John Mueller

★★★ Does the Order of HTML Attributes Actually Impact SEO and Google Crawling?

An amusing question was asked to John Mueller on Reddit, to find out whether the position of the "rel" and "href" attributes (one before the other, in a given order) in a "canonical" tag mattered. Joh...

Mar 22, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Do You Have to Wait 28 Days to See Your Core Web Vitals Scores?

John Mueller explained in a webmaster hangout that Google tools used to "score" Core Web Vitals metrics (LCP, FID, CLS) need, for any given web page, to collect data (from the Chrome User Experience R...

Mar 22, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why don't Core Web Vitals testing tools reflect your actual rankings?

The data in Search Console is based on what users actually experience (in the last 28 days). Testing tools provide live theoretical testing as they do not account for the real connections or devices o...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why Do Disavowed Links Still Appear in Search Console?

When you submit links in the disavow file, they continue to appear in the Search Console link report. The disavow prevents these links from affecting your site, but does not remove them from the repor...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How can you avoid doorway page penalties when managing multiple sites with duplicate content?

For multiple sites with the same content (e.g., commercial sites), use rel=canonical to point to a central indexed version. This avoids spam issues (doorway pages), concentrates strength on a single s...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really use nofollow for all the links placed in your guest posts?

When you publish content on someone else's site (guest posts), Google will attempt to ignore these links since they are not natural links but links that you placed yourself. It is necessary to use nof...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really have a single index for all countries?

Google does not have different indexes based on countries. There is no content indexed differently according to location. Rankings may differ between countries, and with hreflang, Google can swap URLs...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you index the content generated by your users?

For Google, user-posted content is still considered part of the site's content. The owner must identify valuable content and promote it while using noindex for duplicated or low-quality content. It is...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that Google really enforces a strict non-favoritism policy in SEO?

Google enforces very strict rules (Honest Results Policies): internal Google teams that ask SEO questions are automatically pushed back. No Google team, regardless of its importance, can receive prefe...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really avoid staged deployments when transitioning to mobile-first indexing?

During a staged rollout, avoid being partially indexed in both versions (old and new). If possible, implement the change all at once rather than gradually to minimize SEO fluctuations. A gradual deplo...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are Core Web Vitals Really Crucial for Your Google Ranking?

Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor, but for many sites, content relevance remains the primary focus for ranking. There will be a small ranking bonus, but improving the quality and strength of the co...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it really necessary to ignore toxic links since Google filters them out automatically?

For most sites, there's no need to worry about toxic links. Google's systems automatically ignore links deemed harmful. Individual spam links do not count against your site. The disavow file is still ...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is it possible to force sitelinks to appear using schema markup?

There is no markup to force the appearance of sitelinks. Google automatically selects them when it believes it has multiple relevant pages from a site for a brand search. The sitelinks displayed are a...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can disabling WordPress plugins really boost your SEO performance?

On WordPress and other platforms, disabling unnecessary plugins or replacing complex plugins with simpler versions can make a huge difference in site speed....

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are breadcrumbs really useless for crawl and ranking?

Breadcrumbs probably don't provide additional information for crawl since links to higher levels already exist in the usual interface. Their main advantage is special display in search results, not im...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do cookie banners really block your pages from being indexed?

Displaying a cookie banner or pop-up isn't a problem as long as the actual content remains in the HTML. If the banner replaces content or blocks access to the full HTML (interstitial), it becomes prob...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Domain Authority and Alexa Rank Really Influence Your Google Ranking?

Google does not use Alexa Rank for ranking. Similarly, Domain Authority is a metric created by a third party (Moz) and has no effect on Google SEO. These external metrics are not taken into account by...

Mar 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Use Noindex Rather Than Robots.txt to Deindex a Page?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that when you want to deindex a page that has been previously indexed by the search engine, you need to use the "noindex" meta robots tag and not the robots.txt file....

Mar 15, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Website Traffic Really Influence Core Web Vitals Scores?

John Mueller explained during a hangout that Core Web Vitals / Page Experience scores require a minimum amount of significant user traffic for the site in question to be calculated. But once this mini...

Mar 15, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can Similar URL Patterns Trigger a Duplicate Content Penalty?

John Mueller explained in a webmaster hangout that when two pages have URLs that are too similar, it can generate a duplicate content phenomenon. Indeed, the search engine relies partly, at this level...

Mar 15, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available