John Mueller

★★ Should you create a robots.txt blocked intermediary site to manage thousands of redirects?

To manage thousands of redirected domains (e.g., domain marketplace), create an intermediary site where all domains redirect, block this site with robots.txt, and then redirect to the main site. This ...

Apr 16, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are Expired Domain Redirects Really Ignored by Google?

Buying expired domains and redirecting them to your site is an old tactic that Google can recognize. By default, Google's algorithms try to ignore these redirects. If it’s too integrated into the site...

Apr 16, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really optimize the entire site to rank a single page?

Google primarily looks at the page for ranking purposes, but always in the context of the entire site. To effectively rank a particular page, you need to improve the overall site, particularly the int...

Apr 16, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is excluding Googlebot from adblock detection considered cloaking?

Excluding Googlebot from an adblock detection system is generally not considered cloaking. Google acknowledges that Googlebot has a unique setup without adblock. This is acceptable as long as fundamen...

Apr 16, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really include your m-dot pages in your hreflang annotations?

For sites with separate mobile versions (m-dot), while it's not mandatory to list them in the sitemap, it is recommended to include them if you want to apply hreflang annotations to mobile pages. The ...

Apr 16, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is crawl budget really something to worry about for your website?

Crawl budget only becomes a real concern for sites with hundreds of thousands or millions of pages. For sites with a few thousand or tens of thousands of pages, Google can crawl everything, even in a ...

Apr 16, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really index all your pagination pages?

For pagination, differentiate between divided content (multi-part articles) that must be indexable, and category pages that serve only to find links to other content. For these latter pages, pages 2, ...

Apr 16, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can you really combine noindex and canonical without SEO risks?

Theoretically, using noindex and canonical together is contradictory because it states that the pages are equivalent but must be treated differently. In practice, this causes no issues. If internal in...

Apr 16, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does hreflang really boost rankings, or is it just an SEO myth?

Hreflang does not serve to improve rankings, but to ensure that Google shows the correct language version of a page already ranked in different countries. This is different from geographic targeting, ...

Apr 16, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really create geolocated content for all your pages?

Google differentiates between geographic targeting and hreflang. Geographic targeting improves rankings in specific countries when users search for something local. If users are searching with local i...

Apr 16, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really implement hreflang between completely different languages?

If you have page versions in completely different languages (German/Chinese), hreflang may represent unnecessary effort if Google has no trouble distinguishing these versions. Hreflang is especially u...

Apr 13, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really implement every possible hreflang variation?

You shouldn’t automatically create all possible language and regional variations just because the system allows it. If you don’t create unique content for these versions, it adds no value in terms of ...

Apr 13, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Search Console hide your international hreflang pages?

Search Console mainly reports on canonical URLs, making tracking very challenging for international sites using hreflang. Alternative pages may seem missing from reports even though they are properly ...

Apr 13, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really implement hreflang for nearly identical content with just currency differences?

It is useful to implement hreflang between pages with nearly identical content but with regional differences like currencies (euros vs Swiss francs) or prices. Even if Google considers these pages as ...

Apr 13, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google itself struggle with properly implementing hreflang on its own sites?

Implementing hreflang is often complex and error-prone. Google acknowledges that even its own sites have made mistakes (like using ES-LA for Latin American Spanish). If Google doesn’t always manage to...

Apr 13, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do 301 and 302 Redirects Really Matter Differently for SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that in most cases, Google treats 301 and 302 redirects in almost the same way, because it knows that 302 redirects can remain in place for months, or even longer. It...

Apr 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Changing Your Publication Date Actually Improve SEO Rankings?

John Mueller indicated in the same webmaster hangout that modifying the publication date in the source code for a page without actually changing its content did not improve the ranking of said page. A...

Apr 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Different Ads Between AMP and Non-AMP Pages Impact SEO?

John Mueller explained in a webmaster hangout that having the AMP version of a page display more or fewer ads than its "canonical" version (non-AMP HTML page) does not pose any problems in terms of SE...

Apr 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Core Web Vitals really only serve to separate tie results?

Core Web Vitals primarily serve as a tiebreaker signal when multiple results are considered equivalent in relevance. Google can then favor the page that meets the Core Web Vitals thresholds. This is n...

Apr 09, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does robots.txt really prevent the indexing of your pages?

The robots.txt file prevents crawling but not necessarily indexing. Google can index URLs blocked by robots.txt without their content. These pages may appear in site: queries without a snippet, but us...

Apr 09, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available