John Mueller

★★★ Is it really necessary to index the internal search pages on your site?

Internal search pages can be indexed if they are relevant and useful to users, similar to category pages. It is recommended to only select certain important queries and block the rest to avoid an infi...

Mar 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really avoid duplicating your content across two distinct sites?

Creating two distinct sites for the same content leads to competing with yourself. Both versions will carry signals and value in Google's eyes, which can result in both ranking in the mid-range instea...

Mar 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can hreflang really be used across multiple distinct domains?

Hreflang does not necessarily have to be limited to a single domain. It is possible to use hreflang across different domains to indicate the relationships between the linguistic or regional versions o...

Mar 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google take several months to reward a site's quality improvements?

After improving a site's quality (reducing advertising, removing low-quality content), the impact on Google traffic requires several months. Google must recrawl, reindex, and recalculate long-term qua...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are your structured data sabotaging your Knowledge Panel?

For Knowledge Panels, Google requires clear, consistent, and identical data everywhere on the web. Variations in name or inconsistent data can create fragmented entries and weaken the Knowledge Panel....

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does relevance really outweigh Core Web Vitals in Google?

Relevance is still more important than Page Experience in Google ranking. URLs in brand searches continue to be displayed even with poor Core Web Vitals because Google cannot show a third-party blog i...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google really assess the Core Web Vitals of a page in its search results?

Core Web Vitals are grouped by page type in Search Console and Chrome UX Report. When a URL appears in the results, Google evaluates its group to determine if it provides a good page experience. Highl...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really double hreflang with JavaScript for geolocation?

Beyond hreflang, implement JavaScript detection to show a banner to American users on the European site, offering them the US version. This compensates for cases where hreflang does not work perfectly...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How does internal linking between language versions really speed up the indexing of a new market?

To speed up the SEO of a new linguistic version of a site, creating cross-links between the versions (DE to US, EN to US) on important pages enables the transfer of signals. Without these links, the n...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really implement hreflang right at the launch of a multi-country site with similar content?

To launch a USA site separate from the international English site with initially similar content, it is strongly recommended to implement hreflang at least on important pages (homepage, main categorie...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really use a 410 code instead of a 404 to remove a page from Google's index?

Google makes a slight distinction between 404 (page temporarily unavailable) and 410 (page permanently removed). The 410 slightly speeds up removal from the index, but the difference is not significan...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really keep 301 redirects for at least a year?

Google recommends maintaining 301 redirects for at least one year, ideally longer. After this period, Google should have crawled all old URLs with the redirect at least twice. Less significant URLs th...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you worry about having 90% of your site in noindex?

A large number of noindex pages or pages returning 404 errors is not seen as a sign of poor quality by Google. Having 90% of pages in noindex is not problematic for SEO....

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does using a canonical tag alone truly control page indexing?

Google takes multiple signals into account beyond the canonical tag to determine the canonical page. It may happen that Google still indexes variants despite the canonical, especially during the first...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the noindex of variants really contaminate the canonical page?

If product variants are set to noindex with a canonical pointing to the main page, the noindex is not transmitted to the canonical page. However, external links pointing to these noindex variants will...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really ignore Schema.org for e-commerce product variants?

Google does not use Schema.org to manage e-commerce product variants. For SEO, it is preferable to have fewer indexed pages that are stronger, using the canonical to group variants (sizes, colors) to ...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can Google really figure out that a URL is duplicated without even crawling it?

Google uses a predictive approach: if several URLs with a similar structure show the same content, Google learns this pattern and can treat other similar URLs as duplicates without crawling them, in o...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really block JSON files in your robots.txt?

Blocking the crawl of JSON files via robots.txt will prevent the indexing of content that is visible only after rendering on pages that require these JSON files, both on your site and on third-party s...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do JSON requests really impact your crawl budget?

All requests to the server via Googlebot's infrastructure, including JSON files, count towards the crawl budget. However, many JSON requests do not necessarily imply a limitation on crawling regular c...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is there a magic number of links per page to optimize internal PageRank?

Google uses PageRank to understand the internal structure of a site, taking into account the links on a page. But there is no optimal number of links. A reasonable navigation structure for users will ...

Mar 05, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available