John Mueller

★★★ Does Capitalization in Hreflang Tags Really Affect International SEO?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that it was possible to specify language and country codes in Hreflang tags in lowercase or uppercase, regardless of case: fr-FR, fr-fr or FR-fr, everything will work...

Aug 07, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really unblock images in robots.txt to boost your SEO?

If images on a page are blocked by robots.txt, it will not affect the site's performance in web search, although it will prevent the images from being indexed in image search....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do social signals really influence Google rankings?

Shares and likes on social media do not have a direct impact on Google rankings, as they are often nofollow or invisible to Google....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are Slow Pages Really Indexed by Google?

The loading speed of a page does not stop Google from indexing it, but it can affect the crawl frequency if the pages take too long to load....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really trust the structured data from Search Console?

There may be discrepancies in the structured data report from Search Console, but it is mainly useful for detecting trends rather than serving as a comprehensive inventory....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you duplicate hreflang tags for mobile and desktop versions?

For the mobile versions of sites, Google recommends retaining the same hreflang tags as the desktop versions, pointing to the canonical desktop pages....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does using noindex truly protect your site from quality penalties?

Pages with a noindex tag are not considered in the overall quality assessment of a site. To enhance the perception of quality, it is recommended to improve low-quality pages....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does a temporary noindex really permanently lose its ranking?

If a site has been accidentally marked as "noindex" and this tag is removed, the ranking should return to its previous level once the site is reindexed....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google prefer your content to be bookmarked rather than found through search?

Google recommends creating content that users want to visit directly or bookmark, rather than relying solely on search results....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really abandon the site: command to count your indexed pages?

Using 'site:domain.com' is not a reliable method for determining the number of indexed pages. It is better to use a sitemap to verify the URLs that are actually indexed....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is Panda really operating continuously or is Google hiding something from us?

Panda quality signals are updated continuously, not on a specific date. This means that the impacts are not related to one-off refreshes....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does duplicate content really ruin your Google ranking?

Duplicate content does not necessarily indicate poor site quality, but sites that heavily reuse content without offering added value are often perceived as lower quality....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Google quality raters really affect your rankings?

Quality raters do not have a direct impact on search result rankings. They evaluate Google's algorithms rather than individual websites, although they may influence future algorithm updates....

Aug 02, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do non-Unicode fonts really harm your content's indexing?

For websites using non-Unicode fonts such as in Burmese, Google attempts to recognize this situation and map these fonts to their Unicode versions, enabling proper indexing of the content. Using Unico...

Aug 02, 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

★ 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

★★★ 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

★★ 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

★★★ 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

★★★ 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