Google's John Mueller was asked if Google maybe does a first round of ranking of a new page based on the URL, even before it does any content analysis. John responded on Twitter "not that I'm aware of."
Here are those tweets:
Not that I'm aware of.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) June 8, 2020
Now, this does seem like a farfetched question. Like why would Google bother trying to rank a page without first trying to understand the content. But we do know that Google can rank pages that are not fully indexed just based on the links and other signals.
But still, I have never seen someone suggest that Google does a first round of ranking just based on the URL. Interesting theory...
Forum discussion at Twitter.
More fun for this story:
Came here to ask exactly this. Reported you to our security team for tempering with my brain waves.
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (@methode) June 8, 2020
