Google SEO Office Hours Highlights (2022.11–2024.08) + Summary of 3 Major FAQ Themes

Thematically distilled takeaways from 15 months of monthly SEO Q&As plus 3 long-standing FAQ pages.Not sorted chronologically, but clustered by question topic. Each point is marked in parentheses with the session or FAQ where it appeared, for easy cross-reference. Speakers are: John Mueller (J), Gary Illyes (G), Lizzi Sassman (L), Alan Kent (A), Martin Splitt (M), Duy Nguyen (D).

Part 1 — The "harsh truth" about indexing (most frequently asked)

"Google does not index every URL on the internet" is a core mental model repeated almost every month.

1.1 Indexing is not a promise, it is an evaluation

Submitting a sitemap ≠ indexing guarantee (May 2023, Jul 2023): "Sitemaps tell search engines where your content is, but that is all they do" (G)
Verifying in Search Console ≠ indexing signal (Jan 2023): "It has absolutely no impact on indexing or rankings" (G)
Only 2 out of 200 pages indexed (Apr 2023): "If a URL is accessible to Googlebot, remember that Google prefers to index high-quality URLs" (G)
"Discovered - currently not indexed" (Jul 2023): Reducing from 8M to 2M is not necessarily helpful, "Unless you actually improve quality, you are just wasting time reducing indexable pages" (J)
Repeatedly pushing for indexing will not save pages (Sep 2023): "The system will re-evaluate your content over time, and it may drop out again" (J)

1.2 Indexing speed depends on "perceived quality across the web"

Content length does not affect crawl frequency (Nov 2022): "Niche content can still be indexed, it will not be penalized"
16,000 pages not fully indexed after 6 months (May 2023): "It depends on site quality + web popularity; if it is high quality, run social media promotions to get people talking about it" (G)
Why some sites are crawled faster (Dec 2022): "If many people are talking about it, it is more likely to be crawled quickly"

1.3 "Index bloat" does not exist

Aug 2023: "I am not aware of Google having a concept of index bloat. We do not artificially limit the number of indexed pages per site" (J)
No need to monitor the indexed / non-indexed ratio (Nov 2022): "There is no magic ratio. Small to medium-sized sites (< 1M pages) do not need to worry about crawl budget"
Millions of noindex pages are not a problem (Nov 2022): "noindex is a tool, it will not cause unintended side effects" (G × 2 questions)

1.4 The only ways to remove pages from the index (repeated N times)

3 options:

Delete the page → return a 404404 / 410 / similar status code
Add the noindex robots meta tag (you must allow robots to crawl the page for it to see this!)
Search Console Removals tool(temporary, ~6 months)

⚠️ Common mistake — "I use noindex and block via robots.txt at the same time" (Dec 2023): "Googlebot cannot access the URL, so it cannot see the noindex, which means the page may still appear in the index. Just allow crawling" (M)

Part 2 — 404s are healthy (repeated N times)

Every session has at least one question about 404s.All answers revolve around these two points:

2.1 404s do not hurt rankings

"My site has a lot of 404s, will I lose rankings?" (Aug 2024): "404s do not affect the rest of your rankings" (J)
"Millions of 404s vs millions of 301s" (Jul 2023): "Both are completely harmless, choose what works for you" (G)
"I want to clear the 404 report in GSC" (Jul 2023): "There is no such setting. 404s are not a problem; every website should return 404 for pages that do not exist" (J)
"Large number of API path 404s" (Dec 2023): "No need to worry. You can use robots.txt to block crawling of those" (M)
Large number of 404s after a hack (Dec 2022, Aug 2024): "If the security issue is fixed and the pages are removed, you are basically done. Returning 404 is completely fine"

2.2 Do not blindly redirect 404s to the homepage

Core principle: Redirects must make sense for users, otherwise they are worse than a 404.

"If a user searches for a knife and clicks through, and you redirect them to a page that only shows spoons — that is terrible UX, and it does not help search either" (Aug 2024, J)
Deleting 10,000 thin blog posts (Nov 2022): "Just delete them, no special action is needed" (J)
"I set up 301s for all 404s, is that bad?" (Dec 2022): "You can have millions of redirects, but focus on the real problems, do not create more unnecessary work for yourself"
A better decision formula: If there is a genuine replacement product → 301; otherwise → 404 + a good 404 page

2.3 There is no such thing as "soft 404 cloaking"

200-status 404 pages (Dec 2023): "These are usually treated as soft 404s, not cloaking; you will not end up in SEO hell for this, but it is still undesirable" (M)
robots.txt file reported as soft 404 (Aug 2024): "That is completely fine, you do not need to do anything. robots.txt generally does not need to be indexed" (J)

