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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★★★ Can You Really Trust Google Search Console's Mobile Data to Guide Your SEO Strategy?
We asked Vincent Courson whether the data from the new Search Console regarding mobile compatibility was only samples. Because, most often, the number of pages indicated (sum of mobile-compatible page...
Google Feb 04, 2019
★★★ Could 50% of Websites Lose Traffic Due to Mobile First Indexing?
We know that currently, 50% of Google SERP results come from the Mobile First Index. John Mueller recently indicated that, apparently, the "simple" cases have been processed so far. But the remaining ...
John Mueller Jan 28, 2019
★★★ How Do You Create Quality Content That Truly Stands the Test of Time According to Google?
John Mueller "destroyed" a webmaster on a Google forum after analyzing his site. The publisher took quite a beating. Here's the translation of John's post: We don't index all the content on your site,...
John Mueller Jan 14, 2019
★★★ How do search engines actually handle specific directives in the robots.txt file?
For once, we're talking here (with great pleasure) about Bing in the "SEO news". Microsoft's search engine indeed indicated on Twitter that if, in a robots.txt file, there exists a section of specific...
Google Jan 07, 2019
★★★ Will Google refuse to index your content if too many pages already cover the same topic?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google crawls and indexes content on a given topic, even if the search engine already has numerous pages covering this topic extensively in its index. No matter ...
John Mueller Dec 31, 2018
★★★ Can Switching Hosts or Migrating to a CDN Tank Your Google Rankings?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter, in response to a specific case of a company that migrated its site to Cloudflare and saw its rankings drop, that this case was merely speculation and that a hosting ...
John Mueller Dec 17, 2018
★★★ Why Does Google Ignore Your Canonical Tags Despite Proper Implementation?
A Googler indicated on a webmaster forum that even if canonical tags were properly integrated on a website, other signals such as inconsistent redirects could hinder their consideration by the search ...
Google Dec 10, 2018
★★ Should You Create New Pages Every Year or Reuse the Same URL for Seasonal Content?
In a hangout with John Mueller, a question was raised regarding seasonal content that returns every year, such as Christmas offers, for example. Should you create new pages each time or update those f...
John Mueller Dec 03, 2018
★★★ Why Does Google Crawl Your Pages But Still Refuse to Index Them?
In the new Search Console and its "Index Coverage" option, many pages are sometimes indicated as "Crawled - currently not indexed". Most of the time, these are pages that have not yet been indexed (th...
John Mueller Nov 26, 2018
★★★ Did Your News Site Temporarily Disappear from Google News?
Google News recently experienced some indexing issues with certain sites, which were no longer appearing in search results. Googler Lisa Wang indicated that the bug has now been fixed and that the sea...
Google Nov 19, 2018
★★★ Should You Really Use the Same Title Tag for Both Desktop and Mobile?
John Mueller advised on Twitter to use only one Title tag, identical for both desktop and mobile versions of a web page. And, within the framework of the Mobile First index, it's the mobile version's ...
John Mueller Nov 12, 2018
★★★ Can You Really Opt Out of Google's Mobile First Indexing?
John Mueller responded to a question on Twitter asking whether one could request not to be moved to the Mobile First Index. The answer was negative....
John Mueller Nov 12, 2018
★★★ Why Does Google's Structured Data Testing Tool Crawl Your Site in Desktop Mode Instead of Mobile?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that Google's structured data markup testing tool crawls the submitted URL as a "neutral" crawler, which is interpreted most of the time by the site as a "desktop" cr...
John Mueller Nov 05, 2018
★★★ How Does Googlebot Actually Interpret Your Website's JavaScript?
Google's Martin Splitt indicated during a hangout that there was still a gap between how current browsers (example: Chrome version 70) parsed and displayed a web page and how Googlebot saw it (more li...
Martin Splitt Nov 05, 2018
★★ Do 301 Redirects Between Unrelated Pages Really Lose All Their PageRank?
John Mueller provided more information during a hangout on how a 301 redirect passes "link juice" (PageRank) from one page to another. He initially indicated, as was already known, that 301 and 302 re...
John Mueller Nov 05, 2018
★★★ How Does Google Actually Discover Your New Web Pages?
Gary Illyes indicated at the Pubcon event that the two main pathways Google considers for identifying new URLs to crawl are first the tracking of hyperlinks by its bots, and secondly XML Sitemap files...
Gary Illyes Oct 29, 2018
★★★ Why Does Google Take Several Weeks to Index Some Web Pages?
We know that the Google search engine no longer just reads the HTML code of pages in a basic way as it did years ago, but tries to analyze web pages as if they were displayed in a browser. This "rende...
Gary Illyes Oct 23, 2018
★★★ Is Mobile First Indexing Really Behind Google's Recent Search Result Fluctuations?
John Mueller explained on Twitter that the latest major changes and Google algorithm updates we've seen over the past several months, even weeks, were not related to Mobile First Indexing....
John Mueller Oct 15, 2018
★★★ Is There Really a Limit to How Many Meta Tags You Can Use on a Webpage?
John Mueller indicated on Twitter that to his knowledge, there was no limit to the number of meta tags (of any kind) that Google can crawl on a webpage....
John Mueller Oct 01, 2018
★★★ Why Will the Mobile First Index Transition Take Several More Years to Complete?
John Mueller explained during a hangout that even though many webmasters have received messages in recent days indicating that their site has been validated in the Mobile First Index (MFI), the migrat...
John Mueller Sep 24, 2018
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