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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★★★ Why does Google ignore the lastmod dates in your XML sitemap?
If all the URLs in a sitemap have the same modification date (e.g., today's date), Google ignores this information and uses the sitemap only to discover new URLs. The priority and changefreq fields ar...
John Mueller Aug 21, 2020
★★ 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
★★ 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
★★ Why is Google so tight-lipped about its indexing incidents?
The indexing incident on August 10 was resolved quite quickly, and Google has very little additional information to share publicly. The incident on August 15 appears to have been very brief. Google do...
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
★★ Should you really update the lastmod date of the sitemap for every minor change?
Google recommends using the lastmod date in sitemaps only for significant content changes, not for minor changes like an update of a counter or metric. Priority and changefreq are generally ignored by...
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
★★★ 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
★★★ 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
★★★ Can you inject video tags via JavaScript without facing SEO penalties?
Google fully accepts that video tags and their metadata (poster image, etc.) can be injected by JavaScript instead of being present in the source HTML. If the tag is visible in the rendered HTML (veri...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
★★★ Why does Google only index one language when your site switches through JavaScript?
If the site's language is managed solely by JavaScript/cookies (same URL for all languages), Google can only index one language version because Googlebot does not follow language switchers or use cook...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
★★★ Is it really necessary to remove your old content to boost your SEO?
Google primarily evaluates pages individually, not the total volume of content. Having 5,000 or 500 articles does not increase overall relevance. Removing low-quality content (e.g., duplicate agency n...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
★★★ Are iframes really neutral for SEO, or should you be cautious about them?
Integrating external content via iframe is not problematic as long as it does not make up the entirety of the page's content. Google can either attribute it to the main page (if rendered) or index it ...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
★★ Why does Google keep 404 URLs in Search Console for years?
404 URLs linger in Google's system for a long time (several years) because Google wants to make sure no signals are lost. Google continues to occasionally crawl these 404 pages to verify that nothing ...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
★★★ Does using nofollow really stop Google from crawling your links?
Nofollow, sponsored, and UGC attributes generally prevent the transfer of signals but do not ensure that Google won’t crawl the link. To fully block crawling, use robots.txt. An intermediate solution ...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
★★★ How does Google truly calculate the crawl budget for your site?
The crawl budget depends on two main factors: 1) Google's need (overall site quality, actual frequency of content changes) which determines how much Google wants to crawl, and 2) the server's capacity...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
★★ Can Google redirect your competitors' backlinks to your PDF?
When the same PDF file exists on multiple servers, Google selects a canonical version and concentrates all signals (including links pointing to other versions) there. This can create situations where ...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
★★★ Should You Really Include Modification Dates in Your XML Sitemaps?
Google prefers to have a modification date in sitemaps to know whether to recrawl a page. If the date is old but correct, it's not a problem: Google will typically crawl it. The issue arises only when...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
★★ Should you worry when the number of indexed pages fluctuates by 50% in just a few days?
For large sites, it's normal for the number of indexed pages to fluctuate significantly (e.g., from 10,000 to 5,000 then 20,000). Google's systems continuously adjust to find the optimal indexing leve...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
★★ Why does Google take longer to index a simple title change?
If only the title of a page changes (without modifying the main content), Google's systems may respond more slowly because they detect that the main content is unchanged. To enhance the processing spe...
Johannes Müller Aug 14, 2020
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