John Mueller

★★★ Should You Really Worry About Spammy Backlinks Pointing to Your Site?

On Twitter, a user pointed out to John Mueller that their referral traffic from spammy .xyz sites had significantly increased since the latest Link Spam update. Not much more to add, except that Googl...

Mar 21, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can You Really Rank with a Domain That Has a History of Penalties?

Can a site with a long history of penalties get back into Google's good graces? This is the question posed to John Mueller by an internet user who despairs of seeing his domain name still excluded fro...

Mar 14, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Hyphens in Domain Names Really Hurt Your SEO?

Can the presence of hyphens harm a domain name? "No," according to John Mueller, who seems to have restrained himself from responding with something sarcastic to his interlocutor, by his own account. ...

Mar 14, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Using Nofollow to Sculpt PageRank Still Work in 2024?

During a Twitter exchange, John Mueller stated that attempting to sculpt your PageRank by relying on the nofollow attribute of your links was an "SEO myth" and above all a genuine waste of time. Furth...

Mar 14, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Use a 301 or 302 Redirect for a Temporary Domain Migration?

An SEO specialist asked John Mueller an interesting question on Twitter. Facing a situation dreaded by many experts, he is forced to migrate a domain from www.domain to newshop.domain, then return to ...

Mar 14, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does multilingual duplicate content really hurt your international SEO rankings?

There is no penalty for duplicate content when identical content exists in the same language across multiple markets. Google may treat a page as a duplicate and select a canonical URL, but hreflang an...

Mar 09, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is infinite scroll killing your e-commerce indexation on Google?

Infinite scroll creates difficulties for search engines because they must simulate scrolling (via viewport expansion). This is not efficient and can prevent content indexation. It is strongly recommen...

Mar 09, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google offer a button to force massive reindexing of a website after a redesign?

There is no button to request massive reprocessing of an entire website. This happens automatically over time. You can use a sitemap to signal changes (done automatically by e-commerce platforms), or ...

Mar 09, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does LCP really only measure what's visible in your viewport at load time?

For page speed, Google uses Core Web Vitals including Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures the rendering time of the largest visible element in the viewport during initial load. Optimization...

Mar 09, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is AdsBot skewing your Search Console crawl data without you knowing?

Crawl statistics in Search Console also include AdsBot, which uses the same infrastructure as Googlebot and is constrained by identical crawl rate-limiting mechanisms. AdsBot appears separately in the...

Mar 09, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do you really need to notify Google when redesigning your website?

When updating a website, no special action is required. Google automatically reprocesses the site and updates search results. It is recommended to redirect old URLs to new ones, or return a 404/410 co...

Mar 09, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really retry indexing your pages after a 401 error or server downtime?

When a site is blocked by password (401) or inaccessible, Google's systems automatically retry from time to time. These crawl errors appear in Search Console. When the content becomes accessible again...

Mar 09, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should You Really Use ChatGPT to Rewrite or Translate Your SEO Content?

On Twitter, John Mueller engaged with several users about rewriting content via ChatGPT with the aim of modifying an article or facilitating its translation into another language. While he doesn't ope...

Mar 06, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do third-party reviews from Facebook and Bing really boost your Google rankings?

On Twitter, a user asked Google's John Mueller whether integrating local reviews from sites like Facebook, Bing, Google or others on a website could have any impact on its rankings. Mueller responded ...

Mar 06, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Update the lastmod Tag in Your XML Sitemap?

John Mueller, once again, answered a question about updating the lastmod tag in sitemap files. Our SEO king indicated that such an update only makes sense when there's a significant change. Furthermor...

Mar 06, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do All Google Bots Actually Render Your Website's JavaScript?

Not all Google crawlers use the same rendering system, and some bots don't even render websites at all, according to John Mueller. He was responding to a user's question asking whether all crawlers us...

Feb 28, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should Local Small Businesses Really Worry About Core Web Vitals Optimization?

John Mueller stated that in most cases, working on Core Web Vitals is not "vital" for local small businesses. He explains that these businesses typically don't have many pages and therefore, Google do...

Feb 28, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can a domain with a problematic past secretly tank your SEO performance for an entire year?

If a site migrates to a domain with a problematic history, even with a correct migration, it can take up to a year for the situation to stabilize completely in search results....

Feb 23, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are HTTPS migrations really as trouble-free as Google claims?

HTTP to HTTPS migrations alone are considered relatively problem-free and do not require any special precautions. Google has not observed any incidents during this type of migration in a long time....

Feb 23, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are Meta Refresh Redirects Destroying Your SEO Migration Strategy?

Meta refresh redirects are not recommended for site migrations because they can result in PageRank loss. JavaScript redirects may function but are not ideal....

Feb 23, 2023 ⚡ Analysis available