Damage to the ranking?
Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2025 5:37 am
Many SEO enthusiasts are familiar with Google's regular sermon that you should always create your own, new content. In order to avoid duplicate content, Google wants to present unique content in its index. However, there are often not enough resources to create all the content on your own site yourself. This may be less of a problem with text, but good photos can quickly become expensive. This is why many companies often use stock photos, i.e. photos for which you purchase a license for use on your own website. But these are actually non-original content. Shouldn't this cause a problem? John Müller's answer to a user question on this topic was: "Not directly" (his original answer was: "It doesn't matter for web-search directly.") If you look at the pages of most top-performing sites, you quickly see that a lot of websites use stock images. If Google were to penalize websites that use non-original content, these sites shouldn't rank so well. Google has recognized that it is simply not profitable enough for many websites to actually create all of their own website content themselves. Consequently, it is not bad for the success of the SEO strategy if stock photos are used. Depending on your budget, these can look much more professional than photos you have taken yourself.
Google sets canonicals without checking the URLs: Often not successful
In the most recent Webmaster Hangout, Google employee rcs data indonesia John Müller commented that Google can also independently set canonicals for individual URLs. However, this does not work 100 percent yet, as examining multiple URLs before assigning the canonical does not work perfectly. When Google sets a canonical, it usually does so based on the URL path and parameters, and less often on the actual content of the page. Müller said that this is a problem that Google can fix. However, before Google finally solves the problem, website operators should make sure that they have ideally set a correct canonical tag themselves.
For some websites, Google does not have enough data to include in the ranking. This can be because a website is so small that it hardly gets any traffic. What happens then? This question was also asked in a Webmaster Hangout and John Müller answered: Especially with new websites, there may not be enough data, which is why assumptions have to be made. It can take up to a year until a decent amount of data is available, which is why Google has to make assumptions beforehand so that a ranking can be determined. During this time and as a result of the little data, there can be significant fluctuations. But this is absolutely normal, says Müller
Google sets canonicals without checking the URLs: Often not successful
In the most recent Webmaster Hangout, Google employee rcs data indonesia John Müller commented that Google can also independently set canonicals for individual URLs. However, this does not work 100 percent yet, as examining multiple URLs before assigning the canonical does not work perfectly. When Google sets a canonical, it usually does so based on the URL path and parameters, and less often on the actual content of the page. Müller said that this is a problem that Google can fix. However, before Google finally solves the problem, website operators should make sure that they have ideally set a correct canonical tag themselves.
For some websites, Google does not have enough data to include in the ranking. This can be because a website is so small that it hardly gets any traffic. What happens then? This question was also asked in a Webmaster Hangout and John Müller answered: Especially with new websites, there may not be enough data, which is why assumptions have to be made. It can take up to a year until a decent amount of data is available, which is why Google has to make assumptions beforehand so that a ranking can be determined. During this time and as a result of the little data, there can be significant fluctuations. But this is absolutely normal, says Müller