendation algorithms. These declarations also illuminate algorithm updates specific to these platforms and evolving journalistic standards expected by Google. Understanding the nuances between these two services helps publishers differentiate their optimization approaches and capitalize on opportunities for increased content distribution beyond traditional search results.
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★★ Do News sitemaps really accelerate the indexing of your news articles?
News sitemaps allow for faster crawling only if Google is already trying to quickly index the content of a news site. Putting content into a News sitemap does not speed up indexing if Google is not al...
John Mueller Apr 01, 2021
★★ Does fact-check markup really enhance your page rankings?
Fact-checking tags or fact-check articles are rich results that alter the presentation in search results, but they do not constitute a direct ranking signal. Simply having this markup will not improve...
John Mueller Apr 01, 2021
★★★ Do News sitemaps really speed up the indexing of your content?
News sitemaps (limited to 1000 URLs) help Google index content from sites already identified as news sources more quickly. However, using a News sitemap will not speed up indexing if Google is not alr...
John Mueller Apr 01, 2021
★★ Should you really enable automatic updates for prices and stock in Merchant Center?
You can enable automatic item updates to refresh availability and pricing data in Google Merchant Center instead of marking them as discrepancies when your site is updated more frequently than Merchan...
Alan Kent Mar 23, 2021
★★★ Will Core Web Vitals Really Revolutionize SERP Rankings?
Danny Sullivan explained on Twitter that Core Web Vitals, which will be launched next May, should not fundamentally change the game in the SERPs. He indicated that their impact will likely be very min...
Danny Sullivan Mar 01, 2021
★★ Do we really need to mark up article reviewers for SEO?
There is no dedicated structured markup for article supervisors/reviewers. The 'editor' schema can be used broadly, but Google does not use this data for display. The visible display is sufficient....
Google Feb 25, 2021
★★★ Does Adding an Audio Version to Your Article Actually Boost SEO?
John Mueller explained during a webmaster hangout that offering an audio version of an article initially displayed in text format does not provide any SEO bonus to the latter. He also added that the a...
John Mueller Feb 22, 2021
★★ Does Google really prioritize original content over syndicated versions?
Google attempts to recognize situations where exactly the same article is republished and handle that accordingly in search by potentially showing the original. But there are many cases where Google c...
John Mueller Feb 19, 2021
★★★ Does the length of an article really influence its Google ranking?
For web search, Google doesn't care about the length of articles. Don't focus so much on the length of the article, but rather on whether you want it to be indexed or not. Short articles are perfectly...
John Mueller Feb 19, 2021
★★ Does Google really prioritize geolocation for ranking syndicated content?
When Google recognizes that people are searching for text included in many articles, it tries to select the one that is most relevant for the user. If Google identifies that certain pages or sites are...
John Mueller Feb 19, 2021
★★ Are tags and categories really useless for SEO?
Blog tags and categories have no magical impact on rankings. They're just links that create additional pages (category or tag pages) that can be indexed and allow for discovering other articles throug...
John Mueller Feb 12, 2021
★★★ Why does Google only index a tiny fraction of your pages?
Google does not guarantee the indexing of all pages on every website. For most sites, only a small portion of the total content is indexed. It is normal for a site with 600 articles to have only 100 t...
John Mueller Feb 12, 2021
★★★ Should you really enable max-image-preview:large to get featured in Discover?
For large image previews, images must be of appropriate size and the feature must be enabled either with the max-image-preview:large robots meta tag or by using AMP....
John Mueller Feb 10, 2021
★★ Can your images really drive traffic through Google Discover?
Image previews can be displayed in Google Discover, allowing users to explore content on topics of interest. A relevant preview image may be shown for your pages....
John Mueller Feb 10, 2021
★★★ Why does Google Discover traffic drop off overnight without warning?
Google Discover traffic tends to be highly variable, going from a lot to zero quickly. The algorithms can decide that it's relevant to show a site in Discover and then suddenly stop. This is not relat...
John Mueller Feb 05, 2021
★★★ Why does Google Discover traffic seem to vanish overnight?
Traffic from Google Discover can be highly volatile, quickly shifting from a significant amount to zero. Google's algorithms determine whether content should appear in Discover. This is not tied to a ...
John Mueller Feb 05, 2021
★★★ Should You Avoid Publishing a Video and Its Transcript on Your Site for Fear of Duplicate Content?
John Mueller also explained in a webmaster hangout that the definition of "duplicate content" does not apply to content available on one side in text form on a web page and on the other side in a vide...
John Mueller Feb 01, 2021
★★★ Do Google Updates Really Impact Google Discover?
John Mueller explained during a webmaster hangout that when the search engine implements an update to its algorithm, it also affects the Discover feature on mobile, which is an integral part of the se...
John Mueller Feb 01, 2021
★★★ Are Press Relations Really Compliant with Google's Link Building Guidelines?
John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that conducting quality Press Relations to obtain links is not a problem—quite the contrary: "I love some of the things I see in public relations, it's a shame they...
John Mueller Feb 01, 2021
★★★ Does Google really analyze video content to detect duplication with articles?
Google does not perform textual analysis of videos to compare them to blog articles. A video and an article with the same content are considered different formats addressing different user intents....
John Mueller Jan 22, 2021
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