John Mueller

★★★ Does Googlebot really ignore HSTS 307 redirects, or is there a catch?

Googlebot does not interact with 307 redirects generated by HSTS. These 307 redirects are not real server-side redirects but rather redirects generated by the Chrome browser to indicate that it is app...

Oct 28, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should You Really Limit the Number of Outbound Links on a Web Page?

For years, Google has indicated that there is no limit to the number of outbound links (internal or external) on a web page that are read by the search engine's robots. However, Gary Illyes indicated ...

Oct 27, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can Your Slow Site Penalize Your Fast Pages?

John Mueller explained in a hangout that generally, the search engine uses granular data to analyze and test each page of a site. But sometimes, particularly regarding web performance (loading time), ...

Oct 27, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Publishing First Really Guarantee Google Will Recognize You as the Original Author?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the fact that Google indexes content first does not make that content original and "canonical". In other words, just because a spammer plagiarizes your content b...

Oct 27, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Can Google Penalty Reconsideration Reviews Take Anywhere from 1 Week to Several Months?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the timeframe for processing a reconsideration request for a site that has received a manual action could vary from one week to several months, without any real ...

Oct 19, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you isolate your blog or news section on a separate domain?

For a news section on a product site, it is recommended to keep it on the existing domain rather than creating a new domain. This allows you to immediately benefit from the authority of the existing s...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Really Worry About 302 Redirects During a Migration Error?

Using a 302 redirect instead of a 301 during a migration will take longer for canonicalization to focus on the new URL. In the long run, the difference is minimal, but for a permanent migration, a 301...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does content syndication really harm your organic search ranking?

If other sites are syndicating your content, it is not a signal that Google views your site as low quality. On the contrary, this can be seen as a positive sign that others want to syndicate your cont...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google impose a maximum threshold for ads within the viewport?

There is no specific percentage or pixel limit for ad sizes within the Page Layout algorithm. Google does not indicate that ads should represent a maximum of X% of the viewport or Y pixels....

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does recovery from a Page Layout penalty take months?

After fixing issues related to the Page Layout algorithm (excessive ads above the fold), recovery is not instant. Google must reprocess a large part of the site to understand that the problem is resol...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google manage to comprehend 15% of queries it has never seen before through machine learning?

15% of daily searches are completely new. Google uses machine learning (like BERT) to understand acronyms, synonyms, singular/plural forms, and what users are really looking for, rather than simply ma...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really create keywords from your content, or is the process the other way around?

Google does not read content to decide which keywords to target. Instead, Google receives a query and searches for documents containing those words via an inverted index, then ranks those documents. G...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why do your rendering tests fail while Google indexes your page correctly?

Google's testing tools (Mobile-Friendly Test) have shorter timeouts than actual indexing to provide quick answers. If rendering works in the URL Inspection tool but not in the tests, it’s likely a tim...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really prioritize incremental linking for pagination instead of linking everything from page 1?

To help Google focus on the first page of a paginated series, link the pages incrementally (page 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc.) instead of linking everything from page 1. This signals to Google that the first ...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the Ad Experience Report really influence Google rankings?

Google Search does not use the Ad Experience Report as a ranking factor. It is Chrome that automatically blocks non-compliant ads. The search effects come mainly from the algorithm regarding above-the...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is alternating between index and noindex really dooming your pages to Google's oblivion?

If pages alternate between index and noindex, Google will eventually treat them as 404 pages and crawl them less frequently, regardless of submissions in the sitemap. This fluctuation is counterproduc...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google ignore identical modification dates in XML sitemaps?

If a sitemap contains thousands of URLs with the same recent modification date (all updated in the last minute), Google understands that this is incorrect and will not use this information as a signal...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How might a missing timezone in your XML sitemaps jeopardize your crawl?

The lastmod tag in a sitemap must follow the datetime standard with a specified timezone. Using 'z' at the end indicates UTC time, but other timezones can be specified according to the appropriate RFC...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google ignore your canonical and hreflang tags if your HTML is poorly structured?

Elements like rel canonical, meta robots tags, and hreflang must be in the head section of the page. If body elements appear before in the head, the browser will prematurely open the body and Google w...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can Google really evaluate Core Web Vitals section by section on your site?

Google tries to be as granular as possible in assessing Core Web Vitals. If your site has a clear structure (subdirectories or subdomains), Google can treat slow and fast sections differently. Without...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available