John Mueller

★★★ Does Creating a Search Console Property Really Improve Your Site's Crawl?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that creating and verifying/validating a Search Console property for a site has no impact whatsoever on the crawling of that particular site. Google's crawling system...

Nov 07, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should your alt attributes describe the image's context on the page, not just what's visually shown?

The alt attribute should not only describe the image itself, but also its context on the page. For example, for a beach photo on a hotel website, specify that it's the beach near the hotel....

Nov 03, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Will backlinks really lose their importance in SEO?

The weight of backlinks will gradually decrease over time as Google improves its understanding of content in the broader context of the web. Links will remain important for discovering pages, but will...

Nov 03, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really prefer subdomains or subdirectories for SEO? Here's what actually matters

Google has no technical preference between subdomains and subdirectories. Quality engineers say do what you want. However, subdirectories are often perceived as being more part of the main site....

Nov 03, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really detect link schemes 100% algorithmically without manual intervention?

The detection and penalization of artificial backlinks are handled algorithmically by Google, not manually....

Nov 03, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can JavaScript Really Change How Google Treats URL Hash Fragments?

There is an exception to standard hash processing in URLs: when JavaScript on the page performs special actions with these URL fragments. In this case, processing can be different and falls under Java...

Oct 26, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are URLs with hash (#) really invisible to Google?

Most of the time, the part located after the hash symbol (#) in a URL is ignored by search engines during crawling and indexing. Only the part before the hash is used for indexing....

Oct 26, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do URL hash fragments (#) create separate pages in Google's eyes?

URLs containing a hash symbol (#) are used to create links to a specific section of a page. The part before the hash is the page address, the part after is the reference to a precise location. In term...

Oct 26, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do You Really Need to Translate Your URLs to Match Your Content Language for Better Rankings?

John Mueller indicated on Twitter that it is not mandatory to assign web pages written in a language a URL in the same language: "There is no need to use English URLs if the content is not in English....

Oct 24, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Really Optimize Image File Names and Avoid Changing Their URLs at All Costs?

John Mueller explained during a webmaster hangout that Google takes into account image names (for example: golden-retriever-dog.jpg) because it can give the search engine an idea of what the image con...

Oct 24, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are automatic redirects really killing your international SEO rankings?

For international sites, it is recommended to use banners rather than automatic redirects. Redirects prevent Google from discovering other language versions, and you can never be 100% certain of the c...

Oct 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why can't Google ever guarantee that your users will land on the right language version of your site?

It's impossible to guarantee that a user will always visit the correct language or geographic version of a page, even if Google does everything right. This is inherent to how the web functions....

Oct 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the referrer URL in Search Console really affect your search rankings?

The referrer URL displayed in Search Console's URL inspection tool shows where Google found the first link to this page. This information may be outdated (e.g., an HTTP page), but it has no impact on ...

Oct 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is hreflang really essential for managing a successful international website?

For websites with identical content across multiple countries and languages, using hreflang is the appropriate approach. You must link the different linguistic and geographic versions together, includ...

Oct 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does blocking URLs with robots.txt but leaving them indexed really hurt your SEO?

If URLs blocked by robots.txt are indexed but only appear in the omitted results of a site: search, it's not problematic. They don't affect your site. Pay attention only if they rank in place of your ...

Oct 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does duplicate content really trigger a Google penalty?

Publishing the same content across multiple sites (blog and e-commerce for example) does not result in a duplicate content penalty. Google will attempt to index one version, and it's normal to have id...

Oct 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google really customize search results based on location and language? Here's what actually happens behind the scenes

Search results naturally vary from one country to another and from one language to another—that's normal. For certain queries (e.g., repairs), Google prioritizes local results; for others (e.g., manua...

Oct 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really respect rel=canonical or is it just a suggestion that gets ignored?

The rel=canonical tag allows you to indicate to Google your preferred version among multiple pages with identical content. It's not an absolute guarantee because Google takes many signals into account...

Oct 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why do website mergers produce unpredictable results in Google's eyes?

Merging two websites essentially creates something entirely new, with no guaranteed predictable outcome. Google must understand the new global site. It is crucial to follow Google's recommendations, d...

Oct 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you worry about reusing the same text blocks across multiple pages?

Reusing text blocks (header, footer, newsletter banner) across numerous pages is common and acceptable. A page may appear for this shared text in specific searches, but this doesn't negatively affect ...

Oct 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available