Part 3 — Site Migrations / Canonical / Redirects

3.1 Timeless site move quote: 301 to specific URLs, not the homepage

"Should I 301 redirect all old URLs to the homepage at once?" (Dec 2022): "NO. Redirect on a per-URL basis" (J)
"Rankings still haven't come back 4 months after migration?" (Nov 2022): "Fluctuations after big changes are totally normal. There is no fixed timeline" (L)
"How to speed up a site move?" (Jan 2023): "The most important thing is to make sure all old URLs 301 to the new URLs; submitting the site move request in Search Console is nice to do" (G)
"30,000 → 2,500 products, do I need 400,000 redirects?" (Dec 2022): "It is OK to clean up old pages + return 404 or redirect to new versions" (A)
One year after migration, still reporting 1 million "pages with redirect" (Jul 2023): "That is completely normal. Google remembers old URLs for a long time; as long as they keep redirecting, it is OK" (J)
Company renaming its domain (Jan 2023): "Redirects from old URLs to new URLs are the most important thing. Everything follows the official site move documentation"
WordPress → self-hosted (Dec 2022): "If you are changing domains,redirect the old ones to the new ones, instead of just deleting the old ones. The old site may have accumulated valuable signals, don't throw them away" (G)

3.2 Canonical = a signal, not a command

"I set rel=canonical, but Google chose a different URL" (Nov 2022): "Canonicalization is based on multiple signals, not just rel=canonical: there are also redirects, sitemaps, internal links, external links. If you want it to stick, make sure all signals are aligned"(J)
Priority of the 5 canonical signals (implied across multiple sessions): 301 redirect > rel=canonical > sitemap > internal links > external links
Self-referring canonical? (Nov 2022): "From my perspective, it does nothing. But sometimes pages are seen under other URLs (like with UTM parameters), and that is when a self-canonical is useful" (J)
Canonicalization does not affect rankings (Nov 2022): "It mainly affects which URL is displayed" (J)
Canonicalization across multiple hreflang sets is complex (Jul 2023): "For very similar content like DE/AT/CH, canonicalization might pick.at or.ch as the canonical, but users in.de may still see the.de version" (M)

3.3 Redirects have no size limit + 308 = 301

"Will millions of redirects negatively impact rankings?" (Dec 2022): "Have as many as you want"
308 vs 301 (Apr 2023): "We treat them the same, both are moved permanently, both are strong signals" (L)
Long-term 302s are automatically treated as 301s (May 2023): "Google recognizes long-term temporary redirects as permanent" (J)
Do not cloak status codes (Apr 2023): "Serving 410 to Googlebot + 200 to users = a very bad idea, it will cause problems sooner or later" (G)

3.4 Standard m-dot markup (Jan 2023, L)

Desktop page:

rel=canonical points to itself
rel=alternate points to the m-dot version

Mobile m-dot page:

Only needs rel=canonical pointing to the desktop version

Part 4 — Robots / noindex / Control

4.1 NOODP is dead (Jun 2023): "The DMOZ project has not existed for a long time; this meta tag has no effect but keeping it does no harm" (J)

4.2 Blocking specific sections of a full page (Jun 2023): "The short version is you cannot block specific sections of an HTML page. But you can:`data-nosnippet` hide snippet fragments;`iframe` + hide via robots.txt; block JS via robots.txt" (J). The latter two are complex, easy to break, and usually unnecessary.

4.3 Permanently block Googlebot (Jun 2023): "robots.txt `disallow: /` for the Googlebot user agent. If you want to block at the network layer, add Google IP ranges to your deny rules" (G)

4.4 Large numbers of nofollow and noindex ≠ low-quality signal (Aug 2024): "It is not a low-quality signal; it just means you do not want to be associated with those links" (M)

4.5 Redirect through a robots.txt-blocked page blocks PageRank (Dec 2022): "If the goal is to prevent signal flow, redirecting through a blocked page works" (J)

4.6 Affiliate links: robots.txt block (May 2023): "sensible. We are also very good at recognizing and ignoring them, but blocking them via robots gives you more control and may save crawl budget" (G)

Part 5 — hreflang (high-frequency, complex)

5.1 Each page is an independent unit

Missing return tag → only that one connection is ignored, others are unaffected (Nov 2022): "3 working hreflang + 1 broken = we use the 3 and ignore the 1. There are no negative effects at all" (J)
It is OK if some pages have hreflang and some do not (Jul 2023): "hreflang is per-page; using it only on a subset is fine" (J)
Implement hreflang with sitemaps (Nov 2022, G): "Search sitemaps.org for 'sitemap cross submits'. It greatly simplifies implementation for multi-variant websites"

5.2 hreflang ≠ canonical but they are related

noindex + hreflang (Jan 2023): "Links with noindex will not enter the cluster" (G)
Multilingual similarity (Mar 2023, Jul 2023): "If two markets use the same language, a page may be treated as duplicate, with the canonical pointing to the other.hreflang can still swap the URL, but Search Console reports the canonical URL, so it may look like it is being ignored"
Query string in hreflang (Jul 2023): "There should not be major issues. But be consistent, otherwise there will be canonicalization surprises" (G)

5.3 Use multiple hreflang for the same language across multiple regions (Nov 2022): "A German-language page can target both Germany and Austria at the same time" (J)

5.4 `hreflang="be"` ≠ Belgium (implied, plus others) — `be` is the Belarusian language,Belgium's country code is `be` but that is a region, not a language

