John Mueller

★★★ Does Google really analyze the audio of your podcasts for SEO?

Google does not perform any textual analysis of podcast audio files to understand what is being said. If content is essential for SEO, it needs to be presented in text on the page, for example through...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How does Google really handle the separation of a site into two distinct entities?

Separating a site into two is not considered a domain migration by Google since a new state is being created. Using rel canonical followed by 301 redirects is an acceptable approach. It is essential t...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really cancel a failed domain migration or commit to it fully?

You should avoid canceling a domain migration because it does not revert everything to the original state. You're simply moving the current situation (with its issues) back to the old domain. This res...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it really necessary to avoid any migration following a failed domain migration?

During a problematic domain migration, the one thing you must absolutely avoid is another migration. Internal changes to the site are acceptable, especially if they don't involve modifying URLs....

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really delete your out-of-stock product pages to avoid a quality penalty?

Having hundreds or thousands of out-of-stock product pages can create a mass of low-quality content that doesn't attract attention. It's better to focus this content in a gallery or archive page so th...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do out of stock pages really hurt your Google rankings?

Pages of products marked 'out of stock' or 'not available' tend to be ranked as soft 404s. When they slip into a soft 404 state, the page and its images disappear from search results....

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really archive out-of-stock products instead of leaving them marked as unavailable?

For permanently out-of-stock unique products, it is preferable to move them to an 'archives' or 'reference' section rather than keep product pages marked as 'out of stock'. This allows images to remai...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why do your images stay indexed long after the text content has disappeared?

Google does not re-index images as frequently as text. If a link to an image is found one time out of ten during crawling, the image will be indexed and remain in Google Images, even if the text on th...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How can you confirm if Google is truly indexing your lazy-loaded content?

To check if content is indexed, search for an exact phrase in quotes on Google. This is the ultimate proof that the content is indexed. The Inspect URL tool also allows you to view the fully rendered ...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does lazy loading really harm your content's indexing by Google?

When rendering a page, Google uses a fairly high viewport and indexes everything that loads within this viewport. If content requires a specific action (scroll, click on 'Read more'), it will probably...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google still crawl your deleted old URLs?

Google occasionally continues to crawl old URLs (returning 404) for years, especially if they had backlinks or were important. It is at low priority and does not block normal site crawling....

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you sync visible and technical dates to enhance your crawl?

The date displayed on the page should reflect major changes to the main content, not minor modifications (comments, sidebar). Dates in the sitemap or structured data can indicate any HTML change to si...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you return a 404 or a 200 on a product page that's out of stock?

For temporarily unavailable products, displaying a page with a 200 code and an email alert option is acceptable. If the unavailability is long, switching to a 404 allows Google to optimize the crawl b...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google sometimes show your old meta descriptions in the SERPs?

Even after updating the meta description, Google can temporarily show the old text in snippets if that content was previously on the page and considered relevant to the query. This typically normalize...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really hide cookie consent banners from Googlebot?

Blocking Googlebot from cookie consent banners does not lead to a manual penalty, as long as the main content remains identical for users and for Google. Banners implemented in JavaScript or HTML abov...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really avoid setting all your outbound links to nofollow?

Setting all outbound links of a site to nofollow can have a slight negative impact. Google uses links to understand how a site fits into the web. If all links are nofollow, it may give the impression ...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does alternative text for images really enhance SEO?

The alternative text for images is mainly used for image search (Google Images) and for accessibility. It should describe what's visible in the image, not necessarily repeat the product description....

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Core Web Vitals: Why does Google ignore other performance metrics for Page Experience?

For the upcoming Page Experience ranking factor, Google will use only the Core Web Vitals (not other performance metrics like Lighthouse). Desktop and mobile will be evaluated separately. Google will ...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does blocking robots.txt prevent noindex from working?

You should not block noindex URLs in robots.txt, as this prevents Google from seeing the noindex directive, and these pages may stay indexed. Instead, use the URL Parameters Tool to reduce crawling of...

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is the URL Parameters Tool in Search Console a zombie or still useful for your SEO?

The URL Parameters Tool in Search Console is still operational and is recognized by Google, but display data has been at zero for a long time. A replacement tool is under development....

Oct 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available