Gary Illyes

★★ 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

★★ Does Google really guarantee regular updates on its search incidents?

Unlike Twitter where update timelines were unclear, the dashboard guarantees an update within a defined timeframe (typically 12 hours maximum), even if it's just to say that the investigation continue...

Dec 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why did Google technically separate its Search Status Dashboard from google.com?

The Search Status Dashboard is technically decoupled from google.com. If google.com goes down, the dashboard remains accessible to publish information about the incident. The serving system used is ex...

Dec 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google leave certain search features out of its public incident monitoring?

In the initial version, the dashboard does not cover incidents affecting specific features such as Featured Snippets or Top Stories. These features could be added in a future version of the dashboard....

Dec 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you subscribe to the Search Status Dashboard RSS feed to anticipate Google incidents?

The Search Status Dashboard offers an RSS feed that allows webmasters to subscribe and receive automatic notifications when new incidents occur, without needing to manually refresh the page....

Dec 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why doesn't Google consider a single site's ranking drop as a system-wide incident?

An incident affects many sites simultaneously and requires action from Google. If a single site loses its ranking, it's generally not an incident but a site-specific problem (such as a noindex tag add...

Dec 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do Quality Rater Guidelines Reveal Google's Secret Algorithm Roadmap?

Quality Rater Guidelines show where Google wants to go with its algorithm in the future. When something is added in multiple places within the guidelines, it indicates an important direction the algor...

Nov 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is E-A-T Really a Direct Ranking Factor in Google's Algorithm?

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. These criteria are present in the Quality Rater Guidelines and represent what Google wants to see on highly-rated sites....

Nov 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really stop writing for Google and focus entirely on your audience instead?

It is important to create good content by writing for your audience and not for keywords or search engines. This is a fundamental principle confirmed by Google....

Nov 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really follow Google's Quality Rater Guidelines to boost your SEO rankings?

Google decided to publish the Quality Rater Guidelines publicly because they contain nothing secret. They serve as a reference for understanding what Google considers high-quality sites....

Nov 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can AI-Generated Content Really Rank on Google If a Human Reviews It?

AI-generated content can be acceptable if it is revised by a qualified writer to improve grammar and phrasing. A mass-production approach without human review is not recommended....

Nov 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really index your PDFs, or does it transform them first?

Google does not index PDF files directly. They are converted to HTML before indexing. The same process applies to Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and other proprietary formats. Google extrac...

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does content weight really vary based on its location in HTML versus PDF?

In a PDF, content weight is uniform throughout the entire document. In HTML, position matters: content in the footer carries less weight than content in the body, unlike PDFs which are treated as one ...

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really depend on Adobe to properly index your PDFs?

Google uses an Adobe license to convert PDF files. Google does not have complete control over the conversion process and relies on the capabilities of the converter provided by Adobe....

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really index source code files the same way as regular text content?

Google indexes code files (.py, .java, .txt, .php) as plain text because code is essentially written prose. These files can appear in search results if someone searches for code examples....

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available