Gary Illyes

★★ Is Originality Becoming Google's Top-Ranking Factor in 2025?

Gary Illyes stated that originality would be a priority for Google in 2025. This statement emphasizes the importance for websites and content creators to produce unique and authentic information, part...

Feb 11, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Can You Prevent Google From Completely 'Forgetting' Your Indexed Pages?

Gary Illyes clarified the 'URL unknown to Google' status in Search Console. According to him, when a URL receives this status, it means it is literally unknown to Google's systems and therefore has no...

Feb 04, 2025 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Which HTTP encodings does Googlebot actually accept to crawl your pages effectively?

Google Bot and Google crawlers support three specific types of HTTP encoding for compressing server responses. This information was officially documented in 2024 after being found only in scattered ol...

Dec 30, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Google finally turning those old blog posts into official documentation—and should you care?

Google is updating its documentation in 2024 to close gaps by converting historical information from blog articles (dating back to 2005-2006) into official documentation and documenting technical deta...

Dec 30, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How can Google's AI white papers transform your SEO strategy?

Google makes technical white papers available explaining how LLMs function, common problems like hallucinations, and AI principles. These resources are recommended for understanding AI interfaces in a...

Dec 30, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Googlebot Really Collect Your Links Instead of Following Them?

Contrary to what Google states in its official documentation, Googlebot doesn't follow links in real-time but collects them for later processing. This clarification was shared by Gary Illyes in the Se...

Aug 13, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are URL Parameters Really Threatening Your Site's Google Crawlability?

Gary Illyes warned that URL parameters could cause crawling issues for Google, particularly by generating an infinite number of URLs for a single page: "technically, you can add an almost infinite num...

Aug 13, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does intensive crawling really guarantee a high-quality website?

Google may crawl a site more extensively for various reasons (quality content, hacks, new URLs, calendar scripts). High crawl volume does not automatically mean the site is high quality. Conversely, r...

Aug 08, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does forcing Google to crawl more pages actually boost your search rankings?

Forcing Google to crawl more of your website (for example via robots.txt) won't make your site rank better in search results. Content quality must come first for Google to naturally increase crawl fre...

Aug 08, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can you really boost your site's crawl budget by contacting Google?

Requests submitted via the Googlebot issue report form cannot be used to increase a site's crawl volume. This form is intended solely to report over-crawling problems or server overload issues....

Aug 08, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google crawl some sites more frequently than others?

Crawl volume is determined by the server's technical capacity to handle requests and by the quality/usefulness of content for users. These two aspects define the frequency and intensity of crawling....

Aug 08, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is Google Really Pushing the If-Modified-Since Header to Cut Crawl Costs?

Servers should properly implement the 304 Not Modified response to the If-Modified-Since header. This saves bandwidth and server resources by avoiding retransmitting unchanged content. Currently, this...

Aug 08, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do URL parameters really create an infinite crawl space for Google?

URL parameters can generate a nearly infinite number of versions of the same page. Google must crawl a large sample to determine whether the parameters actually modify the content. Webmasters can use ...

Aug 08, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why do hashtags and URL anchors complicate Google's crawling process?

URL fragments (hashtags/#) exist only on the client side and Googlebot cannot access them without rendering. This complicates crawling and the discovery of content based on anchors....

Aug 08, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Googlebot really crawl links sequentially like a user navigating from page to page?

Contrary to popular belief, Googlebot does not follow links page by page like a user would. It first collects the links and then returns to them independently. This technical distinction is important ...

Aug 08, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really optimize crawl budget when Google has unlimited resources?

Google has sufficient resources for crawling. Crawl optimizations (reduction of unnecessary URLs, improvement of response times) primarily benefit websites by allowing Google to crawl genuinely useful...

Aug 08, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can robots.txt really protect your site from unwanted crawlers?

Google has confirmed that the robots.txt file does not have the capability to prevent unauthorized access to a website. Gary Illyes from Google explained that this file merely requests that robots avo...

Aug 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Block the GoogleOther Crawler in Your Robots.txt?

Gary Illyes warned that blocking the GoogleOther bot could affect various Google products and services, although it does not directly impact search results indexed by Googlebot. GoogleOther is used fo...

Jul 30, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does your URL structure really affect how hreflang works on Google?

From an SEO perspective, the URL structure you choose (subdirectories, subdomains, or separate domains) makes no difference to hreflang. All configurations work equivalently for Google Search....

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are ccTLDs really losing their SEO weight for geographic targeting?

Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) like .de and .ai are losing their reliability as geographic targeting signals. Google previously applied a slight boost for ccTLDs matching the user's country, ...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available