Gary Illyes

★★ Does your favicon really impact your site's SEO performance in Google search results?

Uploading a new favicon to your site will update the favicon displayed in Google search results....

Apr 23, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really respect your publication dates… or does it just make them up as it goes?

In the snippet, you can sometimes see a byline date that is Google's own estimation of when the page was updated or published....

Apr 23, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google display multiple links from the same domain underneath a single search result?

Below the snippet, you can sometimes see sitelinks: two or more links coming from the same domain or its alternative version, grouped together to help users access pages relevant to that particular re...

Apr 23, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the dash vs underscore distinction in URLs really impact your SEO rankings?

Keywords in URLs contribute very little to ranking in Google search results. However, dashes are preferable to underscores because they separate words more clearly....

Apr 18, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do short 503 errors really impact your site's crawl rate?

Serving a 503 code during an extended period will result in a decrease in crawl rate. However, 10 to 15 minutes of unavailability several times per week is not considered prolonged and should not caus...

Apr 18, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does switching web hosting really hurt your search engine rankings?

If the hosting change is done correctly, with a site that remains accessible and minimal downtime, it should not have negative effects on page rankings in Google search results....

Apr 18, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is the Indexing API really restricted to job postings and events only?

The Indexing API is limited to job postings and broadcast events. It might work for other content types, but since it's not designed for that, it could stop working overnight for unsupported verticals...

Apr 18, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does having duplicate burger menus in your DOM hurt your SEO rankings?

Having a hidden burger menu on mobile with the same links as the desktop menu, thus creating duplicate links in the DOM, results in no penalty from Google....

Apr 18, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do external 404 errors really hurt your Google rankings?

The false 404 errors that Googlebot could have explored cannot reasonably be attributed to a drop in rankings. It is normal to have a certain number of 404 errors on a site and you do not need to fix ...

Apr 18, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do you really need a sitemap.xml to rank well on Google?

It is not mandatory to have a sitemap. If you choose to have one or more, you can give them any filename you want, not necessarily sitemap.xml....

Apr 18, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Worry About Crawling and Indexing During Core Updates?

On LinkedIn, Gary Illyes provided some clarification about the independence of indexing systems from algorithm updates, particularly Core Updates. He states that indexing, canonicalization, and the va...

Apr 16, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is page content really the most important relevance factor for Google?

Hundreds of factors determine the relevance of results for the user, but the actual content of the page is the most important. Other factors include the user's location, language, and device type....

Apr 09, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really strip stop words from your search queries?

When interpreting a query, Google cleans the query by removing unnecessary stop words like 'a', 'of', 'the' when they are not necessary to understand the query....

Apr 09, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really preserve stop words within named entities, and how does this affect your SEO?

Google identifies specific entities in search queries. For example, with 'the Statue of Liberty', the word 'of' is preserved because it is an integral part of the recognized entity....

Apr 09, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really expand your search queries with synonyms automatically?

Queries are automatically expanded to include similar words and synonyms. For example, searching for 'car dealership' will also include 'auto dealership' because 'car' and 'auto' are close synonyms....

Apr 09, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does your geographic location really reshape the search results Google shows you?

The user's geographic location directly affects the results. For example, searching for 'bicycle repair shops' shows different results in Paris than in Hong Kong....

Apr 09, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does page quality or site quality matter more in Google's ranking algorithm?

Google takes into account both page quality and site quality when ranking. Quality is determined by several factors, including content uniqueness and the relative importance of the page on the Interne...

Apr 09, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does content uniqueness really matter for your Google rankings?

Content uniqueness is one of the factors Google uses to determine the quality of a web page during the ranking process....

Apr 09, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does a page's relative importance really impact its quality according to Google?

A page's relative importance on the internet as a whole is one of many factors Google takes into account when evaluating a page's quality....

Apr 09, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really show different SERP features based on what you're searching for?

The features displayed in search results pages change depending on the user's query. A search like 'bicycle repair shops' will likely show local results, while 'modern bicycle' will show image results...

Apr 09, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available