Gary Illyes

★★★ Should You Really Abandon the Meta Keywords Tag for SEO?

Some webmasters/SEOs sometimes ask Google's officials questions from another era. For instance, Gary Illyes was asked on Twitter whether the search engine penalized websites that "stuffed" their meta ...

Jul 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Trust Badges and Seals Really Influence Google Rankings?

The same Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that obtaining a "trust badge or seal" for your site (trust seal: BBB, Norton, McAfee or other) had no impact on Google rankings. This makes perfect sense sin...

Jul 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google Analytics Really Impact Your Website's Rankings?

Gary Illyes explained on Twitter that Google's relevance algorithm doesn't use any information from Google Analytics to measure the relevance of a page. Why would it anyway, since Chrome provides all ...

Jul 10, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Long Does It Really Take for Google to Process a Site Migration?

Gary Illyes explained at the SMX Advanced conference that processing a site migration (domain name change and/or URL structure change) by Google can take 3 months, depending on the site's size, and no...

Jun 26, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Breadcrumbs Really Pass PageRank Just Like Other Internal Links?

Gary Illyes explained that Google particularly appreciates breadcrumbs and that these links are treated like any other internal links on the page for internal PageRank distribution......

Jun 26, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Use URL Parameters in Search Console?

Gary Illyes explained on Twitter that the indications provided by webmasters in the "URL Parameters" section of Search Console were directives followed by the search engine's algorithms, and that you ...

Jun 26, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★★ How Does Google Actually Distinguish Near Duplicate Content from Pure Duplicate Content?

Gary Illyes explained on Twitter his vision of "near duplicate content": he sees it in two forms: either it's slightly modified content on another page, or the same content, but in a different environ...

Jun 19, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Create a Specific Meta Tag to Optimize Your Content for Featured Snippets?

Gary Illyes explained at the SMX Advanced conference that Google would not be offering specific data on the appearance of your site's content in featured snippets in the Search Console in the short te...

Jun 19, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Panic About the Mobile First Indexing Delay in 2018?

Once again at the SMX Advanced conference, Gary Illyes confirmed that the "Mobile First" project would not be launched in 2017 and that 2018 was more realistic as a timeline, as indicated a few weeks ...

Jun 19, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are Page Speed and HTTPS Really Minor Ranking Factors?

Gary Illyes explained on Twitter that the page load time criterion (Page Speed) was, like the HTTPS criterion, more of a "tie breaker", a criterion to separate 2 pages that would have a very (too) clo...

Jun 19, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Really Stop Buying Links for SEO in 2024?

Once again Gary Illyes at the SMX Advanced conference, who explained that "buying links literally corresponds to throwing money out the window". He specified that Google is getting better and better t...

Jun 19, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Simply Ignore Spammy Links or Do They Trigger Penalties?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that if links were not recognized as "blatant attempts to manipulate" the search engine's algorithm, there was a strong chance they would be purely and simply ignored ...

Jun 12, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Guest Blogging Really Under Threat from a Wave of Google Penalties?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that the recently published post about guest blogging was simply a "general reminder" of best practices and was not necessarily the announcement of an upcoming series ...

Jun 06, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Does the Google Sandbox Really Exist or Is It Just an SEO Myth?

Gary Illyes explained on Twitter that Google has no mechanism that could be likened to a "sandbox". The concept of the "sandbox" has been in the air for over 10 years and would characterize a specific...

May 29, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Adding a Video to a Page Really Improve Its SEO Ranking?

Gary Illyes explained on Twitter that "simply having a video on a web page" does "absolutely not" help it achieve better ranking in the SERPs. And fortunately!......

May 22, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Is HTTPS Really an Important Ranking Factor for SEO in 2024?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that Google has no intention of modifying the weight (currently low) given to whether a site is in HTTPS in the search engine's relevance algorithm. It remains importa...

May 15, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can Google Actually Index and Understand Your Podcast Audio Content?

The same Gary Illyes also indicated on Twitter that Google currently does not know how to read and understand the words spoken in an audio podcast that would be embedded on a website. No voice recogni...

May 15, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Outbound 404 Links Really Hurt Your Page's SEO Performance?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that a web page will not see its relevance score decrease because some of its outbound links point to a 404 URL. This situation does not imply any "punishment" from Go...

May 15, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Internal Nofollow Links Actually Hurt Your Page's Relevance?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that if a page contains internal nofollow links, this does not degrade the relevance of that page (the one containing the link) in Google's eyes. One wonders why it wo...

Apr 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Avoid PageRank Sculpting with Nofollow Links to Prevent Penalties?

Gary Illyes clarified on Twitter that performing "PageRank Sculpting" by creating silos through nofollow internal links cannot generate a penalty from Google. However, he continued with a very "Gary-e...

Apr 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available