Gary Illyes

★★ Does Google's Live Test Tool Actually Crawl Your Site in Real Time?

The Live Test tool in Search Console uses a high-priority real crawler, while property verification of the site is user-triggered and works almost instantly without any crawl delay....

May 29, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Googlebot really support HTTP/3 for crawling your website?

Googlebot currently supports HTTP/2 for more efficient crawling using streamed connections. HTTP/3 is not yet supported but could be in the future....

May 29, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Google Really Crawling Less of the Web, and Should You Worry About It?

Last year, Google actively worked to reduce its footprint on the internet by optimizing its crawling requests to save resources....

May 29, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are HTTP 1xx status codes harming your site's crawlability by Googlebot?

Google does not support HTTP 1xx status codes (such as 100 Continue or 101 Switching Protocols). The crawler simply passes through them without noticing and waits for the next non-1xx status code to e...

May 15, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are your TCP/UDP network errors really blocking Google's crawl?

Connection issues reported in Search Console (network blocking messages or connection problems) can originate from low-level TCP, UDP, QUIC, or DNS layers. These network errors directly impact Google'...

May 15, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you still worry about choosing between 301 and 302 redirects?

For Google Search, all 3xx redirect codes (301, 302, 307, 308) are treated similarly during crawling. Google slightly takes into account the temporary/permanent distinction for canonicalization, but o...

May 15, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Your Crawl Budget Being Compromised by HTTP 429 Status Codes?

HTTP status code 429 (Too Many Requests) is treated by Google as a client-side error (4xx), indicating that the client is requesting a resource too frequently. It is not a server error even though it ...

May 15, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google really care so much about HTTP status codes for your search rankings?

HTTP status codes tell an important story about what happens during a request. They are crucial for website owners and SEO professionals because they allow you to understand how Google interacts with ...

May 15, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Will Google's Deep Dive SEO sessions finally replace superficial conference presentations?

Deep Dive events will enable in-depth contextualization of SEO topics, unlike the short 25-minute formats. Google will be able to concretely show how to apply concepts via Search Console, server logs,...

May 01, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you trust local SEO experts over Google's official statements?

Google recognizes the crucial importance of local communities in each country. Lightning talks make it possible to identify and highlight local experts on specific topics, who become more accessible r...

May 01, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Search Central Live finally coming to Africa—and what does this mean for local SEO professionals worldwide?

In 2025, Google is expanding Search Central Live to new territories: Budapest, Warsaw, the Baltic States, Zurich, and for the first time in Africa (South Africa). Events are also being maintained in A...

May 01, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How is the IETF standardization of robots.txt reshaping the game for crawlers and SEO professionals?

Robots.txt was a de facto standard for approximately 25 years before being officially standardized with the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). This standardization makes it possible to standardiz...

Apr 17, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google really enforce a 500 KB size limit on robots.txt files?

Google enforces a 500 kilobyte limit on robots.txt files. This limit was established for security reasons, notably to prevent buffer overflow attacks during the file parsing process....

Apr 17, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are RSS and Atom feeds really being used by Google to discover your content?

Google Search uses RSS and Atom feeds as sources for URL discovery, in addition to other content discovery methods....

Apr 17, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are XML sitemaps really essential without official standardization?

The XML Sitemap format, created in 2005-2006, is a widely adopted de facto standard but has never been formally standardized by a standardization body. There is no obvious benefit to standardizing it ...

Apr 17, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is robots.txt still essential for modern websites, or just a relic of the past?

Robots.txt is considered extremely important for Google and virtually all search engines. Standardization helps reduce the burden on site owners by uniformizing the way these files are written for all...

Apr 17, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why did Google open-source its robots.txt parser, and what does it mean for your SEO strategy?

Following the standardization of robots.txt, Google made its robots.txt parser public as open source, enabling developers to use it as a foundation for creating better robots.txt files....

Apr 17, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are robots.txt and XML sitemaps now officially linked together?

In the IETF's robots.txt standard, XML sitemaps are mentioned as an informative reference, establishing a formal link between these two crawling mechanisms....

Apr 17, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Is Google Optimizing Its Crawl to Do Less But Better?

In April 2024, Gary Illyes from Google expressed his intention to make web crawling more efficient, seeking to "reduce crawling frequency and the amount of data transferred (...) without reducing craw...

Mar 04, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Update Your XML Sitemap for Every Minor Website Change?

Gary Illyes recently emphasized that merely changing the copyright year in a website's footer does not constitute a significant content update. Consequently, it is not necessary to update the lastmod ...

Feb 11, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available