5.5 x-default is the fallback language (Nov 2022): "On a per page-set basis; it does not have to be uniform across the whole site. It is fine if English is the default for one set and Japanese is the default for another" (J)

5.6.com vs ccTLD for local markets

"For a Dutch site, use.com or.nl?" (Mar 2023): "If possible, stay on.nl. Site moves carry risk, and.nl is a direct signal to all search engines that 'this is local to the Netherlands'" (G)
".kr or.com for Korean?" (Jul 2024): ".kr usually has a slight edge because Google promotes content local to the user. But language matching is more important than the domain name" (G)
".ai is treated as a gTLD" (Jul 2023): "Starting in early 2023, Google Search treats.ai as a generic TLD; it can be used for a global presence" (G)

5.7 Geo-IP redirect is an anti-pattern (Aug 2024): "Use banners to let users choose,do not redirect. Geo-IP redirects also redirect Google crawlers, preventing them from seeing other local versions" (J)

Part 6 — Mobile-first indexing

6.1 Already the default — cannot be manually triggered

"How do I get the mobile version indexed?" (Jul 2023): "Virtually all sites are already mobile-first. Check in crawl stats whether the smartphone Googlebot is the main crawler type" (J)
"Desktop URL is not indexed" (Dec 2022): "with mobile-first indexing, Google focuses on the mobile version. There's no specific trick to index just desktop"(J)
"Desktop m-dot traffic reversal" (Dec 2022): "The shift to mobile is normal; if total traffic drops, it is due to other reasons" (J)

6.2 Desktop/mobile inconsistency = indexing failure

"All content disappeared after migration" (Apr 2024): "If the migration coincided with indexing disappearing, your new site is very likely blocking search engines" (J)
Links hidden on mobile (Sep 2023): "with mobile-first, we use the mobile version as the basis for indexing and link discovery.If the mobile version has the full content, you are OK"(J)

Part 7 — Spam / Links / Black hat / Hacks

7.1 Spam links? Ignore them

"Backlinks from bad sites (spamming porn)" (Jan 2023): "Google is getting better at recognizing and ignoring spam links. But if you are worried or have a manual action, use the disavow tool" (L)
"Want to stop spam links" (May 2023): "easy: ignore them. After 25 years we are already very good at ignoring them" (G)
"Russian site is link attacking me" (May 2023): "Our algorithms generally do a very good job of recognizing and ignoring spammy links.You should not really worry"(D)
"Toxic links are attacking me" (Jun 2024): "I know what I would do: ignore them. If you still want to, disavow or file a spam report" (G)
"Fake traffic makes me look untrustworthy" (Aug 2024): "trustworthiness is not binary; Google will not mark you as untrusted just because someone sends you spam traffic" (M)
"Disavow IPs instead of domains?" (Jun 2023): "NO" (G)
"Disavow using the domain property is unavailable" (Nov 2022): "Do it at the prefix level; no extra token is needed. Also do not waste time on random weird links — they will not change anything" (J)

7.2 The decline of backlinks

"Why does Google still use backlinks?" (Nov 2022, D): "backlinks have much less influence than in Google's early days (20 years ago). We have hundreds of ranking signals, and link spam algorithms catch up at scale and nullify them"
"Is buying backlinks powerful?" (Dec 2022): "We have launched many link spam algorithms to nullify it; the money spent buying links may be completely wasted" (D)
"What is link spam?" (Dec 2023): "The section of our spam policies about link spam has not changed for a long time" (J)
If a domain is penalized → its outbound links are also not trusted (May 2023): "If it is demoted, we generally do not trust its links" (D)

7.3 Guest posts equal spam (Sep 2023): "Exchanging guest posts for backlinks violates spam policies. Links need nofollow / sponsored to tell search engines they do not affect ranking" (J)

7.4 Hack signals (appeared N times)

Descriptions show content you did not write (Apr 2023): "unfortunately that usually means you have been hacked" (G)
Chinese spam URLs indexed (Jun 2022 implied, Apr 2024): "A variant of the Japanese Keyword Hack. It needs to be fixed" (J)
You have gambling content on your domain (Aug 2023): "Google does not fabricate content. If you see spam that is not your content, your server or infrastructure has been hacked" (J)
Deleted thousands of hacked pages (Apr 2024): "Returning 404 is completely fine. Once the security issue is resolved you are basically done"
How to delete 30K hacked URLs (Sep 2023): "Focus on manual removal or reindexing of visible pages; the rest will drop on their own" (J)

7.5 Quality raters do not give direct scores (Jul 2023): "quality raters look at individual sites but do not change live ratings. We use their responses to evaluate changes" (M)

7.6 Who can solve SEO for us? (Apr 2023): "Google has no SEO certification. All such claims need to be verified" (J); (Dec 2023): "Can we do SEO for you for free? — NO"(G); (Jul 2024): "Private meetings? — NO,follow the same path"(G)

