Gary Illyes

★★★ 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

★★★ Can Using Capital Letters in Title Tags Actually Get You Penalized by Google?

Some webmasters sometimes ask Google really bizarre questions. Like the one asking whether putting words entirely in capital letters in a Title tag could trigger a Google penalty. Gary Illyes' answer ...

Apr 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do Clicks on a 404 Page from Search Results Actually Trigger Deindexing?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that if a user clicks on a link in a SERP and lands on a 404 page, this will not send a signal to Google to remove that URL. For this page to be deindexed, it will be ...

Apr 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Remove the Priority Parameter from Your XML Sitemaps?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that the priority indexing parameters in XML Sitemap files were a "bag of noise." Basically, this indication serves no purpose and, for once, we completely agree with ...

Apr 10, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Bounce Rate Really a Ranking Factor on Google?

Gary Illyes reaffirmed on Twitter for the 478th time that bounce rate is not taken into account by Google's algorithms, simply because "it's not a good relevance signal". And once again, we can only a...

Apr 10, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Social Signals Like Facebook Likes Actually Impact Google Rankings?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter for the 3,487th time that Google's algorithm does not take into account Facebook "Likes" (like the vast majority of social signals in general, for that matter). Some b...

Apr 03, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are Google's SEO Penalties and Adsense Really Independent From Each Other?

The same Gary Illyes indicated, also on Twitter, that just like with the Adwords Team, there was no interaction between the Search Quality Team (the teams that inflict penalties on websites that attem...

Apr 03, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Googlebot Really Use Cookies to Crawl Your Website?

Gary Illyes published one of his "DYK" (Do You Know) posts about cookies: Googlebot generally doesn't make use of cookies, but it can if it detects it cannot get to the content without them?. In other...

Mar 27, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ What Does Google's Fred Update Really Reveal About Penalized Sites?

The same Gary Illyes indicated during the SMX West conference the Fred update of March 9th, arguing that this algorithm update was based on points present in Google's guidelines. But he didn't say whi...

Mar 27, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Is Google's Page Layout Algorithm Still Penalizing Your Site in 2024?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that the Page Layout algorithm, which has been updated several times in the past and aims to penalize pages with too many ads embedded in editorial content, somewhat l...

Mar 20, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Are Quality Comments Really an Important Ranking Signal for Google?

Gary Illyes painfully attempts to provide information on Twitter with his "DYK" (Do You Know...) posts, which are unfortunately most of the time incomprehensible and totally useless. Latest example: "...

Mar 13, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ How Long Does It Actually Take Google to Process a Spam Report?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that the time it takes for Google's Search Quality Team to process a "spam report" can vary, but as a general rule, it takes a few hours or a few days. However, the st...

Feb 20, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Why Does Google Refuse to Display Backlink Types in Search Console?

The "Links to your site" section of Search Console displays a large number of backlinks pointing to your site, but without specific mention of those that are dofollow, nofollow or disavowed, for examp...

Feb 13, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is PageRank Still a Key Ranking Factor in Google's Algorithm in 2024?

Gary Illyes reminded us on Twitter that, almost 20 years after Google's creation, the search engine still uses PageRank as a relevance criterion. Thankfully... 🙂 And he shared the link to the document...

Feb 13, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can You Still Trust the Site: Operator to Audit Your Page Indexation?

Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that Google is not at all considering removing the "site:" query syntax, which allows you to obtain a sample of the pages that the search engine indexes for a given we...

Feb 06, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available