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Gary Illyes

Analyst at Google
814 statements Period : 2016 - 2026
Gary Illyes is an analyst on the Google Search team. Known for his candor and technical expertise, he regularly speaks at SEO conferences and on Google's official podcasts. His statements often focus on the technical aspects of crawling, indexing, and how Google's algorithms work.
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★★★ Does Google really share cached content between its different crawlers?
Google uses an aggressive internal cache independent of standard HTTP mechanisms. If Google News crawled a page 10 seconds ago, web search can reuse that copy rather than making another request, thus ...
Mar 12, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Why does Google really use two distinct systems to access your pages—and how does it affect your SEO?
Crawlers process URLs in batches continuously, while fetchers process individual URLs on demand from a user. Fetchers require a person to wait for the response, unlike crawlers which operate asynchron...
Mar 12, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Why doesn't Google document all its crawlers in its official list?
Google does not document all of its crawlers/fetchers. Only major and special crawlers are documented on developers.google.com/crawlers due to space constraints. Small crawlers generating minimal traf...
Mar 12, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Does Google's crawl really work through APIs with configurable parameters?
The crawl infrastructure operates through API endpoints where teams specify parameters such as user-agent, timeout delay, and robots.txt token to respect. Default parameters exist to simplify API call...
Mar 12, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Is Googlebot really a single program, or is it actually a distributed infrastructure client?
Googlebot is not a single executable program (googlebot.exe) but rather one of many clients of a centralized crawling infrastructure that operates as a service (SaaS). This internal infrastructure has...
Mar 12, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Why does Googlebot ignore your resource preloading hints?
When rendering pages, Google caches the necessary resources on its side rather than fetching them each time. This approach saves bandwidth and reduces the load on hosting servers, which explains why c...
Feb 26, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Does Google really parse HTML the same way browsers do?
Search engines, including Google, try to behave similarly to browsers when parsing HTML. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Like browsers, Google accepts metadata tags in the <head> but not in ...
Feb 26, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Does web performance really improve your organic search rankings?
Performance improvements that speed up loading for users (via preload, prefetch, etc.) have positive side effects on SEO because studies show that users appreciate fast sites, with better retention an...
Feb 26, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Is HTML5 semantic markup really useless for SEO?
Using HTML5 semantic tags (article, section, nav, header, footer) or respecting the hierarchical structure of headings (single H1, then H2, etc.) has no significant impact on search engine optimizatio...
Feb 26, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Should you really optimize preloading hints for Googlebot?
Google does not use or barely uses link hints like DNS prefetch, preconnect, preload or prefetch, because its infrastructure works differently from browsers: no synchronous resource fetching, Google-s...
Feb 26, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Does valid W3C HTML code really improve your search rankings?
Strict compliance with the W3C validator has no importance to search engines. Unless you do something really stupid with the HTML, it will work. We cannot give a ranking bonus to valid HTML, because a...
Feb 26, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Does Google really ignore canonical tags placed in the <body>? Here's why it matters.
Google does not accept link rel=canonical tags located in the <body> of the page. If this powerful signal were accepted in the body, a malicious user could place it in a comment and hijack a page's se...
Feb 26, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Is Google really ignoring your meta tags placed in the <body>?
Meta and link tags carrying metadata for search engines must mandatorily appear in the <head> section of HTML. If they appear in the <body>, they are ignored by Google's infrastructure. The HTML stand...
Feb 26, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Do you really still need a website to rank on Google in 2024?
The decision to have a website in 2026 depends entirely on your objectives, target audience, and the type of content or service you provide. There is no universal answer—some businesses succeed withou...
Feb 12, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Why does Google still prioritize the open web over native mobile apps?
Sharing a web link represents a lower barrier to entry for users compared to downloading an application, because it requires no strong commitment and no compatibility with a specific operating system....
Feb 12, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Why does owning a website give you far more control over monetization than relying on social media platforms?
A website gives you complete control over monetization strategies (affiliate links, display ads, etc.), unlike social platforms that impose restrictions and often take a commission....
Feb 12, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Are social media profiles really websites from an SEO perspective?
Profiles and shops on social networks are indeed websites accessible via browser. The distinction between website and social network has faded, making the categorization less relevant....
Feb 12, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Should you replace GET parameters with PUT requests to protect your crawl budget?
It is very rare that Googlebot uses HTTP PUT requests. Using PUT requests instead of GET parameters for actions like adding to cart would help prevent these URLs from being crawled....
Feb 03, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Do you really have to wait 24 hours for robots.txt changes to take effect with Google?
robots.txt files are cached by Google for a duration that can extend up to approximately 24 hours. Modifications made to robots.txt are therefore not immediate but remain the most sensible method for ...
Feb 03, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Why does Googlebot need to crawl massive amounts of a new site before deciding if it's worth its attention?
Googlebot, despite nearly 30 years of experience, can only determine if a new URL space is relevant after crawling a large portion of it. During this phase, intensive crawling can render the site unus...
Feb 03, 2026 ⚡ Analysis available
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