John Mueller

★★★ Is mobile-first indexing really impacting your Google rankings?

The shift to mobile-first indexing changes nothing about ranking. It's purely a matter of indexation and selecting which content to use. You shouldn't try to force this change. Google switches sites w...

Mar 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are ranking fluctuations really normal, or could they be hiding a technical issue?

Ranking changes where pages move up and down in search results are completely natural. This isn't necessarily a sign of content quality or technical problems. Pages can even temporarily leave the inde...

Mar 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really distinguish between 'edit video' and 'video editor' as different user intentions?

Google tries to understand synonyms but looks at the complete context of the query. Terms like 'edit video' and 'video editor' may seem synonymous but user expectations are different, so the results c...

Mar 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does your homepage distance really impact how fast Google indexes your pages?

Pages closer to the homepage are generally indexed faster. For most sites, the homepage is the central point, but for some, this can be a specific major category or product....

Mar 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Really Ignore All Links Placed in Widgets?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google simply does not take into account links integrated by widget designers to their site within the mini-application offered. These links are simply ignored. ...

Mar 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you still trust the site: operator to diagnose your indexation status?

The numbers displayed by site: queries are not intended for diagnosis. They are not a reflection of what is actually indexed, but merely a quick approximation. The figures can be wrong by several orde...

Mar 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really segment websites by template type when evaluating Page Experience?

Google can divide a website into sections according to similar page types if sufficient data is available. For example, if all product pages are fast but another page type is slow, only that type will...

Mar 14, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Still Be Using Google's Disavow Tool in 2024?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google doesn't use the disavow file submitted by webmasters to discover spammy links or link networks. Why? Simply because, according to him, "fake link networks...

Mar 07, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can you host your XML sitemap on a different domain than your main website?

It is entirely possible to host sitemap files on a different domain. Two methods work: having both domains verified in Search Console, or submitting the sitemap via robots.txt with 'sitemap:' followed...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really avoid product structured data on category pages?

According to Google's policies, you should not implement multiple product schemas on a product listing page. Product structured data must apply to the main element of the page. On a category page with...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can you safely use bidirectional canonicals between two site versions without any risk?

Duplicating content between two versions of a site (global and local) while providing a canonical tag is a perfect use of this tag. You don't need to apply the same direction for all content: one site...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are massive footer links really killing your site's context?

Having massive internal links in the footer where every page is linked to all other pages removes context and prevents Google from understanding the site structure and the relative importance of pages...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can commodity content really survive in Google search results?

For commodity content that anyone can reproduce (public domain poems, well-known quotes, etc.), it is crucial to provide significant unique value. Sites based solely on this type of content are in a p...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google insist that sitemaps should never be your only safety net?

Sitemaps should provide supplementary information about a site, but should not be the primary means of content discovery. Internal linking is essential. Google must be able to discover all content by ...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does Google really keep crawling a sitemap after you remove it from Search Console?

When you remove a sitemap file from Search Console, Google retains it in its systems and will likely continue trying to re-crawl it for several months to ensure it hasn't become temporarily unavailabl...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really rely on the schema.org validator to optimize your structured data?

The schema.org validator verifies general markup compliance according to schema.org requirements. Google Search Console's validator focuses specifically on what Google can extract and use in search re...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do you really need to pick one primary language per page if you're targeting multiple markets?

Google tries to understand a page's primary language to determine which search queries should display it. Pages intentionally mixing multiple languages make it harder for Google to rank the page corre...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why is one x-default enough for your entire multi-domain hreflang configuration?

In an hreflang configuration, even across multiple domains, there must be only one x-default. For each page, all hreflang annotations must match and clearly indicate which version to show based on cou...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you stop using the manual submission tool in Google Search Console?

Regularly using the 'Request indexing' function in Search Console is almost a sign that Google isn't yet convinced by your site. Even if you force indexation, there's no guarantee the page will appear...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Does server speed really impact the crawl budget of large websites?

For very large sites, server speed plays an important role in Google's crawl capacity. If a web server is very slow, Google cannot crawl as much content. The amount of crawl affects what can be indexe...

Mar 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available