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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★★ Does Google really rewrite your title tags and meta descriptions: should you still optimize them?
Google can rewrite the title tags and meta descriptions displayed in search results, even if they have been correctly rendered by JavaScript. The appearance in the SERPs is not a good indicator to tes...
Martin Splitt Jun 17, 2020
★★ Should you restrict access for users without JavaScript to protect your SEO?
Completely blocking access to the site and displaying 'Please enable JavaScript' when JS is disabled is not a direct SEO issue as long as Googlebot can execute the JavaScript. However, this approach i...
Martin Splitt Jun 17, 2020
★★ Is it true that blocking a site without JavaScript risks an SEO penalty?
Completely blocking a site without JavaScript and displaying a 'please enable JavaScript' message does not result in a direct SEO penalty, but it poses user experience issues if JavaScript fails or is...
Martin Splitt Jun 17, 2020
★★★ Is Google really testing the AMP version for Core Web Vitals even if the mobile version is indexed?
For evaluating Core Web Vitals and the page experience score, Google tests the version that users actually see. If a site has an AMP version, it is the AMP version that will be tested for speed and us...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Is it true that automatic geographic redirections sabotage your Google crawling?
Googlebot crawls mainly from a single location per website, typically the United States. If a site automatically redirects US users to a specific version, Google will think that these pages should be ...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Is mobile-first indexing really a ranking factor?
Mobile-first indexing mainly concerns the indexing of mobile content, not mobile compatibility as a ranking factor. Google needs to see the content on mobile. Desktop-only sites with table-based desig...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Does the source of content affect the crawl budget?
There is no difference in the crawl budget based on whether the content is written by you, a team of writers, or generated by users. The important factor is to structure the site so that Google can cr...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Is JavaScript navigation without URLs ruining your site’s mobile-first indexing?
If a site's mobile version uses only JavaScript for navigation, without normal URLs (everything stays on the same URL with changing layers), Google will not be able to crawl and index the content. Wit...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Does Discover really work without strict technical criteria?
There are no specific technical requirements, mandatory formats, or necessary meta tags to appear in Discover (except for not blocking crawls). You need to create content that your audience really lik...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Why does Google only crawl a fraction of your known pages?
Google has only crawled a portion of known URLs from a site since its inception. If Google crawls 20,000 pages out of 100,000 known (via sitemap), only those 20,000 can be indexed. This number increas...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Why does Google suddenly show more non-indexed URLs in Search Console?
Google now prominently displays discovered but non-indexed URLs in Search Console. This is not a change in indexing itself but in the way this information is reported. Google has always been selective...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Do external links to m. or www. affect ranking differently?
With separate mobile URLs, external links pointing to either the mobile (m.) or desktop version are irrelevant. Google combines all signals from both versions, whether or not mobile-first indexing is ...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
Why does Google sometimes index your AMP pages before their canonical HTML version?
Google may sometimes discover and index an AMP page before its canonical HTML version, especially if links point directly to the AMP. Once the HTML page is crawled, Google connects the two versions an...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Does the rel canonical really consolidate ALL link signals to the chosen URL?
When Google recognizes a group of duplicate pages and selects a canonical URL (through the rel canonical and other signals), all external and internal signals, including external links pointing to any...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Can removing pages from a sitemap actually limit their crawling by Google?
Sitemaps help Google crawl better, but do not limit what is crawled. Removing pages from a sitemap does not prevent Google from crawling or indexing them. Google crawls the site normally even without ...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Should you really use unavailable_after to manage temporary content?
To control which pages remain indexed, use the noindex meta tag on pages that you no longer want to index. For temporary content like events, use the unavailable_after tag to tell Google when a page w...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Should you really abandon geolocated redirections for a regional selection banner?
For sites personalizing content by state or city, Google recommends displaying a banner that allows users to change their version rather than automatically redirecting. This allows Googlebot to index ...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Why hasn't your site been migrated to mobile-first indexing yet?
Google has been notifying sites about significant problems detected ahead of the mobile-first indexing migration for quite some time. The remaining unmigrated sites are mainly either sites with no mai...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★★ Why do your desktop images and videos become invisible to Google in mobile-first?
With mobile-first indexing, if images or videos are very visible on desktop but tiny or at the bottom of the page on mobile, they are less likely to appear in image and video search results. Visual co...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
★★ Do pop-ups after a 301 redirect really harm your SEO?
Displaying an informative pop-up after a 301 redirect to inform users that they have been redirected does not affect SEO. Google follows the redirect without sending a referrer and likely will never e...
John Mueller Jun 12, 2020
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