AI Search
Every year, for the past 18 or so years, Google’s John Mueller has been working on Christmas to provide support to those who need help with their Google Search ranking and SEO concerns.
This year is no different; John Mueller has responded to several concerns on Reddit and other social media platforms today.
John Mueller specifically has done this since at least 2007, so eighteen years and counting, and has done it again this Christmas.
Here are the previous years of John offering support on Christmas. He did it last year in 2024, and then in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.
Here are the threads John responded to over Christmas:
(1) expanding my SaaS using multiple ccTLDs on Reddit John wrote:
Taking a step back, I’d look around for some international SEO guides. There are some great ones out there, and they’re a lot more than just local URLs + hreflang. The best time to fix international SEO issues is before they’re live, the second best time is, well, you know.
It’s a bit late, but I question whether you really need to split your site across ccTLDs. Having them reserved is one thing, but by separating your site across separate domain names, you both make things harder on yourself, but you also make it harder for search engines to understand each of these sites (because they’re all separate sites). YMMV of course.
There’s nothing wrong with putting them all into the same Search Console account. That’s what the site-picker is for.
For x-default, you don’t need to create a new generic default version, you can just pick a language that works well for most of your target audience. Maybe that’s English, but it doesn’t need to be. You don’t need a separate x-default site. The more important part is that you make sure the hreflang elements are set correctly, including all back-links, including your important pages individually. (FWIW you can set up hreflang in sitemap files, if that makes it easier to maintain)
(2) Favicon is not visible in the google or any other search engine on Reddit John wrote:
I’d dig up Glenn Gabe’s “favi-gone” article – he covers pretty much all of the variations of what can go wrong. Also, since you mention React, I’d make sure your favicon code is in the HTML template directly, and not added with JavaScript (to minimize another possible point of failure — it’s probably fine to use client-side-rendering for favicons, but you’ll use them site-wide anyway, so might as well keep it simple).
(3) Google SEO indexing conversion from PHP site to NextJS on Reddit John wrote:
First off – there are a number of guides out there for how to deal with site migrations & SEO – I’d find them all and make plans. IMO the basics are the same across most guides, some of the more obscure things you might be able to skip.
You absolutely need to set up redirects, at least for the important pages as u/weblinkr mentioned. Without setting up redirects, you’ll have a mix of old & new URLs in the search results, and the old URLs will drive traffic to your 404 page. It’s normal for old URLs to remain indexed for a while, and you’ll often struggle to have all links from ourside your website updated, so you really need to make sure they redirect.
If you set up redirects for this, ideally pick permanent server-side redirects (308 or 301) – avoid using JavaScript redirects.
If you’re also moving images, and your site gets a lot of traffic from image search, make sure to set up redirects for the images too.
Since a move like this generally also means that at minimum your pages’ layouts also change (assuming you can keep the primary content the same — with updated links of course), keep in mind that page layout changes, as well as site structure changes (the way you deal with internal linking such as in header, sidebars, footer, etc) will have SEO effects. This is not necessarily bad, but all of this basically means you should expect some visible changes in how the site’s content is shown in search, definitely short-term (even if you get the URL changes perfect, you will see changes), perhaps even longer-term (and to improve for longer-term changes, let it settle down first).
Finally, having a list of old URLs is great, but especially for a non-trivially sized site (100+ pages? I’m picking a number), you’ll want to have something that helps you check & track semi-automatically. I’d use some sort of website crawler before you migrate (to get a clean state from before), and to use the clean state to test all the redirects (which you can do with many crawlers), and check the final state (again using a website crawler). Website crawlers like Screaming Frog are cheap, and well worth it for a site migration, you save so much time & get more peace of mind. Finally, depending on the site’s size, it might make sense to keep a static mirror around for debugging for a while.
(4) My Blogger website is not showing on Google even after submitting sitemap – what am I missing? on Reddit John wrote:
Folks here are mostly focusing on indexing (which, yes, is never guaranteed), but it can also be that some of your pages are technically indexed but just don’t show up.
One thing I’ve seen folks get confused about is that “searching for your site’s name” can be very different depending on what you consider your site’s name to be. If your site’s name is “Aware_Yak6509 Productions” and if your homepage is indexed, then probably you’ll find your site in the search results for that name (what else can a search engine reasonably show?). On the other hand, if your site’s name is “best web online .com” then almost certainly just having your homepage indexed is not going to get your pages shown for those searches. The reason is primarily because search engines assume that people doing those searches (“best web online”) are not actually looking for your homepage – it’s a combination of generic words, not something that uniquely identifies your homepage.
So in short, yes, understand how indexing technically works, because it’s the basis for visibility, and understand that some things take time & more evidence to be picked up. But also, think about what’s reasonable for “your site’s name” in terms of search results.
(5) John replied to an indexing question on Bluesky saying:
The tool hides them in the search results, it doesn’t change indexing. Id check if they really appear often in search first (it’s not given that others from your site will show instead), but it’s fine too use the tool if you just don’t want those urls shown anymore.
It is so nice to see John do this every year because for someone to post concerns on Christmas, those people are probably pretty concerned.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Forum discussions at threads above.
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