What does Google say about SEO? /
The Crawl & Indexing category compiles all official Google statements regarding how Googlebot discovers, crawls, and indexes web pages. These fundamental processes determine which pages from your website will be included in Google's index and potentially appear in search results. This section addresses critical technical mechanisms: crawl budget management to optimize allocated resources, strategic implementation of robots.txt files to control content access, noindex directives for page exclusion, XML sitemap configuration to enhance discoverability, along with JavaScript rendering challenges and canonical URL implementation. Google's official positions on these topics are essential for SEO professionals as they help avoid technical blocking issues, accelerate new content indexation, and prevent unintentional deindexing. Understanding Google's crawling and indexing processes forms the foundation of any effective search engine optimization strategy, directly impacting organic visibility and SERP performance. Whether troubleshooting indexation problems, optimizing crawl efficiency for large websites, or ensuring proper URL canonicalization, these official guidelines provide authoritative answers to complex technical SEO questions that shape modern web presence and discoverability.
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★★★ How does Googlebot really handle content at the bottom of the page?
Googlebot does not utilize scrolling but expands the viewport vertically. When new content is detected, the viewport grows larger, within certain limits related to memory constraints....
Martin Splitt Dec 10, 2020
★★ How does Google really weigh canonicalization signals?
Google employs machine learning to automatically calculate and adjust the weights of various canonicalization signals. Manual weight adjustments were too complex as altering one signal unpredictably a...
Gary Illyes Dec 10, 2020
★★★ Is PageRank still influencing the selection of canonical URLs?
PageRank is still used by Google as one of the signals to determine which page should become canonical among a group of duplicate pages, even after all these years....
Gary Illyes Dec 10, 2020
★★ What JavaScript mistakes are silently killing your crawl budget?
Developers must avoid mistakes such as pointing all canonicals to the homepage, using fragments for routing, inadvertently blocking APIs in robots.txt, or misapplying noindex tags....
Martin Splitt Dec 10, 2020
★★★ How does Google determine the location and language of your pages during indexing?
Google determines during indexing which country or metropolitan area the pages are local to, as well as their language. These signals are used as ranking factors to give a slight boost to locally rele...
Gary Illyes Dec 10, 2020
★★★ Is Google truly keeping its rendering engine up to date as fast as claimed with Evergreen Chrome?
Google uses an evergreen version of Chrome for web page rendering. This version is updated a few weeks after each new stable release of Chrome. The system automatically manages errors and retries in c...
Martin Splitt Dec 10, 2020
★★★ Is it true that the Intersection Observer is really crawled by Googlebot?
The Intersection Observer is a recommended approach for lazy loading with Googlebot. Google seems to trigger all intersection observers as long as they generate new content, within certain limits....
Martin Splitt Dec 10, 2020
★★★ Why won't Google reveal the dimensions of Googlebot's viewport?
The dimensions of the viewport used by Googlebot are an implementation detail that can change at any time without notice. Google does not voluntarily disclose these exact dimensions because websites s...
Martin Splitt Dec 10, 2020
★★★ Do redirects really outweigh the HTTPS signal when it comes to choosing the canonical URL?
A redirect (301 or any other type) carries significantly more weight in the canonicalization process than whether a page is on HTTPS or HTTP, as the user will ultimately see the destination of the red...
Gary Illyes Dec 10, 2020
★★★ How does Google choose the canonical URL among more than 20 signals?
Google uses over 20 different signals to determine which page should be selected as the canonical URL in a cluster of duplicates. These signals include content, PageRank, HTTPS, sitemaps, and redirect...
Gary Illyes Dec 10, 2020
★★★ Does client-side JavaScript really enhance your SEO strategy?
Google can perfectly index and rank sites using client-side JavaScript, but developers should only use it when absolutely necessary. For simple sites like blogs or marketing sites, server-side renderi...
Martin Splitt Dec 10, 2020
★★ Does Safe Search really apply during indexing?
Safe Search is a signal calculated during the indexing phase to determine if a page contains adult content. This helps prevent surprising users with inappropriate results for innocent searches....
Gary Illyes Dec 10, 2020
★★★ Should you ditch infinite scroll to ensure proper indexing by Google?
For infinite scroll, it is recommended to split the content so that it is accessible via specific URLs, to submit individual elements via sitemap, or to offer a paginated version as an alternative....
Martin Splitt Dec 10, 2020
★★ Are third-party crawlers really more reliable than Search Console for testing your SEO changes?
Third-party crawling tools provide immediate feedback on a site's status (in about an hour), unlike Search Console which relies on Google indexing and can take a month. These tools are useful for test...
John Mueller Dec 09, 2020
★★ Should You Really Deindex Your Out-of-Stock Product Pages?
Google considers that out-of-stock pages without additional functionality (like sign-up for alerts) generally do not add value for users in the index. The answer depends on context: for a unique vinta...
Gary Illyes Dec 09, 2020
★★ Is SSR with hydration really the best of both worlds for SEO?
Server-side rendering with hydration allows for generating static content on the server for speed, then loading JavaScript in the browser for dynamic parts. This provides the benefits of both approach...
Martin Splitt Dec 09, 2020
★★ Does Google really mean it when they say every URL counts toward your crawl budget?
Every crawled URL counts against the crawl budget: alternate language versions, CSS files, images. Even 170 language variations of a page all consume budget; they are not exempt....
Gary Illyes Dec 09, 2020
★★★ Does removing low-quality content really improve the crawl budget?
Removing or pruning less useful content from your site enables Googlebot to focus its time on higher quality pages that are actually beneficial to users....
Gary Illyes Dec 09, 2020
★★ Is Google really limiting its crawl deliberately to spare your servers?
Google has enough crawling capacity to crash parts of the Internet, but deliberately chooses to crawl as slowly as possible while discovering enough content not to harm sites....
Gary Illyes Dec 09, 2020
★★★ Should you really be concerned about your site's crawl budget?
The vast majority of websites do not need to worry about crawl budget. It concerns only a substantial but minority segment of the web ecosystem....
Gary Illyes Dec 09, 2020
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