Category: Google Search Engine Optimization

I spotted an interesting comment from John Mueller of Google about URLs and reducing duplication. He said focusing on individual URLs here and there won’t help you much, it is more about looking where you can “reduce duplication by a factor of 10x.”
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Google has removed the following structured data fields from its Google Search help documentation. Google said these were removed “since they are unused by Google Search and Rich Result Test doesn’t flag warnings for them.”

Google’s John Mueller said that when it comes to web search, Google does not “look at the specific images on the page” for web search or ranking purposes. For image search, Google does but for web search, John said no.

In September we said Google Merchant Center would enforce that all products would have unique product identifiers (UPI) within the product feed. If there was not UPI, Google would immediately disapproved and no longer showed in free listings. That is n…

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter “I don’t think we keep track of order of links on a page.” I found that interesting in that Google does treat links to the same destination with different anchor text differently. Although, it is hard to know exa…

As you know, Google is rolling out continuous scroll on mobile search. To be honest, in my original reporting on this topic, I covered both the image of Search Console and Google Ads reporting – saying there is no direct impact outside of how user beh…

The other day I asked John Mueller on Twitter to confirm that Google can handle and not confuse the titles in the SVG images with the page title. Turns out, John answered this question back in May saying that titles in SVG images are not something to …

Google’s John Mueller was asked if using “admin” or “author” for the author name on articles would be okay for some web sites. The answer was not 100% clear, but he suggested for YMYL categories of sites, it’s best to stay away from generic author nam…

Google added to the Search Console Search Analytics API Discover and Google News data that it added to the web interface earlier this year. Google also added support for Regex with the query and page dimensions.

Google’s John Mueller was asked if energy supply types of websites would fall into the YMYL, your money – your life, category and thus have to hold to a higher standard for E-A-T concepts. John said, he doesn’t have an “absolute answer” because Google…

Google’s John Mueller said that when it comes to Google trusting a website, “when it comes to trust it’s definitely not a matter of just links that are pointing at a website.” He first said that trust is not something Google has a score for.

Google’s John Mueller said that the search engine does not classify the type of site you are based on the technology platform or infrastructure it uses. So if you use WordPress for your site, it doesn’t mean Google will say your site is a blog. If you…

Google’s John Mueller said a bit ago in a video hangout that the author of an article is not a direct ranking factor. He said this when he was asked if it matters if you have a recognized and authoritative doctor write or review your medical content w…

Google’s John Mueller admitted on Twitter that sometimes black hat SEO and risky practices work and you don’t always get caught. But he added that sometimes you can get caught and “not getting caught doesn’t mean it works.” But he added building a bus…

Daniel Waisberg of Google asked on Twitter how would you use the data, if Google let you export more data from Google Search Console. Daniel wrote “Many people ask Google to expand the limits for exporting *Search performance data* (not talking about i…

Google’s John Mueller was asked if the button attribute is treated like a link attribute. The answer was a straight forward, “no.” John said on Twitter “buttons aren’t links and don’t inherently have urls attached to actions, so we wouldn’t use them …

Google’s John Mueller was asked if opening links in a new window versus the existing window (tab) would make a difference SEO or ranking wise in Google. John said no, there is no difference for ranking purposes.

Google’s John Mueller said when it comes to confusing Google around having different intent of content, it is more of an issue on the page-level and not on the site-level. John said “a lot of websites just have a mix of different kinds of content,” an…

After over a year of not having an update on the Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines – Google made several updates to the document yesterday, October 19, 2021. The last update was just over a year ago on October 14, 2020. The document this time ar…

Martin Splitt from Google explained the concept of centerpiece annotation, a term used in Google to define the primary content of a page or site. Martin said they are able to understand that a page’s primary topic is on A and the rest of the content o…