35 Google Technical SEO Myths Busted

A Google representative debunked common misconceptions about technical website optimization and gave useful tips.

Technical SEO: The Facts from Google

Pages with 404 errors do not affect the ranking of other pages. No matter how many pages with 404 errors are present on a site, this does not lead to a decrease in its ranking.

Google treats sites with the same URL structure on the same hosting the same. If you have multiple sites hosted on the same server, use different parameters in the URL to help Google differentiate them.

Using a 301 redirect does not result in the final URL being indexed by search engines.

To measure site speed, Google takes into account page loading and rendering time. Fast first byte (TTFB) is not a key indicator of user experience. Google analyzes the entire download picture, rather than individual metrics at intermediate stages.

Google doesn't honor images embedded in CSS styles. For an image to appear in image search results, it must be included in a tag with the src attribute, for example: srk="https://www.example.com/we_image_URL".

The location of internal links on the page does not matter. More important are the relevance of these links and their usefulness to the user.

When changing hosting, Google may temporarily reduce site crawling speed because the search engine does not know how much load the new server can handle.

To test JavaScript frameworks, it is recommended to use the Rich Snippets function in the search console. It is also important to use a structured data validation tool to ensure that the site is indexed and displayed correctly.

HTTPS itself does not affect rankings, but it can be an important factor. If other sites don't use SSL certificates, having HTTPS on your site can be a ranking factor.

Micro markup should be used with caution, ensuring that the -code is correct. Errors in this may cause Schema.org to break.

Google evaluates the quality of a website only based on indexed pages. The position and quality of content on a website is determined only by those pages that have been indexed by the search engine.

A page with a 410 error is removed from the index faster than a page with an error 404. In both cases, the page will be removed from the search results, but Google removes a page with a 410 error faster - usually within a few days.

It is not recommended to add the noindex tag using JavaScript. In order to immediately prevent the page from being indexed, it is better to use a static .

Don't duplicate search engine signals in JavaScript and . Google only processes JavaScript during the second stage of rendering and indexing. When using JavaScript to change meta tags or disable indexing, it is important that these changes are not duplicated in JavaScript.

If a page is updated frequently, Google will crawl it more often. The search engine analyzes the frequency of content updates and, based on this, increases the speed of page crawling.

Google does not index URLs with hashes. For example, a URL like http://www.example.com/office.#mycontent will not be indexed.

4xx errors do not reduce the crawling budget. If GoogleBot encounters 4xx errors, this does not mean that search engine resources are being wasted. The system again tries to scan such pages to make sure that they are truly inaccessible.

To quickly index your site, use Sitemap and increase crawling speed. If your hosting server has high bandwidth, you can request a crawl speed boost through Google's help center.

Scanning speed does not directly affect rankings. These two processes are independent: scanning and ranking occur separately.

Google does not favor short URLs. While short URLs are beneficial for users, search engine algorithms do not consider URL length to be an advantage.

Google works fine with different navigation for mobile and desktop versions of the site. If different versions of the site have different navigation menus, this will not lead to problems with indexing.

Google differentiates between sites even if they have similar link profiles. Even if competitors copy your site, the search engine will distinguish your resources.

Anchors help search engines determine the topic of a page. However, you should not overuse keywords in anchors to improve search rankings.

Google does not use the IP address for geotargeting or local SEO. The previously used method has been replaced with more precise signals such as TLD (top level domain), ccTLD, rel attribute, Google My Business settings and Google Search Console.

HSTS is not a ranking factor. Although Google does not use HSTS as a ranking signal, it is recommended to use this technology once your site's rankings have stabilized after switching to HTTPS.

The importance of a page is determined by its nesting level, not its URL structure. The closer the page is to the main page, the more important it is. The number of clicks to a page does not always correspond to the URL structure.

Don't close premature in scripts. If this happens, Google may ignore the attributes associated with rel, because it believes that the section is already closed.

Google recognizes filter pages. However, indexing of such pages may be slower due to the difficulty of crawling them.

When switching to Mobile First Indexing, search cache pages may return a 404 error. This is normal and does not interfere with indexing, since cached versions of pages may be missing when indexing from mobile devices.

Slow server response may limit site indexing. If the server response time exceeds one second, Google will not crawl the site as quickly as it could.

Avoid using multiple redirects. When they are applied to the same page, a situation similar to a soft 404 error may arise.

Incorrect migration to HTTPS may affect the stability of positions. Remember to use 301 redirects, otherwise any other types of redirects such as 302 or 303 will result in the URL being re-processed.

Lazy-loading of images can be used with the tag

Don't use the 503 status code multiple days in a row. If a site continues to return a 503 status for several days, Google may think that the site is permanently unavailable.

Google uses various signals to determine canonical pages. Canonical tags, redirects, URL parameters, and internal links help Google choose the right version of a page to index.

For any question, you can contact the SEO studio "SEO COMPUTER" by email info@seo.computer.

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