Gary Illyes

★★ Why do raw source code files fail to rank properly in Google search results?

Source code files have greater difficulty ranking well in search results due to their structure and lack of context. Pages like Stack Overflow are preferred because they provide context and explanatio...

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really stop storing all your PDFs in a single /pdfs/ folder?

It's preferable to group PDFs by subject rather than placing them all in a /pdfs/ directory. Distributing files according to existing patterns allows Google to infer signals from URL structures alread...

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Really Never Index a Single Image Without a Hosting Page?

Google never indexes a single image on its own. An image must be hosted on an HTML page or a PDF to be indexed. Google indexes the hosting page first, then the image on that page. Isolated images in a...

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really index images and videos separately from text content?

Images and videos are indexed by a completely different system than the one used for textual content. It's a separate indexer with different processes and result presentation methods....

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really filter out personal data before indexing your pages?

Google indexes everything published on the public web. If someone uploads private information to a site that makes it publicly accessible, Google can index it. Google does not examine content to deter...

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does your file extension (.html, .php, .txt) really impact Google SEO rankings?

Google doesn't really care about file extensions (.py, .txt, .php). What counts is the content-type header sent by the server and the actual content returned when accessing the URL....

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really index all your XML files?

Google selectively indexes XML files. Sitemaps and podcast feeds can be indexed, but RSS and Atom feeds generally cannot. The decision depends on the declared XML namespace and the content-type header...

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can you really get JSON and plain text files indexed in Google search results without metadata?

JSON and text files can be indexed and served in search results if Google has enough context. The lack of internal titles and metadata makes these files difficult to rank, but external links with desc...

Sep 08, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do you really need to publish every day to improve your Google SEO?

Publishing daily or at a specific frequency doesn't help you rank better in Google search results. However, the more pages you have in Google's index, the more your content can appear in search result...

Sep 07, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do images really consume your crawl budget at the expense of your strategic pages?

Googlebot and its variants (Images, etc.) share a single crawl budget. If you have many images, Googlebot Images can use a portion of the budget that could have been used by Googlebot. This is not a c...

Sep 07, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does audio content on a page actually influence your Google ranking?

Audio content, in itself, does not play a role in ranking text-based results. There can be indirect effects if users find the page more useful and recommend it more....

Sep 07, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are Google's algorithm updates really that different from penalties?

Named updates published on the Search Central Rankings Updates page are not penalties. They are adjustments to ranking algorithms to deliver higher quality and more relevant results. If a site's ranki...

Sep 07, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Google Crawl Your Site by Sections and Why Are Some Areas Explored More Often Than Others?

Gary Illyes explained during a recent "Search Off the Record" podcast that Google can analyze certain parts or sections of sites and thus crawl certain areas more frequently while visiting others less...

Sep 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really be concerned about crawl budget for your website?

The vast majority of websites (over 90%) don't need to worry about crawl budget. It's a rare problem that only affects very large sites or sites with specific needs....

Aug 25, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What's Google's real definition of crawl budget—and which levers can actually move the needle?

Google defines crawl budget as the number of URLs that Googlebot can and is willing to crawl for a given site. This definition rests on two factors: crawl capacity (not overloading the server) and cra...

Aug 25, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is crawl budget a concept invented by Google or by SEO professionals?

For a long time, Google claimed it didn't have a concept of crawl budget. Following discussions within the SEO community, Google created a definition by working with several internal teams to map exis...

Aug 25, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really index only a fraction of the web because of storage costs?

Google does not have infinite storage capacity. Indexing requires storage (hard drives, memory, SSDs) that costs money. Google therefore does not index all available content on the Internet, only what...

Aug 25, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can you really manage your crawl budget from Google Search Console?

Webmasters can indirectly control their crawl budget through the crawl statistics in Search Console. They can limit the maximum number of requests per second (QPS) that Googlebot makes to their site t...

Aug 25, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does HTTP/2 really boost your crawl budget?

Enabling HTTP/2 on your server significantly improves crawl budget utilization. HTTP/2 allows Googlebot to open a single connection and stream requests instead of opening multiple simultaneous connect...

Aug 25, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What does your "discovered but not crawled" URL status really reveal about your site?

If a large proportion of URLs appears as "discovered but not crawled" in Search Console, this indicates either a content quality issue (Google doesn't think users are searching for this content), or a...

Aug 25, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available