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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★★ How Does Google Really Decide When to Tell Us About Search Outages?
In the latest episode of the Search Off The Record podcast, Gary Illyes and John Mueller explained how Google manages communication around incidents affecting crawl and indexing. The Site Reliability ...
Gary Illyes Jun 11, 2024
★★★ Can a Few Problematic Pages Really Penalize an Entire Website?
On Reddit, John Mueller clarified that it was unlikely that ten problematic pages (out of 20,000 pages), affected by the HCU or reputation abuse, could cause a ranking penalty across an entire site. A...
John Mueller Jun 11, 2024
★★★ Are White Label Coupon Sites Doomed by Google's Latest Crackdown?
Google has indicated that white label coupon and discount sites, primarily used to manipulate search rankings, may be penalized for site reputation abuse. However, sites that demonstrate transparency ...
Google Jun 11, 2024
★★ Why does Google keep incidents 'open' on its status dashboard even after they're resolved?
For certain critical incidents, Google maintains the open status even after visible problem mitigation, rather than closing it immediately. This prevents having to reopen the incident if the system re...
Gary Illyes Jun 06, 2024
★★★ Is Google really deleting 7% of its video index and how can you avoid being part of it?
Google has begun indexing more short videos, which required freeing up space in the video index. To do this, Google removed underperforming videos from its index, resulting in approximately a 7% reduc...
Gary Illyes Jun 06, 2024
★★★ Why isn't Google crawling your site as frequently as you'd like?
Some issues perceived by site owners as malfunctions are actually intentional. For example, if Google doesn't crawl a site as frequently as the owner wishes, it's not a bug but an algorithmic decision...
Gary Illyes Jun 06, 2024
★★ Why does Google rely on pre-approved message templates during technical incidents?
To communicate quickly during incidents, Google uses templated messages pre-approved by legal and public relations teams. This allows the company to publish updates to its status dashboard without hav...
Gary Illyes Jun 06, 2024
★★ Should you worry about Google's minor technical incidents?
Historically, incidents classified as 'minor' internally at Google have never warranted external communication. These incidents involve isolated technical issues like a server running out of RAM or a ...
Gary Illyes Jun 06, 2024
★★ Will Google finally start sharing good news about its search engine?
Google is considering expanding the use of its status dashboard to include positive informational updates, such as indexing improvements or processing speed increases. Currently, the majority of commu...
Gary Illyes Jun 06, 2024
★★ Why Are Google's Search Experiments Causing Unexpected Incidents in Your Rankings?
Frequently, incidents are caused by experiments (tests) that interact poorly with each other or have unintended side effects. When an alert triggers, the SRE team can identify a faulty experiment and ...
Gary Illyes Jun 06, 2024
★★★ Why do indexing incidents cripple news sites so severely?
During an indexing incident in February 2024, search results became outdated and Google struggled to index new content. This particularly affected news portals that couldn't reach their users, and use...
Gary Illyes Jun 06, 2024
★★ Does Google Really Welcome Constructive Criticism from SEO Professionals?
No, Google is not upset by those who share constructive feedback about its search results. Danny Sullivan has indeed stated that complaints and feedback represent opportunities for improvement. He eve...
Danny Sullivan Jun 04, 2024
★★★ Why Doesn't Reporting Spam to Google Directly Penalize Targeted Sites?
On X, Danny Sullivan clarified that spam reports received do not lead to direct action against the reported sites. Instead, these reports help improve Google's spam detection systems, which can then t...
Danny Sullivan Jun 04, 2024
★★ Does having separate URLs for mobile and desktop really hurt your images?
When a site uses different URLs for mobile and desktop with different image URLs, the transition to Mobile-First Indexing may cause a temporary loss of traffic to images....
Google May 30, 2024
★★★ Why is the removal tool unsuitable for canonicalization?
The removal tool should never be used for the canonicalization of URLs. For instance, during an HTTPS migration, removing the HTTP versions via this tool will also delete all other versions of the sit...
Google May 30, 2024
★★★ Why doesn't domain type impact site reputation abuse?
Site Reputation Abuse refers to the publishing of third-party content without oversight from the main owner, regardless of the type of domain used (.co.jp or otherwise). It’s not about the domain, but...
Google May 30, 2024
★★★ Did you know that Google removes multiple versions of a URL at once?
When a single URL removal request is submitted, Google automatically deletes 4 versions of the URL: with/without www and http/https. This multiple deletion can be unintentional for the site owner....
Google May 30, 2024
★★ Why are ranking fluctuations a normal part of SEO?
Rankings are never completely stable. Positions can rise and fall regularly even in the absence of bugs or technical issues. This is a normal behavior of the algorithm....
Google May 30, 2024
★★ How can you regain Google's trust using lastmod tags?
If lastmod in the XML sitemap has been used incorrectly (fake dates to force crawling), Google will recognize it and ignore it. However, if the lastmod becomes accurate again, Google will eventually t...
Google May 30, 2024
★★★ What are the risks of blocking images in robots.txt for your SEO?
Blocking the indexing of images via robots.txt or HTTP headers stops Google from crawling the site and accessing structured data. This prevents the display of images in image search AND thumbnails in ...
Google May 30, 2024
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