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 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
★★ 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
★★ 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
★★★ 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
★★★ 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
★★★ Should you really keep the canonical from desktop to mobile in mobile-first indexing?
For sites with separate mobile URLs (m.example.com), even after the switch to mobile-first indexing, you must continue to set the rel canonical from the mobile version to the desktop version and the r...
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
★ 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 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
★★ Should you include all your pages in a general sitemap?
General sitemaps must include all your pages. News sitemaps are limited to the last 1000 articles and are specifically meant for Google News, but can be used by any website. Including all URLs in a si...
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
★★★ 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
★★★ Is a low crawl rate really a problem for your SEO?
A low crawl rate is neither a negative signal nor a cause of traffic loss. Google adjusts the crawl frequency based on detected changes and server availability. If content changes little, the crawl na...
Martin Splitt Jun 11, 2020
★★★ Should you really limit the number of HTTP resources per page for SEO?
Google does not impose a strict limit on the number of HTTP resources per page. Fewer resources are generally better to reduce the risks of loading failures, but you must be reasonable: putting everyt...
Martin Splitt Jun 11, 2020
★★ Does a noindex header on an API really stop Googlebot from rendering the page?
A robots noindex header on an API endpoint should not prevent Googlebot from calling it to obtain the data necessary for rendering. The noindex header differs from robots.txt blocking and only pertain...
Martin Splitt Jun 11, 2020
★★ Should You Ditch Search Console's URL Parameters Tool in Favor of Robots.txt?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that the URL parameters handling tool in Search Console does not replace a "clean" use of robots.txt to block crawling on complex URLs with parameters, and that robot...
John Mueller Jun 08, 2020
★★ Does the rel=canonical via HTTP header really still work?
The rel=canonical attribute via HTTP header continues to work and remains effective for PDFs or other content with separate desktop/mobile versions on different domains....
金谷武明 Jun 04, 2020
★★ Does Googlebot really render all JavaScript in a single pass?
When a page loads multiple JavaScript files, Googlebot executes them all at once in a single rendering session, exactly like a traditional web browser. The number of JS files does not trigger multiple...
Anonyme (金谷武明) Jun 04, 2020
★★ What really causes your sitemap to fail in Search Console and how can you effectively resolve the issue?
If submitting a sitemap fails in Search Console, the best action is to use the 'Send Feedback' feature in Search Console with a detailed description (ideally in English, but Japanese works too via Goo...
Anonyme (金谷武明) Jun 04, 2020
★★ Is it true that all sites indexed after July 2019 default to Mobile-First Indexing?
Sites created and indexed after July 2019 are supposed to be automatically in Mobile-First Indexing. If Search Console still displays 'desktop Googlebot', it is likely a display bug in the tool, as se...
Anonyme (金谷武明) Jun 04, 2020
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