Google Says There Is No SEO Reason To Make Bloated Sites

Some folks were complaining that SEO is to blame for the bloat on the web. Specifically when some sites that are so bloated with trackers and other add-ons that the sites are not only slow but slow down your computer. John Mueller from Google said on Twitter “there is no SEO reason for making such terrible & bloated sites.”

Here are some of the complaints on Twitter that led up to this response:

It’s…a conundrum.

Really good recipes that are JUST the recipe have exactly ZERO chance of being chosen for the recipe carousel or Discovery list in Google.

Sooo it’s not really the recipe sites you should be dragging…

Looking at you @JohnMu

— Jeremy Rivera (@JeremyRiveraSEO) February 23, 2021

and tiny almost invisible “jump to recipe” link to “compensate” for all the junk. This is only a scratching on the surface of the issues most recipe sites have that I’ve audited. And those that clean it up, do better in SEO. 2/2

— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) February 23, 2021

John responded:

Yeah, there is no SEO reason for making such terrible & bloated sites. If anything, they rank despite doing these things, not because of them.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 23, 2021

Now, Google did say at some point, having such a run down web page can impact how Google renders the page but it has to be insane levels of CPU requirements to cause such an issue.

Either way, there are some sites I try to avoid, even if the story has a good headline, because I know the site will cause my fans on my computer to turn on.

But no, there is no specific SEO reason to make your site bloated for SEO. In fact, it might hurt things not just with your SEO (i.e. rendering) but also with your user loyalty.

Forum discussion at Twitter.