John Mueller

★★ Should You Really Aim for 100ms Download Times to Optimize Google's Crawl?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that an interesting metric, in terms of page load times, could be to look at the Search Console, in the "Crawl > Crawl Stats" section, and then try to have the "Time ...

Sep 17, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Add Your Brand Name to Every Title Tag?

John Mueller indicated, also on Twitter, that adding the site name (company or brand name) at the end of each Title tag on a website's pages poses absolutely no problem whatsoever....

Sep 17, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Google Choose Between Publication Date and Last Updated Date in Search Results?

John Mueller provided an interesting insight during a hangout about the date displayed in Google's SERPs (particularly to the left of the snippet, which usually takes the meta "description" tag): it c...

Sep 17, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can Cookie Banners Actually Prevent Google from Crawling Your Most Important Pages?

John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that Google cannot crawl a page if displaying it requires the user to accept cookies....

Sep 17, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Structure Your XML Sitemaps Differently Based on How You Submit Them to Google?

John Mueller explained during a hangout that if an XML Sitemap file was submitted via an anonymous ping, the URLs it contained had to be present in the directory (and subdirectories) of the Sitemap fi...

Sep 17, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What really happens when a Google manual action expires without any fixes?

John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that manual actions do indeed expire at some point. However, if nothing has been done to fix the problem in the meantime, it could be picked up by a new part of the...

Sep 10, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Really Ignore Links from .edu Domains?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that, "because of the misconception that .edu sites are better taken into account by Google," the search engine was ignoring tons of links coming from pages on this t...

Sep 10, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can JavaScript Actually Prevent Your Site from Being Indexed in Mobile First?

John Mueller explained during a hangout that sites using a lot of JavaScript might not be transitioned to the Mobile First index....

Sep 10, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do White Spaces on Web Pages Really Hurt Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller explained during a hangout that white spaces (empty areas) on a web page, which may push textual content further down, do not pose specific SEO problems. Only ads that hinder content read...

Sep 10, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Is the ALT Attribute Crucial for Your Google Images SEO Rankings?

John Mueller reminded us on Twitter of the critical importance of the ALT attribute for images in Google's dedicated search engine for this format....

Sep 10, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Google Really Evaluate the Quality of a Backlink?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that the overall quality of the site linking to you is not the only source of information Google uses to qualify the quality of the link itself. Other criteria come i...

Sep 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Exclude All Redirected URLs from Your XML Sitemap?

John Mueller has said it repeatedly in the past: when you create your XML Sitemap files, don't include any redirected URLs (301 or otherwise). He reiterated this on Twitter recently. Google uses this ...

Sep 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Google Really Index PDF Files and Why Should This Change Your SEO Strategy?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that when indexing PDF documents or others (certainly Word, Excel, PowerPoint or others), it first goes through a conversion phase from PDF to HTML. And it's this doc...

Sep 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do You Really Need Third-Party Tools to Identify Toxic Links for Disavowing?

During a hangout, John Mueller indicated that, as part of a link disavow process, Search Console data (the "Links to your site" section) was most of the time sufficient to verify that no toxic links w...

Sep 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Link from Your Homepage to Every Page on Your Site?

John Mueller discussed during a hangout the technique of implementing links from the homepage to all pages of a site, or to as many of these pages as possible. While this practice is quite logical for...

Sep 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Redirect All Old URLs to the Homepage During a Migration?

John Mueller had already said this in the past. He reiterated it once again in a hangout: redirecting all the old URLs of a site to the homepage (particularly during a migration with massive changes t...

Sep 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Which HTTP Redirect Should You Use During HTTPS Migration to Preserve Your SEO?

John Mueller indicated during a hangout that "Google strongly recommends 301 redirects during an HTTPS migration", and therefore to move URLs from HTTP to HTTPS, when he was asked about 302 or 303 red...

Aug 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Does Google Really Favor Fresh and Recent Content in Its Rankings?

When asked on Twitter: "Does Google favor 'fresh' content?", John Mueller answered "No". According to John, the search engine would not favor "fresh" content....

Aug 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Author Reputation Really Impact Google Rankings?

John Mueller indicated during a hangout that the search engine does not take an author's reputation into account in its analyses. The question arose because this point is sometimes mentioned in the Qu...

Aug 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can You Use the Same Image Multiple Times on Your Site Without an SEO Penalty?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that an image could appear identically (under the same filename or not) on the same site, or across several different sites, this posed no problem for Google, and tha...

Aug 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available