Google analyst Gary Illyes offers guidance on large robots.txt files, the SEO impact of website redesigns, and the proper use of rel-canonical tags.
Illyes accepts questions sent to him via LinkedIn direct message and answers them publicly, providing valuable insight to members of the SEO community.
For a Googler, sharing SEO tips is already newsworthy. This is especially so given that Illyes is not as active on social media as colleagues such as search attorney John Mueller and developer attorney Martin Splitt.
Over the past week, Illyes has been sharing advice and offering guidance on the following topics:
Given the inclusion of his posts, there are likely more to come. Here’s a rundown of what you’re missing if you’re not following him on LinkedIn.
Keep Robots.Txt Files Under 500KB
Regarding the previously published survey about the size of robots.txt files, Illyes is sharing a PSA for those whose file size is larger than 500kb.
Screenshot from linkedin.com/in/garyillyes/, January 2023.
Illyes recommends paying attention to the size of a website’s robots.txt file, especially if it’s larger than 500kb.
Google’s crawlers only process the first 500kb of a file, so it’s crucial to make sure the most important information appears first.
This helps ensure that Google crawls and indexes your website correctly.
Website Redesigns May Cause Rankings To Go “Nuts”
When redesigning a website, it is important to remember that it can affect its ranking in search engines.
As Illyes explains, this is because search engines use the HTML of your pages to understand and categorize your site’s content.
If you change the HTML structure, such as splitting paragraphs, using CSS styling instead of H tags, or adding unnecessary break tags, HTML parsers may produce different results.
This can significantly affect your site’s ranking in search engines. Or, as Illyes puts it, it can get crazy in the rankings:
Screenshot from linkedin.com/in/garyillyes/, January 2023.
Illyes recommends using semantically similar HTML when redesigning your site and avoiding adding tags that aren’t necessary to minimize SEO impact.
This allows HTML parsers to better understand your site’s content, which can help maintain search rankings.
Don’t Use Relative Paths In Your Rel-Canonical
Don’t take shortcuts when applying rel-canonical tags. Illyes strongly recommends writing out the full URL path:
Screenshot from linkedin.com/in/garyillyes/, January 2023.
Saving a few bytes using a relative path in a rel-canonical tag is not worth the potential problems it could cause.
Using relative paths can cause search engines to treat it as a different URL, which can confuse search engines.
Writing out the full URL path eliminates potential ambiguities and ensures that search engines recognize the correct URL as the preferred version.
In Summary
By answering direct messaged questions and offering his expertise, Illyes gives back to the community and offers valuable insight on a variety of SEO-related topics.
It’s a testament to Illyes’ commitment to helping people understand how Google works. DM him and your question may be answered in a future LinkedIn post.
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