What does Google say about SEO? /
This category compiles all official Google statements regarding JavaScript and technical aspects of search engine optimization. Modern JavaScript frameworks (React, Angular, Vue.js) and web application architectures (SPA, SSR, CSR) present critical challenges for crawling and indexing. Google's guidance on JavaScript rendering, dynamic DOM manipulation, AJAX implementation, and API calls is essential for ensuring client-side content visibility. SEO professionals will find authoritative positions on implementation best practices, differences between server-side and client-side rendering, and recommendations for optimizing load times while guaranteeing content accessibility to search crawlers. Understanding data formats (JSON, XML) and their SEO implications completes this vital resource. These official declarations help prevent common technical implementation mistakes that can severely impact the search performance of modern websites and JavaScript-powered applications. Access to Google's verified positions on these technical matters enables practitioners to make informed architectural decisions and implement JavaScript solutions that maintain strong organic search visibility while delivering enhanced user experiences.
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★★★ Do You Really Need a Trailing Slash at the End of Your Homepage URL?
John Mueller answered a question on Twitter about the slash ("/") at the end of a website's domain name: is it implicitly taken into account or not? In other words, is the address https://www..com (wi...
John Mueller Dec 31, 2018
★★ Should You Really Ignore Negative SEO Like Google Recommends?
According to John Mueller, Negative SEO is a waste of time and this concept doesn't exist. When asked "How can we be safe from negative SEO?" on Twitter, John replied: "You can just ignore it."...
John Mueller Dec 24, 2018
★★★ Does Having Your Content Scraped Negatively Impact Your Google Rankings?
John Mueller indicated last week, again on Twitter, that having your content "scraped" (stolen, copied/pasted) by other websites is neither a quality criterion nor a relevance criterion for Google's a...
John Mueller Dec 17, 2018
★★★ Should You Abandon a Domain with a History of Spam or Hacking?
A webmaster asked John Mueller a question during a hangout about the historical value of a domain name that may have been used in the past for spam or hacking actions. Is there a reset - or something ...
John Mueller Nov 26, 2018
★★★★ Does Buying Your Domain Name for 10 Years Actually Improve Your SEO?
John Mueller explained on Twitter for the 1,458th time 🙂 that the purchase duration or expiration date of a domain name with a registrar is not a relevance criterion taken into account by the search e...
John Mueller Nov 26, 2018
★★★ Does Using the Same Google Account for Search Console and Analytics Hurt Your SEO?
John Mueller indicated on Reddit that having the same Google account (same login, same email address) for Search Console and Analytics across multiple sites, or using different accounts, has no impact...
John Mueller Nov 12, 2018
★★★ How Does Googlebot Actually Interpret Your Website's JavaScript?
Google's Martin Splitt indicated during a hangout that there was still a gap between how current browsers (example: Chrome version 70) parsed and displayed a web page and how Googlebot saw it (more li...
Martin Splitt Nov 05, 2018
★★★ How Does Google Actually Discover Your New Web Pages?
Gary Illyes indicated at the Pubcon event that the two main pathways Google considers for identifying new URLs to crawl are first the tracking of hyperlinks by its bots, and secondly XML Sitemap files...
Gary Illyes Oct 29, 2018
★★★ Why Does Google Take Several Weeks to Index Some Web Pages?
We know that the Google search engine no longer just reads the HTML code of pages in a basic way as it did years ago, but tries to analyze web pages as if they were displayed in a browser. This "rende...
Gary Illyes Oct 23, 2018
★★★ How Does Google Actually Decide Between Manual Penalties and Algorithmic Spam Filters?
John Mueller explained during a hangout that Google has always tended to favor algorithmic filters to fight spam, rather than manual actions. A manual action will only be imposed (as part of a group p...
John Mueller Oct 01, 2018
★★★ Should You Structure Your XML Sitemaps Differently Based on How You Submit Them to Google?
John Mueller explained during a hangout that if an XML Sitemap file was submitted via an anonymous ping, the URLs it contained had to be present in the directory (and subdirectories) of the Sitemap fi...
John Mueller Sep 17, 2018
★★ Do White Spaces on Web Pages Really Hurt Your SEO Rankings?
John Mueller explained during a hangout that white spaces (empty areas) on a web page, which may push textual content further down, do not pose specific SEO problems. Only ads that hinder content read...
John Mueller Sep 10, 2018
★★★ Does Google Really Ignore Links from .edu Domains?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that, "because of the misconception that .edu sites are better taken into account by Google," the search engine was ignoring tons of links coming from pages on this t...
John Mueller Sep 10, 2018
★★★ What really happens when a Google manual action expires without any fixes?
John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that manual actions do indeed expire at some point. However, if nothing has been done to fix the problem in the meantime, it could be picked up by a new part of the...
John Mueller Sep 10, 2018
★★★ Can JavaScript Actually Prevent Your Site from Being Indexed in Mobile First?
John Mueller explained during a hangout that sites using a lot of JavaScript might not be transitioned to the Mobile First index....
John Mueller Sep 10, 2018
★★★ Should You Really Exclude All Redirected URLs from Your XML Sitemap?
John Mueller has said it repeatedly in the past: when you create your XML Sitemap files, don't include any redirected URLs (301 or otherwise). He reiterated this on Twitter recently. Google uses this ...
John Mueller Sep 03, 2018
★★★ Can You Use the Same Image Multiple Times on Your Site Without an SEO Penalty?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that an image could appear identically (under the same filename or not) on the same site, or across several different sites, this posed no problem for Google, and tha...
John Mueller Aug 27, 2018
★★★ Should You Really Force Google to Crawl Faster During an HTTPS Migration?
Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that, in the case of an HTTPS migration, there was no reason to implement specific actions to obtain faster crawling from Google. The migration will be taken into acco...
Gary Illyes Aug 20, 2018
★★★ Does Google's URL Removal Tool Actually Delete Your Pages from the Index?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the "Remove URLs" tool in Search Console only hides the URL from search results. It will therefore continue to be crawled, analyzed, and indexed until the 90th d...
John Mueller Aug 13, 2018
★★ Are EMD (Exact Match Domain) Names Really Useless for SEO?
John Mueller provided several pieces of information in a hangout regarding the presence of keywords in domain names: keyword domain names (EMD for Exact Match Domain) do not perform better, according ...
John Mueller Aug 06, 2018
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