Category: Google Search Engine Optimization

Google has done something unusual, it has removed one of the confirmed data anomalies notes about a search features bug, and added a new note confirming a bug with Google Discover logging resulting in a data drop in the Search Console Discover performa…

Generally, Google says you should never let Google index your internal search result pages. But John Mueller of Google said you shouldn’t even be considering going against Google’s advice here, if you have good category pages, you won’t even need to t…

Yes, Google can pass PageRank and other link signals from an HTTP non-secure URL to HTTPS secure URL through redirects. John Mueller from Google said this is how Google does canonicalization and that there is “no special “security dust” involved.”

Google has added a single “note” to the create crawlable links help documentation to say that links generated by JavaScript, where the link is visible, can be crawled by Google. Google added this line “Note that links are also crawlable when you use Ja…

Google’s John Mueller recommended the obvious (as I write this I am asking myself why write it but hey, sometimes the obvious needs to be reminded). If you have SEO work to do, do the work that is a larger problem before you do the smaller ones, like …

Google has updated the sitemap section of the localized pages search help documentation to say that “Child elements don’t count towards the URL limit for sitemaps.”

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that Google rewriting your page titles is not a sign of a quality issue with your page or site. He said, some pages have good titles, some have bad – that is just the web. I am sure my title here could be better, s…

Since the October Spam update and the helpful content update, many SEOs are saying AI-generated content is being targeted by Google. The answer, as I said previously, is not really. Danny Sullivan from Google said again, it is not about if a human or…

Google’s John Mueller said that the size of your header tags, i.e. H1s, H2s, etc, does not matter for SEO or ranking purposes. John said it might matter for users and conversions but for SEO, nope.

Google has published on the Search Off The Record podcast, which was a recording from brightonSEO session, where John Mueller of Google said that he believes that over time, links as a ranking factor will be not as important and not as big as a ranking…

Google’s John Mueller said that if you make your content creation decisions based off of keyword search volume lists, then those pieces of content will be mediocre, at best. John said on Twitter “don’t focus on keywords & “search volume” lists like this, they’ll lead you into mediocracy.”

Google’s John Mueller confirmed on Twitter that having a Sitemap file that lists pages that are duplicative to others, won’t necessarily cause ranking issues for your site. It might confuse Google when it comes to crawling but it should not impact rank…

Google has posted a short note in the Search Consoles data anomalies that says there was a bug in Google Search that affected some search features, including but not limited to the Top Stories search feature. Google said this started to be noticeable …

The past 30-days or so was pretty heavy between the October 2022 spam update and then several unconfirmed updates that were pretty strong, it was a bumpy road. Google also renamed the webmaster guidelines to the search essentials, rolled out new site n…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if sites that are verified with Google Search Console get crawled more often or at a higher priority. The answer is no, “crawling is independent of Search Console,” John said.

Google’s John Mueller said a website does not need to have 200,000 words to be considered authoritative. This comes after a Twitter thread said “You need around 200,000 words on your website to be considered authoritative by Google.” John replied, “I …

Google has made some changes to its sitemap documentation and title links documentation but has yet to document those changes. Here are a list of the changes, some might be considered more than “minor” but since Google did not document them, I assume t…

Mark Williams-Cook shared an example of a test site he was toying with that got hit super hard by the October 2022 Google spam update. He said the site was “scraped content mixed together answering PAAs (People Also Ask).”

On Friday, Michelle aka @Shelliweb, spotted that the Google Search Console geographic target setting feature was still visible under the legacy features. This is despite Google deprecating the feature months ago.

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that just because a piece of content is written by a human, it does not make that content necessarily helpful and good content. Having a human write content won’t guarantee the content ranks well in Google Search.