Technical SEO — Mueller: indexability is binary and decisive; most other factors are hygiene

Claim: John Mueller (Google):

• "If the page is unindexable, there's nothing that can compensate." A noindex tag or unreachable URL prevents ranking.
• "A page blocked by robots.txt can still rank first."
• 404s are "perfectly fine... even if it's hundreds of millions of pages."
• URL structure is "not a big ranking factor."
• The highest-risk sites are those hand-built by people who "understand computers enough to make their own site."

Source: John Mueller, Google Search Central. Verified.

Confidence: Verified.

Why this matters for Candid: A modern CMS (WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, etc.) handles the basics automatically. Technical SEO is the fastest-acting work (2-6 weeks) because it removes active suppression — but once the basics are in place, repeated "audits" yield diminishing returns and are where vendors most often over-bill.