Gary Illyes

★★ Should you really migrate a complex website in phases rather than all at once?

For complex migrations involving multiple domains or TLDs, it is recommended to proceed in phases rather than migrating everything simultaneously. This reduces the risk of organic traffic loss....

Feb 23, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is a comprehensive URL mapping really the single most critical factor that makes or breaks an SEO migration?

The most important element of a migration is creating a complete map showing where URLs come from and where they go. This map is essential for configuring redirects and verifying that everything has m...

Feb 23, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can You Really Use a 301 Redirect Between Pages in Different Languages?

In a brief conversation posted on Mastodon, Gary Illyes from Google indicated that the 301 redirect (permanent redirect) was required when two URLs are almost identical. So far, nothing new. But where...

Feb 20, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How does an HTML redesign actually impact your SEO rankings?

Gary Illyes explained on LinkedIn that when launching a website redesign that affects the HTML code of pages, this will certainly have an influence on the site's rankings in search engines afterwards....

Feb 13, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Could Your CDN and Firewall Be Blocking Googlebot Without You Knowing?

Gary Illyes explained on LinkedIn that the two obstacles most frequently encountered by Googlebot when crawling a site were CDNs and Firewalls that are more or less properly configured. And he advises...

Feb 06, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Always Use Absolute URLs in Your Canonical Tags?

Gary Illyes explained on LinkedIn that "canonical" tags on a website should contain absolute addresses (https://www..com/20230203-51450-quand-les-quality-raters-de-google-manifestent-pour-etre-mieux-p...

Feb 06, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Can XML Sitemaps Help You Manage Internal Duplicate Content?

Gary Illyes explained on LinkedIn that it's important, when a site has internal duplicate content, to indicate in the XML Sitemap the URL of canonical pages to help Google properly distinguish between...

Jan 30, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do XML Sitemaps Really Guarantee Your Pages Will Be Indexed by Google?

Gary Illyes explained on LinkedIn that XML Sitemaps provide clues to Google about submitted URLs, but that this does not provide a guarantee of indexing for these pages......

Dec 27, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Did Google really hide a 15 MB indexing limit from everyone for 15 years?

Googlebot has always had a technical limit of 15 megabytes for page indexing. This limit has existed for approximately 15 years, but was not publicly documented. The recent addition to the documentati...

Dec 22, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What are the only 3 technical requirements needed to get indexed by Google?

There are only three absolute technical requirements for a site to appear in Google search results. These three elements are things that virtually every site respects by default. Other factors like sp...

Dec 22, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really stop worrying about what Google doesn't support?

Google has begun actively documenting unsupported elements (such as the meta keywords tag) in addition to what is supported. This approach responds to a recurring demand and makes it explicit what Goo...

Dec 22, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How should you prioritize your SEO actions using Google's official classification system?

Google has classified its recommendations into three priority levels: Priority 0 (absolutely necessary), Priority 1 (very important and impactful for most sites), and Priority 2 (useful if possible). ...

Dec 22, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Googlebot accessibility really a binary condition for indexation?

Making your site accessible to Googlebot is one of three absolute technical requirements to be indexed. It's not something you can 'violate' in the strict sense, it's simply a binary condition: either...

Dec 22, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really distinguish between "absolute requirements" and "best practices" in SEO?

Not spreading spam is identified as an absolute requirement, unlike other factors such as site speed or HTTPS which are important but not mandatory. The distinction between spam policies and best prac...

Dec 22, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can you really rank on Google without HTTPS and fast page speed?

Although it is recommended to have a fast site and operate in HTTPS, these elements are not absolute requirements to appear in Google search results. They are part of important best practices but thei...

Dec 22, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can a 5xx Error on Your robots.txt Really Make Your Entire Site Disappear from Google?

Gary Illyes explained on LinkedIn that if your robots.txt file returns a 5xx code (such as 500 or 503) for a certain period of time, this can have a disastrous consequence with the eventual removal of...

Dec 19, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google's new Search Status Dashboard really eliminate the need to monitor Twitter for search outages?

Google has created an official dashboard (Search Status Dashboard) to communicate in a structured manner about incidents affecting search. It replaces ad-hoc Twitter communication and uses pre-approve...

Dec 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Which incidents does Google officially communicate on its status dashboard?

The dashboard covers major incidents affecting three main systems: crawling, indexing, and serving. For example, if Googlebot cannot crawl the entirety of the Internet, or if Google.com becomes inacce...

Dec 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why doesn't Google inform you about all of its technical incidents?

Google only communicates about incidents affecting many sites. If an incident lasts only 5 minutes, Google may choose to publish nothing to avoid overcommunication and unnecessary confusion....

Dec 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ What are the two hidden channels Google uses to detect search engine incidents?

Google detects incidents through two sources: automated internal alerts configured by SREs (Site Reliability Engineers), and Twitter monitoring where multiple similar reports (more than 5) trigger an ...

Dec 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available