John Mueller

★★★ 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 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

★★★ 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

★★ 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 Submit All Your URLs to Google Every Month to Prevent It from Forgetting Them?

John Mueller gently mocked a Twitter user who explained that all URLs of a website should be submitted to Google every month "so that the search engine doesn't forget them". The Googler explained that...

Jan 29, 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

★★ Should You Include GPS Coordinates in Structured Data for Local SEO?

John Mueller explained in a hangout that the search engine does not take into account Schema.org structured data tags providing GPS coordinates in its algorithm....

Jan 29, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can Spectre and Meltdown Security Patches Actually Hurt Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that the Spectre and Meltdown patches, which slow down certain cloud service provider servers, should not have a significant impact on a site's page load time and the...

Jan 22, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Do Site Mergers and Splits Take Google So Much Longer to Index?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that when a website splits into multiple information sources (splitting into several domain names) or conversely, when several sites merge into one, the processing by...

Jan 22, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Include All Your Pages in Your XML Sitemap to Maximize SEO?

John Mueller has once again reminded us (as this has been stated several times in the past) that URLs present in the XML Sitemap file are often used by the search engine to define canonical page addre...

Jan 15, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Delete Low-Quality Pages to Force Google to Index Everything?

John Mueller confirmed on Twitter that Google never indexes ALL pages of a website. And, as usual, following the search engine's well-oiled communication strategy, he added that the focus should prima...

Jan 15, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Does Google Ignore Images Declared in CSS Files?

John Mueller explained in a hangout that Google does not index images whose URL would be present in a CSS file. It only takes into account URLs present in the HTML code itself, and he recommended usin...

Jan 15, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should You Use Google Tag Manager for SEO Testing?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that he does not recommend using the Google Tag Manager tool to perform SEO tests on a number of tags, as a recently published article suggested. But he didn't explai...

Jan 08, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Your Mobile Site Need the Same Structure as Desktop for SEO?

John Mueller clarified on Twitter that a site's architecture in its mobile version doesn't necessarily have to be the same as the desktop site, but this architecture must be crawlable by robots....

Jan 08, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Does a Noindex,Follow Page Eventually Become Noindex,Nofollow?

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that a "noindex,follow" directive in the meta "robots" tag will eventually be considered as "noindex,nofollow" because the links on the page will no longer be follo...

Jan 08, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Consider Hiding Structured Data from Users as Cloaking?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that showing structured data tags to Googlebot only and not to the average user was considered by Google as cloaking and that this type of technique was therefore rep...

Dec 27, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Could Your Localized Pages Be Flagged as Doorway Pages by Google?

John Mueller clarified his definition of a "doorway page" in a hangout, in addition to the official definition: it refers to numerous pages offering identical or similar content, where the only thing ...

Dec 27, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available