John Mueller

★★★ Does Grammar Quality Really Impact Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller explained during a hangout that Google's relevance algorithm does not consider the quality (or lack thereof) of grammar used in a web page's content. This will not affect the page's ranki...

Oct 16, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Optimize EXIF Metadata in Your Images for Google SEO?

In 2014, Matt Cutts indicated in a video that Google "reserved the right" to read the metadata (EXIF) present in an image. Without saying more. We could therefore think that at that time, the search e...

Oct 16, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do ® and ™ Symbols Actually Impact Your Pages' Search Rankings?

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that the search engine does not take into consideration symbols like ® or ™, stating in any case that these symbols do not provide any specific semantic character t...

Oct 16, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Do Sites Ranking Well in France Often Struggle in Other Countries?

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that the situation, for a given site and an identical query, can be very different depending on the target country. For example, a site that ranks well for a keywor...

Oct 16, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Choose a Dedicated Mobile Site (m.) or Responsive Design for Better SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Google's mobile search engine does not give better rankings to dedicated mobile sites (with URLs like m.yoursite.com) compared to responsive sites......

Oct 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Cart Abandonment Rate Actually Hurt Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the fact that an e-commerce site has a high shopping cart abandonment rate (abandoned pending orders) was not a relevance criterion in the algorithm......

Oct 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is There Really a Top 3 of Google Ranking Criteria to Prioritize in SEO?

Two years ago, a Googler said that Google's algorithm primarily used 3 essential criteria: content, links, and RankBrain. Since then, John Mueller and Gary Illyes have repeatedly indicated that this r...

Oct 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Google's Algorithm Adapt Its Ranking Criteria Based on Your Queries?

John Mueller explained during a hangout that Google's relevance algorithm doesn't use the same criteria with the same weight for all queries and that the calculations could change in their very essenc...

Sep 25, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google's "Fetch as Google" Tool Actually Show How Googlebot Sees Your Site?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the "Fetch as Google" feature in Search Console, which displays a page as seen by both users and search engines, is not used by the search engine's algorithm. It...

Sep 25, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Click-Through Rate (CTR) Really a Ranking Factor for SEO?

John Mueller explained during a hangout that if Google uses the click-through rate in SERPs (or pogosticking), it's primarily to evaluate and improve relevance algorithms, but not to assign a score to...

Sep 25, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can Adding a Chatbot Actually Improve Your Website's SEO Rankings?

John Mueller explained during the same hangout that adding a chatbot (an automated tool that responds to visitors' questions in real-time) does not improve a site's or web page's rankings on Google....

Sep 25, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Reporting Spammy Sites to Google Still Worth Your Time?

John Mueller explained during a hangout that Google does not read all the "spam reports" that are sent to them, but that the search engine's anti-spam teams attempt to process those that seem most imp...

Sep 25, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should you still rely on Google's cache date to verify page crawling?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that it's better not to pay too much attention to the date shown (last bot visit) when displaying the "Cached" version of a page (or using the "cache:" syntax for a U...

Sep 18, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do HTML ID attributes have an impact on natural search rankings?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the content of "id=" attributes in an HTML tag (example: <div id="content" class="content"...>) is not taken into account (in terms of text relevance analysis) b...

Sep 18, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do you really need to optimize your XML sitemap loading speed?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that an XML Sitemap file doesn't need to load faster or slower, as long as a timeout doesn't occur, of course. But the loading time of this file isn't taken into acco...

Sep 18, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the Absence of Google's "Cached" Link Indicate Low-Quality Content?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that the fact that the "Cached" link does not appear in the SERPs for a page is not synonymous with low-quality content for the search engine. This may mean that the ...

Sep 11, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do Large Sites with More Pages Rank Better on Google?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google does not rank large sites (those with many pages) better "by default" compared to small sites......

Sep 11, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Can We Still Trust Google's Statements About the Panda Filter?

Gary Illyes explained on Twitter that Google had changed its approach to the Panda filter and that what was true 5 years ago wasn't necessarily true today. It's worth noting that a year ago, John Muel...

Sep 04, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should You Build One Multi-Topic Website or Multiple Niche Sites for Better SEO?

John Mueller explained during a hangout that, in his opinion, it was better to create a single website, offering silos dedicated to specific topics, rather than numerous websites, each dealing with a ...

Sep 04, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the Meta Robots Noarchive Tag Actually Hurt Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that using the meta robots "noarchive" tag (which prevents the cached version of a page from being displayed in Google search results) has no negative impact on the r...

Sep 04, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available