Gary Illyes

★★ Is indexing your login pages actually hurting your user experience?

Login pages should generally remain indexed because users actively search for them, for example to access their banking portal. Blocking their indexation forces users to navigate unnecessarily through...

Jun 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really use rel=canonical over noindex for aging content?

To manage old blog articles that remain relevant, it's better to use the rel=canonical tag pointing to your main page rather than deindexing them with noindex. This allows you to preserve historical a...

Jun 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really use max-snippet and max-image-preview to control how your content appears in search results?

The 'max-snippet' and 'max-image-preview' meta tags allow you to control the length of text snippets and the size of image previews displayed in search results, with particularly visible effects in Go...

Jun 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is the X-Robots-Tag header really the only way to keep PDFs out of Google's index?

To block indexing of files like PDFs, you must use the HTTP X-Robots-Tag header. If header access isn't available through your CMS, the only alternatives are to not publish the file or use the removal...

Jun 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does robots.txt actually block images and videos but not web pages?

The robots.txt file works effectively to block images and videos because these contents are indexed in separate tabs (Images, Videos) where Google would have nothing to display as a snippet. For stand...

Jun 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google really transform your PDFs into searchable content?

When Google indexes a PDF, the first step is to convert it to HTML, then it is processed as standard HTML content for indexing in web results, unlike images and videos which follow distinct indexing p...

Jun 30, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ 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 ...

May 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google ignore the 'lastmod' tag in your sitemaps?

Google does not use the 'lastmod' (last modified) tag in sitemaps because it is highly unreliable. Websites often update this date for minor changes such as HTML tags or copyright notices, without any...

May 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you still bother filling in the lastmod tag in your XML sitemaps?

Unlike Google, Bing uses the 'lastmod' tag from sitemap files. Google doesn't use it due to its poor reliability, as sites often update it without any significant content changes....

May 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does submitting a sitemap really guarantee that Google will crawl your URLs?

Submitting a sitemap does not guarantee that Google will crawl the listed URLs. The sitemap simply indicates to Google that these URLs exist, without any instruction to crawl them. The process of what...

May 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you replace sitemap extensions with structured data?

Certain tags and attributes from sitemap extensions (video, image, etc.) have equivalents in schema.org structured data. It is preferable to provide this information through structured data because an...

May 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available