John Mueller

★★ Should you stop using nofollow on About and Contact pages?

Having an 'About' or 'Contact' page linked throughout the site is standard structure. Google knows this is a normal part of a site and does not consider it the most important page just because it is l...

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can partial pop-ups ruin your SEO as much as full-screen interstitials?

Full-screen pop-ups that are not legal interstitials (cookies, age confirmation) are considered intrusive interstitials, even if they only cover part of the screen but block functionality. This can ca...

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why do orphan pages detected solely through sitemaps lose all their SEO weight?

Creating pages that are accessible only through the sitemap and not linked from the site is a bad practice. Google can find and index them through the sitemap, but cannot assign them weight because it...

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can you really deploy thousands of 301 redirects without risking your SEO?

Adding more than 1000 301 redirects at once is totally acceptable and does not affect SEO. It is normal during a rebranding or redesign. The number of redirects is completely irrelevant....

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google continue crawling 301 redirected URLs for over a year?

Even after more than a year of a 301 redirect, Google may continue to crawl the old URLs if there are external links pointing to them. However, after a few passes, Google switches the canonical to the...

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why doesn’t Google treat all 404 errors the same way in Search Console?

Google differentiates between the pages we are trying to index and others. If a page is in the sitemap and returns a 404, it is considered an error. If it’s just a random URL returning a 404, it’s mar...

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you ditch dynamic rendering for Google indexing?

Dynamic rendering (client-side version for users, server-side version for Googlebot) is no longer recommended. It’s easy to misconfigure, and Googlebot can index errors that are invisible to users. Do...

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that traffic doesn’t impact Google rankings?

Google does not use traffic as a ranking factor in search. For Core Web Vitals, Google makes no distinction based on the source of traffic (social, paid, organic, bookmarks)....

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why might your geo-targeted content disappear from Google's index?

Google crawls sites from a primary location, usually in the United States. If the content varies based on IP and is not accessible from the U.S., Google will not be able to index it. To index local ve...

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can a site's speed make up for mediocre content?

Speed alone is not enough to create a good search result. It is possible to create a very fast empty page, but that does not make it useful or relevant for users. Relevance takes precedence over speed...

May 06, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is loading speed really just a minor ranking signal?

When multiple sites provide similar answers, it makes sense to favor those that provide a good user experience in terms of speed and usability. Speed should act as a tie-breaker rather than a high-wei...

May 06, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google really prioritize speed as a ranking factor?

Google uses speed as a ranking signal not for arbitrary technical interest, but to ensure that the web experience remains positive for users. A fast and pleasant web encourages people to continue usin...

May 06, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google prioritize speed as a ranking factor?

Google uses speed as a ranking factor not arbitrarily, but because the company depends on people who actually use the web. It is essential to ensure that the web experience is positive, that browsing ...

May 06, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Google Identify Content Authors Without the Authorship Tag?

John Mueller explained during a webmaster hangout how the search engine manages to detect who the author of a piece of content is, even without the authorship tag, which was removed many years ago. Hi...

May 03, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Breadcrumb Placement on Your Page Actually Impact SEO?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that while Google does use breadcrumbs, their placement has no impact on this analysis: "We use breadcrumbs for crawling (finding internal links) and for rich results...

May 03, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Page Experience really impact rankings for Top Stories and News?

Google plans to use Page Experience factors for the Top Stories carousel and Google News as well....

Apr 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why is Google finally launching a dedicated report for ranking changes?

This is the first time Google is implementing such a comprehensive report for a specific ranking change, hoping to facilitate site improvements for users....

Apr 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Core Web Vitals really depend on your actual users?

The Core Web Vitals portion of the ranking factor is based on real user metrics, which take time to collect and are automatically updated. Improvements made at any time will be reflected in these metr...

Apr 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How can you leverage the new Page Experience report in Search Console to boost your SEO?

A special report for the Page Experience update has been added to Search Console, covering all the involved elements. It allows you to see at a glance how many pages are achieving the high 'good' thre...

Apr 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you aim for technical perfection before launching a website?

A website does not need to be perfect from the beginning and is rarely so. You will start to see positive results as soon as your pages exceed the threshold of 'needs improvement' to achieve a 'good' ...

Apr 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available