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

★★★ Why do orphan pages hurt your SEO even when indexed?

Creating pages that are only accessible via the XML sitemap (not linked within the site) is a bad practice. Google can find and index them, but can't give them any weight because there is no context o...

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that Googlebot ignores your 'Load more' buttons and how can you fix that?

For lazy loading content, Google recommends using the Intersection Observer API. Googlebot renders pages with an extremely long viewport and can load content detected as visible. Scroll events or 'Loa...

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

★★★ Should you really avoid multiple progressive redirects to protect your SEO?

Restructuring a site with multiple successive redirects (one per month over a year) is poor SEO practice. Each redirect step takes time to process and causes fluctuations. You should redirect directly...

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that JavaScript is compatible with SEO?

Using JavaScript and loading content with JavaScript is not automatically bad for SEO. It is essential to check the details with the URL inspection tool to see if Google can view the navigation and co...

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Core Web Vitals truly reflect your users' experience?

For Core Web Vitals, Google considers what users actually see. If AMP pages are valid and served via the AMP cache, this is what will be taken into account for evaluation....

May 07, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really make all your affiliate links nofollow?

For affiliate links, the key is that they either have a nofollow attribute or that the redirect URL is blocked by robots.txt to avoid transferring PageRank. A configuration with an intermediate URL an...

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 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

★★★ 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

★★★ 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

★★★ 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

★★ 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

★★★ 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

★★ How can you leverage regex in Search Console to analyze your performance data?

Google has added regex support to the Performance report of Search Console. You can now use patterns instead of keywords for search queries as well as for pages displayed in the report....

Apr 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are you really making the most of all the video features available for your SEO?

It is strongly recommended to verify that you are using all available features for videos to your advantage, even if you are already including videos on your web pages....

Apr 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google really want you to optimize your videos for search?

Google has updated and expanded its best practices documentation for videos, including how to help Google find and index your videos, and how to specify how you want your videos to be highlighted in s...

Apr 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available