Google guidelines

In search engine optimisation, Google – by far the most widely used search engine, with a market share of around 90% in Germany and Switzerland – plays a central role. Accordingly, the rules Google sets for websites are important. They used to be called “Webmaster Guidelines”; since October 2022, Google has summarised them under the name “Google Search Essentials”. They are aimed at everyone who builds and maintains websites – from developers and designers to editors and shop owners.

Googlebot crawls the web and adds pages to the index, and the algorithm evaluates them based on numerous factors. Complying with the Search Essentials creates the precondition for ranking well at all. Violating them risks devaluation or a manual action.

What do the Google Search Essentials contain?

The Google Search Essentials consist of three parts:

• Technical requirements

• Spam policies and key best practices

The technical requirements describe the minimum a page needs to appear in Google Search at all. The spam policies define which practices Google penalises. The best practices show how to improve how a page appears in search.

Technical requirements

The technical requirements are deliberately brief: Googlebot must not be blocked, the page must work – i.e. return an HTTP status code 200 rather than an error – and it must contain indexable content. Beyond that, Google recommends a clean technical implementation: fast loading times (Core Web Vitals), a mobile-friendly layout, HTTPS and a robots.txt that only blocks areas that really shouldn't be crawled. Internal links should work and not lead to error pages (404).

Spam policies

The spam policies describe what Google considers manipulation – including cloaking, doorway pages, hidden text, keyword stuffing, link spam, unlabelled paid links, automatically generated content without value and, since 2024, the mass creation of interchangeable content (“scaled content abuse”). As a rule, content should be created for people, not search engines. Updates such as Panda, Penguin and the Helpful Content Update had exactly this goal. The same applies to link building: links should arise naturally because content is so good that others recommend it. Systematic link exchanges and unlabelled paid links violate the guidelines.

Best practices: what Google recommends

In addition, Google names key best practices that help with rankings. Google staff such as Search Advocate John Mueller regularly give tips on this. However, the exact algorithm remains a trade secret. Important recommendations are:

• Helpful, reliable content created for people

• Use the terms people search for in prominent places on the page (page title, headings, alt texts, link texts)

• Crawlable links that Google can use to find more pages

• Clear website structure

• Descriptive URLs

• Fast loading times and good Core Web Vitals

• Mobile-friendly, responsive design (mobile first)

The worst case: black hat SEO

Methods summarised as black hat SEO violate the guidelines massively – such as cloaking, doorway pages or copying third-party content. Duplicate content that arises on your own website for technical reasons, on the other hand, is not a violation; Google simply chooses one version.

Violations of Google's guidelines are penalised

There are two possible causes when a page drops in the rankings. Firstly, algorithmic devaluations: systems such as SpamBrain detect violations automatically, or a core update reassesses content. These can be fixed by removing the causes; rankings then recover over time. Secondly, manual actions: here, a Google employee identifies a violation, which is shown in Google Search Console. After cleaning up, a reconsideration request must be submitted. In the worst case, a page is removed from the index entirely.

Google updates its guidelines regularly, often in connection with algorithm updates. In recent years, Google has above all tightened the requirements for helpful content and added new forms of spam, such as expired domain abuse or site reputation abuse.