Part 8 — Practical boundaries of structured data

8.1 Google supports ~30 types (34 now, counted in Nov 2022): "The Schema Markup Validator checks schema.org syntax; the Rich Results Test only checks the ~25–30 features Google supports. That is, not the full schema.org scope" (L)

8.2 Invalid SD does no harm (May 2023): "If it cannot be parsed it is ignored. You only miss out on rich feature opportunities" (G)

8.3 Nested SD helps Google understand the topic (Mar 2023): "recipe + review at the same level is less clear than nesting review inside recipe — it indicates the page is primarily about the recipe" (L)

8.4 Do not misuse structured data (SD)

Recipe schema cannot be used for non-edible items (Jul 2024): "This is a very clear violation of SD policies" (J)
Product SD used for real estate (Aug 2023): "Unmovable objects are not supported by Shopping and will be ignored; this does not count as abuse but has no effect" (J)
Service businesses should use LocalBusiness SD (Jan 2023): "Local business SD can specify a price range" (J)

8.5 Review aggregation is a major taboo (Aug 2024): "Our review snippet technical guidelines specifically include 'Don't aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites.' If you do this, the page will no longer be eligible for review rich results" (M)

8.6 dayOfWeek must be in English (Aug 2023): "Enumerated fields must be specified precisely; even if the entire site is in French, opening days must use their English names" (J)

8.7 reviewCount = 0 is OK (Apr 2023): "New product pages often have this empty, it is just nothing to show" (L)

8.8 ratingValue not being displayed ≠ an error. FAQ rich results (Nov 2022): "Currently FAQ schema markup is required to display them" — Note: Note: As of 2026-05-07, FAQ rich results have been deprecated.

8.9 Cross-vendor schema differences (Jun 2023): "schema.org is neutral; Google as a vendor has more specific requirements" (M)

Part 9 — Site Quality vs Technical Optimization (Monthly Topic)

9.1 SEO does not equal success

"How to achieve perfect SEO?" (Dec 2023): "Sorry to disappoint you, Charan, but your SEO is not perfect. There is no perfect SEO. The internet changes, and SEO evolves too" (J)
"I did all the SEO but still don't rank in the top 200" (Aug 2023): "A good cover + short sentences + few typos + a good topic won't make a book a bestseller. Good ingredients + a clean kitchen won't bring customers to a restaurant either. Technical details are good, but more is needed"(J)
"A perfect SEO checklist?" (Jul 2024): "We also have SEO consultants.There is a trust component. Gain an understanding of what they do from their work" (J)

9.2 helpful content judgment

"How to identify helpful content?" (Dec 2022): "We published an article describing questions to ask yourself: Are you writing for users? Are you using automation to attract search traffic? Are you becoming an expert overnight and publishing large volumes of articles?" (D)
AI content (Jun 2024): "Content quality is key,regardless of source. If you use AI to draft + editor review + implement brand guidelines, focus on the final quality" (J)
AI translation transparency (Jun 2024): "There is no special markup. Do you think these translations meet quality standards? If not, noindex them" (J)

9.3 Be cautious with auto-translation (Jun 2024): "If it is low quality,maybe there will be negative impacts. Review by native speakers is key" (G)

9.4 Recovering after a spam update (Dec 2022): "Take a really deep look at the content and improve it considerably" (G); "It will take several months before re-evaluation" (D)

9.5 How much modification is needed after a ranking drop? (Dec 2022): "Algorithmic actions may take several months to re-evaluate" (D)

9.6 Deindexing shown in SC (Sep 2023): "An indication that quality is not convincing. The system will re-evaluate" (J)

Part 10 — Oddities in Search Console & Reports

10.1 filtered data > overall data(Sep 2023, G): "Bloom filters! The tradeoff for processing trillion-scale data lookup speed. The smaller the filtered set, the more accurate the prediction, which is why filtered > total" (G)

10.2 Search Console data comes from real users (Dec 2022, May 2023): "Performance data is not theoretical; it is based on content actually shown to users. If you don't understand a particular data point,use filters to narrow the scope, and try to reproduce it. Sometimes you just have to accept that it cannot be reproduced for now" (J)

10.3 "Pages with redirect" still at 1 million after a year (Jul 2023): "This can be perfectly normal. Google's systems like to remember old URLs for a long time"(J)

10.4 GSC vs GA data mismatch (Dec 2023): "The two collect data differently, so it is worth looking at them separately" (J)

10.5 SC shows spam reports with no enforcement (Dec 2023): "We use these reports to improve the algorithm overall, and do not take action on individual cases" (G)

10.6 Removing verification ≠ affecting indexing (Jan 2023): "Verifying SC or changing the verification code has no impact on indexing" (G)

10.7 Crawl Stats include AdsBot (Mar 2023): "Listed separately under Googlebot Type" (J)

10.8 Missing several months of data in GSC (Dec 2022): "If verification is lost for an extended period, data is lost.It cannot be recovered"(J)

10.9 Not all errors in the Page indexing report need to be fixed (Jul 2024): "Many are expected. Don't obsess" (J)

10.10 Sudden spike in indexed pages (Sep 2023): "Maybe we got more hard drives, maybe we freed up some space, maybe we just discovered those URLs. Open the bubbly!"(G)

