John Mueller

★★★ Does Page Experience on desktop really deserve your attention as a ranking factor?

The Page Experience ranking factor, which includes Core Web Vitals (speed, responsiveness, and stability), was previously used only on mobile. It has recently been deployed for desktop users as well. ...

Mar 31, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does a link without an indexed URL essentially do nothing for your SEO?

For a link to exist in our systems, we always need a source and a destination, and both sides must be canonical URLs that are indexed. If we don't have any source in our systems, the link disappears b...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do brand mentions without backlinks actually help your SEO rankings?

If there's no link to your pages, then it's not really a link. It's not something we would see as a half-value link or anything like that. We don't treat these mentions as links....

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really use just one signal to choose which URL to canonicalize among your duplicate content?

Regarding canonicalization, several factors play a role: the rel canonical tag, internal and external links, what is listed in the sitemap, redirects, and sometimes which URL appears cleaner or cleare...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really ignore your canonical tags when it decides pages are too similar?

If we think these pages are essentially the same, we try to do you a favor by choosing just one URL to index. The best way to avoid this is to make sure these pages are significantly unique....

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does partial duplicate content really hurt your search rankings?

If part of a page is considered duplicate content, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's perfectly acceptable to have shared elements on a page discussing the same topic, like identical code snippets...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are out-of-stock products hurting your e-commerce site's overall search rankings?

When something is out of stock, we'll treat it more like a soft 404 error and remove that URL from search results. However, if only a single product reference is out of stock, the ranking of the rest ...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does robots.txt prevent Google from crawling your pages but still allow them to be indexed?

With robots.txt, you prevent crawling of these URLs but not their indexation. If you run a site: search for these specific URLs, you'll very likely still find them in the index, even without the conte...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really avoid URLs with parameters for SEO?

There's a general assumption that URLs with parameters are bad for a site, and that's simply not the case. It's not something I would consider critical; it's more about polishing the site to make it a...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does the order of links in your HTML code really affect Google's crawl priority?

If we look at an HTML page, the order of the links is not related to the order of our overall crawl of these pages on the site. As long as these links are on the HTML page and we can follow them, we c...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really count clicks on rich results the same way as organic clicks?

For rich results, we count a click only if there's actually a link to your site and someone clicked on it. It's not the case that we'd say there's a rich result and therefore count a click even if no ...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google deprioritize crawling low-effort aggregator sites?

Google's algorithms are not invested in crawling and indexing all content from low-effort aggregator sites that merely take content feeds and publish them, because it's the same content already seen e...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really use different ranking algorithms depending on your industry?

Google has nothing specific regarding different algorithms for different niches. A bike shop doesn't have completely different algorithms from a shoe shop. They're essentially both e-commerce stores....

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do Google's testing tools really crawl in real-time or do they rely on cached data?

The mobile-friendly test and URL inspection tool do not use any cached data to display information. They really retrieve this information live directly from your server....

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can out-of-stock product pages really trigger soft 404 errors in Google's eyes?

Soft 404s can be products that are out of stock or no longer available. This can also be an empty page or an error in the DOM if something with JavaScript loads an error message like 'no information f...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really prefer noindex over disallow to control indexation in Google?

If these are pages you don't want indexed, using noindex would be better than disallow in robots.txt. Noindex is a meta robots tag on the page, and you must allow crawling for it to work....

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Google Search Console really collecting all the data from your massive e-commerce site?

On a very large e-commerce site, there are limits in Search Console on the amount of data collected per day. If you drill down to the URL or individual query level, you could see significant differenc...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why do Search Console and Analytics data never really match up?

Search Console measures what is shown in search results, while Analytics uses JavaScript to track what happens on your site. These tracking methods are different and have different deduplication metho...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How long does it really take to see your new backlinks in Google Search Console?

Most reports in Search Console are recalculated every three to four days. For the links report, you should expect to see data within approximately one week to one and a half weeks, not months or hours...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really use the URL inspection tool to index a brand new website?

For a brand new site with no signals or background information, using the URL inspection tool to request indexation is a way to get your foot in the door, but it's not a guarantee that Google will pic...

Mar 28, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available