What does Google say about SEO? /
Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping search engine optimization and Google's algorithms. This category compiles Google's official statements regarding AI usage in search, including machine learning technologies, large language models (LLMs), and new generative search experiences like SGE and AI Overview. SEO practitioners will find Google's positions on how AI-generated content (ChatGPT, Gemini, Bard) impacts website rankings and organic visibility. Google has clarified its guidelines concerning artificial intelligence for content creation, distinguishing acceptable practices from manipulative techniques that violate search quality standards. Understanding these official declarations is crucial for adapting SEO strategies to algorithmic evolutions, particularly with the increasing integration of machine learning into ranking systems. This category also covers the impact of AI-generated answers in SERPs, E-E-A-T quality criteria applied to AI-assisted content, and recommendations for maintaining organic search presence in the era of generative search. Essential insights include how Google evaluates content quality regardless of production method, focusing on helpfulness and user value rather than creation process. A must-follow resource for staying ahead in modern search engine optimization.
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★★ Can removing pages from a sitemap actually limit their crawling by Google?
Sitemaps help Google crawl better, but do not limit what is crawled. Removing pages from a sitemap does not prevent Google from crawling or indexing them. Google crawls the site normally even without ...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★ Why does Google sometimes index your AMP pages before their canonical HTML version?
Google may sometimes discover and index an AMP page before its canonical HTML version, especially if links point directly to the AMP. Once the HTML page is crawled, Google connects the two versions an...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Why do your desktop images and videos become invisible to Google in mobile-first?
With mobile-first indexing, if images or videos are very visible on desktop but tiny or at the bottom of the page on mobile, they are less likely to appear in image and video search results. Visual co...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Should you include all your pages in a general sitemap?
General sitemaps must include all your pages. News sitemaps are limited to the last 1000 articles and are specifically meant for Google News, but can be used by any website. Including all URLs in a si...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Does geotargeting really depend solely on ccTLD and Search Console?
For geotargeting, Google mainly uses the geographic top-level domain (ccTLD) or the geotargeting setting in Search Console. Links and the server's IP address are only used when Google lacks clear info...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Does Google really estimate the Core Web Vitals of low-traffic sites?
For sites lacking sufficient traffic in the Chrome User Experience Report, Google cannot display Core Web Vitals data in Search Console. However, the site will not be excluded from search results: Goo...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Should you really use unavailable_after to manage temporary content?
To control which pages remain indexed, use the noindex meta tag on pages that you no longer want to index. For temporary content like events, use the unavailable_after tag to tell Google when a page w...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Should we really disregard spammy automated backlinks?
Google automatically ignores spammy links that are created en masse by scripts. Google's algorithms are used to seeing this type of manipulation (thousands of automatically generated links) and comple...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Do pop-ups after a 301 redirect really harm your SEO?
Displaying an informative pop-up after a 301 redirect to inform users that they have been redirected does not affect SEO. Google follows the redirect without sending a referrer and likely will never e...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Does user-generated content really expose your site's SEO liability?
If you publish user-generated content (UGC) on your site, Google considers it to be content you have chosen to publish. It is not necessary to use rel=UGC, but if the content is of low quality, it's u...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Does structured data really influence rankings on Google?
Adding additional types of structured data (such as online schema) does not change page rankings. It provides more information to Google and can generate different rich results, but it does not affect...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Are Core Web Vitals truly a ranking factor or just smoke and mirrors?
In June 2020, Core Web Vitals are not yet a ranking factor. Google announced that it would give approximately six months' notice before using them. The position changes observed at the announcement da...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Why hasn't your site been migrated to mobile-first indexing yet?
Google has been notifying sites about significant problems detected ahead of the mobile-first indexing migration for quite some time. The remaining unmigrated sites are mainly either sites with no mai...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Why does Google only crawl a fraction of your known pages?
Google has only crawled a portion of known URLs from a site since its inception. If Google crawls 20,000 pages out of 100,000 known (via sitemap), only those 20,000 can be indexed. This number increas...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Should you really keep the canonical from desktop to mobile in mobile-first indexing?
For sites with separate mobile URLs (m.example.com), even after the switch to mobile-first indexing, you must continue to set the rel canonical from the mobile version to the desktop version and the r...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Core Web Vitals: Why do your laboratory tests fail to impact your ranking?
Google uses field data from the Chrome User Experience Report for ranking, not laboratory data. Testing tools (extension, PageSpeed Insights in lab mode) are useful for testing and seeing the immediat...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Should you really limit the number of HTTP resources per page for SEO?
Google does not impose a strict limit on the number of HTTP resources per page. Fewer resources are generally better to reduce the risks of loading failures, but you must be reasonable: putting everyt...
Martin Splitt Jun 11, 2020
★★ How can you unlock a blank page in Google using the bissection method?
To identify the cause of an empty page in the HTML render, use the bissection method: compare versions of the code between a working version and a broken version, gradually narrowing down the interval...
Martin Splitt Jun 11, 2020
★★ Does a noindex header on an API really stop Googlebot from rendering the page?
A robots noindex header on an API endpoint should not prevent Googlebot from calling it to obtain the data necessary for rendering. The noindex header differs from robots.txt blocking and only pertain...
Martin Splitt Jun 11, 2020
★★★ Should you really hide user comments from Google?
User comments visible in the rendered HTML do not need to be hidden from Google. Google is capable of identifying user-generated content, and it neither benefits nor harms SEO. Trying to hide them may...
Martin Splitt Jun 11, 2020
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