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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★★ Is it really necessary to manually de-index your old pagination URLs?
When pagination is removed, old paginated URLs either return the homepage (automatically canonicalized) or a 404 (de-indexed upon recrawl). Google manages this naturally over time without any manual d...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★★ Do cascading internal 301 redirects really drain SEO juice?
Even if internal navigation points to old URLs that redirect via 301, Google follows the chain and treats the link as going directly to the final destination (the canonical). No loss of value. Users c...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★★ Should you still fill in the priority and changefreq attributes in your XML sitemaps?
Google does not use the priority or changefreq attributes in sitemap files. Only the URL and the lastmod date are taken into account. Priority has been ignored because websites filled it out in a non-...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★★ Are URL parameters really a non-issue for SEO anymore?
URL parameters have not been an SEO problem for a long time. Google automatically handles the canonicalization of URLs with parameters. The parameter management tool is only useful for sites with tens...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★ Are sitemaps really essential for Google indexing?
Google discovers new URLs through various means: internal links, RSS feeds, tweets, public mailing lists, external links. The sitemap is not the only source. Google does not guess URLs; it must find t...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★ Can the JavaScript History API really force Google to change your canonical URL?
When JavaScript uses the History API to change the URL after the page has loaded, Google may interpret this change as a redirect and choose the modified URL as canonical. This behavior depends on the ...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★★ Why does Google require a canonical on ALL AMP pages, including standalone ones?
All AMP pages must have a rel=canonical, whether they are connected to a traditional HTML version or are standalone AMP pages. In the case of standalone AMP, the canonical points to the page itself....
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★★ Is rel=canonical in syndication really reliable for controlling indexing?
If you publish your content on other sites with a canonical link pointing to your page, Google can either index both pages separately (if they are sufficiently different) or choose a canonical URL by ...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★ Can automated DMCA complaints harm your visibility on Google?
Some large content providers automatically crawl the web and file DMCA complaints in an automated manner, generating a very high volume of DMCA requests each day. Google processes these complaints but...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★★ Do internal 301 redirects really dilute PageRank?
If your internal links point to URLs that redirect via 301, Google follows the redirect, identifies the final URL as canonical, and treats the link as if it points directly to the destination. No loss...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★ Are URL parameters still an obstacle for organic search?
URLs with parameters (query strings) have been perfectly acceptable to Google for a long time. The URL parameter management tool is only useful for very large sites (millions of pages) generating an e...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★ Does mobile-first indexing really offer any SEO advantages, or is it just a myth?
Being already indexed in mobile-first does not provide any advantages in terms of ranking or indexing. It is a technical change (using the mobile crawler). If the site is responsive and equivalent on ...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★★ Does nofollow really block indexing, or can Google still crawl those URLs?
Google can now follow nofollow links to discover new URLs and potentially index them. However, the passing of PageRank and ranking signals through nofollow remains independent and is not guaranteed: j...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★★ Does Google Discover really use the same quality algorithms as traditional search?
Google Discover is part of the Search systems. It uses the same crawling, indexing, content understanding processes and the same quality algorithms as traditional search. Major algorithm updates for S...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★★ Why does Google ignore identical modification dates in your sitemaps?
If all URLs in a sitemap have the same modification date (for example, today's date), Google completely ignores this lastmod field and uses the sitemap only to discover new URLs, not to prioritize re-...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★ Is it true that Google is blocking the indexing of new sites?
There has been no general blocking of new sites or publishers since December 2019. Many new sites normally appear in search results. Reported cases concerning Google News have been forwarded to the Ne...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★ Do security alerts in Search Console really block Google's crawling?
Security alerts in Search Console (malware, phishing, hacked site) do not affect how Google crawls the site, but they can impact the display of pages in search results. Google remains cautious about w...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★ How can Search Console be leveraged to effectively audit and enhance your technical SEO?
Search Console offers features to enhance AMP implementation, request the temporary removal of content from search results, manage sitemaps, identify pages crawled and indexed by Google, and monitor s...
Daniel Waisberg Aug 18, 2020
★★★ Should You Stop Using the Canonical Tag for Pagination and Redirects?
Rachel Costello and Martin Splitt have published a very interesting video on web page canonicalization and therefore the "canonical" tag. They explain in particular that this tag was created primarily...
Martin Splitt Aug 17, 2020
★★★ Does Google Really Penalize Sites Listed in Disavow Files?
John Mueller has said it again for the 345th time 🙂: the fact that a website is listed in a disavow file submitted to Google by another site has no impact on its crawl or future rankings and does not ...
John Mueller Aug 17, 2020
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