John Mueller

★★ Does Google really prioritize geolocation for ranking syndicated content?

When Google recognizes that people are searching for text included in many articles, it tries to select the one that is most relevant for the user. If Google identifies that certain pages or sites are...

Feb 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really prioritize original content over syndicated versions?

Google attempts to recognize situations where exactly the same article is republished and handle that accordingly in search by potentially showing the original. But there are many cases where Google c...

Feb 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does server response time really slow down Google's crawl more than rendering speed?

Server response time is critical for crawling. Rendering speed (user-side performance aspect) is less important for crawling, but server response time technically slows Google down during the crawl....

Feb 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are server errors really killing your crawl budget?

When Google crawls a certain number of pages per day and the number of server errors increases, Google reduces the crawl, assuming it is crawling too aggressively. Google aims to leave capacity for ac...

Feb 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why doesn’t Search Console show all the data from your indexed sitemaps?

In Search Console, you sometimes only see part of the table with sitemap files in a sitemap index. This is more of a reporting issue than an indexing issue. If you were to add the sitemap files indivi...

Feb 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Core Web Vitals apply to subdomains or just the main domain?

Data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is maintained at the origin level, which means the hostname including the subdomain and the protocol. If you have different subdomains, they will be ...

Feb 19, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Short Domain Names and URLs Actually Boost Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that using a short domain name or short URLs (number of words or characters) does not provide any "bonus" in terms of SEO....

Feb 15, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Trust Google Patents for Your SEO Strategy?

John Mueller indicated during the same hangout that when Google files a patent application, it does not necessarily mean that what is described in the patent is integrated into the relevance algorithm...

Feb 15, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Remove User Comments from Your Pages to Boost SEO?

John Mueller explained during a webmaster hangout that if you remove user comments from a web page, there will inevitably be an impact on the page's ranking: "From our perspective, we consider comment...

Feb 15, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do social signals really influence Google rankings?

Google does not consider social share buttons, like counts, or social media activity as a ranking factor in search results....

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is content freshness really a key ranking factor?

Google tries to take content freshness into account for certain queries, but it's not systematic. An older, higher-quality page can outclass more recent content. The relevance of freshness varies base...

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really rename all your images for SEO?

Google advises in its image search guidelines to use helpful and descriptive file names for images rather than simple numbers. This specifically aids image search....

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why do your Core Web Vitals fixes take 30 days to impact your rankings?

Core Web Vitals field data takes approximately 30 days to be updated. A fix applied 10 days before an update is unlikely to be detected immediately. The measurement is not unique to a specific date bu...

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really implement hreflang between distant languages?

For content in significantly different languages (e.g., Swedish, Japanese, Korean), hreflang is generally not necessary. Google will not show the Swedish version to someone searching in Japanese. Href...

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google only index a tiny fraction of your pages?

Google does not guarantee the indexing of all pages on every website. For most sites, only a small portion of the total content is indexed. It is normal for a site with 600 articles to have only 100 t...

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that the History API is really seen as a redirect by Google?

If Google detects that a page is using the History API to change the URL during loading, it classifies this as a redirect and will try to crawl and index the destination URL (the new URL) during the n...

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can you extend a page's expiration date using unavailable_after?

If Google recrawls a page and detects an updated unavailable_after meta tag with a new date, it will consider this new date. It's not fixed after the first specification. Google treats the page as noi...

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do audio files on your pages really boost your SEO?

Adding an audio version of the content on a page does not help with rankings, except for the obvious improvement in accessibility. Google does not treat audio files as distinct content and does not ra...

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Merging and splitting sites: Why does Google never guarantee a stable ranking post-migration?

During migrations involving site mergers or splits (as opposed to a simple domain move), temporary and long-term ranking fluctuations are expected. The outcome may be stronger or mixed. Google needs t...

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is removing URL parameters for Googlebot actually cloaking without a penalty?

Serving pages with URL parameters removed only for Googlebot is technically considered cloaking. However, from a practical perspective, this will not cause manual action by the webspam team, but compl...

Feb 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available