What does Google say about SEO? /
John Mueller is one of Google's most active spokespeople on search engine optimization topics. As a Search Advocate, he regularly answers the SEO community's questions during Google Search Central sessions and on social media. His statements are a prime source of information for understanding how Google Search works and the best practices to follow.
Quick SEO Quiz

Test your SEO knowledge in 5 questions

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🕒 ~1 min 🎯 5 questions
★★★ Does Google really slow down crawling on pages that are in prolonged no-index?
<p>When a page remains in no-index for an extended period, Google significantly slows down the crawling of that page. Once the page becomes indexable again, active resumption of crawling is required, ...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Why doesn't Google automatically hide Chrome extension pages on mobile?
Google does not have an algorithm that would automatically hide all Chrome extension pages from mobile search results, even if these extensions do not function on mobile. It's easy to verify this by s...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Is it true that Google prioritizes its own platforms in search rankings?
Google does not apply any automatic bias favoring pages hosted on the Chrome Web Store in search results. The team explicitly tries to prevent content from being automatically ranked higher simply bec...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ How could bold text influence your SEO strategy?
Boldening important words or phrases in content does indeed assist Google in better understanding the main topic of the page. It's a clear signal indicating what the author considers essential, and Go...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Should you favor a hierarchical structure to boost your SEO?
Instead of linking every page to all other pages on a site, it's better to create a clear hierarchical structure with categories and subcategories. This helps Google better understand the organization...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ What unique SEO challenges do JavaScript PWAs bring?
PWAs that are solely based on JavaScript create additional technical challenges for SEO, particularly regarding rendering and indexing. This can involve significantly more work compared to a tradition...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ How can temporary internal linking boost your reindexing speed?
To speed up the reindexing of important pages, temporarily creating internal links from very significant pages (like the homepage) signals to Google that these pages are a priority and triggers faster...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Why is Google Discover traffic so unpredictable for SEO professionals?
Traffic from Google Discover is generally very unstable, with brutal fluctuations. If the algorithms determine that a site should no longer be featured in Discover, traffic can nearly vanish overnight...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Is it really necessary to manage over 10,000 links per page to optimize your SEO?
Google has a practical limit on the number of links it can process per page, likely well beyond 10,000 links. However, having thousands of internal links on each page makes it very difficult for Googl...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Is it true that changing your URL could cost you valuable SEO data?
Changing URLs to force reindexing results in a complete loss of all historical information tied to the old URLs. Google no longer recognizes if there was a no-index tag, nor does it retain any data ab...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Can canonical and hreflang tags actually work together on the same page?
A page can perfectly have both a canonical tag pointing to itself and alternate hreflang tags pointing to other language versions. The canonical tag confirms that this page is the preferred version, w...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Why does the crawl rate take longer to recover than to decline?
Google's systems are very responsive in reducing the crawl rate when response time problems occur, but they are much slower to restore it once the problem is fixed. Generally, you need to wait a week ...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Should you combine no-index and canonical tags to enhance your SEO signals?
It is possible and even beneficial to combine no-index and canonical on the same page. This helps Google understand that the page should not be indexed while transferring certain signals (like externa...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Why does Google keep crawling old mobile subdomains?
After redirecting a mobile subdomain (m-dot) to the main domain, Google might continue to crawl the old mobile domain for a very long time, sometimes for several years. This is normal and should not b...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ How does Googlebot's geographic limitations affect content indexing?
Google can only index the content visible to Googlebot, which typically crawls from the United States and without cookies. If content is displayed solely through geographic personalization or cookies,...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Why should you avoid using canonicals between language versions?
The canonical tag should never point from one language version to another (for example, from the French page to the English page) because these are fundamentally different pages. Each language version...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Why is a 500-millisecond response time essential for effective SEO crawling?
A server response time of 500 milliseconds is generally good for crawling medium-sized sites. For very large sites with millions of URLs, an even faster response time is recommended to allow for effic...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ How can overusing bold text harm your SEO efforts?
If all the content on a page is in bold, it has no SEO effect because nothing stands out. Emphasis markup (bold, strong) works in relation to the rest of the page: only a few highlighted elements have...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Do PWAs Really Impact Your SEO?
A Progressive Web App (PWA) is not treated any differently in SEO compared to a traditional site. Google renders the JavaScript and then treats the PWA like a normal HTML page. Therefore, merely migra...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Does response time really impact how Google crawls your site?
<p>For a news website, the importance of response time depends less on the type of site and more on the volume of URLs that Google needs to crawl daily. A site with 10,000 pages crawled each day can t...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
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