John Mueller

★★★ Does a 1:1 domain migration truly transfer ALL ranking signals?

During a simple domain migration (one-to-one), all ranking signals are transferred. Google has worked long to make these migrations as seamless as possible, and they generally work very well....

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really ban external reviews from your Schema.org structured data?

If you use reviews that do not come from your own collection but from an external source, you must not include them in your Schema.org structured data for reviews....

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really use data-nosnippet to control your search snippets?

It is acceptable to use the data-nosnippet attribute to exclude certain parts of a page from search snippets. Lazy-loading is also a valid option for content that is intended solely for users....

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can exchanging content for backlinks trigger a Google penalty?

Exchanging product reviews for backlinks can be seen as a problematic link exchange by Google's Web Spam team. It is recommended to use nofollow links in this case to avoid being interpreted as purcha...

Oct 16, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does a sudden drop in traffic always signal a quality issue?

If there is a significant drop in traffic from one day to the next, it is more indicative of a quality issue than a technical problem. A technical issue would generally cause a subtle decline over sev...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Paired AMP: Is it really the regular HTML that matters for indexing?

In a paired AMP configuration (normal HTML page + linked AMP page), Google uses the normal HTML page for indexing. The AMP page is additional and can be displayed on mobile and appropriate devices, bu...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it really necessary to list every keyword variation for Google to understand your content?

Google tries to understand synonyms, equivalents, acronyms, and singular/plural forms to determine if a page is relevant for different versions of a keyword. It is not necessary to include every varia...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do words in the URL really still have a true impact on Google rankings?

Google uses some signals from the words in the URL, but it's very, very weak. If Google can analyze the page content, it can essentially ignore the words in the URL. Having a word in a different langu...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do URL fragments really disrupt the indexing of JavaScript sites?

On JavaScript sites, if content is only loaded when the fragment is present, Google will likely not be able to index that content because fragments are removed during indexing. Only a very small numbe...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are URLs with # really invisible for Google SEO?

Fragment identifiers (URLs with #) are completely ignored for indexing. Google treats them as links to the same page. They do not affect rankings or featured snippets. Google may sometimes use them to...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it really necessary to be 'significantly better' to climb the SERPs?

If several sites are very similar in quality and relevance, the ranking team will change nothing. To improve its ranking, a site must be made clearly the most relevant for targeted queries so that Goo...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really ignore hidden content instead of penalizing it?

If Google detects hidden content on a competing site, it may simply ignore it rather than penalize the entire site. Some negative aspects of a site do not mean it will rank lower if Google recognizes ...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are backlinks really less important than we think for ranking on Google?

Google uses links as a factor in certain algorithms but also many other elements. Links are probably not the most critical element. Having more backlinks does not guarantee a better ranking if other a...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does domain age and the choice of CMS really influence Google rankings?

Website age is not a factor: Google does not favor either old or new sites systemically. The CMS used (WordPress, Wix, Blogger, etc.) does not matter: Google looks at the generated HTML pages. All mod...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do HTML breadcrumbs really enhance crawling and internal linking?

HTML breadcrumbs (not structured data) have an SEO effect because they create links between pages. On a site with multiple category levels, this connects products, subcategories, and main categories, ...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does structured breadcrumb really enhance your SEO ranking?

The structured data for breadcrumbs does not change anything for SEO or ranking. It merely allows search results to display differently as a rich result. The homepage and final page in the schema are ...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does each language version really need its own self-referencing canonical?

For a multilingual site, all individual language versions must have a canonical tag pointing to themselves. If the English version is the canonical of the French version, Google may only process the E...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can you really host your XML sitemap on an external domain?

The sitemap file can be hosted on a different domain and specified in robots.txt. This allows different departments within a company to manage sitemaps dynamically even if the main content takes time ...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can an incomplete or outdated sitemap really harm your SEO?

An incomplete or outdated sitemap likely does not affect search performance. The sitemap only helps with crawling slightly better; it does not change ranking. Google crawls the site normally even with...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really use sitemaps to speed up the indexing of your content?

To help Google detect changes more quickly, changes need to be reported via a sitemap file. Most CMSs automatically generate sitemaps or feeds. The URL Inspection tool in Search Console can be used fo...

Oct 15, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available