John Mueller

★★★ Are Sitemaps and Internal Linking Really Essential for Getting Crawled by Google?

To assist in Google's crawling, it's essential to ensure good internal linking and include pages in the sitemap file. This facilitates the discovery of pages and their indexing by Google....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really block access to your staging environments instead of using robots.txt or noindex?

For staging sites, Google recommends blocking access via HTTP authentication or IP whitelisting to avoid accidental indexing, rather than using robots.txt or noindex....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can invalid structured markup really penalize your entire site?

In the case of invalid structured markup, only that specific content may be ignored or marked without affecting other valid markup types on the site....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the word count really impact Google rankings?

Google does not specify a minimum word limit for a page to be eligible for ranking, focusing instead on the relevance of the content to the end user....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is Google really constantly testing its search results?

Google is constantly testing changes to search results to ensure their relevance and optimizes algorithms based on user testing results....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do no-snippet tags really influence your page rankings?

Using no-snippet tags allows you to control which parts of your content appear in previews, but does not affect the page ranking....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are your forum or customer reviews dragging down the ranking of your entire site?

It is possible that your quality content is impacted by lower-quality user-generated content, such as a forum, thus influencing the overall ranking of the site. It is recommended to properly manage an...

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the URL removal tool really take your pages out of Google's index?

The URL removal tool in Google Search Console allows you to temporarily hide URLs from search results, but it does not remove them from the index....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the perceived quality of a health site really depend on the expertise displayed by its authors?

It is recommended to enhance the overall quality of a site by ensuring that sensitive information, such as medical content, is provided by qualified experts to improve its ranking....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why doesn’t Google crawl all your pages with the same frequency?

Google does not crawl all pages of a site at the same frequency. Some pages are analyzed multiple times a day, while others are checked only every few weeks or months. Typically, indexed pages are cra...

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google Discover really operate without prior site validation?

Google Discover, unlike Google News, operates entirely organically, without any prior validation process for sites....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do human translations really help you avoid duplicate content penalties?

Pages translated by humans are considered unique and non-duplicated content, even if they are based on the same source material....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why isn’t regular publishing enough to rank a new site?

Regularly publishing content on a new website does not guarantee a high position in search results, especially on highly competitive topics....

Oct 03, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can Old Content Actually Hurt a New Website That Republishes It?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that there's no problem if content is older than the launch date of the site hosting it (example: a new domain name recovers content from a previous, now-abandoned ad...

Sep 30, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do You Really Have to Wait 24 Hours for a Crawl Rate Change to Take Effect?

John Mueller indicated that changing Googlebot's crawl rate via Search Console takes approximately one day to be taken into account....

Sep 30, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Google Adjust Its Crawl Rate During a Server Migration?

John Mueller published a new #AskGoogleWebmasters video where he explains that the only thing that changes when you move a site from one server to another is the speed at which GoogleBot crawls that c...

Sep 30, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it really necessary to use the exact keywords from user queries to rank?

To rank in search results, it is important to use words and phrases on your site that your users employ in their searches....

Sep 27, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really use multiple H1 tags on the same page?

It is possible to use multiple H1 tags on a web page. HTML5 allows it without negatively impacting rankings....

Sep 27, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are backlinks to category pages really risk-free for rankings?

Backlinks to specific pages, such as category pages, are not an issue as long as they are obtained naturally....

Sep 27, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is merging multiple pages into one a smart move for SEO?

When merging multiple pages into one, the new content will take time to stabilize regarding ranking. This practice is generally beneficial for creating a strong page on a given topic....

Sep 27, 2019 ⚡ Analysis available