John Mueller

★★ Should you really abandon geolocated redirections for a regional selection banner?

For sites personalizing content by state or city, Google recommends displaying a banner that allows users to change their version rather than automatically redirecting. This allows Googlebot to index ...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really keep the canonical from desktop to mobile in mobile-first indexing?

For sites with separate mobile URLs (m.example.com), even after the switch to mobile-first indexing, you must continue to set the rel canonical from the mobile version to the desktop version and the r...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that automatic geographic redirections sabotage your Google crawling?

Googlebot crawls mainly from a single location per website, typically the United States. If a site automatically redirects US users to a specific version, Google will think that these pages should be ...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can removing pages from a sitemap actually limit their crawling by Google?

Sitemaps help Google crawl better, but do not limit what is crawled. Removing pages from a sitemap does not prevent Google from crawling or indexing them. Google crawls the site normally even without ...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is mobile-first indexing really a ranking factor?

Mobile-first indexing mainly concerns the indexing of mobile content, not mobile compatibility as a ranking factor. Google needs to see the content on mobile. Desktop-only sites with table-based desig...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google only crawl a fraction of your known pages?

Google has only crawled a portion of known URLs from a site since its inception. If Google crawls 20,000 pages out of 100,000 known (via sitemap), only those 20,000 can be indexed. This number increas...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really estimate the Core Web Vitals of low-traffic sites?

For sites lacking sufficient traffic in the Chrome User Experience Report, Google cannot display Core Web Vitals data in Search Console. However, the site will not be excluded from search results: Goo...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the rel canonical really consolidate ALL link signals to the chosen URL?

When Google recognizes a group of duplicate pages and selects a canonical URL (through the rel canonical and other signals), all external and internal signals, including external links pointing to any...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the source of content affect the crawl budget?

There is no difference in the crawl budget based on whether the content is written by you, a team of writers, or generated by users. The important factor is to structure the site so that Google can cr...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should we really disregard spammy automated backlinks?

Google automatically ignores spammy links that are created en masse by scripts. Google's algorithms are used to seeing this type of manipulation (thousands of automatically generated links) and comple...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is JavaScript navigation without URLs ruining your site’s mobile-first indexing?

If a site's mobile version uses only JavaScript for navigation, without normal URLs (everything stays on the same URL with changing layers), Google will not be able to crawl and index the content. Wit...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How does Google really assess the importance of your pages through internal linking?

Google determines the importance of a page by its position in the site architecture and internal links. A page linked from the homepage with significant anchor text will be judged more critical than a...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is it true that a well-ranked website can lose its relevance without making any mistakes?

Don't stop once the site is well-ranked. The web evolves quickly, and a stagnant site can become less relevant even without errors. You need to continue optimizing, anticipating trends, and maintainin...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you include all your pages in a general sitemap?

General sitemaps must include all your pages. News sitemaps are limited to the last 1000 articles and are specifically meant for Google News, but can be used by any website. Including all URLs in a si...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does structured data really influence rankings on Google?

Adding additional types of structured data (such as online schema) does not change page rankings. It provides more information to Google and can generate different rich results, but it does not affect...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Googlebot send an HTTP referrer when crawling your site?

Googlebot does not send an HTTP referrer when crawling, even when following redirects or links. Consequently, pop-ups or conditional messages based on the referrer will never be seen by Google and do ...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does image quality really affect rankings in Google’s web search?

The quality of images (resolution, sharpness) does not affect rankings in standard web search, but influences how these images appear in Google Images. If you are targeting visual search traffic, impr...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Why does Google sometimes index your AMP pages before their canonical HTML version?

Google may sometimes discover and index an AMP page before its canonical HTML version, especially if links point directly to the AMP. Once the HTML page is crawled, Google connects the two versions an...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Core Web Vitals: Why do your laboratory tests fail to impact your ranking?

Google uses field data from the Chrome User Experience Report for ranking, not laboratory data. Testing tools (extension, PageSpeed Insights in lab mode) are useful for testing and seeing the immediat...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google suddenly show more non-indexed URLs in Search Console?

Google now prominently displays discovered but non-indexed URLs in Search Console. This is not a change in indexing itself but in the way this information is reported. Google has always been selective...

Jun 12, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available