Martin Splitt

★★ Can Lighthouse really diagnose your critical rendering problems for Google?

The Lighthouse tool, available via web.dev or Chrome DevTools, can be used to detect page loading issues and visually observe how elements like headings load and change....

Oct 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Should you really crawl your website every three months to avoid technical problems?

Performing regular site crawls (for example every three months) allows you to detect technical issues such as duplicate titles before they affect search performance....

Oct 05, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why must your JavaScript links absolutely use A tags with valid href attributes?

For JavaScript links, you must use a real HTML A tag with an href attribute containing a resolvable URL, not a JavaScript URL like 'javascript:'. Avoid anything that isn't an appropriate link....

Sep 07, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Should you really avoid modifying meta tags with JavaScript?

While it is possible to update meta tag data with JavaScript, it is not recommended. This can send contradictory signals to Google Search, and certain features may fail to detect the changes or have i...

Sep 07, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are POST requests really eating up your crawl budget?

POST requests cannot be cached by Google, unlike GET requests. If your pages make POST requests to APIs, they will consume more crawl budget with each crawl because they cannot benefit from caching....

Aug 25, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does a new section inherit its crawl budget from your main site's quality?

When you launch a new section (like /blog), Google infers initial crawl signals from the main site. If the main site has strong quality signals (backlinks, popularity), the new section will benefit fr...

Aug 25, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Are HTTP 503 and 429 status codes really killing your crawl budget?

HTTP status codes 503 and 429, as well as slow response times, signal to Googlebot that the server cannot handle the load. Googlebot will then slow down its crawl and the allocated budget will decreas...

Aug 25, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ How does Google use 10,000 human raters to assess your content quality?

Google employs over 10,000 quality evaluators (search quality raters) to assess the relevance and quality of search results....

Jul 26, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really crawl rendered HTML or only the source code?

The HTML that the server sends (source HTML) can be different from what Google Search actually sees. Google uses the rendering process to analyze the final content of a page, which may include modific...

Jul 06, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Does Google really index DOM changes made by JavaScript after the page loads?

The Document Object Model (DOM) is an interactive representation of the web page that can change during loading, during user interactions, or other events. JavaScript can add, modify, or remove elemen...

Jul 06, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Why does Google index rendered HTML instead of source HTML?

Source HTML is what the server initially sends to the browser. Rendered HTML is a snapshot of the DOM transformed into HTML, reflecting the page content at the moment the snapshot is taken. Google use...

Jul 06, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Should you really ditch source code inspection and switch to Search Console to see what Google actually indexes?

To debug and view the rendered HTML that Google Search uses to index a page, it is recommended to use the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console rather than classic source viewing tools....

Jul 06, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why doesn't 'View Source' show you what Google actually indexes?

When you right-click and select 'View Page Source' or use 'view-source:' in front of the URL, you only see the raw HTML sent by the server, not the content modified by JavaScript that Google may index...

Jul 06, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is your rendering process preventing Google from indexing your actual content?

Rendering is the process by which a browser transforms source HTML and CSS into a series of visual and interactive elements. This process creates the DOM and CSSOM, then the layout, and finally render...

Jul 06, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Why does Chrome's Elements tab reveal more than the source code for SEO?

To see the current DOM content including JavaScript modifications, use the Elements tab (Chrome) in your browser's developer tools. This tab shows an interactive and up-to-date representation of the D...

Jul 06, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★★ Is page experience really enough to guarantee good UX for Google?

Page experience is a subset of user experience (UX). It includes technical elements such as Core Web Vitals, mobile compatibility, HTTPS, and intrusive interstitials, but does not cover all aspects of...

Jun 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are Core Web Vitals really enough to measure user experience?

Core Web Vitals offer a limited view of how a user experiences a page. There is no single metric that can cover the entirety of user experience, which is why multiple specific metrics have been define...

Jun 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Are human-readable and consistent URLs really a ranking factor?

Google recommends making URLs human-readable and maintaining consistency in their structure. Brevity and ease of memorization are important for user experience....

Jun 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★ Is Lighthouse really missing poor quality anchor text on your site?

Google's Lighthouse tool uses a limited list of English phrases to detect non-descriptive link text like 'click here'. This detection doesn't work for other languages and remains very basic....

Jun 21, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available

★★ Is Google abandoning traditional crawling to index social web content?

Martin Splitt explains that to adapt to the future of the web, search engines will potentially need to move away from the traditional crawl-index-serve model and find ways to integrate where people ex...

May 19, 2022 ⚡ Analysis available