Googler Offered SEO Advice On Drastically Changing Content on High Traffic Pages

Google’s John Mueller shared a number of tweets the other day with specific SEO advice around what to do when you remove or disable the functionality of parts of your website or your whole website in order to encourage users to take action on an issue. EG: You replace your home page with a message to take action on something you or your brand deeply care about.

If you remove, replace, or redirect your normal content, search engines may index your pages like that (or, drop them from the index). This can have a negative effect on your site’s overall visibility in search.

A possible workaround is using the 503 Header Response.

Occasionally we see sites temporarily closing functionality, encouraging users to take action on an issue they care deeply about. It's great to see the web being used to bring attention to issues that affect a broader community. If you want to do this, for SEO sake keep in mind:

— ? John ? (@JohnMu) February 10, 2021