SEO statements by Gary Illyes

★★★ Does Hidden Content in Accordions and Tabs Really Carry the Same SEO Weight as Visible Content?

Gary Illyes also explained in the recent podcast in question that the fact that text is potentially visible (examples: in a tab, an accordion, in short hidden by default but made visible upon user act...

Jun 27, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google prefer hyphens over underscores in URLs—and what's the real impact on your rankings?

Google recommends using hyphens rather than underscores in URLs. Google's tokenizer uses certain parts of the URL to understand page content, and cannot easily segment at the underscore level because ...

Jun 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do accordions really hurt your SEO, or is it just an old myth?

Since around 2014, Google has been able to see content within collapsible elements or accordions. Hiding content in this way has no negative effect on how the content is represented in search results....

Jun 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Has hidden content become just as important as visible content for Google?

Google used to consider content not visible on the page as less important than visible content, but that's no longer the case. Content simply needs to be present in the HTML or immediate JavaScript....

Jun 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Googlebot really fail to index content hidden behind user clicks?

Googlebot does not trigger user interactions like clicks. If content requires a click to load via an XHR request (a network request initiated by JavaScript), Google will probably not see that content....

Jun 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is Google really unable to crawl your navigation if it doesn't use proper anchor links?

For content discovery, Google focuses on technical links. Navigation must use anchor elements with appropriate href attributes. If unlinked images, onclick events, or other methods are used, Google pr...

Jun 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why won't Google give you precise criteria on certain UX aspects—and what should you do about it?

Google remains vague on certain UX aspects because they are difficult to define precisely. For example, navigation structure, titles, or readability levels cannot be specified exactly because they var...

Jun 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do individual Google employee opinions on Web3 actually represent the search engine's official stance?

Gary Illyes explicitly clarifies that the episode does not present Google's official position on Web3, but rather the personal reflections of the participants. These are individual opinions, not offic...

May 19, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why can't Google index content without a crawlable URL?

Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt discuss how Google's traditional crawl, indexation, and serving model is based on discovering resources through URLs. Content that does not exist in the form of crawlable...

May 19, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really remove the 'changefreq' tag from your sitemaps?

Google does not use the 'changefreq' (change frequency) tag in XML sitemap files. It is impossible for site owners to accurately predict how often a page will actually change, making this information ...