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.
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🕒 ~1 min 🎯 5 questions
★★ 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
★★★ What makes Google Discover's SEO standards so much stricter?
Google Discover applies different and often stricter quality standards compared to classic web search, particularly concerning adult content, clickbait titles, and other factors outlined in the Discov...
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
★★★ 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
★★ 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
★★★ How does semantic HTML enhance your SEO performance?
Using the appropriate semantic HTML tags (headings, strong, em, etc.) helps Google better understand the structure and meaning of a page. This is a positive factor for SEO as it clarifies what is impo...
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
★★★ 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
★★ Why doesn't Google assign a single quality score for SEO?
Unlike paid ads, there is no single, quantifiable quality score for natural referencing. Google uses multiple algorithms to evaluate the quality of a site, making it impossible to create a simple metr...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★ Should you really replicate the markup of major websites for SEO?
You should not automatically copy the technical markup of major websites, even those belonging to Google, as they may contain errors or use non-standard internal codes that only work within their syst...
Nov 12, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available
★★★ Is it true that the ES-419 code is a critical error for hreflang?
The ES-419 code for targeting Latin America in hreflang is an error found in certain Google pages themselves. This code is not valid, and hreflang links using ES-419 are ignored. Instead, each country...
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 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
★★★ Why doesn't a reduced crawl rate from Google lead to the deindexing of your pages?
If Google reduces the crawl frequency of a site, it does not cause the deindexing of already indexed pages. Pages do not expire just because they are not recrawled. Therefore, a decline in indexed pag...
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
★★ Should you use the form to boost your crawl rate?
For significant sites that have improved their response times, there is a form in the Search Console help center that allows you to request that the Googlebot team manually increase the crawl rate. Th...
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
★★★ How do you choose between no-index and canonical for an effective SEO strategy?
The choice between no-index and canonical depends on the intent: use no-index if you absolutely want to prevent the content from appearing in search results, and canonical if you want to consolidate t...
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
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