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Google’s John Mueller offered a simple solution to a Redditor who blamed Google’s “AI” for a note in the SERPs saying that the website was down since early 2026.The Redditor didn’t create a post on Reddit, they just linked to their blog post that blamed Google and AI. This enabled Mueller to go straight to the site, identify the cause as having to do with JavaScript implementation, and then set them straight that it wasn’t Google’s fault.
Redditor Blames Google’s AI
The blog post by the Redditor blames Google, headlining the article with a computer science buzzword salad that over-complicates and (unknowingly) misstates the actual problem.
The article title is:
“Google Might Think Your Website Is DownHow Cross-page AI aggregation can introduce new liability vectors.”
That part about “cross-page AI aggregation” and “liability vectors” is eyebrow raising because none of those terms are established terms of art in computer science.
The “cross-page” thing is likely a reference to Google’s Query Fan-Out, where a question on Google’s AI Mode is turned into multiple queries that are then sent to Google’s Classic Search.
Regarding “liability vectors,” a vector is a real thing that’s discussed in SEO and is a part of Natural Language Processing (NLP). But “Liability Vector” is not a part of it.
The Redditor’s blog post admits that they don’t know if Google is able to detect if a site is down or not:
“I’m not aware of Google having any special capability to detect whether websites are up or down. And even if my internal service went down, Google wouldn’t be able to detect that since it’s behind a login wall.”
And they appear to maybe not be aware of how RAG or Query Fan-Out works, or maybe how Google’s AI systems work. The author seems to regard it as a discovery that Google is referencing fresh information instead of Parametric Knowledge (information in the LLM that was gained from training).
They write that Google’s AI answer says that the website indicated the site was offline since 2026.:
“…the phrasing says the website indicated rather than people indicated; though in the age of LLMs uncertainty, that distinction might not mean much anymore.
…it clearly mentions the timeframe as early 2026. Since the website didn’t exist before mid-2025, this actually suggests Google has relatively fresh information; although again, LLMs!”
A little later in the blog post the Redditor admits that they don’t know why Google is saying that the website is offline.
They explained that they implemented a shot in the dark solution by removing a pop-up. They were incorrectly guessing that it was the pop-up that was causing the issue and this highlights the importance of being certain of what’s causing issues before making changes in the hope that this will fix them.
The Redditor shared they didn’t know how Google summarizes information about a site in response to a query about the site, and expressed their concern that they believe it’s possible that Google can scrape irrelevant information then show it as an answer.
They write:
“…we don’t know how exactly Google assembles the mix of pages it uses to generate LLM responses.
This is problematic because anything on your web pages might now influence unrelated answers.
…Google’s AI might grab any of this and present it as the answer.”
I don’t fault the author for not knowing how Google AI search works, I’m fairly certain it’s not widely known. It’s easy to get the impression that it’s an AI answering questions.
But what’s basically going on is that AI search is based on Classic Search, with AI synthesizing the content it finds online into a natural language answer. It’s like asking someone a question, they Google it, then they explain the answer from what they learned from reading the website pages.
Google’s John Mueller Explains What’s Going On
Mueller responded to the person’s Reddit post in a neutral and polite manner, showing why the fault lies in the Redditor’s implementation.
Mueller explained:
“Is that your site? I’d recommend not using JS to change text on your page from “not available” to “available” and instead to just load that whole chunk from JS. That way, if a client doesn’t run your JS, it won’t get misleading information.
This is similar to how Google doesn’t recommend using JS to change a robots meta tag from “noindex” to “please consider my fine work of html markup for inclusion” (there is no “index” robots meta tag, so you can be creative).”
Mueller’s response explains that the site is relying on JavaScript to replace placeholder text that is served briefly before the page loads, which only works for visitors whose browsers actually run that script.
What happened here is that Google read that placeholder text that the web page showed as the indexed content. Google saw the original served content with the “not available” message and treated it as the content.
Mueller explained that the safer approach is to have the correct information present in the page’s base HTML from the start, so that both users and search engines receive the same content.
Takeaways
There are multiple takeaways here that go beyond the technical issue underlying the Redditor’s problem. Top of the list is how they tried to guess their way to an answer.
They really didn’t know how Google AI search works, which introduced a series of assumptions that complicated their ability to diagnose the issue. Then they implemented a “fix” based on guessing what they thought was probably causing the issue.
Guessing is an approach to SEO problems that’s justified on Google being opaque but sometimes it’s not about Google, it’s about a knowledge gap in SEO itself and a signal that further testing and diagnosis is necessary.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Kues

Google’s Search Relations team was asked directly whether you still need a website in 2026. They didn’t give a one-size-fits-all answer.The conversation stayed focused on trade-offs between owning a website and relying on platforms such as social networks or app stores.
In a new episode of the Search Off the Record podcast, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt spent about 28 minutes exploring the question and repeatedly landed on the same conclusion: it depends.
What Was Said
Illyes and Splitt acknowledged that websites still offer distinct advantages, including data sovereignty, control over monetization, the ability to host services such as calculators or tools, and freedom from platform content moderation.
Both Googlers also emphasized situations where a website may not be necessary.
Illyes referenced a Google user study conducted in Indonesia around 2015-2016 where businesses ran entirely on social networks with no websites. He described their results as having “incredible sales, incredible user journeys and retention.”
Illyes also described mobile games that, in his telling, became multi-million-dollar and in some cases “billion-dollar” businesses without a meaningful website beyond legal pages.
Illyes offered a personal example:
“I know that I have a few community groups in WhatsApp for instance because that’s where the people I want to reach are and I can reach them reliably through there. I could set up a website but I never even considered because why? To do what?”
Splitt addressed trust and presentation, saying:
“I’d rather have a nicely curated social media presence that exudes trustworthiness than a website that is not well done.”
When pressed for a definitive answer, Illyes offered the closest thing to a position, saying that if you want to make information or services available to as many people as possible, a website is probably still the way to go in 2026. But he framed it as a personal opinion, not a recommendation.
Why This Matters
Google Search is built around crawling and indexing web content, but the hosts still frame “needing a website” as a business decision that depends on your goals and audience.
Neither made a case that websites are essential for every business in 2026. Neither argued that the open web offers something irreplaceable. The strongest endorsement was that websites provide a low barrier of entry for sharing information and that the web “isn’t dead.”
This is consistent with the fragmented discovery landscape that SEJ has been covering, where user journeys now span AI chatbots, social feeds, and community platforms alongside traditional search.
Looking Ahead
The Search Off the Record podcast has historically offered behind-the-scenes perspectives from the Search Relations team that sometimes run ahead of official positions.
This episode didn’t introduce new policy or guidance. But the Search Relations team’s willingness to validate social-only business models and app-only distribution reflects how the role of websites is changing in a multi-platform discovery environment.
The question is worth sitting with. If the Search Relations team frames website ownership as situational rather than essential, the value proposition rests on the specific use case, not on the assumption that every business needs one.

Featured Image: Diki Prayogo/Shutterstock