John Mueller

★★★ Can you really stop competitors from ranking for your brand name?

Google does not allow brand terms to be exclusively held by their owner in search results. If another site has relevant content and signals to support it, it can also appear in results for that term....

Feb 24, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the text/code ratio really influence your SEO ranking?

The text/code ratio has no effect on SEO unless the page size becomes exceptionally large, such as 10 MB or more. Standard HTML including inline CSS for fast rendering does not pose an SEO issue....

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can you really speed up the deindexing of a page with the noindex tag?

There is no way to significantly speed up the deindexing of pages with No Index. Including URLs in the Sitemaps with the modification date may encourage Google to recrawl the pages more quickly to app...

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ What happens when your international pages look too similar for hreflang to work?

Issues with hreflang can arise if the indexed pages are similar. If this is a problem, you need to ensure that the content differs enough so that our systems do not consider them identical, allowing f...

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google mix up your page titles after switching to HTTPS?

After switching to HTTPS, errors in page titles may result from Google's inability to differentiate very similar sites. Ensure that different sites cannot be perceived as identical, by using distinct ...

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it really necessary to serve server-rendered HTML to rank with JavaScript?

It is advisable to provide a rendered HTML version of JavaScript pages for all users and search engines while allowing the rest of the navigation to occur via JavaScript. This improves discoverability...

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is disavowing links completely useless for SEO now?

Links entered into the disavow file are treated as if they are NoFollow and do not affect ranking. Drops in visibility are probably due to other factors than these disavowed links....

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Will switching to HTTPS cause a drop in organic traffic?

Generally, a transition from HTTP to HTTPS should not lead to a loss in traffic. Drops may result from technical issues or adjustments in ranking systems. It is advisable to check the implementation s...

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Could A/B testing jeopardize your organic rankings?

A/B testing generally does not have a negative impact on SEO, provided that all versions are treated equally by Googlebot and that the tests achieve a stable state. Significant variations in content m...

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really compress your Sitemap files for SEO?

Google accepts both compressed and uncompressed Sitemap files equally. What matters is that the Sitemaps are presented in the way that works best for the site....

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really avoid using robots.txt to handle duplicate content?

It is generally not recommended to use the robots.txt file to handle duplicate content issues. The robots.txt file prevents Google from seeing the Canonical tag that could resolve the duplicate conten...

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really avoid combining NoIndex and Canonical on the same page?

Combining a NoIndex tag and a Canonical tag on the same page can cause issues. It may be better to use Canonical alone or redirect when possible. A NoIndex tag does not affect crawl budget, as we cont...

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is the three-click rule really dead for SEO?

Not all product pages need to be accessible within three clicks. However, if some pages are buried too deep within the site, they might be hard to find and less frequently crawled by Google. It is adv...

Feb 23, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can user-generated content really harm your SEO rankings?

The quality of a site's pages is the responsibility of the site owner. If the user-generated content is of poor quality, it negatively affects the site....

Feb 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do local redirect popups really harm your SEO?

Using popups to redirect users to local versions of sites is not recommended; prefer discreet banners....

Feb 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really abandon relative URLs in favor of absolute URLs for SEO?

Google supports protocol-relative URLs on web pages, but it's recommended to use absolute URLs for better clarity and management....

Feb 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What causes fluctuations in rankings during your HTTPS migration?

Ranking fluctuations when transitioning from HTTP to HTTPS should be minimal if the migration is well-configured. Ongoing issues should be reported....

Feb 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you avoid bulk redirects to a single destination page?

Redirecting a large number of pages to a single page because products are no longer available can lead to soft 404 errors but will not incur penalties....

Feb 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do hamburger menus on desktop really block Google's crawling?

Using hamburger menus on desktop sites does not affect Google's ability to crawl or index a site as long as the content is loaded on the page without an AJAX call....

Feb 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do accents and special characters really affect Google rankings?

Google treats special characters, such as accents, as synonyms and recognizes them when used in content. This generally does not impact search results....

Feb 21, 2017 ⚡ Analysis available