Part 11 — Practical Limits of Sitemaps

11.1 50,000 URLs / 50MB hard cap (Aug 2023, Jul 2024): "Each sitemap file has 50,000 URLs; a sitemap index also has 50,000 sitemaps" (J)

11.2 lastmod is important; priority/changefreq are ignored (implied)

11.3 Sitemap filename — arbitrary (Apr 2024): "My sitemap is called `johnmu_loves_cheese.xml`"(G)

11.4 Sitemap file self-link (Dec 2023): "You can, but it is pointless. Adding `noindex x-robots-tag` HTTP header"(G)

11.5 Cross-domain sitemap index (Sep 2023): "Definite maybe. Not recommended. Only if submitted via robots.txt, or all domains are verified in SC" (J)

11.6 hreflang across multiple sitemaps (Mar 2023): "You can, choose whatever is convenient for you" (L)

11.7 News + general sitemap (Jan 2023): "It is usually simpler to separate them. But having the same URL in both sitemaps will not cause problems" (G)

11.8 Sitemap changes = reprocessing (Jun 2023): "We do not reprocess unchanged sitemaps. Once you change a URL or lastmod, it will be re-parsed" (G)

11.9 Do not submit sitemap.html (Jun 2023): "That is for users; HTML is not a sitemap.An HTML sitemap is often a signal that navigation is too messy"(J)

11.10 Paginated pages do not need to be in the sitemap (Dec 2022): "If each category page links to the next category page, there is not much benefit" (A)

Part 12 — Speed / Core Web Vitals

12.1 CWV is one dimension of page experience, not the whole thing (Dec 2022): "Google measures CWV for most sites as part of page experience. But it does not override relevance" (A)

12.2 PageSpeed Insights fluctuation is normal (Jun 2024): "Lab tests are simulations and will fluctuate.Focus on field data"(J)

12.3 INP is not part of CWV (Sep 2023): "Although improving INP is beneficial for UX,do not expect visible ranking changes"(J)

12.4 GTMetrix passes but CWV fails (Dec 2022): "Speed is measured with different methods,read up on which is appropriate"(J)

12.5 HTTP/3 has almost no impact on SEO (Nov 2022): "As far as I know, Google does not use HTTP/3 as a ranking factor, nor in crawling.Performance improvements will not be significant for CWV"(J)

12.6 Viewport-only optimization (Mar 2023): "LCP measures the largest paint within the viewport.probably covers your concern"(J)

12.7 prefetch/prerender/dns-prefetch are not specially evaluated (Aug 2023): "What matters is actual user experience, reflected in real user metrics,not signaling that you are trying to provide good UX"(J)

12.8 Site returns 503 for a few minutes, 4 times a week? (Apr 2024): "Long-extended 503s will lower crawl rate. 10–15 minutes does not count as extended, you should be fine" (G)

Part 13 — Discover / AI features

13.1 Discover automatic eligibility (Nov 2022): "No action is needed to enable it. Google decides automatically. Search traffic ≠ Discover traffic" (A)

13.2 Discover traffic ebb and flow (Jul 2023): "This organic feature follows user demand.There is no simple way to bring it back"(M)

13.3 Syndicated content appears in Discover instead of the original version (Jun 2023): "We recently expanded our syndicated content guidelines. If you do not want the syndicated version to appear,have those versions include a noindex robots meta tag"(J)

13.4 LinkedIn Pulse outranks the original author (Jun 2024): "Search results are not a marker of the original source. You are trading visibility for that platform potentially ranking higher than your site in the SERP.business decision"(J)

13.5 AI Overviews / AI Mode (implied): standard SEO applies, no special SEO is needed

Part 14 — Ecommerce / Reviews

14.1 Prices only show USD (Jul 2023): "We primarily crawl from the US, so we only see USD.Displaying multiple currencies requires separate URLs"(J)

14.2 How to be unique for the same product sold by multiple sellers (Jul 2023): "Provide your perspective — genuine reviews, tests, useful know-how, turn off default manufacturer text" (M)

14.3 Incorrect currency in rich results (Aug 2024): "This is usually a side effect of being mostly duplicate. Either make the pages less similar, or use Merchant Center feeds instead of structured data" (J)

14.4 Appears under the shopping tab in GSC but is not a store (Aug 2024): "Our systems identify product information,that does not mean we assume it is an online shop"(J)

14.5 Cloaking to show all variants to Googlebot (Jun 2024): "Technically this is cloaking and violates spam policies. Use Merchant Center to submit variants"(J)

14.6 Multiple affiliate links do not necessarily cause ranking drops (Jun 2024): "Affiliate links do not automatically make a page unhelpful or bad,stand on their own"(J)

14.7 What schema to use for affiliates (Jul 2023): "There is no special schema. Mark them nofollow / sponsored"(J)

Part 15 — Title / Meta description / Snippet

15.1 Title does not have to match H1 (Jun 2024): "do what makes sense from a user perspective" (G)

15.2 URL/title/H1 do not need to be identical word for word (Dec 2022): "There will be overlap, but word-for-word matching is not required"(L)

