John Mueller

★★★ Why does Google refuse to index all your pages, and how can you fix it?

Google does not promise to index all pages on the web. On a new site with a sudden influx of content, systems may be cautious and limit crawling and indexing. Submitting via Inspect URL does not guara...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is repetitive internal anchor text really a concern for Google?

It is normal for a product to be internally linked with the same product name as anchor text (98% identical). Depending on the CMS, this occurs naturally. Google does not automatically penalize this r...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that BERT penalizes websites that lose traffic after its rollout?

BERT is not a ranking algorithm update but a system to better understand the text of long queries and pages. If a site loses traffic after BERT, it's because Google has a better understanding of what ...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you choose hreflang language only or language+country for your international versions?

With hreflang, you can define either a language (e.g., pt for Portuguese) or a language-country combination (e.g., pt-BR for Brazilian Portuguese). If you only have one Portuguese version, use just th...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is the site: command really useless for diagnosing indexing?

The number of results displayed by the site: command is optimized for speed, not accuracy. To diagnose indexing, one must rely on the Index Coverage report from Search Console, which accurately reflec...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the URL Parameter Tool really consolidate all signals as Google claims?

By configuring a parameter as 'Representative URL' in the Search Console parameter tool, Google consolidates all signals from URLs with that parameter to a unique representative version. This can redu...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do core updates really not penalize any technical errors?

Core updates (such as the June 2019 update) improve the relevance of search results. A drop in ranking after a core update does not necessarily indicate a technical error or a penalty, but suggests th...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What happens when your internal linking isn't bidirectional?

For Google to crawl the entire site, it requires links that allow for descending through the hierarchy (to subcategories), ascending back up, and navigating horizontally between items in the same cate...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Hreflang really only affect displayed URLs while Google insists on indexing just one version?

Hreflang does not influence indexing: Google may index a single version of similar content (canonical), but displays the appropriate URL based on the search country. In Search Console, only the canoni...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does hreflang in HTML really weigh down your pages, or is that just a myth?

Hreflang markup in the HTML head is static text that compresses very well. For an e-commerce site with a lot of content, adding hreflang annotations to the HTML does not significantly affect the page ...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google Images really select the right image for your pages?

To ensure Google Images associates the right image with a page, integrate main images visibly and use structured data (e.g., article markup) to explicitly specify which images represent the page. This...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really rewrite your meta descriptions if they contain too many keywords?

When Google detects that a meta description resembles keyword stuffing or appears unhelpful to the user, its systems may decide to rewrite it based on the actual content of the page. The displayed des...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the outdated content tool really just hide the snippet instead of affecting indexing?

If critical information (like an old phone number) persists in the results, the outdated content tool allows for temporary removal of the snippet or waiting for the result to be updated, without deind...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do UTM parameters really cause Google to index duplicate content?

URLs with UTM parameters (Facebook, Twitter) can be indexed as duplicates even if the canonical is correct. Google will eventually consolidate these versions to the canonical version. To accelerate or...

May 13, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does a Backlink's Age Really Influence Its SEO Weight Over Time?

John Mueller discussed link age during a recent hangout. In other words, does the "SEO strength" of a link increase or decrease over time? John explained that there are no "rules" establishing a corre...

May 11, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can renaming a URL parameter really force Google to reindex your duplicate pages?

When Google learns that a URL parameter is irrelevant and groups pages as duplicates, this learning persists for a long time. Changing the parameter name (e.g., from 'q=' to 'qu=' or 's=') forces Goog...

May 05, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Long Before Google Deindexes a Site That's Down?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that if a website is "down" due to an outage, the search engine will test access to its pages a certain number of times, then begin deindexing content (page by page a...

May 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Submitting Multiple Google Reconsideration Requests Really Speed Up Manual Action Removal?

When a site has been targeted by a manual action from Google, John Mueller indicated on Twitter that there is no point in making several reconsideration requests in succession, as long as you have not...

May 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Does Google Detect So Many Soft 404s in Search Console and How Can You Fix Them?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that if, in the Search Console ("Coverage" report), you have many "Soft 404s" (pages generating a 200 code but with 404 behavior), it's because you may have an intern...

May 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Googlebot Still Fill Out Forms to Crawl Your Website?

John Mueller explained in a hangout that today, it is extremely rare for Googlebot to attempt to fill out and submit a form on a website "to see where it goes in that case". John explained that if thi...

May 04, 2020 ⚡ Analysis available