SEARCHENGINES
Googlebot Did Not Stop Crawling Some Shopify Websites
Last week, we saw reports that some Shopify sites were showing massive declines in crawling activity from Google’s Googlebot. John Mueller of Google responded this morning that this was “temporary drop in how we calculate how much we can crawl” adding these sites are in a “good state” and there is nothing to worry about.
John Mueller wrote on Twitter “we looked into the sites that were mentioned and for all of them it was a temporary drop in how we calculate how much we can crawl. This happens from time to time, and catches up after a few days usually.” “As far as the engineers are concerned, these are in a good state, crawling will speed up again, and there’s not something that needs to be done. It’s kinda confusing from the outside though,” he added.
And yes, as of this morning, Shopify site owners and webmasters are reporting normal crawling again.
Tim Dennis flagged me about this last week on Twitter and I’ve been watching it since but there is still no clear answer on what is the issue yet. He did share charts from a few Shopify sites he runs showing the flatlining of Googlebot activity as reported in Google Search Console’s crawl stats report:
Here is a video he recorded showing this:
Yeh, all the Shopify stores I have access to have flatlined. No new pages indexed for a couple of weeks. https://t.co/C1u4ZKKOi0
— Tim Dennis (@tim_fully) February 4, 2022
It is not just Tim who noticed this, others are reporting this as well.
Like I said both Shopify and Google are looking into it. John Mueller from Google said he passed it on to the teams at Google to look at it:
Thanks – I passed these on to folks internally to check out.
— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) February 5, 2022
And Kevin_Indig from Shopify also said he is looking into it:
Looking into this
— Kevin_Indig (@Kevin_Indig) February 4, 2022
Here are the tweets from John Mueller of Google this morning about what the issue was and was not:
As far as the engineers are concerned, these are in a good state, crawling will speed up again, and there’s not something that needs to be done. It’s kinda confusing from the outside though 🙂
— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) February 7, 2022
Here is the update from an SEO who has some Shopify sites saying Googlebot is back to normal again for some of the sites, not all:
Similar for me! One out of the three sites we saw impacted though has now recovered in the crawl. But the sitemap couldn’t be fetched on the 9th Feb
— Jess (@JessicaMal_) February 7, 2022
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: This may have impacted sites beyond just the Shopify platform:
I don’t know about Shopify in general, i just checked the few samples sent our way.
— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) February 7, 2022
SEARCHENGINES
Google Won’t Change The 301 Signals For Ranking & SEO
Gary Illyes from Google said on stage at the SERP conference last week that there is no way that Google would change how the 301 redirect signal works for SEO or search rankings. Gary added that it’s a very reliable signal.
Nikola Minkov quoted Gary Illyes as saying, “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal,” when asked if a 301 redirect not working is a myth. Honestly, I am not sure the context of this question, as it is not clear from the post on X, but here it is:
More from @methode:
– 301 redirect not working is a myth. “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal”.#SERPConf2024#SERPConf2024International— Nikola Minkov (@n_minkov) April 19, 2024
We’ve covered 301 redirects here countless times – but I never saw a myth that Google does not use 301 redirects as a signal for canonicalization or for passing signals from an old URL to the redirected URL.
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Again Says Ignore Link Spam Especially To 404 Pages
I am not sure how many times Google has said that you do not need to disavow spammy links, that you can ignore link spam attacks and that links pointing to pages that 404/410 are links that do not count – but John Mueller from Google said it again.
In a thread on X, John Mueller from Google wrote, “if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped.” “They do nothing,” he added, “If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link.”
John then added, “I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.”
Asking if it would hurt to disavow, after responding with the messages above, John wrote:
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
Earlier this year we had tons of SEOs notice spammy links to 404 error pages, John said ignore them. In 2021, Google said links to 404 pages do not count, Google also said that in 2012 and many other times.
Plus, outside of links to 404 pages, Google has said to ignore spammy links, time and time again – even the toxic links – ignore them. The messaging around this changed in 2016 when Penguin 4.0 was released and Google began devaluing links over demoting them.
Here are those new posts in context:
I’d say add both. Lol
— Jeremy Rivera (@JeremyRiveraSEO) April 11, 2024
Sure. But also, save yourself the work completely :-).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
Re-reading your initial post – if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped. They do nothing. If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link. I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
… but still… is this a dumb idea?
— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) April 11, 2024
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
And in general, Google says it ignores spammy links, so you should too (not new) but this post from John Mueller is:
I would just ignore them, Google ignores them too. Sometimes they’re just more visible in tools, but that doesn’t mean they’re a problem.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 18, 2024
And then also on Mastodon wrote about a similar situation, “Google has 2 decades of practice of ignoring spammy links. There’s no need to do anything for those links.”
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Needs Very Few Links To Rank Pages; Links Are Less Important
Gary Illyes from Google spoke at the SERP Conf on Friday and he said what he said numerous times before, that Google values links a lot less today than it did in the past. He added that Google Search “needs very few links to rank pages.”
Gary reportedly said, “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.”
I am quoting Patrick Stox who is quoting what he heard Gary say on stage at the event. Here is Patrick’s post where Gary did a rare reply:
I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理/경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
Gary said this a year ago, also in 2022 and other times as well. We previously covered that Google said links would likely become even less important in the future. And even Matt Cutts, the former Googler, said something similar about eight years ago and the truth is, links are weighted a lot less than it was eight years ago and that trend continues. A couple of years ago, Google said links are not the most important Google search ranking factor.
Of course, many SEOs think Google lies about this.
Judith Lewis interviewed Gary Illyes at the SERP Conf this past Friday.
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