What does Google say about SEO?

Why does Google trust Merchant Center feeds over regular crawling for your product data?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★★

Data extracted from Merchant Center feeds is more reliable than data extracted by Googlebot through page crawling, because feeds are designed to be read by machines.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing E-commerce Featured Snippets & SERP AI & SEO

Can Merchant Center really boost the crawl of your product listings?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★★

Creating a Merchant Center product feed helps Google discover all product pages on your website. The URLs of product pages are shared with Googlebot to be potentially used as starting points for crawling.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing E-commerce AI & SEO Domain Name

Does Googlebot actually crawl your site's internal search engine to discover content?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★★

Google generally does not enter search terms in a site's internal search bar to discover new pages. Products accessible only through internal search may not be indexed.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing E-commerce AI & SEO

Should you use Google's URL inspection tool or the site: operator to verify indexation?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★

To verify whether a product page is indexed, use the URL inspection tool in Search Console or perform a search with the site:URL operator to search for that specific URL.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing E-commerce Domain Name Search Console

Does Google really require both structured data AND Merchant Center feeds to display product prices correctly?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★★

For Google to correctly interpret prices displayed on product pages (list price, discounts, net price), it is recommended to add structured data to web pages AND provide structured feeds via Merchant Center.

Domain Age & History E-commerce AI & SEO

Could price discrepancies between your website and Merchant Center really be killing your product visibility?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★★

Price data inconsistencies between your website and Merchant Center can negatively impact product presence in search results until the divergence is resolved.

E-commerce

Should you increase Google Merchant Center feed processing frequency to boost your e-commerce visibility?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★

It is possible to ask Merchant Center to process feeds more frequently to reduce the delay between product data changes on your site and Google's recognition of those changes.

E-commerce AI & SEO

Can automatic updates in Merchant Center fix your product data without manual intervention?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★

Enabling automatic article updates in Merchant Center allows it to automatically update price and inventory data based on web page content when discrepancies are detected.

Domain Age & History Content Discover & News E-commerce

Do you really need both structured data AND Merchant Center feed to unlock rich product results?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★★

To achieve the enriched product display format in search results, it is recommended to provide both structured data within product pages AND a product feed to Merchant Center.

Domain Age & History E-commerce

Why aren't product structured data alone enough to appear in the Shopping tab?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★★

To be eligible for the Shopping tab, you must provide product data feeds via Merchant Center AND activate the Surfaces Across Google option. Structured data alone in your product pages is insufficient.

Domain Age & History E-commerce AI & SEO Pagination & Structure

Are Search Console and Merchant Center errors quietly killing your shopping visibility?

Alan Kent Aug 29, 2022 ★★

To optimize the enriched presentation of products, it is recommended to regularly check error messages in Google Search Console and Merchant Center.

Domain Age & History E-commerce Search Console

Should you really be concerned about crawl budget for your website?

Gary Illyes Aug 25, 2022 ★★★

The vast majority of websites (over 90%) don't need to worry about crawl budget. It's a rare problem that only affects very large sites or sites with specific needs.

Crawl & Indexing

What's Google's real definition of crawl budget—and which levers can actually move the needle?

Gary Illyes Aug 25, 2022 ★★★

Google defines crawl budget as the number of URLs that Googlebot can and is willing to crawl for a given site. This definition rests on two factors: crawl capacity (not overloading the server) and crawl demand (URLs that indexing wants to crawl).

Crawl & Indexing Domain Name

Is crawl budget a concept invented by Google or by SEO professionals?

Gary Illyes Aug 25, 2022 ★★

For a long time, Google claimed it didn't have a concept of crawl budget. Following discussions within the SEO community, Google created a definition by working with several internal teams to map existing metrics to what people were calling 'crawl bu...

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO

Does Google really index only a fraction of the web because of storage costs?

Gary Illyes Aug 25, 2022 ★★★

Google does not have infinite storage capacity. Indexing requires storage (hard drives, memory, SSDs) that costs money. Google therefore does not index all available content on the Internet, only what users are likely to search for.

Domain Age & History Content Crawl & Indexing

Are POST requests really eating up your crawl budget?

Martin Splitt Aug 25, 2022 ★★

POST requests cannot be cached by Google, unlike GET requests. If your pages make POST requests to APIs, they will consume more crawl budget with each crawl because they cannot benefit from caching.

Domain Age & History Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO JavaScript & Technical SEO Web Performance

Are HTTP 503 and 429 status codes really killing your crawl budget?

Martin Splitt Aug 25, 2022 ★★★

HTTP status codes 503 and 429, as well as slow response times, signal to Googlebot that the server cannot handle the load. Googlebot will then slow down its crawl and the allocated budget will decrease. This situation is not permanent and improves wh...

Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security AI & SEO

Can you really manage your crawl budget from Google Search Console?

Gary Illyes Aug 25, 2022 ★★★

Webmasters can indirectly control their crawl budget through the crawl statistics in Search Console. They can limit the maximum number of requests per second (QPS) that Googlebot makes to their site to avoid overloading the server during traffic spik...

Crawl & Indexing AI & SEO Search Console

Does HTTP/2 really boost your crawl budget?

Gary Illyes Aug 25, 2022 ★★

Enabling HTTP/2 on your server significantly improves crawl budget utilization. HTTP/2 allows Googlebot to open a single connection and stream requests instead of opening multiple simultaneous connections, which consumes fewer server resources.

Crawl & Indexing HTTPS & Security

Are you wasting your crawl budget on JavaScript files that add no value?

Gary Illyes Aug 25, 2022 ★★

If a significant proportion of crawl budget (35% or 90%) is consumed by JavaScript files that add no content, it is recommended to consolidate these files or use X-Robots-Tag headers to prevent their indexing and free up budget for real content.

Content Crawl & Indexing JavaScript & Technical SEO PDF & Files