John Mueller

★★★ Do Commas in Title Tags Actually Hurt Your SEO Rankings?

A user asked John Mueller on Twitter whether using commas as separators in Title tags posed a problem. Unsurprisingly, John replied that he could do as he pleased in this regard....

Aug 07, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can You Use 301 Redirects in Hreflang Tags?

We asked John Mueller whether a URL in a hreflang tag could be subject to a 301 redirect. His answer was clear: URLs in hreflang tags must be canonical. This therefore rules out the use of such redire...

Jul 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can Googlebot Really Crawl Your Site If You Use Cookies?

This has been known for a long time, but John Mueller recently reminded us: Googlebot crawls a site using a stateless protocol, meaning it doesn't take cookies into account. It's therefore up to you t...

Jul 17, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Avoid Automatic Redirects Based on Visitor IP Addresses?

We've said it often on our site, and John Mueller recently reiterated it on Twitter: don't redirect your visitors to one site or another automatically based on their IP address (and therefore their ge...

Jul 17, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the Position of Internal Links Really Affect Their SEO Weight?

John Mueller reminded in a hangout that the position of an internal link on a web page doesn't matter in terms of indexation: top of page, footer, sidebar, etc. In all cases, the link will be detected...

Jul 17, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Geographic Hosting Location Still Impact Your Site's SEO Rankings?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the geographic location of a server no longer matters to Google. To establish the target country of a site, the search engine primarily relies on the domain exte...

Jul 17, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should You Nofollow Links to Legal Pages and Terms & Conditions?

John Mueller indicated during a hangout that links to pages such as "About", "Terms and Conditions" or "Legal Notices" can be set to dofollow. For our part, we recommend nofollow (especially for large...

Jul 17, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Put a Canonical Tag on EVERY Page of Your Website?

John Mueller confirmed in a hangout that it was beneficial to implement a "canonical" tag on all canonical pages of a site pointing to themselves to avoid DUST (Duplicate URL, Same Text, more explanat...

Jul 17, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Will Hidden Content in Accordions and Tabs Finally Carry the Same SEO Weight as Visible Text?

Following Gary Illyes a few weeks ago, John Mueller confirmed in a hangout that hidden but potentially visible content on a page (tabs, accordions, etc.) will be treated, when the Mobile First project...

Jul 10, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Google and Bing Actually Share the Same Search Index?

John Mueller reminded us on Twitter - but did it really need to be said given how obvious the information is? - that Google doesn't share an index with Bing (or any other competing search engine). Rea...

Jul 10, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really index a site with thousands of pages gradually, or can you submit everything at once?

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that it poses no problem for Google's robots to crawl, all at once, a new site or a new section within a site, comprising hundreds of thousands of pages. The only p...

Jul 10, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Avoid Massive 301 Redirects to Your Homepage?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that 301 redirects should primarily be used as "1:1" replacements, meaning: one URL replaces another. Otherwise, it's better to leave the URL as a 404. If you impleme...

Jul 10, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Embedding YouTube Videos Actually Improve Your Google Rankings?

John Mueller indicated on a webmaster forum that including a YouTube video on a web page does not increase its relevance score for the search engine. Adding videos plays no role in your Google ranking...

Jul 10, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can Repetitive URLs Actually Harm Your Site's Search Rankings?

John Mueller indicated in a Google webmaster forum that the search engine could ignore certain URLs if they repeat identical patterns or titles too many (excessively many) times. In short, when implem...

Jun 26, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How Is Google Rolling Out Mobile First Indexing Site by Site?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that Google was considering launching the Mobile First index site by site, as soon as the algorithm determines that the site in question will be ready for it. Therefo...

Jun 26, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How Does Google Use Machine Learning to Assess Website Quality?

John Mueller explained in a hangout that machine learning algorithms were primarily used by Google to understand whether a site is generally of good or poor quality, but not in the context of a specif...

Jun 19, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do You Really Need Hreflang Tags on a Monolingual Website?

Still on the subject of Hreflang tags, John Mueller indicated, also on Twitter, that if your site is published in a single language, you are not obligated to use Hreflang tags. Logical there too. Howe...

Jun 12, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Worry About a Drop in Your Site's Crawl Rate?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that the fact that a website experiences a lower crawl rate at a given time from the search engine's robots is not necessarily a negative signal for your future visib...

Jun 12, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the Order of Hreflang Tags Really Matter for SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that hreflang tags in a page's source code could be listed in any order, it didn't matter at all. Makes sense......

Jun 12, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Long Can You Use a 503 Code Before Risking Deindexation?

John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that using a 503 code (Service Unavailable) is not a problem if it's implemented for a few hours (for a quick maintenance operation, for example), but it should not...

Jun 12, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available