Google hasn’t been very open about its algorithmic changes lately. Except for major updates such as Mobile First Index (which is yet to be launched), Panda and some other unconfirmed alterations, there have been very few announcements by Google for SEO/Webmasters. However, evangelists like John Mueller (Twitter : @JohnMu) and Gary Illyes (Twitter : @methode ) have been instrumental in bridging this gap. Barry Schwartz (Twitter : @rustybrick), relentlessly publishes updates, notifications, questions by Webmasters and myriad chatters across the SEO community. Many of us owe big thanks to these mavens who have been selflessly sharing their knowledge with the whole fraternity. We at CueBlocks have made a similar effort! We have compiled a list of some important Google algorithm updates and official statements, straight from the horse’s mouth. Many of these points clarify the direction that Google wants SEOs to take. These will also serve as a primer for correct and ethical practices in our sphere. Source: http://bit.ly/71-seo-guidelines

1. 71 SEO Guidelines
stated by Google, Officially
Compiled by CUEBLOCKS.COM

2. Do not block CSS and JS files in your Website’s
Robots.txt file
Allow: /*.js$
Allow: /*.css$

3. Google ignores special characters in the
meta title tag of the website
™ and ©in Title Tags
Not
Needed

4. W3C Code validation is not really a
deciding factor for SERPs
= Not necessary but suggested

5. Google has confirmed that one can use
multiple H1 tags on a page

6. Don’t use URL Fragments
cueblocks.com/blog/seo-guidelines-from-google/#url-fragments =

7. The Panda update is also about
Discerning the Website Architecture

8. As of now AMP is not a ranking factor
but it improves the overall website
speed

9. One should use rel-nofollow while
linking to bad websites

10. It is not advisable to build backlinks
from Google Docs/Excel sheets

11. Not Found URLs are not always due to a
Webmaster’s mistake. Google Bots can
sometimes find unwanted URLs

12. Mobile First Index is still being tested
and is not live yet

13. There is no single method or formula for
gaining top search engines positions

14. Nofollow tag may help manage the
crawl budget of large websites

15. Google takes manual action against
spamming the Rich Snippets

16. A Website Penalty can be seen by a
Webmaster only and not by any third
party tools or software

17. There is no such thing as the Google
Sandbox
Google
Sandbox

18. Submit URLs you want to index in
Sitemaps

19. A link will be considered as Paid if we
are giving Charity or Donation for link
exchange

20. Changing URL Structures and Switching
to HTTPs URLs are completely different

21. Google allows using different markup
formats for structured data

22. Google ignores HTML lang attribute
completely

23. Content within Tabs will be given full
SEO weightage

24. Fast Crawl Rate setting won’t help with
SEO rankings

25. Webmasters can remove links from the
Disavow file

26. Domain Authority or Score is not a
signal in Google’s algorithms

27. No big SEO advantage with HTTP/2

28. No need to have an XML sitemap for
AMP pages

29. International and Multilingual links are
not considered as spam

30. Site Command will show rich snippets if
Webmaster has implemented them
correctly

31. Google does not support rel-canonical
tag for Images
rel=’canonical’ JPEG
PNG
GIF

32. Google considers singular and plural
words as different keywords

33. No Penalty for linking out to external
websites

34. Upload Disavow File on Canonical
version of the website

35. Product Pricing is not a ranking factor
as per Google

36. Backlinks shown in Search Console are
crawled in Google’s index

37. Hreflang won’t improve search engine
rankings of the website

38. Using Underscores or Dashes in the
website URLs does not pose any SEO
threats

39. No way you can redirect a penalized site
safely

40. Different Google algorithms impact a
website differently

41. Mention Alt tags in the same language
as that of the content

42. Google does not provide any SEO
Certifications to Webmasters
Google Certified
Webmaster

43. There is only a slight SEO advantage in
having keywords in the URLs

44. Outbound links are not considered as a
ranking factor

45. Google does not index images as
frequently as it does web pages

46. Title Tags are not a critical SEO ranking
factor for Google

47. Using Special Characters and Decimal
points in the URL is not a very SEO-
friendly practice

48. There is no SEO advantage of using
capital letters in the URLs

49. Links Disavow file size has a limit of
2MB
Disavow File
………………
………………………..
……………………..
…………………………..
……………….
………...
2 MB

50. There is no direct correlation between
crawl frequency and higher rankings

51. No need to set preferred domain settings
if redirects are correctly implemented
and pointing to the preferred versions

52. A website can incur both types of
penalties; Manual Action and
Algorithmic

53. Reupload Disavow file to HTTPS
preferred version when migrating to
HTTPS

54. Google won’t disavow domains when
you disavow IP Addresses

55. It is best to keep the 301 Redirects active
for a time period of one year
cueblocks.com/old_url cueblocks.com/new_url
>365 days

56. Social Signals do not influence page
rankings

57. Google never indexes all the website
pages

58. User Engagement on a website is not a
ranking factor

59. According to Google, 404s do not attract
Google Panda penalty

60. Bad HTML validation is not a threat to
rankings but can impact structured
data

61. Links within a PDF document will pass
PageRank
PDF Page
1
PAGERANK
Page
2
Page
3

62. Google treats Errors codes (429 and 503)
in the same manner
429
error
503
error

63. Put rel-nofollow link on Web Design by
Links

64. Disavow file syntax in uppercase or
lowercase doesn’t make a difference to
Google
Disavow File
site:example.com
Disavow File
site:EXAMPLE.COM

65. Add pagination on infinite scroll pages
to get them indexed

66. Change of Address tool helps with
Website Domain Migration

67. Googlebot can follow up to 5 redirects at
a time
301 X 1 =
301 X 2 =
301 X 3 =
301 X 4 =
301 X 5 =
301 X6 =

68. There is no guarantee of indexing from
Sitemaps

69. Google keeps on updating and
improving its algorithms

70. Google picks up title tags automatically
and presents them in a better way

71. A Domain’s age is not a ranking signal

72. Robots.txt file size should be smaller
than 500KB
Robots.txt
User-agent: *
Allow: /
500
KB