Just like with Christmas day every year, so to with New Year's Day - Google's John Mueller and often other Googlers, are out and looking to respond to some questions on Google Search and SEO. John Mueller so far posted a few times on Reddit this morning, January 1, 2026.
One individual, John Mueller, has been doing this every New Year for like 18 years now. John Mueller from Google has a tradition of helping webmasters both on New Years and Christmas. He did new years 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, the 2019 also, and has done it year after year prior to that. He did it Christmas too in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, then in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.
Where did he post so far today?
In a Reddit thread named Large number of 404s in GSC. Redirect to homepage or return real 404/410? John provided a super detailed response - he wrote:
Taking a step back, I think this is one of those situations where it doesn't really directly matter for SEO (hence the various opinions), but it does have a strong usability effect. Even with a 1-page website, people will reach your site with invalid URLs - the bigger & more popular the site, the more often it will happen. Do you want to help those users to find the gems within your site, or do you want to shoo them away? They wanted to come to your site for something, you just need to help them find it. Having a great 404 page at least makes it a possibility.As to why does it not really matter for SEO? Here's my thinking:
* 404: URL doesn't get indexed; it's an invalid URL, so this is fine. Just to be clear: 404s/410s are not a negative quality signal. It's how the web is supposed to work.
* 410: It's a 404, essentially.
* Homepage redirect: URL doesn't get indexed. Maybe it stays soft-404 & gets crawled (not great, not terrible).
* Category redirect: URL doesn't get indexed. Potentially a short-term support for the category page, but still confusing to users. (If you do this, at least display something on the page explaining how they got there.) Longer-term soft-404.
* 200 with 404 page content: definitely soft-404.
He also posted a short reply on a Reddit thread named Evil SEO tricks, he wrote, "This feels like every Monday."
He also posted on Bluesky:
Happy new year, Yordan!
— John Mueller (@johnmu.com) January 1, 2026 at 7:34 AM
I am sure there is more to come from both John and representatives at Google and Bing.
Forum discussion at Reddit.
Update: Rajan Patel, Google's VP of Engineering of Search is up early working too:
Thanks Barry. Looking into it. Happy new year!
— Rajan Patel (@rajanpatel) January 1, 2026