15.3 Meta description is overridden (Jan 2023): "Snippets are auto-generated and vary depending on the query. We are more likely to use the one you wrote if it describes the page more accurately than what we extract from the page"(L)

15.4 Will changing the title change rankings? (Aug 2024): "Yes, or more accurately maybe. Changing titles/headings will cause changes in search,that is expected"(J)

15.5 What to do about meta descriptions for 10K pages (Nov 2022): "Programmatically generated descriptions are acceptable,but maintain quality — unique, specific, relevant" (L)

15.6 Incorrect character encoding (Dec 2023, G): "Specify it using the meta charset attribute,this is required for scenarios with funky characters"

Part 16 — Links / Anchor text / Internal structure

16.1 Large numbers of internal links with the same anchor are OK (Nov 2022): "Menus are everywhere, that is normal,there is nothing to change"(J)

16.2 "here" is bad link text (Dec 2022): "Use relevant words so that both users and search engines know what the link points to" (L)

16.4 Wikipedia links do not give "bonus points" (Dec 2022): "Links that add value are good,blindly adding Wikipedia links does not add value"(J)

16.5 Button-fetched links are usually not crawled (Dec 2022): "Googlebot does not click buttons. Make sure they are `<a href>` links"(A)

16.6 dropdown `<option value="URL">` does not count as a link (May 2023): "We may recognize the URL and crawl it separately, but not treat as link"(J)

16.9 Mouseover-revealed menus are OK (Dec 2022): "Google can handle them, but they must be visible in the HTML + must be proper `<a href>`"(L)

16.10 Links in highlighted text fragment URLs (Apr 2024): "`#:~:text=` PageRank flows the same way,content after the hash is ignored by search"(J)

16.11 Mixing relative and absolute paths multiple times is OK (Aug 2023): "just like a browser would,no difference"(J)

16.12 Do internal links dilute PageRank? (Dec 2022): "You are overthinking it. Allowing internal links helps us discover new pages + understand your site,limiting them does more harm than good"(D)

Part 17 — URL structure

17.1 Hyphen vs underscore (Apr 2024): "Keywords in URLs contribute very little. hyphens are better — word separation is clearer" (G)

17.2 Numbers are OK (Jun 2023): "Using numbers + letters + non-Latin characters + unicode is all fine. The only thing to avoid: temporary identifiers that change on every visit"(J)

17.3 URL depth does not affect rankings (Jan 2023): "3 levels vs 5 levels does not matter much. Image URL depth is also irrelevant"(L)

17.4 Double slashes // (Dec 2023): "From an RFC 3986 perspective it is not an issue. it is not a good idea for usability and may confuse crawlers"(G)

17.5 # vs? (Apr 2024): "If you use fragments to change content,that can be a good way to handle faceted navigation. But you can also disallow certain parameters" (G)

17.6 URL and page in different languages: no negative impact (Nov 2022): "Users might care, but there is no negative SEO impact" (A)

17.7 query string in URL(add to cart):not necessarily bad on its own(Nov 2022)

17.8 Subdirectory vs subdomain: Google has no preference (crawling-index-faq): "choose whichever is easiest for you to organize/manage"

Part 18 — Images

18.1 Image filenames (May 2023): "Generally helpful a little. Name them well when you only have a few images,no need to bother when you have millions"(G)

18.2 Alt text is helpful: use descriptive text,do not stuff keywords(implied in multiple places)

18.3 OCR works but do not rely on it (Dec 2022, Mar 2023): "Theoretically it works,search does not count on it. If there is text you want recognized,put that text on the page"(J/L)

18.4 EXIF is not used (Jan 2023): "Google does not use EXIF. We only use IPTC(image license metadata)"(G)

18.5 WEBP recognition depends on the HTTP content-type (Mar 2023): "We do not rely on the file extension" (G)

18.6 CDN speed does not directly affect appearance in Image Search (Aug 2024): "Appearance happens for multiple reasons,speed is not the deciding factor. But CDNs have benefits like dynamic resizing" (M)

18.7 Multiple levels in image URLs are OK (May 2023): "good news,doesn't matter"(M)

18.8 Multiple favicon sizes: multiple HTML links are supported (Sep 2023): "`.ico 多分辨率`the format allows it, but it is better to specify them separately in HTML"(J)

18.9 Favicon not updated? (May 2023, Jul 2024): "sometimes it takes a while. If it does not get better after 30 days, keep checking. Glenn Gabe has a troubleshooting guide"

18.10 A different image shows in the SERP (Mar 2023): "It is not guaranteed that the main image will be shown; rather,most relevant to user query"(G)

18.11 Product images not indexed = dynamic sorting error? (Nov 2022): "unlikely. Product images should be referenced from the product description. or add a sitemap / Merchant feed"(A)

