John Mueller

★★ Do free SSL certificates harm your Google rankings?

Any SSL certificate supported by modern browsers like Chrome is suitable for Google Search. Free certificates, especially those provided by Let's Encrypt, are perfectly appropriate for an HTTPS migrat...

Sep 01, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What triggers the same signals as a complete site move when migrating to HTTPS?

Moving from HTTP to HTTPS requires redirecting all users to the HTTPS version via server-side 301 redirects. Google considers this a site migration with a change of URL....

Sep 01, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why Did Google Remove Regex from Search Console Before Even Launching It?

A few weeks ago, the help documentation for the Search Console "Performance" report indicated that it was possible to use regex (regular expressions to filter data). Then John Mueller and Gary Illyes ...

Aug 31, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Links from Wikipedia Really Impact Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller explained on Reddit that links from Wikipedia to your site have no impact on your visibility in Google. And even more so for links created artificially and/or automatically on the online ...

Aug 31, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Optimize Keywords in URLs to Improve Your SEO?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that keywords present in the URL carry low weight in the search engine's algorithm....

Aug 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the Mobile First Index Really Apply Automatically to New Websites?

Google indicated in May 2019 that starting from July 1st of that same year, all new sites discovered by the search engine's crawlers would automatically be integrated into the Mobile First Index. John...

Aug 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Google Actually Determine the Canonical URL of Your Pages?

John Mueller provided on Twitter a list of criteria that Google takes into account to define what the canonical URL of a page is (and therefore its "canonicalization"): redirects, internal links, exte...

Aug 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is it really necessary to nofollow site-wide links to your legal pages to optimize PageRank?

Having 10 links instead of just one to a legal page (privacy, contact) on every page of the site probably wouldn't change anything. Google understands that these pages are linked everywhere without be...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is advertising on your site harming your SEO?

Displaying ads is not an SEO problem in itself. Google checks that the main content remains visible above-the-fold (not just ads) and that the site adheres to the Better Ads Standard (otherwise, Chrom...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do links in embedded tweets really affect your SEO?

When a tweet is embedded on a third-party site, Google can technically treat the links in that tweet as part of the page. However, Twitter heavily uses nofollow: these links generally have no direct S...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google ignore the lastmod dates in your XML sitemap?

If all the URLs in a sitemap have the same modification date (e.g., today's date), Google ignores this information and uses the sitemap only to discover new URLs. The priority and changefreq fields ar...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really have to choose between reducing duplicate content and using canonical tags?

Reducing duplicate content makes crawling and indexing easier, but it is unrealistic to completely eliminate duplication on all sites. The rel=canonical helps Google identify preferred versions. Both ...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it really necessary to optimize the first link on a page for SEO?

Contrary to the common belief that only the first link matters, Google can take multiple links pointing to the same URL on a page into account and combine their anchor signals. There is no need to man...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Nofollow still affect crawling without passing on PageRank?

Google can now follow nofollow links to discover new URLs and potentially index them. However, the transmission of PageRank and ranking signals through these links remains independent of the crawl dec...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is it really necessary to manually de-index your old pagination URLs?

When pagination is removed, old paginated URLs either return the homepage (automatically canonicalized) or a 404 (de-indexed upon recrawl). Google manages this naturally over time without any manual d...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it really necessary to index all pagination pages to optimize your SEO?

Google must index paginated pages to recover all content and internal links (e.g., products from an e-commerce category). Each paginated page needs to be linked with standard HTML links (next/previous...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you still invest in AMP to optimize speed and ranking?

Speed is a ranking factor, but AMP is not necessary for having fast pages. You can create very fast non-AMP pages and slow AMP pages. What matters is the actual measured performance, not the AMP forma...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really ditch display:none to differentiate mobile and desktop?

Using display:none to hide content based on the device (desktop or mobile) does not pose a major issue for Google, but a purely responsive layout is recommended in the long run to facilitate maintenan...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can you truly prioritize certain pages in Google without a dedicated meta tag?

Google does not allow webmasters to specify that one page should rank higher than another on their own site. The only way to signal the importance of a page is through internal linking: strongly linki...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can a misconfigured sitemap really cut down your crawl budget?

A poorly configured sitemap (identical dates, etc.) does not penalize the site and does not reduce the crawl budget. Google will crawl organically rather than being guided by the sitemap. The crawl bu...

Aug 21, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available