John Mueller

★★★ How Does the Sitemap Lastmod Attribute Really Influence Google's Crawling?

Google uses the lastmod attribute (last modified) in sitemap files to optimize crawling....

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Google place such high importance on link context for SEO?

Google derives a lot of value from the context of individual links, particularly the anchor text and the text before and after the link. Superscripts that remove the link from its context make it diff...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why should hreflang be managed on a per-page basis for SEO?

Hreflang annotations operate on a per-page basis. If certain pages lack translation, you can either omit hreflang on those pages or leave a single hreflang tag. Google will simply overlook the absence...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why Doesn’t the Sitemap Influence Your SEO Ranking?

Changes in the sitemap file do not affect rankings. The sitemap helps to explore more efficiently but is not a ranking factor. Google does not penalize significant changes to the sitemap, nor does it ...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do Google reviews really affect your website's SEO?

The number of Google reviews or responses to reviews do not affect organic SEO rankings. While they may influence rankings in Google My Business or Maps, they do not impact web search results....

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google ignore the sitemap priority attribute?

Google does not use the priority attribute in sitemap files....

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does the ranking of new content fluctuate so much?

When new content or a new site appears, Google makes assumptions about its ranking because it doesn't have many signals yet. These assumptions can be high or low, creating initial fluctuations before ...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why is a stable URL essential for updated content in terms of SEO?

For regularly updated content (financial reports, recurring events), it's advisable to have a primary stable URL that accumulates signals over time, and to move old versions to an archive section with...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How do structured data impact social profiles in SEO?

Structured data can be used to indicate that certain social profiles are linked to a company's homepage. This helps Google understand that these profiles belong together and can influence their combin...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do you really need to include every URL in your SEO sitemap?

It's not necessary to list all URLs in a sitemap. Some sites list everything, while others only include important parts or a specific section. It's a free choice....

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Do third-party scripts really slow down your SEO performance?

Third-party JavaScript scripts that slow down a page (such as reCAPTCHA or Google Ads) are included in the speed assessment. Google does not make exceptions for its own scripts. If a script disrupts t...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you choose a ccTLD or Search Console settings for effective SEO geotargeting?

For geotargeting, there are two possible methods: using a country code top-level domain (for example, .de for Germany) or using a generic domain (.com, .net, .info, .eu) with the geotargeting paramete...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is it true that translated content isn’t considered duplicate by Google?

Translated content is not considered duplicate content because it consists of different words and letters. However, a low-quality automated translation may be perceived as low-quality content or autom...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do multiple titles in SVG files really influence SEO?

Having multiple title tags on an HTML page, especially in SVG files, does not cause ranking problems. Google may have simply struggled in the past to display the correct title in search results, but t...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is hidden content on mobile overlooked by Google?

If a site is on mobile-first indexing, content that is only accessible in desktop HTML but hidden on mobile (display:none) will not be indexed or used for ranking. This can be verified using the Inspe...

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really keep your sitemaps updated for Google?

The sitemap assists Google in crawling more efficiently but does not replace normal crawling. If the sitemap is outdated but the content is up to date, Google will continue to crawl the site normally....

May 28, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google Really Detect PBNs Automatically or Can They Still Work?

John Mueller explained on Twitter that PBNs (Private Blog Networks) "were fairly obvious to detect. (...) There's nothing new about them, they're just link schemes like others have been for many years...

May 25, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should You Migrate Your Site to HTTP/2 to Optimize Your Crawl Budget?

John Mueller indicated during the Google I/O event that nowadays, Googlebot crawls more than one in two URLs using the HTTP/2 protocol, which means better "crawl budget" management on the sites explor...

May 25, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do You Really Need to Achieve All 3 Core Web Vitals Scores to Improve Your SEO Rankings?

The past week has brought its usual harvest of information about the Core Web Vitals / Page Experience project, not always very precise: first of all, Jeffrey Jose (Google) indicated during GoogleI/O ...

May 25, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Do links to external sources really impact your SEO?

Citations to authoritative sources (such as manufacturers) should be standard links without nofollow, as long as they are not affiliate links. These are organically provided information. The UX aspect...

May 22, 2021 ⚡ Analysis available