Part 19 — Video

19.1 Video must be main content (Jun 2023): "Right in front of users immediately. It does not absolutely have to be the first element but it should be in their face" (G)

19.2 Prominent video error (Mar 2023): "prominent = above-the-fold + appropriately sized" (L)

19.3 Videos must allow fetching (implied) otherwise Key Moments / Previews will not appear at all

19.4 Video outside the viewport (Dec 2023): "Move it to the top so users see it when they land" (M)

19.5 KEY MOMENTS are not limited to YouTube (Nov 2022): "It is live and used by multiple video providers" (A)

19.6 Video sitemap restriction (implied for removal)

Part 20 — Tools & workflows

20.1 URL Inspection and Rich Results Test use the same pipeline (May 2023): "The indexing pipeline uses 'View crawled page',"live test skips cache. timeouts may affect output" (M)

20.2 Staging site verification (Jan 2023, Dec 2022): "You must first verify in SC, allow-list Google IPs, then use the removal tool" (G)

20.3 Prevent expensive APIs during JS rendering (May 2023): "Disallow that API in robots.txt, but client-side rendering + that API = incomplete content" (M)

20.4 Removals tool takes effect in one day (implied Apr 2024): "Submit removal, removed from results within a few hours" (implied)

20.5 Outdated info tool request denied (Apr 2023): "Only accepts requests where the text was removed AND is still in the index" (J)

20.6 SC property limit (Aug 2024): "no, cannot be increased" (J)

20.7 Indexing API is only for jobs + broadcasts (Apr 2024): "Using it for real estate may work temporarily but is not recommended" (G)

20.8 Cache has been deprecated (Nov 2022, Aug 2023): "We are starting to remove cached links. cache is independent of indexing, not a quality signal"

20.9 Removal tool not working? Usually you wrote the URL incorrectly (Jan 2023, G)

Part 21 — Miscellaneous

21.1 Keyword density does not exist (Jan 2023): "Google does not have a concept of optimal keyword density. But be explicit — don't make search engines guess what your page is about" (J)

21.2 Meta keywords are ineffective (Jan 2023): "Since the 2009 article. NO"(L)

21.3 NextJS / WordPress / any framework — SEO friendliness depends on implementation (Jun 2024, May 2023): "The backend usually doesn't matter. But server performance has an impact" (M)

21.4 NextJS implementation (Jun 2024): "If there is significant JS work, review JS SEO basics" (J)

21.5 Staying on an existing domain (implied multiple times): think multiple times before major changes

21.6 Traffic drop after a redesign? (May 2023, Jun 2024): "If you changed URLs, treat it as a site move. A slow drop = users/Search changing expectations, not a technical issue" (J)

21.7 Product category expanded 10x (Jul 2024): "It is basically a new site, re-evaluation is logical" (J)

21.8 Deleting 300,000 thin pages has no automatic benefit (Nov 2022): "Value must exist independent of the removed pages" (J)

21.9 Domain spam history (Jan 2023): "You must do due diligence or get expert help. Google cannot do this for you" (J)

21.10 Old site for a closed business (Dec 2023): "Request removal in SC + mark the Business Profile as closed" (J)

21.11 brand vs typo:" 'Weird All' vs 'Weird Al'"(Nov 2022):"Do not choose a typo site name. If it is similar to a well-known name it will be very hard for you to differentiate" (J)

21.12 Sitelinks (Jan 2023, Dec 2022): "Automatically generated,no guarantee. Ways to improve: logical site structure + descriptive titles/headings/link text"(L)

21.13 PDFs in Search results (Sep 2023): "Google can index public Google Drive PDFs" (G); "You cannot download + redirect users. You can place a link at the top of the PDF" (G, Dec 2023)

21.14 character `<strong>` vs `<b>`(Mar 2023): "strong = more emphasis + urgent/serious. stronger form of bold"(L)

21.15 `<article>` tag:no particular effect(Aug 2023, J)

21.16 ARIA labels:no SEO advantage(Aug 2023):"use for accessibility"(J)

21.17 Lots of boilerplate is harmless (May 2023, G)

21.18 Forms are not special (Jul 2023, M)

21.19 broken HTML(Jun 2024):"`<head>` bad can be bad. Paragraphs are generally fine" (G)

21.20 Crawl budget for large sites (implied): small/medium sites (< 1M pages) do not need to worry. For large sites refer to the large-site crawl budget guide

21.21 Site name applies only to root domains, subdomains are not supported (May 2023, J)

21.22 A single Spanish post on an English site (Dec 2022): "totally fine. It does not affect rankings" (L)

21.23 NextJS SSR serving full HTML to search + CSR to users (May 2023): "dynamic rendering. Complex but if it works for you it is fine. Not recommended for new projects"(M)

21.24 Indexed PDFs (Sep 2023): "yes, Google can index public PDFs on Drive. Timing is anywhere between seconds to never" (G)

21.26 RSS feed crawling (Jul 2024): "like sitemaps. Google can discover new URLs" (G)

21.27 indexifembedded and iframes (Dec 2023): "If a sub-page should be indexed when embedded but not standalone → noindex + indexifembedded" (J)

