Gary Illyes

★★ 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

★★ Can Google really target geography at the individual page level?

Google can determine geographic targeting at the level of each individual page, not just at the entire site level. A specific section or page can be identified as targeting a particular country even i...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really ignore the HTML lang attribute for multilingual SEO?

Google does not use the lang attribute of HTML tags to determine a page's language because this signal has proven historically unreliable. Many CMS platforms — such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla — ...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Will Google finally automate hreflang tag detection?

Google wants to reduce manual annotations and automatically learn hreflang relationships between pages. Systems capable of automatically identifying linguistic versions of the same content have existe...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google trust hreflang more than the HTML lang attribute?

Hreflang is considered more reliable than the HTML lang attribute because its implementation represents significant investment, particularly for large websites. This constraint incentivizes owners to ...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should you really worry about hreflang if only 9% of websites actually use it?

According to the 2022 Web Almanac, only 9% of crawled homepage pages use hreflang. This figure shows that relatively few sites actually require this annotation compared to the entire web....

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you abandon hreflang in sitemaps and switch to HTML or HTTP headers instead?

Hreflang implemented in HTTP headers or in HTML is processed faster than hreflang in an XML sitemap. Discovery via sitemap is not tied to a specific page and can take longer, whereas HTML/HTTP trigger...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does hreflang automatically trigger Google to crawl all your alternative URLs?

When Google discovers an hreflang annotation, it triggers crawling of the alternative URLs mentioned to verify they belong to the same cluster of linguistic variations. This dependency verification is...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do you really need to include a self-referencing hreflang tag on every page?

Although Google recommends including a self-referencing hreflang tag on each page, it is not strictly required technically. This recommendation exists for historical reasons related to rel=canonical a...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really index your multilingual pages separately with hreflang, or does it only store one version?

Pages marked as hreflang alternatives are not indexed separately but grouped into a duplication cluster. Google stores only the canonical version and can swap the displayed URL based on the user's lan...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why are your hreflang pages disappearing from Search Console without being deindexed?

Google Search Console only reports data for canonical URLs in hreflang clusters. Alternative language versions are not tracked individually, which can create the impression that pages are dropping out...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can your x-default hreflang tag really point to any page on your site?

The x-default hreflang tag can point to any page, not necessarily one of the existing language variants. It can direct to a country selector, a fallback page, or any page chosen for users without a la...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why did Google discontinue its official hreflang validator tool?

Google no longer provides an official hreflang validator. Previously offered validation tools were removed due to low utilization. Google now recommends third-party tools such as those from Aleyda Sol...

Jul 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do You Really Need a Country-Specific Domain (.fr, .de) to Rank Locally on Google?

Gary Illyes indicated that country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) benefit from a local ranking advantage. When a user searches in their local language, domains like .de, .in, .fr, or .kr do tend to b...

Jul 23, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you block GoogleOther or risk disrupting your Google services?

GoogleOther is a generic crawler used by various Google product teams to retrieve publicly accessible content, notably for internal research and development. It was launched to provide greater transpa...

Jul 18, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available