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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★★★ How Can You Optimize Internal Link Anchors to Supercharge Your SEO?
John Mueller reminded us in a hangout that using descriptive anchors (link texts) is not only important for external backlinks. This is also critical for internal linking (crosslinking). When creating...
John Mueller Nov 06, 2017
★★★ Should You Delete or Improve Low-Quality Content on Your Website?
John Mueller discussed in a recent hangout the approach to take when you have content considered low-quality on your site. According to him (and Gary Illyes as well, who often talks about it), the bes...
John Mueller Nov 06, 2017
★★★ How Can You Get Google to Index a New Page Quickly?
John Mueller shared an interesting tip on Twitter: if you want to quickly submit a new page to Google or resubmit an updated version, don't hesitate to use the Search Console and its "Crawl > Fetch as...
John Mueller Nov 06, 2017
★★★ Should You Delete Old Content from Your Website to Improve SEO?
Gary Illyes indicated at an SEO event that it was unfortunate, in his opinion, to delete content on news sites solely on the grounds that it was "old" and therefore "obsolete". According to Gary, old ...
Gary Illyes Oct 30, 2017
★★★ How Does Google Really Index Hidden Content in Tabs with Mobile First?
John Mueller confirmed during a hangout that content inside a tab would indeed be taken into account, within the Mobile First index framework, with the same weight as content visible by default. Howev...
John Mueller Oct 30, 2017
★★★ Why Do Sites Ranking Well in France Often Struggle in Other Countries?
John Mueller indicated in a hangout that the situation, for a given site and an identical query, can be very different depending on the target country. For example, a site that ranks well for a keywor...
John Mueller Oct 16, 2017
★★★ How Many Hreflang Tags Can You Really Add to a Page Without Getting Penalized?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that there is no theoretical limit to the number of Hreflang tags integrated into HTML code. And that if you have many sites, targeting many countries, using an XML S...
John Mueller Oct 16, 2017
★★ Has Google Really Made HTTPS Migration Instantaneous?
Gary Illyes indicated, again at the Brighton SEO conference, that during a migration from HTTP to HTTPS, there should now be virtually no transition period (and therefore no drop) in a site's rankings...
Gary Illyes Sep 25, 2017
★★ Does Google Really Use Disavow Files to Identify Spammy Websites?
Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that the disavow file is solely used by Google to ignore certain links (those designated by the file) but that it does not use this data for other purposes, such as de...
Gary Illyes Sep 25, 2017
★★ Is Reporting Spammy Sites to Google Still Worth Your Time?
John Mueller explained during a hangout that Google does not read all the "spam reports" that are sent to them, but that the search engine's anti-spam teams attempt to process those that seem most imp...
John Mueller Sep 25, 2017
★★★ Do HTML ID attributes have an impact on natural search rankings?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the content of "id=" attributes in an HTML tag (example: <div id="content" class="content"...>) is not taken into account (in terms of text relevance analysis) b...
John Mueller Sep 18, 2017
★★★ Do you really need to optimize your XML sitemap loading speed?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that an XML Sitemap file doesn't need to load faster or slower, as long as a timeout doesn't occur, of course. But the loading time of this file isn't taken into acco...
John Mueller Sep 18, 2017
★★ Why Aren't Your Rich Snippets Showing Up in Google Despite Perfect Markup?
John Mueller indicated that there could be 3 reasons why rich snippets (or rich cards) don't appear in the SERPs for a site: technically incorrect code, an issue with official guidelines not being fol...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2017
★★★ Why Is Google Indexing More URLs Than Those Declared in Your XML Sitemap?
A user pointed out to John Mueller that in their Search Console, the XML Sitemaps report indicated there were more indexed URLs than URLs in the Sitemap. John responded that this likely came from the ...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2017
★★★ How Can You Prevent Google from Indexing Your Pre-Production Site?
John Mueller posted a fairly lengthy message on Google+ about the best way to prevent a test site (pre-production) from being indexed by Google, as we unfortunately see so often. If this mishap happen...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2017
★★★ Does Google Really Consider Server Load Balancing as Cloaking?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that redirecting a user to a faster server based on the load observed at a given time was not considered cloaking....
John Mueller Aug 21, 2017
★★ What are the only two fields in an XML sitemap that Google actually cares about?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that in XML files, the two most important fields are the URL (<loc>) and the last modification date (<lastmod>)....
John Mueller Aug 21, 2017
★★ What's the Maximum Page Size Google Will Actually Crawl?
John Mueller explained that Googlebot's current crawl limit for a web page is 200 MB (the last known limit in 2015 was 10 MB)....
John Mueller Aug 14, 2017
★★ Should You Really Deindex Your Internal Search Results Pages?
John Mueller explained on Twitter why Google requires internal search results pages from a website to be deindexed: they create infinite crawl spaces, are often low-quality pages, and frequently prese...
John Mueller Aug 14, 2017
Are PBNs Really Detected and Penalized by Google?
John Mueller indicated in a hangout that Google's algorithms detect PBNs without too much difficulty and, for those that slip under the radar, the "webspam team" loves diving into them......
John Mueller Aug 14, 2017
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