John Mueller

★★★ Do Structured Data Really Influence Rankings in Google?

John Mueller reminded on Twitter that integrating structured data tags could be a good thing for Google's understanding of a web page's content, since they explain and "label" a certain number of conc...

Apr 09, 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

★★★ How Do You Effectively Manage Sitemaps When Your Site Exceeds 50,000 URLs?

In his "SEO Snippets" video series, John Mueller has just published one about Sitemaps and the Sitemap Index system that allows you to create such files when a website has more than 50,000 URLs....

Apr 09, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Brackets, Parentheses and Quotation Marks Really Impact Your Google Rankings?

A user asked on Twitter about characters like [brackets], (parentheses) and "quotation marks" and how they were taken into account by Google. Pete Meyers responded that they were all equivalent in ter...

Apr 09, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Your URL Extension (.html, .php, .asp) Really Impact Your Google Rankings?

In his "SEO Snippets" video series, John Mueller indicates that whether a URL ends with .html, .php, .asp or another extension (or none at all) does not influence Google's relevance algorithm. The suf...

Apr 02, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Switch Domain Names After a Google Penalty?

John Mueller indicated on Reddit that Google doesn't have a "magic button" or "reset button" that its teams would activate to make all traces of penalties disappear, even after they've been lifted by ...

Apr 02, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How Long Does It Really Take to See Results After Cleaning Up Low-Quality Content?

John Mueller explained during a hangout that improving overall quality or removing low-quality content from a site could have an impact (positions/traffic) sometimes only after 6 months, the time it t...

Mar 26, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Worry About 404 Errors in Search Console?

John Mueller released a new "SEO Snippets" video in which he answers a question about 404 errors that may appear in Search Console and correspond to an old version of a website. John explains that the...

Mar 26, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google's Algorithm Really Ignore Affiliate Links?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Google's algorithm does not take into account in its relevance and PageRank calculations a certain number of links of all kinds and that "he would not be surpris...

Mar 19, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Server Location Really Impact Your Site's Geographic SEO Targeting?

A user asked John Mueller on Twitter whether changing the hosting country of their server (for example from the United States to Germany) could make Google think that the website it hosts had changed ...

Mar 13, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Mass-Produce Content to Improve Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Google's relevance algorithm does not give a specific advantage to websites that provide more information (in terms of volume) than another. "A website should no...

Mar 13, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is the Meta Refresh Tag Really Effective for SEO Redirects?

Google has indicated several times in the past that redirections using the "meta refresh" tag should not be used. However, John Mueller mentioned on Twitter last week that it does work anyway, but is ...

Mar 05, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Page Speed Really Impact Google's Mobile First Indexing?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that the Mobile First index and the page loading speed criterion were two separate things. Indexing and page ranking should not be confused, as some believe, especial...

Mar 05, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Googlebot Really Crawl Your Website?

John Mueller published a video last week (the first "SEO Snippet" - videos succeeding those of Matt Cutts - since their launch), explaining how Google crawls a website and the way Googlebot works....

Mar 05, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should You Worry About Google's Contradictory Statements on Search Console?

As is often the case unfortunately, John Mueller and Gary Illyes contradicted each other last week. John initially indicated that all features from the old Search Console would be transferred to the n...

Feb 26, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why Are Hreflang Tags Considered the Most Complex Aspect of SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that "hreflang tags are one of the most complex aspects of SEO, if not the most complex. It seems as simple as a meta tag, but their implementation quickly becomes di...

Feb 26, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Stop Buying Links in 2024 to Avoid Google Penalties?

John Mueller reminded on Twitter that selling and buying links was against Google's recommendations (and therefore subject to penalties), whether the buying and selling sites are small or large....

Feb 12, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Change Your XML Sitemap Name Daily to Improve SEO Rankings?

John Mueller explained in a hangout that it's not a good idea to modify the name of your XML Sitemap files daily (for example with a date, like sitemap-2018-02-12.xml, etc.) with numerous redundant an...

Feb 12, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Page Loading Speed Really Impact Your Page Indexing?

Regarding last month's Speed Update, John Mueller and Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that while this new algorithm would affect page rankings on mobile, it does not impact indexing in any way. A slo...

Feb 05, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Translate Image ALT Attributes to Optimize Your Multilingual SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that it was important, in terms of SEO, to also translate the ALT attributes (no, we don't say "ALT tags" 🙂) of a site's images, since this text is read by the search...

Jan 29, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available