John Mueller

★★★ Should You Really Balance Your Follow/Nofollow Link Ratio to Look Natural to Google?

When a user told him that it was good practice for a website to have a well-balanced "link profile" between Follow and Nofollow links to "look natural," John Mueller was explicit: "That's wrong"......

Aug 10, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the Order of Hn Tags Really Impact Google Rankings?

John Mueller has repeated for the 7,854th time that the order of Hn tags has no impact on Google's algorithm: you can put H5 before H1 or whatever you want in any order, it will work......

Aug 10, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can Negative Reviews Actually Tank Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller seemed to indicate during a hangout that if a site (the example of Decor My Eyes from 10 years ago was cited) received a very large number of negative reviews, this could influence its ra...

Aug 10, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are doorway pages still subject to manual penalties from Google?

Google once had a manual action for doorway pages, but this practice has likely shifted to automatic algorithmic processing. Many historical manual actions have transitioned to algorithmic detection o...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How can you tell a legitimate city page from a penalizable doorway page?

Creating pages targeting cities can be acceptable if they provide real unique value (special offers, local reviews, popular models by city). In contrast, massively generating pages with only auto-gene...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you serve a streamlined version of your pages to Googlebot to improve crawl efficiency?

Serving a faster page to Googlebot (without trackers or pixels) is not considered cloaking and is similar to server-side prerendering. However, this practice is discouraged because it introduces unnec...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you focus on optimizing your site speed for Googlebot or your actual users?

Optimizing speed solely for Googlebot (by removing trackers/pixels) does not add value for ranking because Google uses Chrome User Experience Report data based on what real users see. Speed should be ...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really limit the crawl rate in Search Console?

Limiting the crawl rate in Search Console reduces the total number of requests but does not proportionally impact crawling for web search. Google can continue to crawl all necessary pages for search a...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why is your Search Console crawl budget skyrocketing for no apparent reason?

The number of URLs crawled per day in Search Console includes all Googlebot requests: HTML, images, CSS, JavaScript, server responses, and also checks for landing pages for Google Ads and Shopping. Th...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really keep each hreflang page self-canonical?

Pages linked by hreflang must be self-canonical (each version points to itself as canonical). If all versions canonicalize to a single page, Google will follow this directive, index only this unique p...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Search Console display a different canonical than what appears in the SERP for your hreflang pages?

When Google groups hreflang pages with similar content, it chooses a unique canonical but displays the appropriate local version in search results. Search Console will show all data on the canonical (...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are Hreflang and Canonical really reliable for geographic targeting?

Hreflang and geotargeting are not guaranteed directives but signals. Google may choose to display a targeted page for one country in another country if the algorithms determine it's the best answer. T...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How does Google really differentiate between two sites in the same language but targeting different countries?

For Google to treat pages separately by country (same language), clear local signals are needed: different currencies, local phone numbers, local physical addresses. These elements allow algorithms to...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google overlook your canonical on multi-country sites?

Google may select a different canonical than the declared one when multiple country versions contain exactly the same content in the same language. The algorithms group these URLs and choose a canonic...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are translated pages really treated as unique content by Google?

Pages translated into different languages (even translated content) are considered entirely distinct and indexed independently. Google does not treat them as duplicate content since they consist of di...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Google Cache really not useful for assessing a page's SEO quality?

The presence or absence of a page in Google Cache is neither a sign of quality nor an indicator of ranking. It's simply a side effect of internal systems. To test what Googlebot sees, you should use t...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is the 304 Not Modified code really a trap for your indexing?

The HTTP 304 code should only be returned in response to a conditional request (If-Modified-Since). Returning a 304 on a normal request is like not returning any content, thus preventing indexing. For...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does splitting your sitemaps truly impact crawling and indexing?

The splitting of sitemaps (separate URLs, separate images, or everything in a single file) generally has no impact on crawling and indexing, provided that size and URL count limits are respected. Reas...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can negative reviews really hurt your Google ranking?

Negative reviews or a poor online reputation generally do not affect search rankings, unless all signals point massively in that direction. A handful of negative reviews among many positive ones will ...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How can you measure Core Web Vitals when your site isn't in CrUX?

When a site does not appear in the Chrome User Experience Report, it is possible to use the Core Web Vitals JavaScript library to collect this data directly in Analytics. This approach allows you to o...

Aug 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available