Gary Illyes

★★ Why does Google discourage using site: queries to verify indexation?

To verify indexation, it is recommended to use Search Console rather than third-party tools or site: queries, as the latter are unreliable and can return variable results depending on which data cente...

Jun 13, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do JavaScript console errors really hurt your site's search rankings?

The impact of errors in the browser console depends on what's broken. An error on a benign element like a paragraph probably won't affect the site, but an error on the head element could be problemati...

Jun 13, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do you really need a dedicated page per video to rank in rich video results?

For rich video results with features like key moments, you need to have a dedicated page for each video where the video is the main focus of the page. Consult Google's video guidelines for more inform...

Jun 13, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How Does Google Really Decide When to Tell Us About Search Outages?

In the latest episode of the Search Off The Record podcast, Gary Illyes and John Mueller explained how Google manages communication around incidents affecting crawl and indexing. The Site Reliability ...

Jun 11, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is Google really deleting 7% of its video index and how can you avoid being part of it?

Google has begun indexing more short videos, which required freeing up space in the video index. To do this, Google removed underperforming videos from its index, resulting in approximately a 7% reduc...

Jun 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why do indexing incidents cripple news sites so severely?

During an indexing incident in February 2024, search results became outdated and Google struggled to index new content. This particularly affected news portals that couldn't reach their users, and use...

Jun 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google keep incidents 'open' on its status dashboard even after they're resolved?

For certain critical incidents, Google maintains the open status even after visible problem mitigation, rather than closing it immediately. This prevents having to reopen the incident if the system re...

Jun 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you worry about Google's minor technical incidents?

Historically, incidents classified as 'minor' internally at Google have never warranted external communication. These incidents involve isolated technical issues like a server running out of RAM or a ...

Jun 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Really Only Announce Technical Incidents When Enough Sites Are Impacted?

Google decides to publicly communicate about an incident when multiple sites (more than three, ideally more than seven) are affected by the same problem. External pressure and problem visibility also ...

Jun 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why isn't Google crawling your site as frequently as you'd like?

Some issues perceived by site owners as malfunctions are actually intentional. For example, if Google doesn't crawl a site as frequently as the owner wishes, it's not a bug but an algorithmic decision...

Jun 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google rely on pre-approved message templates during technical incidents?

To communicate quickly during incidents, Google uses templated messages pre-approved by legal and public relations teams. This allows the company to publish updates to its status dashboard without hav...

Jun 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why isn't your content appearing in search results even after you've fixed your indexing issue?

After resolving an indexing or crawl problem, it takes time before changes become visible in search results. Google may close the incident while clarifying that complete reindexing is underway and use...

Jun 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why Are Google's Search Experiments Causing Unexpected Incidents in Your Rankings?

Frequently, incidents are caused by experiments (tests) that interact poorly with each other or have unintended side effects. When an alert triggers, the SRE team can identify a faulty experiment and ...

Jun 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Will Google finally start sharing good news about its search engine?

Google is considering expanding the use of its status dashboard to include positive informational updates, such as indexing improvements or processing speed increases. Currently, the majority of commu...

Jun 06, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What Happens to Your SEO Data When Your Pages Get Deindexed by Google?

On LinkedIn, Gary Illyes stated that Google Search Console retains almost no data on non-indexed/deindexed sites, though he specified that one element remains "if the URL comes back." This statement w...

May 21, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why is Google admitting its own limitations with hreflang, AI, and migrations—and what should you actually do about it?

In a post shared on LinkedIn, Gary Illyes addresses several different topics. He notably admits his frustration with the hreflang tag, which indicates a site's language and regional variants, saying h...

May 07, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you still optimize meta descriptions if Google ignores them anyway?

Google doesn't necessarily follow the meta descriptions written by webmasters. The search engine can extract any portion of text present on the page to create the snippet displayed in search results, ...

Apr 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do you still need rel=prev/next for pagination in 2024?

The rel=prev/next attribute for pagination is no longer considered by Google. It has been deprecated and is now completely ignored by the search engine. Webmasters can remove it without any negative i...

Apr 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google really determine user location for local SEO?

Google does not rely solely on IP address to determine user location. The search engine combines multiple signals to provide the appropriate local version of a site or search results....

Apr 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are IP geolocation databases really reliable enough for international SEO?

Databases mapping IP addresses to countries evolve very rapidly and require near-weekly updates to remain accurate. An outdated database can redirect users to the wrong localized versions of a site....

Apr 25, 2024 ⚡ Analysis available