John Mueller, a promoter of Google Search, disproves the idea that a website’s SEO can be negatively impacted by HTTP/3’s faster speed.
The Google SEO office hours Q&A session for November 2022 includes a discussion of this subject.
Muller responds to the following query with the assistance of the Google Search Relations team:
Could the use of HTTP/3 improve SEO because it improves performance?
Performance gains over HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 are provided by HTTP/3. However, it’s unlikely that the performance improvements will have an impact on SEO.
Mueller On The SEO Impact Of HTTP/3
In his opening statement, Mueller says that neither Google’s web crawler nor its ranking algorithms use HTTP/3:
“Google doesn’t use HTTP/3 as a factor in ranking at the moment. As far as I know, we don’t use it in crawling either.”
For web crawling, Google generally employs HTTP/1. Although it supports HTTP/2, Googlebot only employs it when it clearly outperforms HTTP/1.
Support for HTTP/3 is probably still far off. Early adopters won’t immediately see their websites’ search ranks rise, according to Mueller:
“In terms of performance, I suspect the gains users see from using HTTP/3 would not be enough to significantly affect the core web vitals, which are the metrics that we use in the page experience ranking factor. While making a faster server is always a good idea, I doubt you’d see a direct connection with SEO only from using HTTP/3. Similar to how you’d be hard pressed to finding a direct connection to using a faster kind of RAM in your servers.”
In response to a question concerning HTTP/3 in December 2021, Mueller made a similar statement.
However, he asserted that HTTP/3 might “possibly indirectly” impact essential web functions.
@JohnMu – hoch much does the Google Crawler like HTTP/3 Websites (with a HTTP/2 Fallback)? Is now or 2022 a great moment for upgrading? pic.twitter.com/a3ywgaH3iV
— Michael Kohlfürst (@kohlfuerst) December 6, 2021
Mueller’s assertion that there is no influence now carries more assurance.
Watch the video below to hear his response:
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