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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★★★ Should you still optimize your AMP pages with mobile-first indexing?
With the transition to mobile-first indexing, you don’t need to put additional effort into your AMP pages. They should already align with what users see on your regular pages....
John Mueller Mar 17, 2020
★★★ Should you really set all category pages to noindex except for one?
For the category pages on your site, allow one version to be indexed with the default sorting order and set the other variations to noindex. This improves the discovery of your products during our cra...
John Mueller Mar 17, 2020
★★★ Should You Really Block Internal Search Results Pages from Indexing?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that it was important not to index internal search engine results pages. Not for spam reasons, but because it can generate an infinite number of pages and drown quali...
John Mueller Mar 16, 2020
★★★ Does JavaScript prerendering still pose indexing risks for SEO?
During prerendering, it is crucial to include as much content as possible to ensure Googlebot has access to all information. This typically means not ignoring elements generated by JavaScript....
John Mueller Mar 16, 2020
★★★ Should You Launch All Pages of a New Website at Once or Gradually?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that it was preferable, when launching a site, not to put everything online at once but to gradually grow the number of pages. This helps Google progressively underst...
John Mueller Mar 16, 2020
★★★ Should you really keep old CSS/JS assets for Googlebot?
For obsolete assets when using techniques like Rails Asset Pipeline, it's best to keep them temporarily until Googlebot recrawls the new HTML content to avoid broken rendering....
Martin Splitt Mar 16, 2020
★★★ Is dynamic rendering really on its way out in SEO?
Server-side rendering and prerendering are unlikely to disappear, as they enable the rapid delivery of HTML content to users and crawlers. Dynamic rendering is temporary and may be abandoned in the lo...
Martin Splitt Mar 16, 2020
★★★ Should you block title modifications via JavaScript to prevent unwanted indexing?
If a chat modifies the page title via JavaScript, it is advised to position the chat behind a user interaction to prevent Google from indexing the modified version of the title....
Martin Splitt Mar 16, 2020
★★★ Should you really keep your old CSS and JS assets to prevent crawl errors?
When Googlebot crawls outdated assets, it is better to keep them temporarily instead of responding with a 404 error. This avoids broken renderings while Googlebot updates its indexes....
Martin Splitt Mar 16, 2020
★★ Should you really prioritize SSR and prerendering to enhance your crawl efficiency?
Prerendering and server-side rendering are useful techniques as they allow quick access to content for users and bots, thus reducing the long-term need for dynamic rendering....
Martin Splitt Mar 16, 2020
★★★ Is post-prerendering JavaScript really safe for SEO?
After the prerendering of a page, it is perfectly acceptable to use JavaScript to improve interactivity or add dynamic elements. It does not negatively affect SEO as long as the main content remains a...
John Mueller Mar 16, 2020
★★★ Can Google Really Index Only Part of a Web Page?
John Mueller (him again) reiterated on Twitter that there is no system to block the analysis and/or indexing of a portion of a web page. Either the bot reads everything, or it reads nothing......
John Mueller Mar 16, 2020
★★★ What happens when JavaScript rewrites your title tags and jeopardizes your Google indexing?
If a site has titles altered by a JavaScript chat feature, Google could index these rewritten versions. One possible solution is to delay the appearance of the chat until user interaction, as Googlebo...
Martin Splitt Mar 16, 2020
★★★ Should you really prerender 100% of your content for Googlebot to index it properly?
When prerendering your pages, include as much content as possible, even if Googlebot doesn't generate elements via JavaScript; this ensures it accesses a complete version during crawling....
John Mueller Mar 16, 2020
★★★ How Should You Handle Pagination to Optimize Your Website's SEO Performance?
John Mueller explained during a hangout that, to recognize that content is paginated on a website, there are several things to do. For example, it's possible to indicate this pagination in the H1 and ...
John Mueller Mar 16, 2020
★★★ Do You Really Need an XML Sitemap to Improve Your SEO Rankings?
In a video on the YouTube channel for webmasters dedicated to XML Sitemaps, Googler Daniel Waisberg explains that these files are primarily interesting in 3 or 4 cases: if the site is very large, if c...
Google Mar 09, 2020
★★★ Do All Your Hreflang URLs Really Need to Be Crawled and Indexed for Google to Recognize Them?
Gary Illyes explained on Reddit that for a site's Hreflang tags to be fully taken into consideration, all URLs referenced by these tags must be crawled and indexed....
Gary Illyes Mar 09, 2020
★★★ Does hreflang really prevent Google from merging your international versions?
In cases of similar content, Google can merge versions for indexing, even with hreflang. Ensure that the pages are sufficiently different to avoid merging and display a message suggesting the correct ...
John Mueller Mar 06, 2020
★★★ Should you really ditch m-dot sites for responsive design?
It is recommended to switch to responsive design rather than maintaining separate m-dot sites, even though we still support the latter with mobile-first indexing....
John Mueller Mar 06, 2020
★★★ Does Google really track all your chained redirects?
Google follows up to 5 redirects at a time during a crawl session. It's best to limit redirect chains to speed up access to your content....
John Mueller Mar 06, 2020
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