SEO statements by Gary Illyes

★★ Does PageRank really operate just like it did back in 1998?

In response to the question about the evolution of PageRank, Gary Illyes confirms that Google still uses PageRank in the same way as at the beginning....

Feb 25, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How can you tell if your site is affected by manual actions or algorithmic declines?

A manual action is targeted and occurs when a site violates guidelines (link manipulation, spam content). An algorithm change is not targeted and aims to resolve a systemic issue in search results. Yo...

Feb 25, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How can you escape Google's duplicate content filter?

When multiple sites have the same product description, Google only displays one version. To stand out from the cluster of duplicate content, you need to add substantial and high-quality content to ens...

Feb 25, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really limit the length of title tags to 60 characters?

There is value in having title tags longer than the display space in snippets. Google does not set a specific character count. The advice is to keep the title precise and relevant to the page, without...

Feb 25, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really tokenize all your content or does it discard half of the HTML?

During indexing, Google breaks down documents into tokens and does not retain all of the raw HTML content. Certain HTML elements are kept for specific reasons, as well as the actual words appearing on...

Feb 23, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why do Google search results change depending on when you ask the same query?

Google's service index consists of thousands or tens of thousands of index shards distributed across more than 10 data centers. Each data center has a copy of the shards to serve similar results, alth...

Feb 23, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google truly identify relevant documents for a query?

Google uses posting lists that identify documents containing certain keywords. For example, for a search 'oatmeal cookies', the posting list indicates which documents contain 'oatmeal' and which conta...

Feb 23, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google query billions of pages in less than a second?

To deliver results in under a second, Google employs shard indexes that identify which index shards need to be queried for specific requests. Essentially, this is a map between keywords or tokens foun...

Feb 23, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really overlook the scripts and extra content on your pages?

When tokenizing documents, Google does not index all of the unnecessary elements of HTML, such as script text. Only relevant elements and actual words appearing on the page are retained in the index....

Feb 23, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really favor certain languages in its indexing?

Google has no bias towards any particular language. The company pays considerable attention to ensure that each language has the same indexing potential, whether it’s smaller languages like Hungarian ...