During the Google Webmaster Central hangout on October 18, Google’s John Mueller has discussed whether or not there are specific SEO considerations for websites with dark mode settings. The dark mode settings for websites have grown in popularity steadily recently and there was no surprise when Mueller was asked- “We want to implement a dark mode for our website. Do we have to consider anything in relation to SEO?”
Mueller responded by firstly stating that he himself is a big fan of the dark mode trend as he finds it really cool but he also went on to say it is not something he expected users would have ever wanted from websites. He said that when it comes to SEO, there are absolutely no problems with people using dark mode. There are no special considerations required for it.
The Dark mode is handled by CSS and the way it is implemented by CSS on a website does not affect how Google crawls content for indexing. However, Mueller didn’t talk about niche edits which are getting very popular these days.
Mueller made it clear that the dark mode is not a ranking factor though. He did say though that maybe in the future it might be good to imply. He said if dark mode becomes widely implemented on websites, then it of course does make a sense to serve dark mode sites to users if the phone they’re searching with is also set to dark mode. It’s an interesting point to think about even if it will ever be implemented is doubtful he made it clear in the hangout.
