John Mueller

★★★ Should You Duplicate Your Page Title in the Main Image's Alt Attribute?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that duplicating a page's title (Title tag) in the Alt attribute of that page's main image was not a problem in itself......

May 28, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Shared Hosting Really Hurt Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller stated repeatedly on Twitter that using the same IP address for multiple websites (for example in the case of shared hosting) does not cause any problems in terms of "search". And that th...

May 21, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How Do EAT Criteria Actually Influence Your Chances of Winning Featured Snippets?

John Mueller also indicated during a hangout that, to appear in a featured snippet, a website must meet "EAT" criteria (Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness). In short, everything will depend prim...

May 21, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Fast Server Response Time Really Boost the Number of Pages Google Crawls?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the faster a website's response time, the more pages search engine bots could crawl: "The faster we can crawl, the more we can crawl"......

May 21, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Is Google Still Using Chrome 41 to Index Your Pages?

John Mueller also indicated during the Google I/O event that, to render web pages when analyzing code, Google was using Chrome version 41, even though the browser was currently and officially at versi...

May 14, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Use a 404 Instead of a 403 to Remove Pages from Google's Index?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that, to signal to Google that a page no longer exists and to see it disappear from the index, a 404 code (Page not Found) should be preferred over a 403 code (Forbid...

May 09, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Keep the Same URL or Create a 301 Redirect When Updating Content?

When an internet user asked about replacing old content with new content on a website, John Mueller explained that it's better to keep the same URL and change the content of that page rather than redi...

May 09, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Where Should Pagination Tags Be Placed for Google to Recognize Them?

John Mueller reminded that pagination tags (rel=next and rel=prev) must be in the "Head" section of the source code for paginated content. If these indications are found in links (A tag) and therefore...

May 02, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the HTTPS SEO Boost Really Work the Same for Every Website?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the "SEO boost" given when a website switches to HTTPS does not depend on the type of site or its topic, but is identical for all information sources......

May 02, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Split Your Content Across Multiple Pages to Improve Google Indexing?

John Mueller indicated during a hangout that it was not a good strategy to split content across multiple pages solely to increase the number of pages indexed by Google because, by doing so, you also r...

May 02, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should You Avoid Internal Links to Noindex Pages?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that there's no problem if a website creates many internal links to pages that are deindexed from the search engine......

May 02, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can You Really Harm a Competitor's Site with External Canonical Tags?

A method of performing negative SEO based on "canonical" tags issued from low-quality sites has resurfaced recently following an article on this subject. John Mueller has, for his part, indicated that...

May 02, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Does Your Site's Mobile Traffic Influence Its Migration to Mobile First Index?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the decision to migrate a site to the Mobile First Index was not dependent on the volume of mobile traffic on that site, but solely on whether the site is techni...

Apr 23, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Avoid Redirects in Hreflang Tags at All Costs?

John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that URLs specified in Hreflang tags should not be subject to 301, 302 or any other type of redirect. In other words, they must return a 200 code and not be redirec...

Apr 23, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should You Use Canonical Tags or Noindex to Handle Duplicate Content?

John Mueller indicated that Google only uses the pages it has in its index for a given site to establish an overall quality score for the information source (which seems quite logical). He also explai...

Apr 23, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google Really Count JavaScript Links for SEO?

John Mueller also indicated on Twitter that some JavaScript links, particularly those using "onclick" directives, could be poorly analyzed by Google and the link not taken into account....

Apr 23, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can a Single Misplaced Tag in Your <head> Invalidate Your Entire HTML Code in Google's Eyes?

During a recent Google event, John Mueller explained that if a tag that should normally be in the "body" is found in the "head" section of the source code, it may not be taken into account by the sear...

Apr 16, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Having an RSS Feed Actually Improve Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that having an RSS feed on your site does not help it rank better in the SERPs, neither in Google nor in Google News....

Apr 16, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are Complex Tables Really Killing Your Featured Snippet Chances?

John Mueller indicated during a hangout that content displayed in the form of a large table or a long series of links was not optimized to appear as a featured snippet and, therefore, in the context o...

Apr 16, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should You Really Consolidate All Your FAQs on a Single Page to Avoid Thin Content?

John Mueller hinted on Reddit that "splitting" a Q&A page on a site into multiple pages (one per question, instead of listing them all on a single page) carried the risk of displaying numerous pages e...

Apr 09, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available