John Mueller

★★★ Should You Really Remove All Hash (#) Links to Boost Your SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Google completely ignores links like <a href="#"> (often used, for example, to open pop-up windows) since they lead "nowhere" according to John......

Sep 04, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Really Stop Trying to Understand Google's Algorithms to Do Better SEO?

When an internet user asked him a question about the "LSTM" algorithm (which we still haven't fully understood what it's about), John Mueller explained on Twitter that you should work on a website in ...

Sep 04, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Your Choice of Browser Actually Affect Your Google SEO Rankings?

John Mueller indicated during a hangout that to his knowledge, Google's relevance algorithm did not take into account the browser used by the user. Search results were supposedly the same on Chrome, F...

Aug 28, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What Does Google Do When Your Site Sends Conflicting Canonical Signals?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that when contradictory and/or conflicting signals are sent to Google regarding "canonical" tags (for example: an HTTPS URL containing a "canonical" tag pointing to t...

Aug 28, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can You Really Contact Google for Personalized SEO Support on Your Website?

A few days after Gary Illyes indicated on Twitter that he doesn't provide SEO support for specific sites privately, John Mueller said the opposite by approving a user asking if they could send him a p...

Aug 28, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What Does the "Expired" Status in Search Console's URL Removal Tool Really Mean?

John Mueller explained what the "Expired" status means in Search Console and the "Remove URLs" tool. This status indicates that no specific action is needed to deindex the page, as it is covered by a ...

Aug 28, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Googlebot Always Start Crawling from a Website's Homepage?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Googlebot generally crawls a site's homepage first, simply because it's the first page it finds. But that it's not mandatory....

Aug 28, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ What are the only two fields in an XML sitemap that Google actually cares about?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that in XML files, the two most important fields are the URL (<loc>) and the last modification date (<lastmod>)....

Aug 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does URL Architecture Really Impact Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the URL structure (the fact that the hierarchy is shown in a page's address, as opposed to a site where all URLs would be at the root level, for example), has on...

Aug 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Does Google Actually Handle Invalid or Non-Standard HTML Attributes in Your Page Code?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that when Google "parses" (analyzes) the HTML code of a page, erroneous attributes (badly coded, non-existent, non-standard...) of a tag are generally ignored....

Aug 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Is Google Indexing More URLs Than Those Declared in Your XML Sitemap?

A user pointed out to John Mueller that in their Search Console, the XML Sitemaps report indicated there were more indexed URLs than URLs in the Sitemap. John responded that this likely came from the ...

Aug 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why Aren't Your Rich Snippets Showing Up in Google Despite Perfect Markup?

John Mueller indicated that there could be 3 reasons why rich snippets (or rich cards) don't appear in the SERPs for a site: technically incorrect code, an issue with official guidelines not being fol...

Aug 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Internal and External Links Really Carry Different Weight for Google Rankings?

When asked "Are there differences in how Google treats internal versus external links?", John Mueller responded: "definitely"....

Aug 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Really Consider Server Load Balancing as Cloaking?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that redirecting a user to a faster server based on the load observed at a given time was not considered cloaking....

Aug 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Can You Prevent Google from Indexing Your Pre-Production Site?

John Mueller posted a fairly lengthy message on Google+ about the best way to prevent a test site (pre-production) from being indexed by Google, as we unfortunately see so often. If this mishap happen...

Aug 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can You Combine Noindex and Canonical Tags on the Same Page?

A user asked John Mueller the following question: "if a page contains both a 'noindex' tag and a 'canonical' tag, does the canonical transmit the indexing prohibition to the canonical page?" John Muel...

Aug 14, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Still Use Geographic Meta Tags for Local SEO?

John Mueller indicated that Google does not take into account geo-type meta tags (<meta name="geo.position" content="latitude; longitude">, <meta name="geo.placename" content="Place">, <meta name="geo...

Aug 14, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ What's the Maximum Page Size Google Will Actually Crawl?

John Mueller explained that Googlebot's current crawl limit for a web page is 200 MB (the last known limit in 2015 was 10 MB)....

Aug 14, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the Last-Modified Meta Tag Actually Help Your SEO Rankings?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google ignores the "Last Modified" meta tag (<meta http-equiv="last-modified" content="YYYY-MM-DD">) indicating a page's last modification date. Therefore, it ha...

Aug 14, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Use WWW or Non-WWW for Better SEO Performance?

A user asked on Twitter whether it was preferable in SEO to use a WWW address (www.yoursite.com) or not (yoursite.com) for a website. Another user replied that it had no impact on SEO. John Mueller ag...

Aug 14, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available