John Mueller

★★★ How Should You Structure Your FAQ to Leverage Question/Answer Structured Data?

Google launched structured data markup for "Question/Answer" type pages last week. The search engine took the opportunity to update its recommendations for this type of markup. An important piece of i...

Dec 10, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Create New Pages Every Year or Reuse the Same URL for Seasonal Content?

In a hangout with John Mueller, a question was raised regarding seasonal content that returns every year, such as Christmas offers, for example. Should you create new pages each time or update those f...

Dec 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Google Actually Measure Trust When Ranking Your Website?

John Mueller confirmed in a hangout that Google uses a certain number of criteria (without specifying which ones) to evaluate the quality of a site as a whole, and therefore the quality of the content...

Dec 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★★ Does Buying Your Domain Name for 10 Years Actually Improve Your SEO?

John Mueller explained on Twitter for the 1,458th time 🙂 that the purchase duration or expiration date of a domain name with a registrar is not a relevance criterion taken into account by the search e...

Nov 26, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Abandon a Domain with a History of Spam or Hacking?

A webmaster asked John Mueller a question during a hangout about the historical value of a domain name that may have been used in the past for spam or hacking actions. Is there a reset - or something ...

Nov 26, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Does Google Crawl Your Pages But Still Refuse to Index Them?

In the new Search Console and its "Index Coverage" option, many pages are sometimes indicated as "Crawled - currently not indexed". Most of the time, these are pages that have not yet been indexed (th...

Nov 26, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Business Accreditations and Certifications Actually Influence Google Rankings?

There are many organizations, particularly in the United States, that grant "accreditations" or scores to businesses based on numerous criteria. One of the most well-known is the BBB (Better Business ...

Nov 19, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★★ Does the Alt Attribute Really Matter for Classic Web Search Rankings?

John Mueller explained in a hangout that the Alt attribute of images plays a fairly minor role in optimizing a page for web search. Indeed, the words that this attribute contains will certainly alread...

Nov 19, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Use the Same Title Tag for Both Desktop and Mobile?

John Mueller advised on Twitter to use only one Title tag, identical for both desktop and mobile versions of a web page. And, within the framework of the Mobile First index, it's the mobile version's ...

Nov 12, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Using the Same Google Account for Search Console and Analytics Hurt Your SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Reddit that having the same Google account (same login, same email address) for Search Console and Analytics across multiple sites, or using different accounts, has no impact...

Nov 12, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can You Really Opt Out of Google's Mobile First Indexing?

John Mueller responded to a question on Twitter asking whether one could request not to be moved to the Mobile First Index. The answer was negative....

Nov 12, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can You Copy-Paste Legal Pages Without Hurting Your SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that it poses no problem for the search engine if you copy/paste the content of pages such as Terms of Service, Terms of Sale, Legal Notices or other administrative p...

Nov 12, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Merge Multiple Pages Into One to Improve Your SEO?

John Mueller explained in a hangout that combining multiple pieces of content into a single page could be beneficial for SEO but sometimes also fail to deliver good results. It will be beneficial for ...

Nov 12, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Does Google's Structured Data Testing Tool Crawl Your Site in Desktop Mode Instead of Mobile?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google's structured data markup testing tool crawls the submitted URL as a "neutral" crawler, which is interpreted most of the time by the site as a "desktop" cr...

Nov 05, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do 301 Redirects Between Unrelated Pages Really Lose All Their PageRank?

John Mueller provided more information during a hangout on how a 301 redirect passes "link juice" (PageRank) from one page to another. He initially indicated, as was already known, that 301 and 302 re...

Nov 05, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can You Host Your Website on Multiple Servers in Different Countries Without Hurting SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that having certain parts of a site hosted on a server with an IP address in one country (for example the United States) and other parts on another server with an IP ...

Oct 29, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Implement Regional Hreflang Tags Instead of Country-Level Ones?

Some SEO professionals (including Aleyda Solis) have advocated for implementing hreflang tags down to the regional level, within a country, instead of staying at the country level as is currently the ...

Oct 29, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Producing Massive Amounts of Content Really Help You Rank Better on Google?

John Mueller explained, also on Twitter, that putting more and more content online did not make your site better in Google's eyes and would not help it rank better....

Oct 23, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Still Bother With isRelatedTo and isSimilarTo in Product Schema?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Google does not take into account the "isRelatedTo" and "isSimilarTo" fields of the Schema.org Product tag. These two attributes allow you to indicate related or...

Oct 23, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Use Physical Store Traffic to Rank Websites?

John Mueller responded on Twitter to a question about whether Google might use IRL (In Real Life) data as relevance criteria. For example, whether there would be more people at a given time in a store...

Oct 15, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available