One SEO professional asked John during the submitted Question and Answer segment of his hangout about how we can trust him regarding our website questions.
Their question was: can we be 100 percent sure that every single answer they get on this YouTube channel is 200 percent factually correct?
John answered that this is a big question.
Even he doesn’t believe he could be 200 percent correct. That’s actually a pretty high bar.
He says that in general, most of the things that they talk about are based on the documentation, especially the technical details.
There should always be a way to double-check what is happening here.
Some of these questions are more strategic in nature.
With regards to these strategic questions, it’s something where you can use different strategies and come to the same goal.
It’s not that just this one strategy is exactly what you need to do. It could be that you may need to do this in a different way.
The other part that John thinks is super critical to keep in mind is he is answering specific questions from individual people here.
And sometimes, these people have very unique and different websites. It’s sometimes not possible to take exactly one answer and apply it to all websites.
Don’t make the mistake of relying on one solution John provides, and applying it to everything. Because usually it doesn’t fit, and you may need to adapt certain things about the strategy to your own site and situation.
This happens at approximately the 47:49 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
And maybe the last one from the list here: As a website owner SEO, can we be 100% sure that every single answer we get on this YouTube channel is 200% factually true? Or should we not solely rely on these answers and always do our own research?
John (Answer) 48:05
I don’t know. That’s, that’s like a big question. I don’t know, like how I could be 200% factually true. That’s kind of a high bar. In general, most of the things that we talked about are based on the documentation, and especially the technical details, you can look them up in the documentation.
So there should always be a way to kind of double-check what is happening here. Some of these things are more strategic questions, and especially for these strategic questions, it’s something where you can use different strategies and come to the same goal. It’s not that this one strategy is exactly what you need to do.
It might be that you could do it in a different way. And the other part I think that is super critical to keep in mind is I’m answering specific questions from individual people here, and they have very unique websites. And it’s sometimes not possible to just take one answer and apply it to all of them. I think that’s very tempting nowadays, especially on Twitter, you have a short short form text, and it’s easy to say, “Oh, John said you should get rid of all country versions and only keep a UK website.”
And that might apply to this one website. But that doesn’t apply to everyone. And taking something simple like that will just result in lots of discussions and then people saying, “Oh, John is wrong, which…maybe I am wrong, but it’s based on this one question here and this one website,” and it’s not something that you can generalize to everything on the web.
So my recommendation here would always be if this is something that you’re relying on for business, don’t take just one person’s kind of comment on that but rather, use that as input to make your own decision. And it might be that you decide to go that direction that I mentioned, it might be that you decide, well, I don’t care what Google says, I think my other approach is better.
Or I have other consultants who are telling me something different. That’s essentially up to you to decide.
SEO Professional 8 50:18
And was that what you just said true? Or should we look that up as well?
John 50:25
Oh, man. It goes…
SEO Professional 8 50:29
Because it seems a little pointless asking the person if they’re telling the truth, whether they’re telling the truth.
John 50:33
Yeah, I see that sometimes. On Twitter as well, it’s like, Is this still true? And like, of course, it’s true. And then the next part is, well, Google says it’s true, therefore, it must be wrong. It’s like, okay, it’s it’s, I don’t know. Can’t do everything.
