John Mueller

★★ How does a translation button affect SEO?

Displaying a button that allows users to click and view an automatically translated version is acceptable to Google, as the translation occurs at the user's request and is not indexed directly....

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you manually review automatic translations for SEO?

Google's position remains unchanged: automatic translation without human revision is considered automatically generated content, which goes against the guidelines. Automatically translating millions o...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should submitting a DMCA complaint really be free for SEOs?

Submitting a DMCA complaint should be free. If someone is charging you for this service, it's likely a third-party company. You can submit DMCA complaints directly to Google or the host using their ab...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why doesn’t Google take action against copycat websites?

Google generally does not impose a manual action solely because other sites are copying your content. Automated systems manage these situations well. If you receive a manual action for unnatural links...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Use the Disavow Tool for Mass Copied Sites?

If your site is being copied by hundreds of spammy sites creating unnatural links, you can use the Disavow Links tool with the domain directive to submit all these domains to Google, which will then i...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is resubmitting your XML sitemap really a waste of time?

Resubmitting an XML sitemap without real changes is not a strong signal for Google. If you manually modify all the dates to force a recrawl, Google will detect that all the dates are identical and wil...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ What should you do when facing persistent 503 errors in SEO?

If 503 errors last more than a few days, URLs may drop out of the index because Google considers it a persistent server error. Recovery requires a new crawl, which can take a few days to a week. For i...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google filter adult content sites even with exact match queries?

Google's systems can filter adult content sites for certain queries if the search intent does not align with that type of content, even when the site has the exact name of the query. This is to avoid ...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How do web fonts disrupt SEO with Cumulative Layout Shift?

External font files can lead to CLS issues if content initially displays without the font and then rearranges once the font is loaded. Chrome DevTools allows you to block the font URL to test if it is...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you use canonical tags on advertising landing pages to point to main product pages?

It is perfectly acceptable to use a canonical tag on advertising landing pages to point to the main product page. This allows for the transfer of authority from received links to the preferred canonic...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Can a 503 error during migration really harm your SEO?

A 503 error lasting one or two hours during a server migration should have no impact on SEO. Google considers this a temporary error, retries after a few hours, and indexing is not affected if the sit...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does the location of your server really influence local SEO?

The geographical location of the server has no impact on geotargeting. It is not a ranking factor. Only connection speed may be affected if the server is far from the users, which could impact Core We...

Dec 18, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How Long Can Your Server Be Down Before Google Deindexes Your Site?

John Mueller explained during a webmaster hangout that from now on, a website that is down (server down problem) will be deindexed if the problem lasts "a couple of days" (so two days, roughly speakin...

Dec 13, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Can publishing 30 articles truly establish your site as an SEO authority?

Creating 30 blog articles does not automatically make a site authoritative, particularly on sensitive subjects like health. For small businesses or one-page sites, it’s not necessary to be perceived a...

Dec 10, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ How unpredictable is Google Discover for your SEO strategy?

Google Discover is very binary: you either get a lot of traffic or very little. One should not depend on Discover as a primary traffic source, as this can change rapidly. Core Updates and Discover con...

Dec 10, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really add text to enhance the indexing of numerical data?

For pages that mainly feature numerical data, adding descriptive text will not impact how Google crawls and indexes those pages. Numbers are regarded as unique content. Indexing instead relies on the ...

Dec 10, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that 'discovered and not indexed' signals a quality issue for a site?

For a reasonably sized site (25,000 pages), if the right URLs are showing up en masse as 'discovered and not indexed' rather than 'crawled and not indexed', it likely indicates a broader quality issue...

Dec 10, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do URL parameters on images really hinder SEO?

Adding query parameters to image URLs (for cache invalidation, for instance) does not have a negative effect on SEO. However, frequently changing image URLs slows down their reindexing because Google ...

Dec 10, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is it true that deleting low-traffic pages can really enhance your SEO?

Deleting a few hundred old pages from a larger site is probably not going to have a significant SEO impact, unless those pages are of very low quality. The absence of traffic does not mean a page is b...

Dec 10, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really worry about different navigation for mobile and desktop in responsive design?

Having different navigation for mobile and desktop within the same HTML (responsive) is a common and acceptable configuration. While it's not optimal due to the need to maintain two versions, it isn’t...

Dec 10, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available