Gary Illyes

★★★ How crucial is loading speed for SEO success?

Google discovered the importance of speed by deliberately introducing a delay of a few hundred milliseconds in search results for a segment of users during an experiment. This significantly decreased ...

Aug 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How was RankBrain tested before its official launch?

The RankBrain algorithm, like almost all search features launched by Google, was tested through experiments or evaluations by human raters before its public deployment. Positive test results led Googl...

Aug 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google really adjust its ranking algorithms for internal testing?

Google has the technical capability to disable certain ranking components from the search results page on its internal network. This feature allows raters to compare two versions of the results: one w...

Aug 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Delete Your 301 Redirects After One Year?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that if you have set up a redirect from URL A to URL B for at least one year, after this timeframe, Google's processing of the redirect will become permanent, even if ...

Aug 02, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why has the Featured Snippet shifted from 'Position 0' to 'Position 1'?

Contrary to the popular belief that the featured snippet would be in 'position 0', Gary asserts it should actually be viewed as ranking in position 1. The use of the term 'position 0' was primarily to...

Jul 29, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How does Google adapt to user preferences for universal results?

Google learns to display images, videos, or other types of results based on user behavior. If enough users click on the Images tab for a given query, it teaches Google that this query deserves images....

Jul 29, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is ranking now just a matter of bidding?

The results page operates like an auction house where different types of results (featured snippets, web results, images, videos) bid for specific positions based on their scores. Certain elements, su...

Jul 29, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google's 'Universal Mixer' influence your SEO strategy?

Google uses a system called 'Universal Mixer' that receives results from all the different indexes (web, images, videos, news) and combines them together. Each index assigns a score to its results tha...

Jul 29, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google share its systems between ads and SEO crawling?

Googlebot is not only used for web crawling but also to retrieve landing pages for ads with a different user agent. The retrieval systems are modular and shared among different teams and features....

Jul 29, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Rethink How You Track Clicks with Search Console?

Search Console logs impressions at a certain position without necessarily specifying the type of result (featured snippet, regular result). When a user clicks, it records the click for that page, that...

Jul 29, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google truly rank images based on their destination pages?

For image results, Google ranks destination pages differently as the emphasis is placed on the image itself, not necessarily on the destination page. The ranking systems are modular, allowing for the ...

Jul 29, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How does Google narrow down results to just 10,000 before reordering them?

Ranking works by first retrieving relevant results from the index, then limiting the set to about 1,000-10,000 results by applying basic signals (PageRank, topical relevance). After that, advanced alg...

Jul 06, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How do floating numbers change the SEO results ranking?

Each result receives a numerical score (floating point, not integer) based on the signals collected. Results are ranked in descending order of this score. Algorithms like RankBrain multiply these scor...

Jul 06, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does HTTPS really impact your SEO?

The HTTPS ranking boost is still applied but designed to have minimal impact. It primarily serves as an equality breaker when two pages have very similar scores, thus favoring the HTTPS version....

Jul 06, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why are ranking scores relative to a specific set of results?

Ranking scores are relative to the specific set of results for a query, not to the overall index. A score of 0.76 can be the best score for a given set of results....

Jul 06, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How does Google's 'centerpiece' annotation impact your SEO?

Google uses an annotation called 'centerpiece' to identify and label the central part of the page that the user is actually reading or interacting with, also known as the main content or primary conte...

Jun 17, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can Google really ignore its own sites when it comes to SEO?

Google's Search Relations team cannot go in and fix the SEO of other internal Google sites. They must follow the same public processes and are directed to public forums and office hours....

Jun 17, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why do synonyms have a lesser impact on SEO rankings?

When a query is expanded with synonyms, the original search terms hold the most weight during ranking. Automatically added synonyms have a lower weight because they are not exactly what the user searc...

Jun 17, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google prioritize 'purchase' over 'sell' in its search results?

Google views 'buy' and 'sell' as synonyms from an information retrieval perspective, but 'sell' receives much lower weight compared to 'purchase', for example, to avoid confusion and maintain relevanc...

Jun 17, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How Does Google Leverage Posting Lists for Search Retrieval?

Google does not examine the entirety of the index during a search. The system utilizes posting lists, which are essentially maps associating terms with documents that contain those words, allowing for...

Jun 17, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available