John Mueller

★★ Should you still use the disavow file against automated UGC spam?

Automated scripts creating spam links in profiles/forums are a very old pattern that Google can recognize and ignore. Manual cleanup on the site (nofollow, noindex) is preferable to the disavow file f...

Jul 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really disavow spam backlinks pointing to your noindexed profiles?

Low-quality backlinks pointing to user profiles do not require disavowal if these pages are noindexed. Google effectively manages this type of automated spam that has been prevalent for years. The noi...

Jul 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really apply noindex to all user profiles suspected of spam?

For forums with user profiles exploited for link building, apply nofollow to links and noindex to suspicious profiles. Google can learn to ignore all links from a domain if too much spam is detected, ...

Jul 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do negative reviews on third-party sites really penalize your Google rankings?

The presence of an external review page (even negative) appearing in the SERPs for a brand query does not affect the ranking of the main site. Users may get lost on this page, but it does not harm the...

Jul 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the URL Inspection Tool really guarantee your pages will be indexed?

Google does not have any known crawling issues with the URL Inspection Tool, but submitting a URL does not imply automatic indexing. New sites without strong signals may not be indexed immediately; it...

Jul 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that you don’t need to mark up your entities for them to appear in Google's rich results?

For an entity to appear in rich results (e.g., mobile games), Google must recognize it as such across the entire web, not just on one site. No special markup is required; Google identifies entities by...

Jul 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the favicon really influence CTR in the SERPs?

The favicon mainly assists users who already know the site in recognizing it in the SERPs, but it likely does not influence the behavior of generic users who are unfamiliar with the brand....

Jul 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does your favicon take months to get indexed on Google?

A favicon can take several months to appear in search results, particularly if the site uses subdomains for each language instead of being indexed at the root. Google recommends reporting persistent c...

Jul 24, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really create your robots.txt from scratch or can you take inspiration from a competitor?

You shouldn't simply reuse someone else's robots.txt file assuming it will work for your site. Instead, think about the parts of your site that you really don't want crawled, and block only those....

Jul 20, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really block server configuration files in robots.txt?

Configuration files such as PHP.ini or .htaccess are not accessible from the outside by default. They are secured or located in a special place. If no one can access them, Googlebot cannot either. The...

Jul 20, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really unblock all CSS files in robots.txt to avoid a Google penalty?

Google must be able to access CSS files to render pages correctly. This is essential for determining whether a page is mobile-friendly. Although CSS files are generally not indexed on their own, Googl...

Jul 20, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Block 404 Error Pages in Your Robots.txt File?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that it would be a very bad idea to block pages that return 404 errors from search engine crawling, adding that Googlebot attempts to crawl billions of URLs that retu...

Jul 20, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Reject Backlinks from Pages Less Popular Than Yours?

According to John Mueller, receiving links from pages with lower popularity (whether you measure it with metrics like TF, CF, DA or others) than the page receiving the link does not pose a major probl...

Jul 20, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Optimize Your Mobile Site for Landscape Mode in SEO?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that the fact that a website doesn't support "landscape" mode on mobile has no impact on the search engine algorithm and therefore no SEO impact......

Jul 06, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can Google Really Rank a Page Without Analyzing Its Content First?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google does not rank a page before analyzing its content. Therefore, it does not propose a page in its SERP based solely on other criteria, such as the URL or li...

Jun 29, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google display inconsistent sitelinks when your internal anchors are clean?

Sitelinks and their descriptive text are generated from the site's structure and the internal anchor texts recognized by Google. Inconsistent text may indicate a problem with anchor recognition (JS, c...

Jun 26, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can blocking CSS or JavaScript via robots.txt hurt your mobile ranking?

Blocking resources (CSS, JS, cookies, popups) via robots.txt is acceptable as long as Google can still render the page and assess its mobile compatibility. Blocking all CSS/JS would render the page un...

Jun 26, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really worry about the impact of 404 redirects on your crawl budget?

Switching from 404 to 301 or vice versa has no significant impact on the crawl budget. Google crawls 404s slightly less over time, but even for millions of pages, the difference is negligible....

Jun 26, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really redirect all your 404 pages that receive backlinks?

If 404 pages receive external backlinks, Google does not utilize these links (no problem). If a new page replaces the old one (e.g., a new product), redirecting the old URL is relevant for users and S...

Jun 26, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do URLs with parameters rank as well as clean URLs?

URLs with parameters (e.g., ?type=blog) rank exactly like URLs with clean paths. Parameters even facilitate crawling: Google's systems learn which parameters are critical and optimize exploration. For...

Jun 26, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available