John Mueller

★★★ Do No Index pages harm the overall quality of your site?

Pages with a No Index tag are not considered in Google's overall quality assessment of a site. Only indexed pages influence this evaluation....

Apr 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you abandon schema markup for internally collected testimonials?

For Rich Results related to reviews, Google prefers reviews to come directly from end users. Testimonials collected through internal forms should not be marked up with review schema....

Apr 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Featured Snippets and Rich Results really have different quality criteria?

Google's algorithms for Featured Snippets and Rich Results may use different quality criteria. It is possible for a site to be shown with Rich Results without appearing in Featured Snippets, and vice ...

Apr 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do short answers on Q&A sites harm your SEO?

A website with a very brief Q&A format may not be optimal in the long term, as pages with very little content may be perceived negatively by Google's algorithms....

Apr 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google sometimes choose an image from another site to illustrate your featured snippet?

Google may sometimes select images from a different website than the one providing the text for featured snippets. This does not necessarily indicate a technical issue with the site from which the ima...

Apr 03, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Your URL Extension (.html, .php, .asp) Really Impact Your Google Rankings?

In his "SEO Snippets" video series, John Mueller indicates that whether a URL ends with .html, .php, .asp or another extension (or none at all) does not influence Google's relevance algorithm. The suf...

Apr 02, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Switch Domain Names After a Google Penalty?

John Mueller indicated on Reddit that Google doesn't have a "magic button" or "reset button" that its teams would activate to make all traces of penalties disappear, even after they've been lifted by ...

Apr 02, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it really necessary to redirect all your URLs when changing your CMS?

When changing a URL structure, such as when switching CMS, it is crucial to redirect the old URLs to the new ones. It takes time for Google to reindex, so it is better to make these changes when your ...

Mar 28, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really remove .html extensions from your URLs for SEO?

Removing .html or any other extension from your URLs doesn't matter to Google. URLs are used to identify content, regardless of their extension or structure....

Mar 28, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the placement of internal links on a page really affect SEO?

The position of internal links on a page is less important than their relevance. Google tries to understand the context of the link, but generally treats all links similarly while navigating the site....

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is SEO really a long-term career choice that stands the test of time?

Search engine optimization is not dead and continues to evolve. Although it changes over time, it remains a dynamic field full of new challenges, making it a potentially sustainable career for those w...

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Could different internal links for mobile and desktop hurt your mobile-first indexing?

For mobile-first indexing, a site with a different internal link structure between mobile and desktop can be affected if these links do not allow for proper exploration. A responsive design, even with...

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it still worth investing in AMP for your SEO?

AMP has evolved to offer more features than it did at its initial launch. It can be used in various types of content and site formats, not just for articles or simple content pages....

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do traffic and bounce rate really affect Google rankings?

Neither traffic nor bounce rate are directly used to rank individual search results. Sometimes, user behaviors are analyzed to assess the overall effectiveness of algorithms....

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How can a low-quality page sabotage the ranking of your entire site?

Low-quality content can impact the overall ranking of a site because Google often evaluates a site as a whole to understand its position on the web....

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are CSS background images really invisible to Google Images?

Using background images via CSS is not advisable if you want them to be considered for image search. It’s better to use standard image tags with alt and title attributes....

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can you migrate a website to a penalized domain without losing everything?

If a site move has been made to a penalized domain, it is advisable to cancel this move and potentially redirect back to the old domain, or to resolve the issue that led to the penalty....

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that Googlebot always respects your crawl restrictions in robots.txt?

Googlebot should not crawl areas blocked by the robots.txt file unless the file has been recently modified and not yet recrawled to update its instructions....

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really rely on the manual indexing tool in Search Console?

Many rely on the manual indexing tool in Search Console, which is not necessary if your site is properly configured. Automatic methods should be enough for page indexing....

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really worry when Google Search Console highlights similar titles and meta descriptions?

Alerts about errors in similar meta descriptions or titles are not inherently problematic. It is acceptable for category pages to have similar title tags. The goal is to raise a flag if there is a lac...

Mar 27, 2018 ⚡ Analysis available