Part 22 — Summary of 3 FAQ pages

22.1 Crawling and indexing FAQ(crawling-index-faq)

How to get your site on Google: no guarantee; be patient with new sites. Common reasons: weak connections, design that blocks crawling, temporary unavailability, Search Essentials violations, being hacked, previous content
Two hosts with the same content: 301 redirect to the preferred version, signals will pass through
duplicate content It is not a penalty; see the demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty blog for details
subfolders vs subdomains:no preference
W3C validation:not directly help ranking
Frameworks/forwarding services:avoid — they make crawling/indexing/ranking your content impossible
Text changed but not updated: update sitemap lastmod + request recrawl of the resource + fix duplicates
PHP/ASP/CGI/JSP/CFM/etc:All pages that can be displayed in a browser are OK — Google supports all of them
Bought a spammy domain:verify SC + check Manual Actions

22.2 Site appearance FAQ(site-appearance-faq)

Change title display: control the <title> tag,Google may override it
Don't want a snippet:<meta name="robots" content="nosnippet"> or data-nosnippet or write a good meta description
Want to show stars/price/reviews:structured data(reviews / product / etc.)
Local business not appearing on maps:Business Profile add
Site removed/blocked, reapplication plan
More image exposure: Images best practices / Web Stories / Google Maps photos / Business Profile

22.3 Site position FAQ(site-position-in-search-faq)

How to get people to link?unique compelling content. Don't do link schemes. Google is good at recognizing unnatural links
Sudden ranking change?organic shifting ecosystem. See the Why is my page missing documentation for details
Does TLD (.com/.org/.gov) affect rankings?NO. Google's goal is the best result
Can competitors sabotage me?Google works hard to prevent that — contact the owner of the website
What triggers a manual spam action?hidden text / hidden links / cloaking / sneaky redirects
Let Google know after fixing?reconsideration request(a few weeks)
Images not appearing?Images best practices
Videos not appearing?Video best practices
Buying ads to improve rankings?NO — ads are completely independent from Search.inclusion and ranking are not paid

Famous quotes (for conference citations)

"Google does not index all URLs on the internet." (repeated across months)

"Bloom filters!... The price of speed is accuracy." (G, Sep 2023)

"My sitemap is called johnmu_loves_cheese.xml. "(G, Apr 2024)

"Maybe we got more hard drives, maybe we freed up some space... Open the bubbly!"(G, Sep 2023)

"Sorry to disappoint Charan, but your SEO is not perfect."(J, Dec 2023)

"After 25 years we are already very good at ignoring spammy links." (G, May 2023)

"Essentially our systems do this automatically,no need to worry about magic ratios. "(J, Nov 2022)

"Hyphens are better, not because of ranking but clarity. "(G, Apr 2024)

"404 pages are a healthy part of the internet." (G, multiple times)

"I am not a cat. Also not Gary. Sorry."(J, Jul 2024)

"Can I arrange SEO directly with Google?No."(G, Dec 2023)

"If you click search looking for a knife and we redirect you to a page that only shows spoons — that's terrible UX." (J, Aug 2024)

Cross-references

Google SEO starter guide + How Search works + Search Essentials — How Search works + Search Essentials + AI Mode/Overviews
Complete guide to crawling and indexing controls (robots.txt / noindex / X-Robots-Tag / data-nosnippet / rel) — robots.txt / noindex / X-Robots-Tag in detail
Complete Guide to Canonical / Redirects / Site Migrations (including full HTTP status code table + 503 temporary closure playbook) — canonical priority + site move playbook + HTTP status
Complete Guide to Googlebot Crawling Mechanism and Indexing Control (URL/Links/Mobile-first/Meta/Testing/AMP) — Googlebot behavior / mobile-first / soft 404 fixes
Complete Guide to Internationalization (hreflang/multilingual/multi-region) + Explicit Content (SafeSearch/Adult) — 6 ironclad rules for hreflang + ccTLD list
How to Use the Search Console + Analytics + Trends Trio (traffic diagnostics / keyword research / Looker Studio) — Search Console report interpretation + Bloom filter mention
Complete Guide to Rich Features / Discover / Images / Video / Page Experience / Web Stories / SXG / Paywall — Discover / CWV / content quality signals
Complete Overview of Structured Data (framework + one-stop lookup for 34 rich result types + JSON-LD/Microdata/RDFa selection) — 34 SD types + FAQ deprecated (2026-05-07)
Full Landscape of Search Result Visual Elements (Visual Gallery / Title / Snippet / Favicon / Sitelinks / Featured / AI / Translated / Preferred) — title link override / snippet control
Complete Guide to Ecommerce SEO (6 Surfaces / 4 Launch Strategies / Merchant Center / 6 SD Types / 3 Pagination Modes / 13 Review Guidelines) — Merchant Center / variants / pagination
GSC Help Operations: Debugging Tools, Status Dashboard, DMA, EU Data Plan, Reporting — debug tools / status dashboard / DMA / report spam

Sources and Related Materials