John Mueller

★★ 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

★★★ How can you know exactly how Google sees and understands your web page?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that if you want to know how Google sees your web page, it's better to use Search Console (Crawl section > Fetch as Google) than the "Cached" option available in sear...

Jun 06, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Will Google Launch a Public Sandbox to Test Mobile First Index Before Deployment?

In 2009, when Google launched its new Caffeine indexing structure, the search engine set up a "sandbox", or new version of its index on a specific URL, to test the new infrastructure being implemented...

Jun 06, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Nofollow Really Burn Your Crawl Budget?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that using a "nofollow" attribute on links does not "burn" crawl budget for a website. Fortunately so. We can even say that this technique is rather beneficial in thi...

Jun 06, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Many Pages from the Same Website Can Appear in Google Results?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the same site can appear multiple times (with different pages) on the same results page. There is no (longer any) limit to the number of URLs from the same site ...

May 29, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Noindex Really Control How Googlebot Crawls Your Site?

John Mueller reminded us on Twitter that while the meta robots "noindex" tag allows you to manage whether or not a page gets indexed on Google, it is by no means a way to control how Googlebot crawls ...

May 29, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Really Avoid Empty Link Anchors for SEO?

We asked the question on Twitter about empty link anchors (for example on an image that would be added via CSS). John Mueller responded that this type of link was followed by Google but that the absen...

May 22, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Really Disavow All Links Coming from Spammy Sites?

John Mueller indicated that links from "spammy" sites are not necessarily unnatural. And that the priority should be to track down (and disavow) unnatural links. He also explained that you can have na...

May 22, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is it true that no one at Google fully understands the algorithm anymore?

A persistent rumor that has been flourishing in numerous articles for several months claims that "no one at Google would understand the search engine's algorithm globally anymore, as it has become so ...

May 22, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ How Will Google Roll Out Mobile First Indexing: All at Once or Site by Site?

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that it is possible that the Mobile First project (currently planned for 2018) will be launched not all at once for all websites, but for batches of sites, one afte...

May 22, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should Widget Signature Links Always Be Nofollow?

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that if a link wasn't systematically set to "nofollow" in a widget signature (such as "Widget created by [link]"), the search engine could automatically do it itsel...

May 22, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Search Console Geolocation vs Hreflang: Which One Delivers the Real SEO Boost?

John Mueller has indicated the difference between geolocation of a site (in Search Console) and the use of the Hreflang tag. Geolocation seems stronger, with a genuine effort from Google to present th...

May 22, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should You Really Use Special Characters in Title Tags and Meta Descriptions?

John Mueller indicated that, most of the time, Google ignored and removed special characters (Unicode) sometimes placed in Title tags and meta "description" tags (arrows, sun symbols, triangles, etc.)...

May 15, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Really Optimize Your Site for RankBrain?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that RankBrain is not a relevance criterion in Google's algorithm and that there is no point in "optimizing your site for RankBrain." It is primarily a system (and th...

May 15, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does a Page's Traffic Really Influence the Value of Its Links?

John Mueller has indicated on Twitter that a link from a high-traffic page carries no more weight in Google's algorithm than a link from a low-traffic page. Let's remember that it's PageRank (which ha...

May 15, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Really Keep All Your Past SEO Mistakes in Memory Forever?

When asked whether Google could forget certain practices performed by a website in the past, John Mueller replied that the search engine had "a lot of storage space". We can confirm this: Google forge...

May 15, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can You Really Use Multiple H1 Tags Without Hurting Your SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that it is possible to use as many H1 tags as desired on a web page. No surprise here, the Googler is simply reiterating the specifications of the HTML language, whic...

Apr 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Can You Check the Canonical URL of Your Pages Directly in Google?

John Mueller reminded us in a hangout of a trick that is actually quite little-known in general: the use of the "info:[URL]" search syntax on Google to find out the address considered canonical for a ...

Apr 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Domain Age Really Impact Google Rankings?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that the age (seniority) of a domain name is not a relevance criterion for Google's algorithm (although this is a deeply rooted belief in the SEO community). It's pos...

Apr 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Why Does Google Deliberately Hide Information About Disavowed Links in Search Console?

John Mueller indicated in a hangout that if Google doesn't provide information in its Search Console about whether a link has been disavowed or not (in the "Links to your site" section), it's basicall...

Apr 10, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available